Author: Pharo
Disclaimer: 'Lost' belongs to JJ Abrams and co. No infringement intended.
Summary: She's a liar, but that's always worked just fine for her.
Spoilers: 1.13 Hearts And Minds.
Feedback: pharo(at)newyork(dot)com
she said, "don't, don't let it go to your head, boys like you are a dime a dozen, boys like you are a dime a dozen…" –Taking Back Sunday, You're So Last Summer
She is a liar. That's her role and it's what she is best at.
She was just a little girl when they put her mother into the ground. Her father had asked afterwards how she was holding up and she just put on a brave smile and told him that she was just fine; all she really wanted to do was curl up in her mother's lavender sheets and cry herself to sleep.
When she was a teenager, she lied left and right. She lied with tales of asthma and pneumonia to get out of gym class. She lied to the geeky boys to earn A's and she lied to the popular boys to taste the excitement of adventure. She lied to her friends when she told them she'd keep their secrets and lied to her enemies when she insisted that she didn't care what they thought about her.
Even now she is lying. Lying when she insists that it is all for the best if she walks away before he does. She wants to be the one to leave.
He is perfectly still while she scrambles to gather all her clothing and put distance between them. She can hear him shuffling as she puts on the dress she bought an hour after she called him. He reaches for her and for the split second that his fingertips graze her arm, she is motionless. She can feel his eyes on her face, willing her to turn around, but she pushes his hand away.
"Where are my heels?" she asks, making no attempts to look for her discarded shoes.
She walks to the other side of the room, the rough carpeting scratching the soles of her feet. Her feet knock into her heels as she slumps down onto the armchair that is farthest from the bed – farthest from him – and looks at her hands, distinctly remembering the sensation of clawing at his back. She closes her eyes and can make out the feel of the silky material of his shirt under her perfectly manicured nails.
She can feel the salty tears wet her face. She scrubs at her eyes and cheeks as if she can just clean away the memory like the stain of running mascara.
"What's wrong with you?" he asks, speaking for the first time since she's moved. His voice is different somehow – sadder. He's sat up and is now looking at her again; all she wants to do is scream at him to stop it and just look away.
Instead, her compact is fished out of her purse in a flash. She lifts it up to block his face and sets to working fixing her hair, putting on another layer of strawberry passion lipstick, adjusting and readjusting the straps on her heels – any motion to keep the mirror up just a little longer so she won't have to look at him.
"We'll go back to LA and pretend like this never happened," she says to her reflection in the small, round mirror.
She is trying her best to sound nonchalant. She doesn't want him to see her red eyes, to recognize that her lips are starting to pout the way it does whenever she's lying. She wants him to burn the memory of them together from his mind. She wants him to hate her.
"You'll tell your mother that you saved me again and we can all just go on our merry way."
He stares at the bare white wall in front of him and she interprets his silence as an agreement.
"As if you get to make all the rules," he finally says, his bitter voice like squeaky chalk on a wet blackboard. She almost grabs her ears in pain, but forces herself to remain cool.
"I was drunk."
"It was more than that and you know it," he spits out, his face turning to look at her.
She sighs impatiently and throws her purse onto the side table next to the armchair. The green in his eyes flash like fiery emeralds. She forces herself to stare straight into them.
"There's no happily ever after here," she says with a sneer, the words cutting through the air in loud slashes.
"You felt something. I know you did!"
"I don't love you, Boone! I never have!"
"Why did you call me here then?"
"Because I needed money and I knew that you would come," she says softly. "God Boone, you've been in love with me forever. You're always ragging on me to do some charity work, so I figured I'd do something for you."
He shakes his head vehemently, unwilling to believe the words.
"That's not it, Shannon, and you know it!" he says, his face colored in a shade of red. "You felt something!"
"I didn't," she says with a shrug.
"You're a liar."
"God, don't you get it, Boone? I could never love you," she says, purposely enunciating every word. "I don't even like you."
He stares at her, the seconds stretching out like minutes, before he turns away from her. He goes back to staring at the wall, untarnished like a blank slate, void of all impurities.
"The flight leaves at ten. The ticket's on the table," he says. "Now get out."
She grabs the envelope and her purse and slowly moves to leave. Her hands are suddenly shaking and she wants him to stop her and say that he can see through her words.
"See you later," she says, lingering longer than she has to at the door. He doesn't say a word. His eyes remain fixed on the wall and she knows that he hates her.
She is a damn good liar. That's all she knows how to be.