The Lie Read online

  The Lie

  A Novel

  Chad Kultgen

  Contents

  Kyle Gibson

  Heather Andruss

  Brett Keller

  Part One

  freshman year

  Chapter One

  I fucking loved her like no guy has ever loved…

  Chapter Two

  Even though I was the one who hit my head…

  Chapter Three

  I’ve known Kyle since third grade. His father has worked…

  Chapter Four

  A few weeks had passed. Class was actually starting to…

  Chapter Five

  I didn’t really know what was going to happen once…

  Chapter Six

  My stepmother had, once again, nagged my father into taking…

  Chapter Seven

  After the night she gave me the most incredible blowjob…

  Chapter Eight

  He was actually really good at sex. I kind of…

  Chapter Nine

  She was a cunt. There was absolutely no question in…

  Chapter Ten

  She kept saying how bad she wanted to go to…

  Chapter Eleven

  I got this text from Kyle saying he had something…

  Chapter Twelve

  The morning after the homecoming party I was coerced into…

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next month was probably one of the best in…

  Chapter Fourteen

  My first abortion was in high school and it was…

  Chapter Fifteen

  The last day of our winter vacation coincided with my…

  Chapter Sixteen

  Our first week back at school was kind of weird.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rush week was seriously like one of the best weeks…

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rush week, for me, was little more than a series…

  Chapter Nineteen

  I didn’t see too much of Heather for the rest…

  Chapter Twenty

  I mean, yeah, I felt bad about not calling Kyle…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  A few months or so before the end of our…

  Summer

  Part Two

  sophomore year

  Chapter One

  The first day of my second year at SMU was…

  Chapter Two

  I know it probably pissed Kyle off that I spent…

  Chapter Three

  The morning after the first big party of my sophomore…

  Chapter Four

  That feeling was fucking worse than anything. It was like…

  Chapter Five

  Oh my God. Seriously, how did he find out? Was…

  Chapter Six

  To say Kyle was merely upset over his breakup with…

  Chapter Seven

  I guess part of me thought that it just wouldn’t…

  Chapter Eight

  I had just had some breakfast in the Kappa kitchen…

  Chapter Nine

  I admit I was surprised that Kyle was able to…

  Chapter Ten

  It was only a few weeks after having sex with…

  Chapter Eleven

  By the time homecoming came our sophomore year, Brian and…

  Chapter Twelve

  I was returning from a blood test that was mandatory…

  Chapter Thirteen

  I was so fucking stupid. Everything with Erin was good,…

  Chapter Fourteen

  I don’t know why I never told Brian about seeing…

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Heaven and Hell party was, for me, an exercise…

  Chapter Sixteen

  There was still some time left until the end of…

  Chapter Seventeen

  I only talked to Brian one other time after the…

  Chapter Eighteen

  I was taking quite possibly the most foul shit of…

  Chapter Nineteen

  That night, in terms of making mistakes, was one of…

  Chapter Twenty

  I was like so excited. I mean a little part…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The information divulged to me by Kyle the day after…

  Summer

  Part Three

  junior year

  Chapter One

  Going into my third year at SMU, I couldn’t have…

  Chapter Two

  That first night back was like seriously the best. Kyle…

  Chapter Three

  Year three of my mandatory and pointless four-year stay at…

  Chapter Four

  Of course I had thought about marrying Heather a few…

  Chapter Five

  I was on my way back from my first actual…

  Chapter Six

  Kyle’s apartment was nice enough. I didn’t mind spending time…

  Chapter Seven

  I hadn’t honestly ever given it much thought in my…

  Chapter Eight

  A bunch of us were like sitting around trying to…

  Chapter Nine

  After a particularly boring business ethics lecture I returned to…

  Chapter Ten

  I had been to probably every jewelry store in Dallas…

  Chapter Eleven

  The next kind of big thing that happened that semester…

  Chapter Twelve

  There were only two days left in the first semester…

  Chapter Thirteen

  That winter break, Heather ended up spending almost the entire…

  Chapter Fourteen

  I like don’t even know how to describe what it…

  Chapter Fifteen

  I hadn’t heard from Kyle since the night of the…

  Chapter Sixteen

  I knew something was up before Heather even came over…

  Chapter Seventeen

  I seriously went through like all the same stages a…

  Chapter Eighteen

  My wounds weren’t significant enough to require any type of…

  Chapter Nineteen

  I guess I had never felt that empty before. Nothing…

  Chapter Twenty

  I know it was like seriously one of the most…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The months that followed the demise of Kyle and Heather’s…

  Summer

  Part Four

  senior year

  Chapter One

  I’d made it through so much shit with Heather and…

  Chapter Two

  The first day back was like seriously not fun. I…

  Chapter Three

  Viking’s Resort was, in short, the greatest place on planet…

  Chapter Four

  After what I did to Erin, something changed in me.

  Chapter Five

  It was a few days after I had sex with…

  Chapter Six

  Every six weeks I was required to take a blood…

  Chapter Seven

  Brett was the first person I knew who had any…

  Chapter Eight

  I had just spent like two hours looking through pretty…

  Chapter Nine

  I explained to Kyle that Heather was the first girl…

  Chapter Ten

  I got the first F of my entire life a…

  Chapter Eleven

  I had been out with Brett on like three dates,…

  Chapter Twelve

  It was with great pride that I found myself knocking…

  Chapter Thirteen

  After getting the good news from Brett about Heather, something…

  Chapter Fourteen

  I didn’t get to see Brett like at all over…<
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  Chapter Fifteen

  I was perusing the personal ads at a website called…

  Chapter Sixteen

  I felt like the Incredible Hulk immediately after he was…

  Chapter Seventeen

  I was like, “Uh…are you fucking kidding me?” Seriously, I…

  Chapter Eighteen

  I called Kyle immediately after she left to confirm her…

  Chapter Nineteen

  I couldn’t believe she actually did it. As she sat…

  Chapter Twenty

  I like knew it was going to happen so it…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  And so on my graduation day, instead of having a…

  Kyle Gibson

  Heather Andruss

  Brett Keller

  About the Author

  Other Books by Chad Kultgen

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  kyle gibson

  You’re going to hate me. You’re going to hate me more than most of the other people you’ve come to hate. Everybody else who hears this story does. Obviously, I wish things would have ended differently, but I don’t have any regrets. I still stand by everything I did, but you’re going to hate me. I just ask that, no matter how much it might seem like I’m the worst piece of shit who ever walked the planet and no matter how much it might seem like what I did is completely deplorable, you try to see it from my point of view. Try to remember the moment when all the stupid innocent things you thought about life and love, all the things you thought mattered, all the things you thought were true…try to remember when they all turned out to be lies.

  heather andruss

  I majored in elementary education. I never really wanted to be a teacher, but I always kind of figured that the stuff I learned would be great when I like have my first baby. Hopefully we’ll start trying soon, which Kyle doesn’t know about, but I’m sure it’ll get back to him and when it does I hope he realizes that he’s basically like the biggest dick I’ve ever met and I have a pretty much perfect life, just like I wanted, in spite of everything he did. I mean he completely tried to ruin my life. He was too pathetic to actually ruin it, but he literally tried to ruin my life. Seriously, what kind of asshole tries to ruin somebody else’s life on purpose? Honestly I feel sorry for him now, but we all get what we deserve. I know I did.

  brett keller

  My father owns the second largest freight and shipping company in the southwest, Keller Shipping. My grandfather started the company, my father took it over when he retired, and now it seems I’ll do the same when my father retires. The first time I had my dick sucked I was eleven. It was my babysitter. She was sixteen. Not that pretty, but nice tits. She smelled nice. She was also the first girl I fucked in the ass. I mention these events because, until very recently, I considered them to be among the most important moments of my life. I never thought anything Kyle and I were doing would lead to this, especially considering some of the more nefarious things I had done up to that point. I actually found it all to be quite amusing. I had little if any concern that it would have any further impact on my life beyond my previously stated amusement. I was clearly incorrect. The events that unfolded as a result of my involvement in all of this left me with little choice in the end. I couldn’t risk the potential excommunication from my family had I acted on personal preference alone, so certain compromises were made to maintain my position within my family for obvious financial reasons.

  part one

  freshman year

  chapter one

  I fucking loved her like no guy has ever loved a girl. I know every guy has thought that about some girl, and that’s exactly why I’m saying it. I’m also saying it because it was true.

  We met about two weeks into our freshman year at SMU. I was majoring in biological sciences with the intent of getting into a good med school and she was getting a bachelor’s degree in elementary education—she wanted to be a teacher. That seemed so sweet to me at the time. She was actually going to college to learn how to be a good teacher. I had a few teachers I liked along the way, but I’ll never forget overhearing Mr. Campbell, my high school history teacher, telling Mrs. Baude, my high school calculus teacher, that he started teaching because it was the only job he could get and twenty-five years later it was the only job he could keep. I always kind of figured that’s how most teachers became teachers, but she was actively pursuing the career. It was almost noble.

  Classes had just barely started. I got a few syllabi, but I still hadn’t even gone to some first classes yet because the hadn’t been held. I was sitting in my dorm room in McElvaney, talking to my roommate, Dave, about some stupid bullshit like how he couldn’t wait to get back home for Christmas so he could get some of his mom’s cooking or some other inconsequential crap. Actually, maybe he was talking about which frats he wanted to try to get into the following semester. I had no interest in joining a frat, which he tried to convince me was the biggest mistake I would ever make. Later I found out he was a born-again Christian, and when he found out I didn’t go to church or subscribe to any religion he tried to convince me that burning in hell was almost as big a mistake as not getting into a frat. Anyway, whatever we were talking about got interrupted when we both heard a thud followed by some whimpering in the hallway outside our door. We went out to see what in the hell was going on and there was Heather. She was shit-faced beyond recognition.

  Heather had apparently been too drunk to walk and had used her friend as a human crutch as they both stumbled back to McElvaney from whatever party they were at. Once they were in the hallway, her friend passed out, they both fell down, and Heather smashed her head against the wall. She had a small cut on her forehead and she was kind of crying or moaning—just making weird low noises, really. I remember genuinely feeling bad for her.

  I asked her if she was okay and she said, “I need to lay down, I think.”

  She was hot as hell, there’s no question about that. But there was something about her, something beyond just looking good, that attracted me to her almost immediately. I had a few girlfriends in high school I thought were cute or whatever, but not like this. I know it’s gay, but it was her eyes or something. I don’t know. Maybe it was just seeing her completely out-of-control drunk, too. But there was some kind of immediate attraction that wasn’t like anything I’d ever felt. So, seeing a hot chick in need of aid, I did what any normal guy would have done. Actually I did what any pussy-ass chump would have done. I helped her up and asked if I could take her back to her room, with no intention of making any kind of move on her.

  She said, “What floor are we on?”

  I said, “Third.”

  “I think my room is on two. I can’t really walk anymore. Where’s your room?”

  I said, “Right here.”

  As Heather went into my room I tried to get her friend up off the floor, but when I reached down and touched her arm she started yelling, “Get your fucking hands off me, asshole.” Then she launched a halfhearted punch at my balls that kind of glanced off my thigh. I looked back to Heather to see if she was going to offer me some help in wrangling her friend, but she was already in my room, on my bed. Not wanting to risk another nut-shot, I just left her friend there, assuming she’d sober up and find her way back to her room.

  I essentially could have done anything I wanted to Heather that night, but it didn’t even cross my mind. I took off her shoes, went down the hall and ran some warm water over a washrag in the bathroom, came back, cleaned the blood off her forehead, put a Band-Aid on the cut, pulled up the covers, and—get this shit—I went to sleep on the fucking floor so she’d be more comfortable.

  I remember Dave just pretending to go to sleep. At the time I really didn’t know why, but after I found out about how Christian he was I thought it might have had something to do with breaking some rule against God or something by having a girl in our room. Who knows? He was a weird guy.

  The next
morning was awkward at best. Heather woke up before I did. She nudged me and then we introduced ourselves.

  She said something like, “Hi. I’m Heather.”

  I said something like, “I’m Kyle.”

  “Did we…I hate having to actually ask this, but did we have sex last night?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, I thought we…Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Positive. I think I would have remembered.”

  “I thought we were both drunk, though. I just want to make sure in case we didn’t use any protection, you know, so I can get a morning-after pill.”

  This was our first official conversation and she was basically telling me that she was so slutty that standard operations for her involved being unable to remember having sex with a guy five hours after his dick was in her followed by eating morning-after pills like they were daily vitamins and this didn’t even tip me off at all that this chick was bad fucking news.