Consent by Donna Freitas

Author:Donna Freitas
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2019-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

I remember, clear as day, the moment I realized my story was a lie. That my story was a cover-up. I remember the exact spot where I was standing, just outside the inner door to my apartment. The door between my office and my living room was wide open at the time. Several people were gathered there with me, a few friends, Christopher and Hannah among them. We were about to go out somewhere.

The phone rang before we left, and I picked it up. It was him.

Everyone overheard my side of the conversation.

They heard me say no to his latest invitation. They heard how many times I had to say no, because he kept pressuring me to say yes, kept trying to persuade me to change my answer from no to yes, or at least from no to maybe. Everyone overheard how difficult he made it for me to get off the phone, the way he tried to keep me on the line even though I kept telling him I had to go, that friends were waiting for me, that they were waiting right there that very moment, in my apartment, while I talked to him. They heard me avoid telling him where we were going, and they knew he must be asking about this, since I was floundering around, trying to answer him without answering him.

Finally, I hung up. When I turned around to rejoin my friends so we could head out, they were staring at me, silent.

“What was that all about?” Hannah asked, with a weird, hesitant tone.

I put on my happiest smile and then, like so many times before, I launched into the story. But on this telling, unlike every other, I heard myself rehearsing it as if from far away, outside my own body. I could see my own face as I spoke those tired lines, the one about this man’s kindliness and his concern, the repetition of the word priest over and over. And in that moment I finally sensed something different as the words emerged from my mouth. They rang hollow, they were off. There was a sickly sweetness to them, and I could taste it on my tongue.

Everything I was saying was a lie. But I was not lying for him, or even for them, I was lying for me. I was lying to myself, as a way of avoiding the truth. I wanted to avoid the truth so badly because the alternative was not an option. This I believed was still true. I had no options. And now my cover was gone. Reality lay there before me like an exposed wire, live and dangerous.

And that was when I knew I’d lost everything, because I’d lost my own lie, too.

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