heart of lies (meyerson university book 1!)

chapter 1

Dedicated to my diabetic girls- 

may your boyfriends be tall and handsome.

Gwen.

Being a "pathological liar" isn't the worst thing in the world.

For example, you could be a narcissist, or a gaslighter, or just an asshole.

And frankly, honesty is lame.

Many may disagree with my sentiments, but the truth? Disappoints, pisses people off, and is just plain boring.

The trick with lying is, don't deviate, don't make the lies too unrealistic, and when in doubt, lie more.

I have lived and breathed these three commandments for approximately four months since I left my shitty hometown for Meyerson University, where I'm currently trying to pay attention to my roommate, Hazel, and her play-by-play of her hookup with a guy named Mike yesterday (or was it nick? I can't remember.)

"I'm telling you, it was like he was trying to reach the back of my throat with his tongue"

Shrieks rained out of Charlotte and Iris, my other two roommates. We were put together in our little on-campus apartment back in September, and Charlotte immediately declared that we would be BFFs (she promptly bought us Starbucks, therefore solidifying herself as my BFF forever.)

"Oh my god, he totally did that weird thing with his lips, like Gwen's guy, what was his name... Ronan!"

This finally caused me to snap back to full attention. My friends turned to me and continued laughing, iris piped in.

"I can't believe you hooked up with him TWICE after that though, what the hell Gwen?"

"Well, when a guy is 6'3, you make certain concessions." I chuckled along with them.

In truth, Ronan doesn't actually exist. My friends, back in October, noticed that I was giggling at my phone a lot, so they basically tortured the secrets out of me. The "secret" was: that I was texting with this cute guy named Ronan whom I met in a biology lecture, we hooked up at a party, I got his number, and we hooked up a few times after.

This, of course, is total bullshit.

I was giggling at my phone because of this horrible romance book I was reading, but instead of admitting, "Hey, I love to read horribly written smut all the time, and I've never even been touched by a guy before, and I've been lying to you guys about that for months" I lied.

No one was hurt, my friends got a laugh out of it, and all is well.

Of course, this was not the first, nor the last time I lied to my friends like that.

It all started on the weekend before classes started. I was finally bonding with my new, cool, hot, amazing friends, when Charlotte said, "Hey guys, there's a party at one of the frats tonight. Wait, Gwen, have you been to a frat party before?"

And instead of admitting, "hell no, I've never even been to a house party" I just said "Of course! I love 'em."

In retrospect, maybe not the best way to enter a friendship, with lies and a shit- ton of half-truths, but I promised myself that once I got to college, I would reinvent myself, try out new things, make new friends, and maybe actually kiss a boy.