When I finally told Skyla, I understood immediately that the lie was going to be harder to carry than I had imagined.
She didn't respond the way I had rehearsed in my head.
There was no argument about money.
There was no immediate accusation.
She looked at me as though she were trying to understand what I had just said.
I told her I had received a serious diagnosis.
I explained that I needed treatment and that the cost was more than I could manage.
Then I added the part that made the situation sound even more hopeless.
I told her that even my wealthy parents couldn't help me this time.
Every word made the story worse.
Every word was another lie.
Skyla went pale.
I remember that reaction more clearly than I remember the exact way I delivered the news.
Her expression changed before she said anything.
The ordinary ease between us disappeared.
For a moment, she seemed unable to decide which question to ask first.
Then she focused on the thing I had told her I couldn't manage.
The money.
"How much would you need?"
She asked quietly.
I had expected her to be frightened.
I had expected questions.
But there was something in the way she asked that made it harder to continue.
She wasn't asking how much she could afford to give me.
She was asking how large the problem was.
And I knew what I was about to do.
I named an amount I knew she could never realistically produce.
I chose it because I wanted the obstacle to be impossible for her to overcome through ordinary means.
I wanted to see what she would do when she couldn't simply reach into her savings and solve the problem.
At the time, I called that making the test fair.
It wasn't fair.
It was designed to corner her.
Skyla didn't tell me she couldn't help.
She didn't immediately walk away.
Instead, she began asking questions.
She wanted to know about doctors.
She asked about loans.
She asked whether there were payment arrangements that might make treatment possible.
She kept searching for options.
I answered her as best I could without letting the truth slip out.
That meant maintaining the lie while she tried to find a way through it.
It was one of the ugliest things I had ever done.
She was treating my supposed illness as a real emergency.
I was treating her fear as an experiment.
The difference between us should have been impossible to ignore.
But I kept telling myself that I needed to see what happened next.
Over the following two days, she continued trying to work out what could be done.
Her questions kept returning to the same problem.
How could I get the treatment I supposedly needed when I didn't have the money to pay for it?
She looked for possibilities because she believed there was something at stake.
I knew she was already living on a tight budget.
I knew that every option she considered would have to be weighed against her own obligations.
She had tuition.
She had rent.
She had food to buy.
She had a car that seemed to demand money whenever she could least spare it.
And still, she kept asking what might help me.
I watched her do all of that while knowing the crisis wasn't real.
I could have stopped.
I could have admitted that I had lied before the damage went any further.
I could have told her that I had become frightened by the opinions of my friends and parents and had handled that fear in the worst possible way.
I could have apologized.
Instead, I waited.
I wanted the test to reach its conclusion.
That was how I explained my silence to myself.
I convinced myself that if I stopped halfway through, I would never know what Skyla would do when the situation became truly difficult.
The irony was that the situation was already difficult for her.
She had no reason to suspect that the person she trusted was deliberately misleading her.
She had no way to know that the questions she asked were being measured against an answer I had decided I needed.
All she knew was that someone she loved had told her he was seriously ill and couldn't afford treatment.
And she was trying to help.
I remember thinking that her concern might be genuine.
Then, almost immediately, I wondered whether she would keep showing that concern.
I had turned every decent thing she did into something I felt entitled to question.
When she searched for payment plans, I wondered whether she would eventually offer money.
When she asked about loans, I wondered whether she was willing to take on debt for me.
When she continued looking for answers, I wondered how long that effort would last.
I wasn't simply waiting to see whether she loved me.
I was moving the standard in my own head.
No answer felt final.
No act of kindness gave me the certainty I wanted.
I had created a test without knowing what result would satisfy me.
Then the message arrived.
It was short.
There was no explanation attached to it.
Skyla told me she would be away for five days and instructed me not to call her.
I read the message again.
Then I read it a third time.
Five days.
No calls.
No explanation.
After the two days we had spent talking about the illness and the money, the message felt like a door closing.
I couldn't understand it.
I had told her I was seriously ill.
I had told her I couldn't afford treatment.
She had asked questions and looked for solutions.
Now she was saying she was leaving.
My first reaction was confusion.
My second was anger.
My third was fear.
I had wanted to discover whether Skyla would leave me when things became difficult.
Now I thought I had my answer.
I forgot that I had created the difficulty myself.
I forgot that I knew nothing about what she was doing or why she had decided to go away.
I looked at the message and treated it as a verdict.
The words seemed to confirm everything my friends had told me.
The warnings from my parents came back.
My mother's concern.
My father's blunt suspicion.
All the doubts I had collected over the previous months seemed to fall into place.
I had been so eager to prove those people wrong that I had built a test to settle the question.
Now I was eager to believe they had been right.
I called Skyla.
She didn't answer.
I tried again.
There was still no response.
I told myself that if she cared, she would pick up.
I told myself that someone who truly loved me wouldn't leave me alone after hearing what I had said.
But I was asking those questions from behind a wall of deception.
I had hidden the truth from her and expected her to respond to a reality that existed only in my story.
And when she failed to behave the way I wanted, I blamed her.
That was the point at which my test stopped being a test of Skyla's feelings and became a reflection of my own.
I wanted to be loved without uncertainty.
I wanted her to prove something without knowing what she was being asked to prove.
I wanted to remain in control while pretending I had surrendered everything.
The message stayed on my phone.
Five days.
Don't call.
I looked at those words and convinced myself that the woman I had loved for nearly two years had abandoned me.
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: Five Days of Silence Convinced Me I Had Been Right, Until the Front Door Opened and Skyla Finally Came Home
I Had Everything Money Could Buy, Yet I Was Afraid the One Person I Loved Might Only Want What I Owned
Part 3 of 8
