Verisimilitude

This is my first sketch of a story I've been wanting to write for some time now - about a woman who's in a relationship with a pathological liar. Of course, it's fiction, something I'm not very good at, but I'll try.

He tells you about his hometown.

I was born there. I was raised there. I had my first kiss there. I'm best friends with the butcher's son. He gives me his best cuts at half price, or if I'm having a bad day, for free. So every time I drop by the wet market I make sure I'm having a bad day. We've been friends some 20 years now. I think he's beginning to catch on.

When you get home, you look up the name of the town.

It doesn't exist.

He's making it up. The butcher is a myth. The best cuts story, total bullshit. He doesn't lie, really, but invents, exaggerates, as you do, to make things more interesting. The difference is, you tell it as fiction, as dream, but he tells it as fact.

Yet he feels like the ocean inside of you.

He is leaving next summer, and like all the others, you'll probably never hear from him again.

So you take all the harmless, self-inflated little lies he has to give because these are his lies. But now, when he gushes, gosh, you're so beautiful, you just can't believe him anymore.

That's when you decide it has to end.