Friends and Other Liars

by Kaela Coble

  “You are such a coward,” I say.

  His face turns cold, and he stands up and scales the roof to climb back inside.

  I follow him, not ready to let him leave without a fight. “That’s what they call people who do the easy thing instead of following what’s in their hearts. You go ahead and build your simple little life with your adoring little puppy-dog girlfriend following you around and doing whatever you say, but you’ll be bored to tears. You’ll always have me in the back of your mind. And I won’t be there. I’ll move on. I’ll get over it, because at least I tried. But you’ll regret this decision for the rest of your life.”

  He looks at me, the anger fading from his eyes as he sees the tears stream down my face. He knows what I’m saying is true, just as I know what he’s saying is true. If we were to be together now, we would destroy each other.

  Murphy puts his arm around me and pulls me to him, and with my head buried in his shoulder I hear him sniff, and sniff again. I put my hand up to his face, and then we are clutching onto each other, crying. Then kissing. Kissing, kissing, kissing. We fumble our clothes off, tasting each new revealed fragment of flesh like it’s our last meal. We fall onto the bed, naked, desperate for each other.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks me. “I’m still with…”

  I nod and pull his face toward me before he can finish so he can’t see the doubt in mine.

  Afterward, I whisper “I love you” into his ear. He says it back to me. Then, I watch him as he gets dressed and walks out the door. His shoulders are pinched, and I know if he turns around, I will see tears in his eyes. So he doesn’t turn and say goodbye, or offer any lame platitudes like “Good luck in New York.” He just walks out the door and out my life, forever.

  “Goodbye, Murphy,” I murmur.

  The pain will kill me. I’m sure of it.

  • • •

  The doorbell rings, startling me enough that I knock over one of the sky-high towers of books that surround me. I’ve spent the entire morning sorting books into piles: to bring to NYU, to leave at home, to give to Danny, to donate to the Salvation Army. I leave in three days, and I don’t think that’s enough time for me to get through them all. Nancy occasionally peeks her head in my room and clucks her tongue in disapproval. “Ruby St. James, if you don’t stop messing around with your books and start in on your clothes, you are going to be one well-read, naked college freshman.”

  Things have gotten better in the six weeks since I said goodbye to Murphy. Not great. Not good even. But better. I’ve remained in hibernation, licking my wounds. After the Fourth of July, Danny started coming over to watch TV with me, not talking about anything important. I don’t know if Murphy told Danny the truth or just that I had said I was worried about him, and I don’t ask. I don’t want to talk about Murphy with Danny. I don’t want to talk about Murphy ever again.

  I take an occasional phone call from Ally but list any number of excuses why I can’t hang out. Work. Family obligation. The trusty “summer reading assignment.” Trips to Burlington with Nancy to fight in Bed Bath & Beyond over the price of linens for the extra-long twin mattress NYU insists I need special sheets for. The crippling pain has settled into a dull, constant ache, but Ally will pry it out of me, turning the intensity back up.

  “Aaaaally darlin’!” I hear my mother exclaim from the door with that sugary-sweet southern hospitality that makes me cringe. “Ruby! Ally’s here!”

  I freeze. This was inevitable, I know, but still I’m unprepared.

  “I’ll just go up and see her, Mrs. St. James,” I hear her say. I stand up among the rubble of my books, actually contemplating whether I could hide in my closet without being found. But who am I kidding? It’s Ally.

  So I go on the offensive. “Hey, Al! I’m sorry I’ve been so busy. It’s been forever,” I say brightly when she opens the door, moving toward her with my arms open for a hug. But she’s on to me. Instead of returning my embrace, she holds her hands up in front of her.

  “Don’t,” she says. “Don’t. You. Dare.”

  I step back, shocked by the bumpy but measured tone of her voice. I have never seen Ally this mad, and that includes the time Emmett called her the c-word when she wouldn’t let Aaron go to a strip club in Montreal for his eighteenth birthday.

  “Al—”

  She ticks off on her fingers. “You’ve ignored my calls. You’ve blown me off every chance you get. You missed my birthday party. Thanks for the card, by the way. That was real swell.”

  “Ally, I’m sorry I’ve been—”

  “Busy.” She nods, her lips pursed. She looks around at my piles—linens, clothes, toiletries. For such a frugal woman, in the end, Nancy sure has stocked me with a year’s supply of literally anything I could possibly need.

  “I don’t know what the hell is going on with you,” she says. “You won’t talk to me, and Murphy, for once, doesn’t seem to know what’s going on either. Not that he would tell me.”

  I feel a stir at the mention of his name, like a beast roused from sleep.

  “And you know what?” she cries, flinging her arms up in surrender. “I don’t even care anymore. My oldest friend is leaving, and she doesn’t even care enough about me to try to…see me before she goes.” She falters and walks over to my nightstand, where a (miraculously full) box of tissues sits, and blows her nose. “Do you even know what I’ve been dealing with, Ruby? Do you even care? Aaron wants to ‘take some time apart’ when he goes off to college.”

  “I-I’m sorry, Al. I didn’t know that.”

  “Of course you didn’t! You’ve been too busy with that scumbag.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Hardy Crane, Ruby. I excused it the first time—the sneaking around, the lying—because you were going through your parents’ separation, and I knew you were hurting. But now… I mean, for God’s sake, Ruby, you’re going to college. Why are you wasting your time on that trash instead of hanging out with the people who love you?”

  Oh my God. She thinks… A surge of rage washes through me. She actually thinks… Fine. Let her think it. Let them all think it. It doesn’t matter anymore. In fact, I might as well stop pretending things can ever be the same.

  “Ally, you really need to grow up.”

  She reels back as if I’ve slapped her.

  “I’m sorry, but this whole loyalty to the crew crap you spout off… Don’t you think we’re a little old for it? Maybe it’s important to you, since you’re sticking around, but I’m going to New York next week. I’m getting the hell out of here. And I don’t plan on coming back.” I hope she doesn’t hear the falter in my voice at the end. I feel a wave of nausea, knowing exactly what I am doing to my friend. To our friendship. All because of something that isn’t her fault.

  She inhales sharply through her nose, finally resigned that this is the way it will be. “Well. Good luck, then.”

  I want so badly to stop her, to go after her as she leaves the room. But in her haste to escape the venomous bullshit I’m spewing, she knocks into a stack of sundries my mother has piled on my dresser, and a huge box of tampons falls to the ground.

  Tampons.

  When’s the last time I used one of those?

  And I’m stopped dead in my tracks.

  20

  RUBY

  NOW

  “‘Taking heroin intravenously is comparatively more cost effective, at two to five dollars for a high,’” Emmett says, reading directly from the Times article that came out a few weeks ago. He has me cornered in Ally’s kitchen next to a Crock-Pot full of roasted wieners (a specialty of Aaron’s, I’ve learned, as he’s proudly pushed them on me all evening). The article is creased and faded from where Emmett has folded it. I imagine he’s been carrying it around since it came out, pulling it out at every lunch break, in every doctor’s office waiting room, his
lips moving as he reads it, shaking his head every few sentences, crossing and uncrossing his leg, ankle to knee.

  “‘Dealers from Montreal and New York move their product in the desolate corners of rural communities like Chatwick, Vermont,’” he continues, an angry fleck of spittle flying from his mouth during his sharp enunciation of the word Chatwick, “‘where boredom and poverty create high demand, and low supply warrants a higher premium. Eighty grams of OxyContin sold on city streets for twenty dollars goes for upward of forty dollars in Chatwick, which adds up quickly once the user is addicted. That’s why so many users in the area turn to Oxy’s less costly alternative, that is, the injection of heroin intravenously. A few months ago, a batch suspected to have been smuggled in from Canada was laced with lethal doses of fentanyl, causing the deaths of no fewer than four citizens of this sleepy town.’” He finishes and looks at me expectantly.

  I nod cautiously. “Yes, Emmett, I read the article.” It’s possible I read it as many times as Emmett did, spooked as I was that the town I was so desperately trying not to think about was suddenly featured in the newspaper where I work. I was happy that such an alarming problem was getting some attention—the end of the article had the address of the rehabilitative center and the methadone clinic where donations could be made—but I was sad too. Because despite our charming downtown buildings and local color of the Maple Festival, which draws people from all over the state, this is how Chatwick will be seen by the world now.

  Emmett scoffs at me. “Yeah I’m sure you read it. Have to proofread your own work, don’t you?”

  I roll my eyes. “Emmett, why don’t you just say what you want to say?”

  “Well, it can’t be a coincidence that the New York Times just happens to discover this little Podunk town and its rampant substance-abuse issues with a former resident in its employ. One who just returned after a decade away from it. You might as well have just used your real name.”

  Emmett McDowell, ever the conspiracy theorist. “Emmett.” I clasp my hands, both to indicate my sincerity and to give me something to squeeze to keep calm. “I sell ad space. All day long, I talk to clients about rates and pixels and price per column inches. I don’t have any input into what the New York Times prints in their newspaper beyond three-by-five-inch ads for condoms and Metamucil!”

  He doesn’t seem entirely convinced.

  “The ad staff sits on an entirely different floor from the writers,” I continue. “I don’t even know any of them.” Technically, this isn’t true, as Jamie has contributed the occasional book review, but that certainly wasn’t relevant to the argument, and I didn’t want to materialize any opportunity for a dissection of my love life. “Besides,” I add, “if I got a byline in the New York Times, there is no way I wouldn’t use my real name, and you know that.”

  “So you admit it! You’re nothing but a fame whore.”

  Yep, that’s me in a nutshell. Ruby St. James: Account manager. Anonymous city dweller. Non-practicing writer. Fame whore.

  “Hey!” I hear a deep voice boom from the doorway.

  I look over to see Murphy in the arch between the kitchen and the living room, slightly hunched, fists clenched, poised to attack. I look back to Emmett, realizing he is about an inch from my face, his tall frame lumbering over me. I furrow my brow. Does Murphy think Emmett’s trying to get fresh with me? Just the thought of it makes me giggle.

  “Who you callin’ a whore?” Murphy says to Emmett.

  I scoff, pushing Emmett gently away from me with one finger and opening the fridge to fill my empty wineglass from the box inside. “I don’t need your help, Murphy,” I say coolly. “It’s just Emmett.” I stick my tongue out at Emmett before brushing past Murphy into the living room.

  I stand there for a moment, looking for Ally or Aaron or Steph so I have someone to talk to. Instead, I find a sea of hairdressers and hairdressers’ boyfriends that Ally introduced me to earlier but whose names I can’t remember. Murphy comes and stands beside me.

  “I know it’s just Emmett, Ruby. I was just trying to—”

  “What, Murph? Defend my honor? Don’t make me laugh.”

  “Listen, I know why you’re pissed, but if you would just let me explain…”

  I spot Krystal talking to someone on the couch and giving me the side-eye. “There’s nothing to explain, Murphy. You and I don’t owe each other any explanations.” I walk away from him again, this time into the hallway leading to the bathroom. He follows me again, this time grabbing me by my waist to spin me toward him and backing me up to the wall as he kisses me. Deeply.

  I pull away and look at him, eyes wide. “What was that?”

  “Mistletoe,” he breathes into my ear, his hands still on my hips.

  I look up. “There’s no mistletoe in here!” I exclaim.

  He pulls back, but only slightly, and shrugs. “Well, I guess I must have been imagining it,” he says. His eyes twinkle with the mischief of days long ago, and I wish I didn’t have to push him away.

  He sighs and reluctantly moves to the other side of the hall. “Do we always have to fight?” he asks, perfectly faking a puppy-dog expression. “I wish we could just talk, instead of you running in the other direction every time I come within five feet.”

  “Well, maybe I don’t want to deal with your crazy girlfriend out in the living room,” I say, copping out. Really, I’m less annoyed that he’s sleeping with Krystal than I’m trying to avoid the conversation I know I need to have with him. Especially now that I’ve told Nancy the truth. I’m just not ready. Not tonight.

  He points to himself. “I have a girlfriend in the living room?” With mock interest, he adds, “Is she hot?”

  Now I’m working not to smile. Trying to have this much control over my face is exhausting, not the way I ever used to feel around my best friend. “Don’t play dumb, Murphy. You know I’m talking about Krystal.” I hate myself for adding, “And no, she’s not, in my opinion.” What is wrong with me? This guy doesn’t just make me feel like I’m sixteen; he makes me act like it too.

  Murphy slaps his palm against the wall, genuinely angry. “Krystal is not my girlfriend,” he says firmly.

  “You might want to tell her that,” I say, my arms crossed against both his bullshit and his sexual advances.

  He rolls his eyes. “What now?”

  I tell him about all the obnoxious conversations I’ve witnessed over text message and about her behavior when she was in New York. As I talk, a familiar calm settles over me. It starts to feel like before we messed everything up with sex, and he was just the person I complained to about stuff. I’m not talking to a man I’m sleeping with about a woman he’s sleeping with. I’m talking to my best friend about a girl who pisses me off. He is listening intently, laughing in places where I add dramatic storytelling flair, his jaw tensing during the parts where my feelings were hurt.

  “I’m sorry, Ruby,” he says when I finish. “I guess she thinks we’re a little more involved than we are. But it’s not my fault. I’ve always been clear with her that I’m not interested in a relationship.”

  He has either chosen his words carefully or just lucked into them, but I find myself wondering whether he’s not interested in a relationship in general, or just not with Krystal. How ridiculous that I even care. “Why not?” I ask, hoping this will encourage him to clarify his point without sounding like I’m fishing for a relationship myself.

  He considers this for a few seconds. “She’s just not the one.”

  I arch my eyebrow at him, and his face lights up with recognition. He tries unsuccessfully to arch one back at me, resulting in a look like he’s trying to poop. It’s an inside joke from ninth-grade homeroom, when I tried to teach him how to control his brows individually, alternating between serious instruction and uncontrollable giggling.

  Frustrated, I had used my fingers to help guide his right eyebrow up. It
was the first time I had ever touched his face, and I remember the way he looked at me when I did it. Was that when everything started to change? Anyway, after that day, whenever I arched my eyebrow at him (which was quite often), he would do the same little wiggle, and it made me laugh every time, no matter how angry I was at him. Unable to stop myself, I cross the hallway to touch his eyebrow and guide it upward. This time we’re not giggling.

  They’re both really good at ignoring problems.

  “What are you guys doing out here?” Krystal’s voice pierces through the bubble that surrounds two people with history when they are left alone. I draw my hand back, but not sharply. I don’t care if she sees. Murphy will always feel more mine than anyone else’s, and in Krystal’s presence at least, I’m not going to apologize for it.

  “Just trying to teach this old dog a new trick,” I say without looking at her, and go into the bathroom to avoid whatever hissy fit Krystal is about to throw. When I come out, the hallway is empty.

  • • •

  “I swear, Rube, I haven’t told anyone you had a…you know,” Ally says, darting her eyes around, although we’re in the same dark hallway where Murphy pressed me up against a wall less than an hour ago, and the music and the chatter from the living room has gotten so loud that no one can hear us. We are the only two not drunk, although I have had two of my allotted three glasses of wine and am secretly wishing Ally wasn’t pregnant just for this one night so we could sneak out to share a smoke. But since neither of us is drunk, there’s no justification for being outside on this particularly brutal December night, the kind where it’s too cold to snow. People think that’s a myth, but it’s not.

  “What?” Ally asks, offended by my knit eyebrows and pursed lips.

  “But…?” I prompt her.

  “But what?” She has one arm across her body, one hand in the crook of her opposite elbow, one forearm raised, as if we were indeed outside sharing that smoke. I half expect her to flick the butt, scattering ashes to the wind. I remember the way she was always able to ash out the window at the precise angle that prevented any ash from flying back into the car. I never possessed this skill, and Blue suffered from frequent burns in her upholstery as a result of stray embers.