by Kaela Coble
After that first day, I started showing up early on purpose, and without any discussion Cecile would put me to work, instructing me in her low, firm voice and occasionally guiding my hands to show me the proper technique for a stir or a whisk. Her hands were always pleasantly cool, even when working over her enormous gas stove, and I secretly treasured the intimacy of it. Murphy, meanwhile, would pore over his schoolbooks, struggling to complete his homework, biting his tongue in concentration. Perhaps this is why we, and our friends, bought into our insistence that we were “like family” for so long. The picture of the boy doing his homework while the womenfolk busy themselves making dinner is like a goddamn Rockwell painting.
I gradually became less and less afraid of Cecile, and once I proved I wasn’t totally useless in the kitchen, she displayed a sort of muted approval of my presence in her son’s life, despite her skepticism as to the need for young boys to have female friends. I wonder now if she knew about Nancy and was doing her part to make me feel like I still had a mother, when things at my house were bleak. I was always invited to dine with the Leblancs when I brought Murphy home from practice, and many times I took her up on it. Except for when I was dating someone, and then I would just tell Nancy that’s where I was and go off with him instead.
Murphy tells me that Cecile was diagnosed with Lyme disease, which I take harder than he seems to think is appropriate. It doesn’t bother her much, as far as he knows. I point out that she wouldn’t tell him if it did. He says he would know anyway, and I know that’s true. One of the many things I know about Murphy that most people don’t is what a mama’s boy he is.
He tells me his father retired around the same time Murphy started his company with Aaron, but he still consults on some of Murphy’s larger projects, and he and Cecile still run all their properties with the help of Murphy’s older brother. His brother had “a few bad years” when he dated Jenny Albrecht, Danny’s on-again-off-again girlfriend from high school, but they’ve been broken up for over a year. The only residual effect from the relationship is his need to smoke pot at the beginning of each day. Considering the stuff Danny was into at the end, both of us agree this is no cause for concern.
Murphy doesn’t mention a girl, and I don’t see any notches on his bedpost, but I suspect there’s a lot he doesn’t tell me as well. I don’t press for the details of his love life, because I’m not sure I can, as he did, remain stoic as he talks about them. I wonder if I was imagining the tension in his jaw as I talked about Jamie.
We listen to the rain against the windowpane for a moment, our eyes drooping in the peaceful post-coital haze. A question floats into my head and I ask it, despite knowing it will make me sad. “Where do you think he is?”
“Who? Dan?”
I nod.
“I don’t know. Heaven, I guess.”
Try to be happy I’m finally at peace.
“Heaven,” I repeat. It’s a concept I haven’t really contemplated in a long time, even when I first heard Danny was gone.
“You don’t think so?” Murphy asks, rolling over to face me, his head propped in his hand. I roll to mirror his posture, which is a mistake, because from this angle I can see the sparkle in his eyes. The thrill of it is like a stab through my heart.
“I don’t know,” I say, looking away. “It’s always seemed like such a nice idea, that we all go to this big pillowy cloud-place after we die. But then what?”
He laughs. “I don’t know, I guess I never thought past that part.”
“I mean, it seems kinda dull, doesn’t it? We just float up there, strap on an unflattering toga, and stroke a harp all day? I mean, that’s why we work hard to be good people? That’s our big reward?”
He’s amused now. This feels like one of the conversations we used to have at night, after our parents had gone to bed (or Nancy had gone out), whispering into the phone so we wouldn’t get hollered at to hang up and go to sleep. “There’s probably more to it than that,” he says.
“Like what?” I ask, collapsing my arm and lying back down, my hands clasped together. I look expectantly at him, like a kid waiting for their parent to tell them a bedtime story. He laughs at this.
“Maybe it’s like this movie I saw once. You get to pick if you stay in heaven, or if you go back for another life. And if you choose heaven, you kind of create whatever you want it to be like.”
“What do you think Danny would choose?”
“Well, given that he just topped himself, I don’t think he’d be too psyched about the idea of living life all over again, or taking his chances on a new one. He’s probably up in heaven dealing dope to all the angels,” he says.
The mental image makes us both laugh, but after a minute it hits me what we’re really talking about, and I start to cry.
“Hey,” Murphy says, pulling me into him and speaking softly into my hair. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have made a joke.”
I shake my head. “No, it’s not that. It’s—everything. Danny and Emmett and . . . this.”
“Was I that bad?” he asks, mock-offended and clearly trying to lighten the mood.
“No,” I say, pulling myself together and giving him a little kiss on the forehead. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Was it better than . . . you know, before?”
I roll my eyes. “Murphy. The last time we had sex you were a newbie. If you hadn’t improved your skills since then, it would be a problem.”
He searches my face and must realize this is the highest praise he’s going to get from me.
“What would you choose?” I ask him. I’d quite literally prefer death to talking about us back then.
“Heaven, for sure,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“And what would your heaven look like?”
“It would be like one endless night at Margie’s. Cold beer. Good friends. Beautiful, easy women.”
I groan. I can’t help myself. This is what Murphy has become? A ’necker? Has he always been one, and I just never noticed because I was surrounded by them?
“Oh, and what would your heaven be, Miss Priss?” he asks, pushing pretend glasses up his nose with his index finger. “Sitting on the sofa with a glass of wine and a good book?” He says it in a mock British accent, and I wonder if he’s taking a dig at Jamie. It’s weird I even told Murphy about him, I realize. The two of them are completely separate worlds for me. It’s like I’m not even the same person when I’m thinking about one or the other.
“Actually, that sounds kinda nice,” I say. “But I would pick reincarnation.”
He rolls his eyes. “Of course you would, Tuesday.”
I’m taken aback. “Why ‘of course’?”
“Because you’re always in search of something better. Always have been, always will be.” He looks into my eyes now, and I turn back to face the ceiling.
We’re quiet for a minute.
“You know,” he says, in a tone I recognize as his I’m-aboutto-poke-a-bear/you-with-a-stick tone, “I really think we should just tell people. I mean, I’m guessing your secret is about us. It happened so long ago, and I think people will understand. What’s the big deal?”
The words feel like shots to the kneecaps, even considering he thinks we’re talking about two totally different things. “How would Taylor feel, if that gets out?” I ask. I know from Ally that they broke up years ago, but not so long ago that it had anything to do with us.
“She knows.”
All things done in the dark . . .
I nod slowly, feeling the color drain from my face. “Right,” I say finally, throwing off the covers and jumping out of bed.
“Hey. Where you goin’?”
I shimmy back into my clothes, my back to Murphy, so he can’t see the hurt on my face. It was one thing for it to be our little secret, but for him to tell Taylor? And for it, apparently, not to have made a difference in their relationship? How he must have downplayed what happened. How little it must have meant to h
im for him to be able to explain it away. “Sorry, I gotta go. More work to do.”
“It’s Saturday night.”
“Yeah, well, you know what they say about New York,” I force cheeriness into my voice as I make a beeline for the door. “It never sleeps!”
“Ruby, wait,” I hear him say as I let his screen door slam shut behind me, running out into the rain.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
RUBY
Back then
I don’t say anything for what probably seems like a long time. But I can’t help it, I mean, he loves me? Murphy?
“You mean, as a friend, right?” I ask, glancing in his direction and then returning to stare straight ahead. I’m giving him an out, because it’s prom, we’ve been drinking and smoking, and this has suddenly gotten way too serious. It’s entirely possible that my freak-out radar is just oversensitive. We’ve always said how great it is to have a best friend of the opposite sex. You get the companionship without the commitment, the perspective without the pressure. What’s not to love? I must be misunderstanding. Murphy must simply have forgotten to add the “man” and the punch in the arm.
“No,” he says, “I’ve been in love with you. For a while.”
So much for that theory. “How long?”
“Two years.”
I take a puff of my cigarette to trap the gasp in my throat, then offer it to him. I’m not surprised when he actually reaches for it and takes a deep inhale. His confession is changing everything; it might as well change his stance on smoking. “Two years,” I repeat when he passes it back. I try to calculate backward. Two years ago would be sophomore year. We had dated dozens of people, between the two of us, since then. One of them being Hardy Crane. “All this time? Why the hell didn’t you say anything?”
“You know why, Ruby. The timing was never right. Either you liked someone, or I liked someone, or neither of us liked anyone and we would kiss and then you would tell me what a mistake it was, because it would ruin our friendship.”
“I thought we were in agreement about that. I mean, you’re my best friend.”
“I know.”
“That’s not something I’ve ever wanted to risk. Boyfriends and girlfriends break up all the time.”
“I know.”
I stamp out my cigarette on the side of the staircase and let it drop to the ground. I think briefly how much time we’re going to spend combing the lawn for butts in just a few hours. We really should have put a can out.
“I can’t believe you’ve been hiding this for so long,” I whisper, letting my head—too heavy now—drop into my hands. Maybe I did see this, feel this coming. I guess if I’m completely honest, there have been times when I sensed Murphy might want more, and there were also times when I thought my feelings might tiptoe over the friendship line, but we never talked about it, so it always passed like a storm cloud over an otherwise sunny day. To hear it out loud like this? It’s too real. I start to sniffle. Then, floating above us for a moment and seeing that my best friend is—for the first time—telling a girl he loves her, and wanting better for him than a tearful reaction, I make myself shiver to pretend the sniffling is from cold rather than emotion.
He puts his arm around me and I lean into him, even though my instinct is telling me to run away. I thought setting him up with Taylor would set us back on the right track. The friendship track, where we get to have fun and be ourselves and never fight. Not about anything real, anyway.
“I’m sorry, Murph, I don’t know what to say.” Because I don’t. I can’t say for sure I feel the same way, but I can’t say for sure I don’t.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he says, and I can tell he’s trying really hard to sound fine with it all. But how can he be? The only desired outcome of telling someone you love them is for them to say they love you too, and immediately. Any variation from that is crushing. We wordlessly get up, creep inside and up the stairs, and climb into the twin bed of one of Tara’s brother’s rooms. At first, our backs face each other, but despite my good intentions I start to cry, and Murphy rolls over to hold me. He strokes my hair, peppering my hairline with tiny kisses, and whispers that it’s all right until I fall asleep.
When we wake up the next morning, Murphy is still holding me, and I find I don’t feel as sad as I did the night before. A little anxious, maybe, but not sad. And maybe even a little . . . happy?
It’s absolutely gorgeous outside, and after I help the girls clean up all the beer cans and cigarettes (while the boys play with Tara’s little brother’s friggin’ Nerf guns), Murphy and I go to his house right around the corner. I know I should go home, and I get a wave of guilt thinking about Taylor, who is sitting at home waiting for Murphy to call. But Murphy is the one who invited me over—hell, he’s the one who started all this—and I’m not ready to go home to sift through this mess alone. Suddenly alone doesn’t have the appeal it used to have. I feel like there’s some kind of spell over us, and as soon as we part ways, it will be broken.
I change into Murphy’s T-shirt and nylon athletic shorts, which are now designated as mine after so many post-field party visits when I demanded comfy clothes that didn’t reek of bonfire. We grab a blanket and lie in the sun on his back lawn. I spend the time practically: trying to convince Murphy he doesn’t really love me. If he cracks, I’ll know he doesn’t, and then it will all go back to normal.
“You hate the way I say ‘orange,’” I remind him.
“Well, Jesus, it’s ‘oaringe’, not ‘arnge,’” he says.
“And you hate that I smoke.”
“You’ll quit. Someday. Right?”
“I’ve whored around for two years.”
“No, you haven’t. You’ve slept with two guys, and one of them was me.”
“Yeah, and neither of them was my boyfriend. What do you call that?”
“You’re independent. Unconventional. And awesome.”
“I don’t even know how to have boyfriends, Murph. I don’t even know if I want one.”
“Okay.”
“And we’ve been best friends since eighth grade. Who would you talk to when I piss you off?”
“Good point,” he says, smiling. “Probably the same person I talk to about it now. You. I’d say that gives us one-up on most of the couples we know.”
I don’t bring up the biggest question on my mind: What about the crew? These friendships, however flawed, are the only thing I’ve been able to count on through the whole mess with my parents. I don’t want to risk losing them. Even when I didn’t know what Nancy’s mood would be like from one day to the next, when I didn’t know if my parents were together or divorced or something in between, I’ve always known I can go to Ally and feel mothered; I can go to Tara and dance around in my underwear; I can go to Danny and feel like I’m taking care of someone who really needs it; I can go to Emmett and fight if I need to blow off steam. And I can go to Murphy and laugh and know everything will be okay.
But if they all know about Murphy and me, it will be weird and awkward. Suddenly we’ll be a couple, and every bonehead comment Murphy makes will be a reflection on me. We’ll be responsible for each other’s actions in a way we haven’t ever had to be. We’ve always just been able to enjoy each other, and now we’ll have to defend each other. Our disagreements will affect the crew. They will be owned by them. Every touch and look and sentence uttered will be up for analysis. And I don’t want to be a contestant in the relationship contest with Ally and Tara. They alternate between competing over who has the best boyfriend and who has the worst, depending on the drama of the day.
I bring up the question that should be the biggest on my mind, if I were a better person, anyway. “What about Taylor?”
His face clouds over, and he takes a moment to respond. “She’ll survive.” He doesn’t explicitly promise to break up with her, and I don’t ask him to.
After several hours of alternately dozing and indulging my neurosis, Murphy sits up straight, suddenly hard-faced.
“Look, Ruby. I said what I said last night, and I meant it. If you don’t feel the same way, that’s fine. I’m not going to die. But I thought you should know the truth. Now let’s just drop it. And maybe you should go home and shower, because you kinda stink.” I give him a playful sock on the arm, and he pulls me close and gives me a quick peck on the lips. Uh-oh. I push him off and glance around frantically. What if Cecile sees?
“Okay, I’m going home,” I stand up abruptly. “Listen, I don’t think we should tell anyone—”
“—anyone about this, especially the crew, because it’s none of their business and we don’t want it to become ‘a thing,’” he recites. It was the same thing I said to him the night I took his virginity.
The next few weeks are a blur of confusion, excitement, and despair. Murphy and I continue to hang out, but, just as I worried, everything is different. It’s good and bad. The bad comes when we see each other in the halls or greet each other in front of our friends. We’re both trying to make it seem normal, but suddenly we can’t remember how we used to act around each other. The more casual we try to be, the more awkward it is. One time we even shake hands before heading into class. I’m really glad nobody saw that.
The good, and I mean really good, part happens when we manage to be alone. At first, tension crackles between us like an electric fence. It’s the same spark and playful sense of humor that’s always been there, but now I’m hyper-aware of it, and it’s obvious that what we have—what we’ve always had—is more than friendship. Everything is amplified.
