Friends and Liars

by Kaela Coble

  When we’re finished, we lie next to each other on our sides, looking into each other, not able to stop touching one another. I know I haven’t yet said what I came here to say, and I know I have to, in order to make this real. In order for us to move forward, and stop the game-playing and the secret-keeping. The words spread inside my chest, looking for an escape. It’s painful. I can’t say them. Saying them will kill me for sure.

  “Murphy,” I finally say, tentatively.

  He doesn’t say “What?” or “Yeah?” He just waits. He waits for several agonizing seconds.

  “I love you.”

  “Duh, Ruby,” he says, gathering me up and rolling me on top of him, my heart feeling like it’s going to explode.

  The next day at school, Murphy and I keep our distance until our friends are out of sight. Last night we didn’t really talk about what comes next (we didn’t really talk about much of anything, although I did manage to squeeze out of him that he didn’t tell me he broke up with Taylor because he didn’t want to put pressure on me). We can’t exactly start making out in the hallways without sitting our friends down for one of those after-school special-style talks. He manages to sneak my books into his pile on the way to class, prompting me to ask him if we’re going to split a milkshake before the sock-hop later. Then, once we’re in class Murphy passes me a note. “Do like I did,” it says. “Tell the crew you can’t hang out this weekend.”

  “Okay,” I scribble back, giddy as . . . well, as a girl in love.

  The weekend is amazing. We spend most of it at my house, since Dad decided to stay in New York for the weekend and Nancy is in a milder version of a black period, which means she stays in her room and watches TV until the storm passes, instead of going out drinking. Coral is off hanging out with high-school friends, and keeps out of our hair on the rare occasion she is home. She was not a bit surprised when I filled her in on my own and Murphy’s Big Feelings. “I wondered when you were going to figure that out, dummy,” was all I got from her.

  Murphy and I snuggle and kiss on the couch, jumping away from each other when we hear Nancy’s footsteps on the creaky staircase. When she descends, she suggests we all watch a movie together and I make up an excuse to leave the house—that I’m teaching Murphy to drive standard. We decide it’s not the worst idea for him to learn anyway, so we go down to the parking lot of Chatwick Elementary to give it a try. Murphy is hopeless, and we end up laughing too hard to drive. Instead, we have sex in the backseat. Famished afterward, we pick up fast food and bring it back to his house, snuggling and kissing on his couch now, the one in the basement, until late into the night. We fall asleep watching a stupid movie where all the actors are dressed up like apes, and wake up in the middle of the night to make love again before I sneak out to go home.

  Since the warm weather has come early but my parents aren’t physically or emotionally present enough to do it, Murphy spends most of Sunday morning giving our pool a final cleaning so we can take a swim. We splash around for most of the afternoon, me riding around on Murphy’s back. We’ve done this a million times, me enjoying the weightless feeling and the close contact with another human that doesn’t feel threatening; only now, I occasionally spin around to face him, and he carries me to the part of the pool that’s blocked from the house’s windows by the deck and presses me against the side, kissing me. As the sun starts to go down, we wrap ourselves in towels and sit close together on the rocker. I am happy and warm.

  So naturally, I have to fuck it up.

  “God, Murphy, what are we doing?” I ask, breaking away from a kiss.

  His eyes, just a moment before full of desire and love, suddenly look panicked. “What do you mean?” he asks.

  “I mean, you love me, I love you—now what?”

  He frowns, shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Well,” I say, resentful at having to pull his teeth, “are we a couple? And if so, what happens next year when I’m at NYU?”

  He pulls away from me, his whole energy stiffening. “I don’t know,” he says quietly.

  Now I panic. This is not the answer I’ve been expecting. As fun and wonderful as Murphy is, he’s not the type to do something without thinking. Case in point, he’s been in love with me for two years and hasn’t said anything because he couldn’t be 100 percent sure of how it would all turn out. I guess, knowing this, part of me assumed Murphy already had some kind of plan about how to move forward.

  “Ruby, we’re having a nice day. Do we have to talk about this now?”

  I look at him, exasperated. How is this not an important conversation to have? And why is he so caught off-guard? I mean, did he forget I’m going away to school next year? We sit in silence for several minutes, questions racing through my mind like the ticker tape at the bottom of the CNN Money channel my father always has on in the background when he’s home.

  My frustration turns on a dime to regret. We were having a nice day, and now there is a frost in the air that I’m unsure how to thaw. True, we do need to have this conversation, but it doesn’t need to be right now. We just began to enjoy each other, and now there is a physical space between us that hasn’t existed in over thirty-six hours. I have a fleeting feeling the gap will never again be closed, but I dismiss it as silly.

  “No. We don’t have to talk about it now,” I say, forcing a decidedly chipper tone. “Come on, let’s go get a snack.” Although the last thing I feel like doing is eating. Suddenly I feel like I have ten pounds of lead in my stomach.

  “Actually, you know what?” Murphy says, standing and drying off vigorously with his towel and pulling his shirt back on. “I forgot I told Emmett I’d help him and his dad finish their deck. I should probably go. I said I would be there an hour ago.”

  My mouth falls. Murphy’s lying. Even if I didn’t already know he had told the boys he would be out of town until Sunday night, I would know he’s lying to me. It’s not that he’s obvious about it; it’s just that I know him. I’m the only one who can beat him at poker, not because I’m such a skilled card player, but because I can always call his bluff. But I want to believe him now, even though I know I shouldn’t, because if I don’t, it means he’s blowing me off. It means that, as suddenly as I’ve come to have him, I’m losing him.

  “Okay,” I say, again with forced nonchalance. “Call me later?” I cringe inwardly as soon as I say it. I’m becoming everything I hate about girls with boyfriends: purposely ignorant, clingy, dependent.

  “Yeah,” he says, forcing a smile, “of course.” He stoops to give me an awkward kiss on the cheek, and then hightails it through the gate.

  He doesn’t call me later. He barely looks at me the next day at school, and he doesn’t return my calls the next day, or the day after that, or after that. And even though something in me knew from the second he pulled away from me on my deck that it was over, that he had changed his mind, I’m still not prepared for Friday morning, when I see him headed down the stairs at school. Just as I’m about to call out his name, to confront Murphy then and there and make him tell me what the hell is going on, I notice he’s not alone.

  He’s holding hands with Taylor.

  Over the weekend I hide from my friends, too shocked and hurt to trust myself around them. Murphy doesn’t call to explain what I saw, even though we made direct eye contact for long enough that he almost fell down the stairs. He doesn’t even call to see how I’m doing.

  It’s not until Monday, when I’m alone at our bank of lockers, that he walks up and says hello, casually, as if it were any other day. In response I hastily swap my paper-bag-covered Calculus book for my Journalism notepad and slam my locker door. He dances around to block me from leaving. “You’re just not going to talk to me?” he demands.

  He looks hurt. Legitimately hurt, as if I’m the one in the wrong. “Why should I?” I shoot back. “You didn’t talk to me before getting back together with Taylor.”

  “Tuesday,” he starts.

  “Don’t call
me that. Don’t call me anything. I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “You have to let me explain,” he says, pleading, his eyes watering.

  “It would have been nice if you had ‘explained’ before I had to see the two of you together, like you and I—” I wave my finger between the two of us, and then falter. The lump in my throat prevents me from saying, “like you and I never happened.”

  “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean for it to happen like that. I was trying to figure out how to tell you, and then Taylor came to talk to me before I saw you, and it . . . sorta happened.”

  I feel like I’m going to be sick. I’m looking at a boy I’ve shared everything with, whom I love, who I thought loved me, but he’s explaining himself as if he had smoked my last cigarette, instead of stomping on my heart in the middle of the hallway.

  “It’s just, when I thought about you going away to school, and being without you, I’d be so miserable when you were gone. And then you would come home for a weekend or for Christmas and I’d be so happy, and then you would just leave again. I don’t think I could handle it.”

  The million questions that have been simmering for days burn in my throat. Why didn’t you tell me you were feeling this way, so we could work it out together? Why didn’t you think of this before you told me you loved me and ruined everything? Why does that mean you have to get back together with Taylor? Did you just tell me you loved me because you wanted to sleep with me, and you thought you were safe, because it was so unlikely I would end up feeling the same way?

  Before I can decide where to start, Ally and Aaron round the corner. I want to scream, to tell them and everyone else in the hallway what is really happening. Ally would be on my side, and at least then I wouldn’t be alone in this. Murphy wouldn’t just get away with it. But I can’t. I don’t want everyone knowing that Murphy Leblanc has, essentially, played me. That I’m a complete idiot. That I’m heartbroken and weak. I lean close to him and growl, “You’re a coward, and you make me sick. Don’t talk to me.”

  I hug my notebook to my chest and turn to go to class. Of course I don’t really mean it. I want him to know that I’m about to be out of his life forever, and I want that to be enough for him to chase after me and tell me he’s made a mistake.

  He doesn’t.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ALLY

  Now

  I never understood what is so friggin’ great about New York City, and I still don’t get it as our bus pulls into the station. I mean, sure, the buildings are cool. They’re super-tall and shiny and there are more windows in one skyscraper than in all the homes in Chatwick put together. Back home, actually in all of Vermont, I’m pretty sure, there’s a law against building over a certain amount of stories. I think it’s like five or six. Not that there’s much call in Chatwick for buildings with more than three or four floors.

  Don’t get me confused with a country bumpkin. I’ve taken my fair share of trips to Boston for Red Sox games, and to Montreal for bar-hopping and shopping. In grade school, Ruby and Emmett and I were part of the band (Ruby played clarinet, I played trumpet, and Emmett played flute, believe it or not; he had a crush on Addie Helsley, who played the flute, and he thought it would be a good way to get close to her), and we took band trips to Washington DC and, yes, even to New York.

  I mean, a city’s fun for a visit, but to live? No thanks. All it is is a billion people crammed into a small space, living on top of each other, breathing in the revolting smell rafting up from the sewers. What is that smell anyway? It’s like sour breath and dirty socks, with a hint of urine. I’m not looking forward to it, with the increased sense of smell the baby has brought on.

  And why are cities always so grey? It’s not just smog, it’s like the weather is always cloudy. It’s like the sun can’t shine on a place with so many miserable people living in it. Ruby talks about the museums and the theatre and the restaurants, dropping the names of them like I’m supposed to be impressed, but if you ask me, you can get all of that in Vermont, there’s just less choices. I don’t think that’s the worst thing in the world. Sometimes too many choices make people pick nothing at all, and if I’m going to pick nothing and just sit at my house, I can do that in Chatwick for a third of the cost, and I’ll be able to find my way around and get a parking spot a hell of a lot easier, thank you very much.

  But fine, we’re here. Steph is excited to be having her bachelorette party in the Big Apple, and it’s all about keeping the bride happy. (I don’t know that I was given the same courtesy; it seemed to me to be more about what everyone else wanted to do, but I didn’t know these girls then, so it’s not their fault). I reach across the aisle to shake Steph awake. She is wearing a bachelorette sash I got at the party store, and sleeping on the shoulder of Elizabeth, who is snoring up against the window. I guess the “super-secret” Nalgene bottles filled with boxed wine that Krystal packed might not have been the best idea. They got all rowdy and obnoxious after an hour, and then they passed out for the rest of the ride. I guess if I weren’t pregnant, I would be in the same boat. But I’m a mother now, so I have to be the responsible one. Who am I kidding? I would have had to be the responsible one anyway. I always have been. Emmett thinks he is, because he’s all upstanding citizen-y, but all he cares about is himself. I’m the one who has to think about everyone else.

  The girls and I get up and stretch. We’re at the back of the bus at my request (near the bathroom, since I have to pee every ten seconds), so we have to wait until all the other passengers file out. I hear a knock on the side of the bus, and when I look, I see Ruby standing there in a blue peacoat that probably cost more than my first car. Her hair comes down in long waves from a cable-knit hat. The curls have kinks at the bottom, and I know I will have to fix them for her. The girl never did get the hang of a curling iron. It’s cute that she tried, though.

  She waves one mittened hand at us. The other is holding a sign in Ruby’s computer-neat handwriting that says “Chatwick Bitches.” I laugh when I see it, glad she is still the same old potty-mouth Ruby and not some proper city snob. She laughs too, and when she does, a little puff of fog fills the air. It’s early December, and it hasn’t snowed yet back home, and it doesn’t look like New York has gotten any, either. Usually we’ve gotten at least a dusting by Halloween. The smart parents order their kids’ costumes one or two sizes larger so they can fit over a parka. It’s funny to watch the neighborhood fill up with puffy little witches and Supermans. Anyway, I wish the snow would come. I’d rather it snow than simply be cold and dead and grey. God forbid we have a White Christmas and start and end winter on time.

  It’s been a l-o-o-o-o-n-g fall. The shitstorm Danny unleashed with his little team-building exercise back in September still hasn’t settled down. I mean, it’s great we know about Emmett. It’s better in the long run that we know. It’s not being nosy, it’s just that I think it’s always better for stuff to be out in the open. How else can you deal with it? But then the little fucker—Danny—makes up a secret for me that isn’t even true. I’m all for women making their own choices and all that, but it’s not a choice I could ever personally make. The only reason I can possibly think for Danny making that up is to cause trouble for me and Aaron, because we’re happy and he was miserable. But if that were his point, wouldn’t telling my real secret probably do enough damage?

  The worst thing is, it’s working. Everyone is taking the word of a heroin addict over me, including my own husband. I’ve tried everything to get Aaron to believe me. I even offered to get him a copy of my medical records, but he said I could have gone to Planned Parenthood under another name. He even accused me of cheating on him! He says that’s the only reason he could see for me not telling him about the baby—that it wasn’t his. The man I married, the man I’ve loved for half my life, thinks I am capable of that. After that conversation I gave up on trying to get him to believe the truth and started being angry right back at him. So, yeah, my second trimester has been g
reat, thanks for asking.

  Notice also that Murphy and Ruby haven’t said Word One about what’s in their envelopes. If you buy that load of bull about Danny’s secret being theirs, too, you are a fool. Now, Murphy is one thing. You can’t ever expect Murphy to take responsibility for anything he does. But Ruby? I expected more from her. I’m not sure why. I mean, she did basically chuck our friendship (and all our friendships) the minute she pulled out of her driveway for college. And perhaps I’m a little bitter because all she has to do is show up at Danny’s funeral and everyone acts like she’s some hero, simply for gracing us with her presence. Meanwhile, she wouldn’t have even come if it hadn’t been for me.

  I was so mad about how she expressed her condolences when I called to tell her the news, as if it were my loss and not hers. Like I was telling her my grandmother or my dog had died. In that minute I left open for her while I was crying, she put up the wall that separated herself from me, from us. Sure she’d been away for a while, and God knows why. The girl already missed my wedding, and I didn’t make a peep. I just wrote her a nice thankyou card for the champagne flutes she sent from London. But there’s no registry for people who have lost a son or a childhood friend. I wasn’t going to let her just send flowers, throw some money at the problem and bury it like Danny was about to be buried. She needed to be there. She needed to come back to help fill at least a little bit of the space Danny left open. And I’m glad she did, even though it’s been nothing but a rollercoaster ride ever since.

  The wedding is only four weeks away, and we’re having the bachelorette party now instead of a week before the wedding (like most people do) because of Christmas. It’s just too hard to get everyone together. Planning this has been like being a dentist. I feel like giving birth is going to be easier than being a bridesmaid in this wedding. Every time there’s a decision to be made, I make sure to text Elizabeth, Krystal, and Ruby all at once, because if I start with just one person, Krystal or Elizabeth give me attitude about being left out of the loop. Of course, when I text everyone, the only one who responds is Ruby, and she always says, “Whatever you guys think is fine with me!” which is so helpful, especially when Krystal refuses to respond because she is offended I’ve included Ruby, who she considers to be a bridesmaid “in name only,” whatever that means. But if I do something based only on Elizabeth’s response, Krystal throws a hissy fit, to make sure I know Elizabeth and she are equal to each other but above everyone else, and just because Elizabeth and I are married doesn’t mean we should be the ones deciding everything. I feel like Jerry friggin’ Springer with these girls.