The Benefits of Lying With Your Friends

When you’re confessing your undying love to your best friend, you probably should not do it while he is ten feet above you, cleaning his gutters on a rusting aluminum ladder.

You probably should not do it while he is elbow deep in slimy, phlegmy leaves and already scowling, and you have emptied half your flask and already smoked nine cigarettes and it’s only 10:00 in the morning.

You probably should be holding the ladder, like you said you would, not watching his black Labrador, Nemo, chew up one of your gloves, bright blue yarn coated in drool, unraveled and stuck between his teeth.

You probably should not have started the conversation with, “Sorry I’m late, I didn’t get much sleep last night,” because you knew he would ask you why and that you would have to tell him you were up all night fucking Justin again, but only because it took your mind off of how miserably in love you are with someone else. You should not have said that, because of course, he would ask, “Who?”

And because you are already at least five sheets to the wind, of course you will let it slip. Of course you will let go of the ladder and say, “You.”

And because your voice is loud, has always been loud, he will hear you, hear you perfectly, and jerk his body upright with surprise.

And because you are not holding the ladder, it will wobble and lean away from the house and before you can blink, you’re feeling cold, dripping leaves oozing down the back of your neck and the ladder is rattling on the driveway and your best friend is groaning from the depths of the holly bush in front of you, and Nemo is barking because he can’t get your bright blue glove out of his mouth and it’s so loud, your ears are stinging.

“Shut up shut up shut up!” you shout.

“Nemo! Shut up!” Your best friend yells, and the dog stops mid-yowl and stares into the holly bush, head cocked, bright blue yarn in tangles from his teeth to his paws.

Your best friend groans. “Get me OUT of here,” he wails in a very unmanly way only unleashed when extreme pain is involved (the unmanly kind of way he wailed when he jumped off the Jim Thorpe National Park Bridge and never stopped flailing his arms, so he dislocated his shoulder and tore his rotator cuff when he hit the water and you had to drive him to the hospital in your bathing suit and the whole time he just lay there in the back seat, gray-faced and moaning).

You can barely see him through all the holly branches, but if you squint hard enough and push that branch out of the way, there he is, dark hair sticking out in every direction with wet leaves clinging. And there’s his back, exposed, cold and scratched raw because there is his jacket, stuck in the branches above him, empty sleeves hanging limp as if they were wishing they had hands to point with. And there are his legs, tangled in branches, and his arms, tangled in other branches, and his big brown eyes looking out at you from all that tangled, up-side-down mess.

“Um,” you say. Um? UM? You probably should have said something a little more eloquent. Something comforting, maybe? But you definitely should not have said “um.”

“Justfuckinggetmeoutofthisfuckinghollybush!” He tries to move, but you probably should have told him not to do that, because it looks like it only hurts him more.

“How?” you want to ask. How do you reach in there, through all that prickly, pointy, nasty, mean holly and pull him out when you have just stupidly—so stupidly—told him that you love him and the only rational way he could find to respond was to FALL OFF A LADDER and land in said holly bush? HOW?

But because you are actively learning from your mistakes, you do not say everything that comes to mind. Instead, you take a step back and analyze the situation like the college-graduate you paid lots of money to become.

“Fuckfuckfuck,” comes streaming from inside the holly bush, mixed with grunts and groans and more swearing.

You reach into the bush and hand your flask to your best friend. If you can’t think of a way to get him out just yet, at least the whiskey will make him a bit more comfortable.

He grabs it from you and you hear metal swinging around metal as he unscrews the cap and he didn’t even say thank you.

HE DIDN’T EVEN SAY THANK YOU, the ungrateful sonofabitch. Maybe you WON’T help him out of there. Maybe you will just LEAVE him all tangled in pointy leaves and pokey branches because FUCK, you just confessed your love to him and he hasn’t said anything about whether or not he loves you, too. He probably should have said something already. AND he probably should have kissed you last month when you were drunk at Jared’s New Years party and it was midnight and you were standing there right in front of him in your silver sequin dress and everyone around you was leaning over and kissing each other but you two were just standing there frozen staring and he just hugged you instead. And you probably should have said something earlier and he probably should be in love with you. He should, because you KNOW him. You know that he likes hot peppers on his pizza and he gets nervous around ladies (but not you—he’s never been nervous around you) and you know that his favorite movie EVER is “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” and that he hasn’t read a whole book since he graduated college and that if he were stranded on a desert island with Nemo he would let himself starve to death so Nemo had something to eat and—STOP. Now you are starting to sound like a Best Friend Fan Club. Ew.

“Are you maybe gonna help me?” your best friend asks. The holly bush is shaking as he moves around, trying to un-stick himself, and you are still standing there frozen and drunk and pissed.

“No,” you say.

“What?” You hear him drop the flask, empty metal thudding on packed dirt and now you can see one of his eyes, wide and brown and looking right at you in disbelief.

“No,” you say again. “You can do it yourself.”