Anything For You

Liar, Liar

          I groaned under my breath. How on earth could this day possibly get any longer? I tried my best to stay focused on the conversation at hand, but to no avail. In truth, I just could not concentrate on what my best friend, Josh Ramsay, was prattling on about. The inability to keep my mind from drifting left me feeling more annoyed than anything. I was only able to catch bits and pieces of what he was actually saying. All I really wanted was for this ungodly day to end so that I could go home to bed and surrender myself to my thoughts.

     "Mae? Are you even listening to me?" Josh asked. His face was a mask of annoyance.

     I guess my obligatory head nods and scattered comments had not been enough to fool Josh for long. He knew me far too well for that plan to have ever been effective. I should have known better than to even try.

     "Sorry Josh. I guess I just really have a lot on my mind today." I picked at a piece of fuzz that had landed on the sleeve of my black knit sweater, and tossed it to the ground. It was a compulsion of mine, although I hated to admit to it. I was extremely bothered by fuzz, little bits of lint, and stray hairs that stuck to my clothing as well as to anyone else's. I really had to rein myself in when it came to picking the fuzz off of others. It had been that way ever since I was a child. Josh was used to it and thought nothing of it anymore, but if I was not paying attention and did it to someone else, they tended to give me rather odd looks.

     He took a long swig of his Coke Zero and sighed. "Really Mae, you can talk to me you know. If there is something on your mind, I don't have a problem listening." He looked deep into my eyes and I held his gaze. His deep, crystal blue eyes searched mine for some hint as to where my mind was wandering to.

     Josh was a good friend, in the truest sense. He was my best friend. He had been for as long as I could remember. We went all the way back to the good old sandbox days. You know, the days when you could sit around in your scruffy old play clothes, the ones that were not fit to go anywhere in, and eat dirt like children tended to have a habit of doing, and no one cared. It was the simplest, most pure type of friendship. Our friendship was hard for me to put into exact words. He was my oldest and very best friend. A bond that far surpassed the title, and blurred many of the lines along the way. We had gone through everything together, from diapers to puberty, and yet for some reason, I could not bring myself to confide in him now. Josh had been through his own literal hell these last few years and I stood by him, holding his hand through it all. The drugs, the anorexia/bulimia, the darkness that never quite seemed to leave him, even after rehab. Josh had looked darkness in the face and said a big "Fuck you". He took all that pain and channeled it into something freaking amazing. He was a musical genius. The songs that Josh wrote brought tears to my eyes. He had a record contract with 604 Records, and his first album Fix Me was doing amazing! His songs, Say Anything and Skin & Bones were my favourite and the ones I liked the least at the same time. It's hard to love songs that speak the truth of a deep and heart wrenching pain, no matter how fantastic they are.

     Now was probably the one time that I could have used him the most, but for some reason unbeknownst to me, I kept quiet.

     "I know. I appreciate it Josh, really I do, but I'm fine."

     "You suck at lying Mae. You do know that right?" A small smile played at the corners of Josh's lips as he watched for my reaction.

     "I am not lying Josh, really." My responses were beginning to sound dead and hollow, even in my own ears. I was unable to even put any positive emotion into my voice. Normally I was cheerful and outgoing. So my lack of enthusiasm was definitely not going to go unnoticed. My repetitive use of the word "really" was probably a dead give away right there. It felt like I was trying to convince myself that I was fine, rather than Josh. I refused to look him in the eye, because I was indeed lying to him. I hated lying to him. It gave me a heavy feeling deep in the pit of my stomach. But, in some weird way, it felt as though I was protecting him by doing so.