How do you tell your best friend that you're in love with her?

For a week now, I've been thinking constantly about that question. About a week ago, Lisa called me to tell me the good news. We hadn't talked for about six weeks, and for us, that wasn't atypical. We had that special, intense kind of relationship where time and distance stopped mattering almost from the outset. We could go weeks without talking, and then pick a conversation up where we'd left off, as if we'd only been apart minutes. Once, Lisa called me at work, and when I picked up the phone, I heard, "...so, as I was saying..." and I knew right where she was. That was the kind of relationship we had. We were the best of friends, soulmates.

And now, it seemed like that's all we would ever be.

And for a long time, that's all I ever wanted. Wasn't it? Pushing back from my desk, I walk to the window in my den that overlooks the back yard. I can see some ducks playing in the pond, the mother gently calling to her ducklings to follow her. My thoughts are confused and whirling around inside my head. A thousand memories shared with Lisa flash across the movie screen inside my head, and I fight to regain control. Shaking my head, I walk back to the desk and sit down.

I stare at the phone.

It sits there, silently mocking me. Call her, it seems to say to me, pick up the phone and make a complete fool out of yourself. You've had more chances than anyone has a right to expect, and you've turned away from all of them. Go ahead. Call her.

I push the phone away in disgust and slide my chair back, tiliting it so I can put my legs up on the desk. As I settle back, my hands clasped behind my head, my gaze takes in the lucite picture frame perched on one corner of the desk. It's a photo of Lisa and me, at the beach, taken about three years ago. She's wearing a terrycloth wrap, but it's open slightly, and the bananna- yellow bikini she's wearing can be barely glimpsed. Her face is tan, and her smile is wide and eager. It's obvious that we'd had a fun day at the beach, the two of us, and her arm is casually slung around my waist. I'm wearing jams in the picture, and I've got a towel draped around my neck. You can see the top of my hand on Lisa's shoulder, and I'm looking at the camera. Lisa's looking at me, with this stupid dreamy expression on her face.

That single picture sums up our entire relationship. She was always looking at me, and I was always looking elsewhere. She'd gotten tired, apparantly, looked elsewhere, and seen someone else looking back. And now they were looking at each other, and I was stuck staring at a goddamned picture on my desk.

I look at the phone again, then back at the picture. How long, I wonder. How long have I been in love with my best friend? When did it start? My sudden, intense reaction to the news that she is getting married tells me that the feelings have been there for a long, long time.

I try to remember. We've known each other for so long. So many years between us. I know that I've always had affection for her, always thought that she was an incredible person...and incredible woman. An incredible friend.

When did it become more than that? And why am I so afraid to tell her that I love her?

I can always take the cop-out that I'm scared that anything romantic, anything intimate between us might turn to shit and ruin our friendship. Even as that thought flits across my mind I dismiss it. It's bullshit and it's a rationalization. I know enough about myself and enough about Lisa to know that if we had gotten involved, and it had turned to shit, we'd still be friends. Maybe not as close as before, not with the pain of a supposed breakup that hadn't even happened yet, not with the walls that were sure to go up between us, but still friends.

So what was I worried about?

I know what it is. I just don't want to admit it. It's several things, actually. Fear, mostly. Fear of loving someone too much. I know how totally insane that sounds, but remember: I'm a man. I'm genetically insane.

The liquor cabinet called to me. I could hear Mr. John Daniels calling to me. You might know him as Jack, but when you've been involved with the man as long as I have, he prefers the more formal John. Ah, sweet dark liquid of life. He has the cure for my ills.

No, he doesn't. All he will make me do is get maudilin and depressed. I'll rage against the storm, scream at the walls and have huge conversations with people that aren't even in the room. It's interesting, don't you think, that when you're having a fight with someone that's not there, imagining their responses to your responses...you always win those fights.

I shake my head and try to refocus my attention on something I'm unfamiler with. My feelings.

What, exactly, are my feelings? I love her. I know that. I love her very...much. I know that, too. Another thing I know is that I am completely terrified of making love with Lisa.

Ah. The crux.

You see, in order to have a fully functioning adult relationship, you have to have sex. I mean, it's not a requirement or anything, but it does help. And it wasn't that I was a horrible lover or that I had a tiny dick that I was ashamed of...it was just the gnawing certaintity that I wouldn't be able to satisfy Lisa in bed.

Getting up from behind my desk, I walk to the couch and lay down and put my feet over the edge. I'm relaxed now, or, a little more relaxed than I was a moment ago. I can now look at this dispassionately and dissect it with all the calm coldness of a scientist examining a specimen under a microscope. No problem.

Two things contribute to this feeling. The first is the fact that Lisa has the rather annoying habit of discussing her sex life with me. I knew she wasn't a virgin, or a nun, but I had no idea that women talked about sex as eagerly...as hungrily, as nastily as men did. Lisa had dumped more than one boyfriend because she'd found him lacking between the sheets. More than more than once Lisa has given me a blow-by-blow, you will pardon the expression, description of her sexual encounters. About how one boyfriend actually asked permission to come in her mouth. And how she had turned him down, turned off that he was so wimpy as to even ask. She likes her men strong and in- control. She likes a challenge. She wants someone to tame, someone to bend to her formidable will.

And one more thing. It had happened once already. Well, almost. Two yeears ago. We went away for the Fourth of July weekend. Neither of us were seeing anyone, so we decided to spend it together. We got very, very drunk, and ended up on the couch together. I was aware that Lisa was on the make, that she was hot and horny and she wanted to fuck me. We started kissing and necking and having fun, and these fears surfaced in me again. I started to pull away, to get distracted. Lisa looked at me strangely, got up and walked into her bedroom. The next day we didn't speak about it. At all. It had never come up again.

I assume that she feels that I don't find her attractive, or that I am not interested in a romantic relationship with her. How ironic that there is nothing further from the truth. How idiotic that when I can finally face my feelings, can finally begin to do something about them, Lisa is beyond my reach.

Or is she? Perhaps this is one last attempt on her part to force my hand. Perhaps this is what I have been waiting for, a galvenizing event to make me realize what is right under my nose, what has been directly in front of me for all these years.

Do I dare? What is it that someone once said? A coward dies a thousand deaths, but the valiant die but once. Time to make a stand. Time to get up and do something about my life.

I stand from the couch and grab my car keys. It's about two hours to Lisa's house from where I live. Two long hours in the car, looking at the road passing under my tires, listening to the radio. Every song is about us. Every song is a love song, every twisted, painful emotion reaching out to me from the speakers, reaching inside my soul. I hear the words, and I feel the music and I know the emotions. Love. Never-ending, undying love. She will be mine. I can feel it. I will make her mine.

I arrive at Lisa's house just after dusk. I can see that she is home, and that she is alone. Or, so I hope. There is no strange car parked in the driveway, just Lisa's Jeep Cherokee, black and sleek in the soft light.

I park my car and lock it, starting the long walk up to her house. The front light comes on; Lisa heard my door slam. The front door opens and she's standing there, barefoot, wearing old jeans and a T-shirt of mine that I gave her one day on the beach. I can tell that she's not wearing a bra, and the thought that her naked, full breasts are pressing against a piece of clothing that I've worn is strangely exciting. I wonder if she would sleep in just my pajama tops, me in the bottoms. A picture fills my head, a perfect mental snapshot of Lisa standing in her breakfast nook wearing my light-blue pajama top, the morning paper, folded over, in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other, reading by the early morning sunlight. In slow motion, she turns, in my head, and looks at me, her eyes finding mine. She's wearing her glasses, the ones that make her look shy and sexy and bookish and devilish all at the same time.

She takes them off and tosses them casually on the table to join the coffee cup and paper, and she walkes towards me, smiling, reaching out with her arms, taking me inside them, lifiting and turning her head for a good- morning kis-

"Jeff!" She squeals my name and runs down the stairs at me, into my arms for real this time. I feel my arms going around her body, enveloping her, feeling her warmth against me, loving it, inhaling her scent, knowing that it's the most beautiful smell in the world, wanting to smell that smell every morning as I wake up to greet the bright, rational sunlight of a new day.

"Why-? When-?" She's full of questions, this one, but her smile tells me everything I need to know.

"Are you alone?"

Her face clouds for a second. "No, Alex is here." Ah, the dreaded enemy. Alex. Such a name. Reminds me of that damn dog in the beer commercials years ago. He's probably well trained.

"I need to talk to you." I say, and then add, "Alone."

Her face changes expression again, and then she nods once, a decision made, a line crossed. She takes my hand and walks with me back to the house, ascending the stairs slowly. There is a heaviness to her now, a resignation that she knows what is coming and either eagerly anticipates it or dreads it. I cannot tell, and to be truthful, I do not care. The time has come to say what must be said, to face the reality of the situation.

"Alex," she is saying, bringing me into the foyer, "I want you to meet someone. This is...Jeff, my...best friend." The words struggle out of her mouth as if something unseen is pulling them with a tow rope. I can hear the machinery struggling. I hear and sense movement to my side and turn to face this man, this obstacle in my path, this nemeisis.

He is handsome. I see that immediately. I can say that. He is good looking. He has a strong chin and deep eyes the color of the ocean. They will be beautiful children, I think.

"Glad to meet you," he says, and I can hear the strong timbre of his voice. It is a radio announcer's voice, a voice a woman longs to hear call her name in the throes of passion during the wolf hours of the night. It is a voice that I immediately hate.

"Yeah," I say lamely. "Me, too." He shakes my hand, and there is a moment were we both consider attempting to establish superiority by the tried-and-true method of Handshake Olympics. The moment passes, and we drop hands like sulking schoolboys faced to shake on the schoolyard after a fight.