She woke up to a text message from Eric. Somehow he'd fallen asleep out in the woods last night and the rabbits nibbled on his butt while he slept and could someone please come get him before a bear smelled the bacon in his pants?
"Really? Bacon in the pants?" Jack rolled his eyes. "Y'know, we've got lives too, Rach, we can't keep bailing his butt out every time he gets drunk off one beer and does something stupid."
"I bet it was non-alcoholic, too." Rachel shook her head. "Come on, Jack, he's our friend and it's our job to make sure he doesn't get himself killed. Or walk off the face of the earth." She grabbed her clothes and headed into the bathroom to change, waited for Jack to change and run a comb through his hair, grabbed her phone and her purse and together they headed out to the woods.
The thing with Eric was that he didn't operate on normal logic. He functioned on his own plane of existence and somehow everything he did made sense. To him. They'd given up trying to talk sense into him, or make sense of him. Eric was Eric, they loved him and sometimes to love someone you had to let them be themselves.
Even if they were bat-crap crazy.
They found him lying in a pile of dirt and leaves and sure enough, he smelled like bacon. And there was a pinecone in his hair. A full one.
"Eric, Eric, Eric..." Rachel sighed, walking over and taking his arm to help him stand up. "So what happened this time?"
"It's the weirdest thing, I didn't even have any beer. Just a soda, and suddenly I'm following a bunny into the woods! I thought it was gonna be like in Alice in Wonderland where I fell down the hole and into a tea party with a queen and a walrus. But then I tripped over a root and fell on my face and passed out. Next thing I know I'm covered in dirt and there's rabbits nibbling on my butt and I've got bacon in my pants." He finally stopped to breathe, and Jack was pinching the bridge of his nose. As for Rachel, she just wondered how he got the bacon in his pants without being anywhere near a supermarket. Or a smokehouse.
"Well, let's get you home," she said, brushing the dirt off his clothes before she helped him into the back seat of her car. "Before the bears come and get you."
"I still don't get how you-" Jack started, but wisely cut himself off. "Never mind. Just don't follow any rabbits next time, okay?"
"Don't have to tell me twice! Those little buggers are tricky little trolls!"
And so they drove home, Eric blathering on and on about his weird dreams involving a chicken, a dancing walrus, a talking pony juggling apples and flying through Yugoslavia on a purple rocket ship.
He was their Eric, and it was best just to go along for the ride rather than try to figure him out.