* * *
—
After practice, I pulled out my phone and saw I finally had a text from Ruby. It took everything I had not to yelp.
It said: Wanna help me make posters for the show?
She’d sent it twenty minutes earlier. I hoped I hadn’t missed my window, that she hadn’t already changed her mind.
Yes!! I wrote. No, I thought. WAY too much. Delete.
Sure! I sent it quickly, before I could find something wrong with that, too. I knew from past experience that I could lose hours of my life this way.
Your place? I added. I wondered what her bedroom looked like. I pictured band posters and clothes everywhere. Maybe one of those big white vanities girls in movies had just for putting on lipstick and spritzing perfume on their wrists. I imagined her sitting there in a silky black robe, awash in golden light, and zoned out until Ronni shouted my name and I realized I was sitting alone.
Ruby still hadn’t replied, so I threw on my bag and dragged myself out to the parking lot, trailing behind the rest of the team. I waved goodbye to everyone and climbed into my truck, where I sat very still and stared at my phone until it lit up.
Eh.
Yours?
Ugh. Why did exactly zero of the rich people I knew ever want to spend any time in their own beautiful houses? If I lived in a house like that, I’d make everyone come to me. Wasn’t that the point?
I thought it over. My mom definitely wasn’t home from work yet, but would be soon. She was weird, but she was also busy, and would probably say hello and head right for her office. We didn’t have a lot to offer, snacks-wise, but if I remembered correctly there were ice cream sandwiches in the freezer. My room was fairly clean, and I’d taken down all the pictures of Jamie and me weeks ago. Despite its modest size and the general anxiety associated with letting someone like Ruby into it, my house was…fine. For a minute I thought about suggesting neutral territory—Triple Moon?—but that felt somehow disrespectful to Jamie. That my instinct was still to protect her feelings, to do anything to avoid offending her, annoyed me. But not enough to change my mind and risk it.
Sure, I wrote. Do you need a ride?
Shockingly, I’ve been cleared to drive. What’s your address?
I took a breath and texted it to her, both embarrassed and grateful that the name of my street would let her know not to expect much.
I raced home, shoveling drive-through tacos into my mouth on the way. I took the world’s fastest shower and then tried to survey the setting from an outsider’s perspective: the tiled entryway, in need of a sweep; the laundry room straight ahead, piled with dirty clothing (I shut the door); the papers and books scattered across the kitchen table, which I stacked in neat piles and then arranged slightly askew for a more natural effect. I hated the way the staircase overhung the entrance to the living room, and I especially hated the spaces between the steps, which had terrified me as a kid, and which sometimes still scared me if I thought too hard about getting my foot stuck in one of them. But there was nothing I could do about that in the next ten minutes or so. So instead I turned on various combinations of lamps and overhead lights until the room felt glowy and warm, and folded our most presentable blanket over the back of the couch. Then I swept the floor and dusted the TV and searched the pantry for a snack I could put out, clapping victoriously when I found a mostly full bag of kettle corn. I dumped it into a bowl and put it on the coffee table and then I sat down to wait.
Ten minutes passed, then twenty, then forty: three-quarters of the way into an episode of Chopped I’d already seen twice. At the forty-five-minute mark I sent Ruby a text.
Hey, are you on the way?
Then I felt bad for having texted her while she was in the car, because what if she got in a car crash and died, and the last thing the police found on her phone was a half-typed response to me? I had seen a commercial about this very thing happening once and it haunted me. I quickly typed another message.
Don’t text me back
If you’re driving, I mean
My phone buzzed anyway. She wrote: Almost there!
When the doorbell rang, another thirty minutes had gone by, and I’d dozed off to the dulcet drone of Ted Allen naming ingredients. I jumped up and slapped myself a couple times on the cheeks before answering the door.
I’d started to get a little annoyed with Ruby by then, but when I opened the door and I saw her I wasn’t mad anymore. Her hair was wet and her eyes were puffy. She was wearing a hoodie, the front pocket lumpy with markers and pens, and she held a small stack of brightly colored paper under her arm. I took these from her and set them on the table.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She looked up at me, seemingly surprised and grateful all at once. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be able to tell that she’d been crying. But it was pretty obvious.
“Is it weird if I ask for a hug?” she said.
I didn’t answer. I just stepped closer and put my arms around her shoulders. She moved closer still, looping her arms around my lower back and resting her head gently against my collarbone. My body felt less solid where hers touched it, like a bubble that might burst if she pressed any harder. I wanted her to press harder anyway. I wanted us both to hold on for dear life.
“Tell me,” I said. We separated and sat on the couch, and I wished I had something to offer her besides popcorn, which now seemed irredeemably dorky.
“It’s stupid,” said Ruby. “I don’t know why I cried. I think I have PMS or something.” She rubbed at her eyes, leaving little shadows of mascara beneath them.
“I’m sure it’s not stupid,” I said. “At least, I’m pretty sure.”
“Thanks a lot,” she laughed.
“Boy problems?” I guessed.
She looked at me then, so intently I blushed. She shrugged. So I was right.
“Mikey?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
“What happened?”
“Just him being a dick, as usual.”
I wanted badly to agree but it seemed wiser to wait.
She sighed. “I talked to the guys about the show, and everyone seemed fine with it, and into it, and then a few hours ago Mikey texted me to say he wasn’t sure he was up for it after all, and it turned into a whole thing.”
“Do you think he meant it?”
“Of course not!” she scoffed. “He would never miss an opportunity to be adored.”
“Then what is he doing?”
“Getting back at me, I guess?”
“Boys are such drama queens,” I said. “Everyone acts like girls are the emotional ones, but have you ever seen a girl punch a locker? No.” I sound like Jamie, I thought.