Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Charlie
The kiss is gentle. Gentle like Ruby is coaxing me. Like she’s showing me she’s safe. It’s so different from the kiss at the library, and I wonder how many more ways we have of kissing each other. Two kisses, two different experiences.
Different until I feel the slight parting of the seam of her lips, the flick of her tongue as she searches for more, a provocation, not a request or invitation. Ruby thinks she’s driving, thinks she’s deciding how this will go.
But I’ve never been the Chill Charlie she thinks I am, not about her. I drop the trashed list to grip her waist, returning the deeper contact she’s looking for while I back her up, angling her until she bumps against the cupboards, giving me all the leverage now.
I lean my hands on the counter to either side of her, pressing the kiss harder, and when she murmurs approval, I decide I’m not keeping her busy enough if she can talk. I pull away, her protest dying before she can finish it when I lift her to the counter.
“Stop talking,” I growl, and she yanks on my shirt, pulling me down.
I return the favor by sliding her forward, which Ruby, brilliant woman that she is, understands puts her in the perfect position to hook her legs behind my thighs.
She would have leveled me with that move if I didn’t spend my free time hanging on to rock faces for dear life.
I have no idea how long this kiss has lasted, only that it keeps building. Not like a wave; that implies building to a crest where the intensity naturally ebbs. That is not this.
This is fire, taking all my oxygen, leaving me gasping. Ruby can’t get her breath either. It’s crazy, unlike anything . . .
It’s crazy.
This is crazy.
I pull Ruby’s hands away at the same time I step back, my chest heaving.
She blinks at me like she can’t bring me into focus and reaches for me, but I tighten my hold to keep her wrists in place.
“Ruby, stop.”
Her hands still but her glazed eyes stay fixed on my mouth. I give a soft curse and let go of her to shove my hands through my hair. Anything to keep them from reaching for her again. I walk out of the kitchen to get some distance.
“That’s . . .” Ruby’s voice is almost a croak. She licks her lips and tries again. “There’s your evidence. And it was number three.”
I pause where I’m pacing. “What’s number three?”
“The step that worked. Stay safe but become less comfortable.” She slides from the counter to her feet.
“I feel safe with you. I always have. For a few days I thought I didn’t, but that was me not trusting my own feelings, being worried about what they meant.
But comfortable?” She scoffs. “I thought you were my favorite sweatshirt, but no. You’re . . .”
“I’m what?”
“Silk sheets.”
“Dammit, Ruby.” I turn around so she can’t see how easily she could hook me back in, literally and figuratively. I drop into an armchair where she won’t get any ideas about joining me. “Stay there and let me think.”
“Why is this an issue?” she asks. “We both want the same thing now.”
I don’t answer for several fast heartbeats, then several steady ones.
“I’ve been climbing a lot lately out at Reimers Ranch.
It’s limestone. Sedimentary rock, the kind made of junk debris settling.
It doesn’t do anything. It turns into stone.
Sometimes limestone is full of fossils, like coral or shells, but that’s usually from a high-energy environment, like strong currents. ”
She nods that she’s following. This is not an odd conversation between librarians, especially when one is a rock nerd.
“We don’t have that kind of sediment in central Texas,” I continue.
“Most of the limestone around here is chalk or marl, made up of microorganisms like plankton or ground-up bits of other minerals that stuck in one place and turned into bigger pieces of rock. No fossil record. No interesting backstory.”
She sighs. “I feel an analogy coming.”
“I don’t want to be Travis County limestone. I want to be metamorphic rock. Coal into diamond. It’s a better story.”
“I didn’t come here to apply pressure, but I will if it makes you happy.”
I give her a slight smile. “Thank you for respecting the analogy, but that’s not what I’m getting at. I’m settling. Been settled. Been slowly eroding. We would be more of the same. Or I would be that for you, anyway. Settling.”
“No way,” she protests. “I don’t see this as settling at all.”
“Limestone is useful, I guess. But it’s not pretty. We both deserve igneous rock love, and maybe I won’t get that, but I can’t settle for being someone else’s sediment.”
“Charlie.” Ruby’s voice carries a warning. “Did you just make a geology joke?”
“It rocked.”
“You are making it hard to love you right now.”
“Technically, you should be the hard one to love. Rubies are a nine on the Mohs scale. That’s right under diamond.”
“Charlie . . .” The warning is now a threat.
“But maybe you should change your name to talc. That’s a one on the Mohs scale. Easy. And it is easy to love you.”
“I don’t want to talc about rocks anymore. I want to talk about us.”
My smile fades, because yes. It’s time to deal with the real stuff.
“I’m trying to. But that still takes rocks.
” I get up and go to the counter where she’d found the list and shuffle the papers around until I produce a slick brochure and hand it to her.
“I’m going metamorphic before I can’t escape the sediment. ”
She takes it and reads the title aloud. “The Colorado School of Mines?”
“I’ve been restless for a while. Looking for something. I’ve been climbing with a guy who’s a geotechnical engineer. I’ve been looking into it, and it’s what I want to do. That’s the top program in the country.”
She stares from the brochure to me and back, like she can’t make sense of the words. “You’re leaving?”
“In the fall, yes.” I sweep my arm to encompass the insane amount of sneakers looming around us. “Applied right before the deadline. Been doubling the side hustle to save up.”
“But . . . the library.”
“The library can replace me without a problem. I need a change.”
“Because of me?” It’s barely a whisper.
“No. No, Ruby, I promise. Not in the way you think. But subbing at the main branch made me realize the main thing I’ve liked about my job the last couple of years is working with you.
Outside of that, it’s fine, but I don’t love it.
When I think about doing it indefinitely .
. .” It stretches in front of me like slow suffocation.
“But it’s the best job in the world,” she protests. “How many times have we had that conversation?”
“For you, it is. It’s your calling. For me, you’re the best part of the job.
But I hate being broke. I hate having to hustle constantly to afford Austin.
When I started thinking of a future with you, I couldn’t imagine us doing anything more than getting by financially forever.
And the restlessness got bad. Then I realized our only path forward together was if we both accepted a limestone fate.
” I reach over and draw the brochure from her unprotesting fingers to toss it back on the counter. “Can’t do that to a ruby. Won’t work.”
“You can’t turn a ruby into limestone,” she says with a bravado that tells me she’s feeling shaky on the science. “It won’t happen. We’re supposed to be getting up to no good on your sofa and making plans for our future together, not you telling me your future plans without me.”
I can’t keep having this conversation. “You think you’re offering me gold, but this is pyrite, Ruby. And I care way too much to let you talk yourself into something different.”
“I’m not!”
“Who’s the rock expert?”
“I’m the Ruby expert!”
I study her, the flush in her cheeks, the pleading in her eyes. I could give into it. I could take what she’s offering, and it would still make me happier than any other woman has or could.
But it wouldn’t make her happy in the end.
The weight of that when I eventually see her recognize she settled, in six months or ten years, it would crush me.
“Can you go?” I say.
“What are—are you kicking me out?”
“Giving us space.”
“How much?” Frustration etches tight lines in her face, making her jaw hard. “How long? Because switching your job across town didn’t help. Going to Colorado won’t help. However long you decide you need is only that much more time you’re going to spend being wrong about this.”
“I’m not going radio silent again, if that’s what you’re asking. I’d rather be miserable talking to you than not talking to you.” I give her my best teasing smile, but she slashes a hand through the air, rejecting it.
“What about next week at the library conference? Do I get to sit in sessions with you? Do I change all the classes we picked to avoid you, eat my meals by myself, and shield my eyes if I see you coming?” She spits the words like nails.
“No, of course not. We’re us, and we were great at it for a long time. We’ll do that.”
“How?” Her voice is sharp but also hollow.
I rub my eyes, the intensity of the day manifesting behind them in a ferocious headache. “I don’t know. I promise to figure it out before the conference.”
“Colorado is stupid, and I hate it.”
I stop rubbing my eyes long enough to stare at her. “No one hates Colorado.”
“I do.” Her lips press tight. Grim.
“Ruby . . .”
“I’m leaving.” She walks to the door and opens it. “I will literally close this door between us, but for the record, I’m getting really tired of you closing figurative ones.” Then she’s gone.
Shot through the heart, and she’s to blame. But which one of us is giving love a bad name?