Chapter Twenty-One #3
I want her turning up at football. I want her jumper left in my room. I want the messages at midnight, breakfast, stupid arguments, her taking the piss out of me and barging into whatever plans I had until they become ours instead.
But if I let myself have all of that, she gets access to everything else too and eventually she’d see the parts of me I spend most of my life hiding.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Ruby whispers, her thumb tracing along mine. “But why do you react like that to her?”
Her touching me is giving me a mad amount of comfort, her voice is soothing the shitshow in my head. “We used to date.”
“Yeah, I guessed as much.”
“It was a bad breakup.”
“You really don’t need to tell me.”
I press my lips to her hair and inhale the smell of her. Strawberries, cherry, and completely intoxicating to my system. “You’re not curious?”
“Of course I’m curious. I’m nosy as fuck, you know that. But I don’t need to know everything about you in order to like you.”
I tell my heart to calm the fuck down and remind myself she doesn’t know half the shit that lives in my head. “You like me?”
“Yeah.” She snorts. “Don’t start getting any ideas with that, I’m trying to be nice.”
“It’s okay.” I squeeze her hand, keeping my eyes on the road. “I’m too fucked up to let myself have ideas like that anyway. You deserve someone with considerably less baggage.” I rub my thumb over the side of her hand. “But I reckon I can manage being a decent friend to you.”
Ruby stiffens slightly. “A decent friend?”
“Yeah. It’s a very exclusive package.”
“Hm.”
“Limited availability.”
“Oh, wow. Lucky me.” It comes out tight and dejected.
“Rubes?” I question, feeling my heart start to flutter. “Are you offended by that?”
“Why would I be offended? You’ve just offered me an exclusive friendship.”
I turn my hand in hers and try to calm the dread that’s making a reappearance in me. “I’ve upset you.”
“You haven’t.”
“Ruby, don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying. We are friends. That’s all we are.”
“Okay, look. You need to listen to me, alright?” I move my hands until I’m cupping her face, holding her there. “If I was going to pick anyone I would choose you.”
“Josh,” she breathes, confusion and hurt all over her.
“But there’s shit you don’t know about.” I continue, needing her to understand what I’m trying to do here. “You don’t want more than friendship with me. I know we nearly kissed, and I know there’s this thing between us that almost feels alive, but trust me, you don’t want me.”
Her hands come up and close around my wrists. “Stop telling me what I want.”
“I’m telling you what you need to hear. I’m saving you the trouble.”
“Of what?” she sputters, her voice wobbling and I think she might cry.
“Of me.”
Her eyes search mine, her brows pursed and lips puckered. I don’t know what she’s looking for, but the disappointment that crosses her face makes me want to drop to my knees and beg her to understand. “Okay, Josh,” she dejectedly sighs.
I was expecting more of a fight. “Okay?”
“I hear you. I accept your friendship.” Ruby’s hands loosen around my wrists and fall back to her sides, and when I let go of her face she puts a full step between us, rubbing her lips together and blinking towards the road instead of at me.
“Ruby—” I start, not really sure what I’m even going to say to make this better, because this feels fucking awful.
“Don’t worry about it,” she mutters, pulling her coat closer around herself. “I hear you. You only want to be my friend. It’s okay.”
The words make me want to grab hold of them and take them back, except I shouldn’t. I mean it when I tell her she shouldn’t want more from me, even if every other part of me is screaming that I’m making the wrong call.
She glances towards the pub door. “I should go back in before the others wonder where I am.”
I want to tell her not to go. More than that, I want to tell her that I didn’t mean I don’t want her, because that isn’t the truth.
If anything the problem is that I want her so much I’ve started thinking about her when I wake up, when I’m in lectures, when I’m training, when some other geezer stands too close to her in a pub and suddenly I’m twenty times more miserable than I was five minutes earlier.
But I really will just fuck her up with my own shit, and no one deserves that.
So I nod. “Yeah.”
Ruby gives me a small smile that doesn’t look anything like the ones she usually gives me, then starts towards the door, and I stay where I am with my hands shoved into my pockets, telling myself I’m doing the good thing. The honourable thing.
At the entrance, she pauses and glances back at me. “Are you coming back inside?”
“No.” I hitch a thumb over my shoulder, thoroughly fucking disappointed in myself. “I’m gonna go home.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Someone will walk you back, won’t they?”
She rubs her forehead. “Yeah. Course. Oscar’s there, isn’t he?”
“Okay.” I wave towards the path. “Well…Night, Rubes.”
“Night, Josh.” Then she disappears back inside and the door swings shut behind her, cutting off the burst of music and voices that escaped onto the pavement with her, and I’m left standing there.
I should feel relieved.
I’ve drawn the line, kept things where they’re safer, stopped myself from dragging her into the mountain of shit I’m carrying around with me.
Instead, all I can think about is Tom standing inside that pub waiting for her, and the fact I’ve just told the girl I want that she should only ever be my friend.
And the grey wolf of depression pounces.