Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Ruby
I walk into the living room Thursday night expecting to be greeted by two nosy faces, and despite the bad date I just left, I have to laugh when four are waiting for me.
My brother and Oliver have joined Ava and Madison, all sitting on the sofa like the world’s most attractive interrogation panel.
“How was it?” Madison asks, holding up her phone. “Sami tagged you in a group dinner post. He’s cute, and you look like you’re having a great time.”
“Sami did not win the bet tonight,” I say.
Madison does a fist pump, and Ava gives a short nod, like this is what she expected. Joey looks bored because my brother doesn’t care about my love life unless I’m dating Niles, in which case he objects.
Oliver looks curious. “Bad date or just boring?”
“Bad,” Madison guesses. “That’s why Sami and Josh didn’t come in with her. They’re too embarrassed by how bad they whiffed it.”
“No, they dropped me off and went to get ice cream. Ed was fine. I never thought too much about what an archetypal Ed is, but now I know. Medium cute, medium interesting. But I have social proof of not being a loser, so we’ll call it a win.”
“Too small of a sample size,” Ava objects.
“To prove I’m not a loser? That’s mean, Ava.”
She rolls her eyes. “That this Ed is an archetypal Ed.”
“I will reevaluate if presented with other Eds, Madame Science,” I tell her.
“So he was vanilla.” Madison sounds extremely pleased with this verdict and curls into Oliver’s side on the sofa.
“Good quality vanilla,” I say. There’s nothing wrong with Ed. He just wasn’t right.
“Still vanilla.”
“Yes.”
“Verdict on the double date?” Ava asks.
I consider this. “Overall, fine? But it also felt like Sami was grading everything in her head, trying to figure out how she was doing in y’all’s bet. That was weird.”
“Observer effect,” Ava muses. “We’ll have to see how much being watched changed your behavior.”
“Can’t be measured,” I object. “There’s no way to say how it might have gone if Sami and Josh weren’t there.”
“I don’t like relying on anecdotal evidence,” Ava concedes, “but it’s all we’ve got. I’ll ask Sami how it looked to her as the observer and that will give me more information. But mostly I’ll have to rely on your self-reported experience tomorrow.”
“Why tomorrow?” I ask, suspecting I know the answer.
“That’s your next date,” she says. “I’ve picked my first candidate from the app, and I like my chances.”
Joey makes a rude noise. “Pick your own dudes and succeed or fail on your own like anyone else.”
“No.” I manage not to stick my tongue out at him.
Ava waves a hand toward me like, See?
“If you don’t want to date, why even bother going on the ones they’re picking?” he argues.
“Do you want your sister to be alone forever?” Madison demands.
“Is the alternative Niles? Then yes,” he says.
“Why is everyone else more hung up on him than I am?” I ask. “He’s in the rearview mirror. And since I picked him, I’m fine with someone else picking this time.”
Joey sits back against the sofa and sighs.
Ava takes it as a sign he’s done objecting. “Tomorrow, you go out with Colton. You’ll like him.”
“Why do you say that like you know it?” Madison asks. “You don’t know.”
“I do know,” Ava says. “I’m science-ing the sh—”
“We get it,” I cut her off, knowing she’s going to finish her favorite Mark Watney quote from The Martian.
We’ve all heard it enough in the last six months since Joey made us watch it for a movie night because he couldn’t believe Ava hadn’t seen it.
She’d held out on account of fake science driving her crazy, but now that she’s seen it, she’s obsessed in her Ava-like way.
She says she’s going to make us all go on a road trip so we can listen to the author’s other space book before the movie comes out.
As if a librarian—even one who loves films—would ever see the movie before reading the book.
“How have you scienced this?” I ask. “I’m assuming you posted my picture in the app. Which app? And why that app? And is this guy going to be confused when I don’t know anything about him?”
Madison drops a kiss on Oliver’s cheek before standing and coming over to take me by the hand. “First, have a seat. You had a hard night of going out for a good meal that you didn’t have to pay for with good friends you adore.”
“Thank you.” I sniff. “You get me.”
She guides me to the oversized armchair. “You need to be comfortable before Ava drops all that science on you. I’ll get you some water.”
“You are the best Madison in this whole condo,” I tell her.
She pats me on the head as I settle in. “I really am.”
“Lay it on me,” I tell Ava as Madison heads for the kitchen.
“I picked MeetCute, and if you care about the algorithmic reasons, I’ll tell you.”
“It’s pretty sexy,” Joey says.
I wrinkle my nose at him because I know he means it. He loves having a genius girlfriend.
“MeetCute. Isn’t that the one you used last fall?” I ask.
“Yes. I’ve posted your picture and your info. But I’ve also explained that it is not YOU screening the dates, it’s your best friend and roommate, and that I’m trying to win a bet, so I’m looking for the best possible match.”
“Guys are clicking on this?”
“Lots. I used a mostly nude photo of you.”
Joey chokes on his own spit or something and sputters.
“What picture did you actually use?” I ask.
Ava swipes through a few things on her phone and hands it to me. “That’s your profile.”
Ava posted two photos. The first is a closeup cropped from a patio party we had last fall. I look good with last summer’s tan bringing out the gold in my complexion from my dad’s Mexican genes.
My hair is still pretty short in the picture, bobbed under my chin after an angsty post-Niles salon visit. I’m smiling so we must have been broken up long enough for me to find things fun again.
“That picture’s good, right?” Ava asks.
“It’s good. I like the other one too.” She snapped it when we were riding bikes at Zilker Park a couple of weeks ago, my hair grown out now to a draped bob that almost touches my shoulders, curtain bangs on point.
It’s a candid shot that says I like adventures.
The thing about a friend like Ava is that she knows me well enough to pick the pictures that communicate my personality, and she loves me enough to make me look cute.
“I put all your likes and dislikes in there,” she continues. “I don’t think you’re going to want to change anything, but you should read the personal statement section and make sure you can live with it.”
I glance over the likes (chocolate, reading, outdoors anything, and movies) and dislikes (snakes, cauliflower, and Tom Hiddleston—he knows what he did) which are all correct. I read the personal statement aloud.
“This is my roommate, Ruby. She agreed to let us (the roommates) set her up on dates. I’m using this app because it’s efficient.
I’ll be screening all candidates. My standards are high.
You need an education, a job, a functioning car, good manners, and a sense of humor.
You must also like being around people because whoever she ends up with will be around all of us roommates plus our boyfriends, often our neighbors, and her large family.
Non-negotiable. You can message me why I should pick you to take out my best friend. ”
It's typical Ava. Direct and specific. I hand back her phone. “All right, they’ll definitely understand what they’re getting into.”
“You’ve gotten a bunch of messages. I responded to three that had potential, and then I narrowed it down to one.” She swipes a couple more times and hands me the phone again. “This is his profile. Meet Colton.”
The picture is an outdoor shot of an extremely fit dude in hiking clothes doing a pose that makes it look like he’s lifting a large boulder in the background over his head.
A sense of silliness is good. I swipe to his profile picture, which shows a guy with a very short haircut and faint laugh lines around his eyes. Hmm.
“He’s cute,” I say. “But that military haircut might mean he’s too regimented.”
Oliver chucks a throw pillow at me and boos.
“However,” I say, moving the pillow off my lap without acknowledging it, “the laugh lines are a good sign.” I swipe to his details and wrinkle my nose. “He’s a personal trainer?”
“Let me see,” Madison says, coming back in with a glass of water. “They’re always hot.”
Oliver doesn’t look remotely bothered by this statement, not even when she makes an approving noise at Colton’s pictures.
For all my enlightened gender role opinions, I like it when a guy is a little possessive.
It makes me feel . . . I don’t know. Wanted?
But Oliver is laid back about her flirtiness, unthreatened by her antics—which is good since she’s not doing it to provoke a reaction.
Madison simply appreciates beautiful people and things.
“I’m not sure about a personal trainer,” I say. “Aren’t they kind of shallow?”
“Are you shallow for going to spin class?” she retorts. “Is your hairdresser shallow because she likes working in the beauty industry?”
“Okay, okay, point taken.” My assumption is based on personal trainers being the worst candidates on the reality dating shows we watch. I already know Ava would scold me for my small sample size. “Where am I going with Colton?”
“You’re doing a chocolate tasting after work tomorrow. I’ll send you both the reservation info. If you click with each other, you can figure out what to do with the rest of your night.” Madison waggles her eyebrows.
My brother makes a gagging noise.
“Not like that.” Ava sends Madison a quelling look. “But I’ll send you some links for live music you can go listen to or something.”
Joey settles back against the sofa and nods.
“All right, chocolate-tasting tomorrow with Colton,” I confirm.
“But no Colton-tasting,” Joey says.
“Definitely taste Colton if the vibes are right,” Madison says to needle Joey.
“Madi,” Oliver says, his tone somewhere between a warning and a laugh. We all know she’s only half joking.
“I’ll be sticking to chocolate. Not that you’re the boss of me, Joey,” I say. What I don’t say is that it’s been more than six years since I kissed anyone besides Niles, and I can’t wrap my head around kissing someone new.
Even the idea makes my stomach feel weird.
Bad weird, like when Ava and I got our ears pierced when we were twelve.
Or were supposed to get our ears pierced.
We decided to get them done together, and Ava had researched the best place to go, but the second I walked in and saw the needle, I chickened out.
Ava left with a tiny stud in each ear, and I didn’t get mine pierced until I was almost sixteen and decided that my soul cried out for gold hoop earrings. I do love rocking my gold hoops . . .
Is the lesson that I’ll also love kissing someone new?
Definitely. Obviously.
Take that, gawkers. Ruby Ramos is thriving.
So why don’t I feel convinced?