Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Charlie
It’s my turn to work Saturday, and that means Ruby doesn’t.
I like our whole staff, but it usually bums me out to know that I won’t have Ruby as my library sidekick.
This morning, I’m okay with it; I don’t want to hear about her date last night.
I’ll need to get the recap at some point so I know how to strategize, but right now, I can believe her date sucked.
My watch vibrates to inform me that the library is officially open, and within seconds, patrons begin breaking off from the line streaming through the main entrance to head my way at the reference desk.
I always enjoy helping them, but today, I’m extra grateful for the distraction from my Ruby thoughts.
It works for about an hour until she texts me.
When’s your lunch break?
Never
Understaffed?
I stare at her reasonable question. I want to say No, but I don’t want to hear about your date because I yearn for you.
No, but busy. Lunch at noon.
I’ll come feed you.
Nothing proves Ruby and I were meant for our jobs more than the fact that we often drop in at the library even when we’re not on shift. Sure enough, Ruby lures me outside two minutes after 12:00 with a text.
Meet me outside.
She knows my order: Cobra burger and fries.
I still don’t want to hear about her date yet. But I really love Billy’s.
I know where she’ll be waiting, and there she is, under the shadiest trees near the building in a camp chair with another one waiting beside her, my takeout bag on the seat.
I pick it up and settle in. “I’m skipping two protein bars and a Cup o’ Noodles for this.”
“Side hustle keeping you too busy to grocery shop?”
“Correct.” Sneaker flipping is time-consuming, but it’s also doubled my salary.
“Party at the H-E-B.”
“Party” means Ruby is now plotting for us to go for groceries together.
I dig my burger from the bag and unwrap it, scraping my teeth against the waxy paper to get the melted cheese. Around here, it’s bad manners not to.
“The date last night was a bust,” she says.
I hide my smile behind the wrapper and nod to let her know I’m listening.
“We went to a chocolate tasting. The guy—Colton–is a personal trainer. Would only eat tiny bits of dark chocolate because the other stuff wasn’t on his ‘plan.’ He passed on truffles.” She shakes her head at me. “Truffles, Charlie. With ganache.”
“He knew he was going to a chocolate-tasting and didn’t suggest doing something else?”
“He knew, and no, he didn’t suggest anything else. I think he was trying to show off his willpower.”
“Weird flex. ‘Let me show you how sad my life is that I can’t enjoy the things in front of me.’ Was the chocolate good, at least?” I’m trying to be anti-Colton without being blatant.
“I had a Swiss dark chocolate mocha truffle that changed my life,” she says. “Not that I have a corroborating witness since my date was so disciplined.”
“You mean joy deficient.” Too far?
“His whole personality is talking about his nutrition.”
Definitely not too far then.
“Everything that would pollute his body, I love, and I’m not changing for him.” She takes a big bite of her burger.
“I’m going to need to try this truffle. I’m looking for something to believe in.”
She reaches into her purse and hands me a small box stamped with the name of the chocolatier. “I brought you one. Welcome to the cult.”
We eat in comfortable silence, Ruby handing me any crispy fries she finds because they’re my favorite.
How does she not realize she’s more content polluting our bodies in camp chairs on the library lawn than being at a chocolate tasting because she’s with me?
I need to point that out in a Chill Charlie way.
I finish my lunch and take a bite of the truffle. “Oh, wow.”
“Right?”
I eat the rest of the chocolate and stretch out in my chair so I can study the treetops like I’m ready to drift into a post-lunch coma. “Don’t you wish every first date could be like this?”
She gives a content hum. “Like what? Indoctrinating people into chocolate cults?”
I give a soft laugh. “No. Like easy.” Do not say comfortable. Do not use any of its synonyms. No words that could mean “boring.” “Like you can talk about anything. Ask anything. Say anything. Do you know what I mean?”
She nods. “I should pretend every date is Ava, so I don’t feel nervous.”
I try again, keeping my voice casual. “Or me. Might be easier since I’m a guy.”
“Same difference.” Her shrug hits me in the gut like a fist. “But I know what you mean. It would be great if every first date was as easy to talk to as you.”
Did I just help or hurt my goal? “You have my permission to superimpose my face on all future dates.”
“Noted. At least I don’t have a date today.” She leans back to tree gaze with a sigh.
“That sounded tired,” I say.
“More like annoyed.”
“Because . . . ?”
“I’ll probably have two more of these dates next week.”
As a bad friend, her dread makes me feel warm inside. “Sucks that much, huh?”
“It’s not how I want to spend my time. These first two weren’t terrible, but neither was even close to the right fit.”
I consider this and roll my head to look at her. “Do you think it’s suspicious that Ava and Sami were that far off? And that Ava sent you on a chocolate date with a health nut?”
“Suspicious how?”
“Could they be trying to tank them on purpose like you did when you set Ava up with Joey?”
“I sent Ava on dates because I knew Joey needed to see her in a new light, the way other guys see her, to recognize that she was right for him. I made sure they were bad so she and Joey would believe I really thought she needed his coaching.”
That’s true. Ruby had even dragged me into her scheming in finding “bad” guys to go along with the plan. Ruby had been extremely intentional in reminding Ava of all Joey’s best qualities by sending her out on dates with his opposites.
Oh, dang. I’ve subconsciously copied her strategy to use it on her, reveling in foods the trainer would never touch.
“Why are you smiling?” she asks.
“Just remembering some of her bad dates.”
“Neither of mine have been that bad. Besides, why would the girls want to tank them?” Ruby asks.
“Maybe it’s payback for the dumb dates they had to go on.”
“Just Ava. I only sent Sami out with Josh, and I never told Madison I was setting her up.” She shakes her head. “They’re not tanking anything. They just don’t have my matching superpowers.”
It really is her superpower. Patrons love her because she’s undefeated in matching people to books they would never have considered on their own, but she can do it with other things too.
She can call any season of The Bachelor by the end of the first episode.
The other girls make her write her guess and put it in an envelope that she doesn’t get to reveal until the proposal because according to Madison, the rest of them like the suspense.
But her roommates’ combined matching powers are better than Ruby thinks, considering they wanted to match me with her first. The difference between them and Ruby is that she’ll force a match if she’s sure it’s right. I’m relieved the other girls have boundaries.
“How long are you going to go along with this?” It’s hard to imagine her being patient if it feels like a waste of time.
“Until it interferes with real life.”
“What does that mean?”
She makes her thinking sound, a soft humming noise. “If it takes time from something I want to do instead. Like if one of them tries to set me up on something that would make me miss a family thing. Stuff like that.”
Good news for me since the Ramos family gets together for everything. With five Ramos siblings—three of them married with a few kids in the mix—there’s always a birthday or promotion or holiday to celebrate. Two weeks ago, they got together because her oldest niece lost her first tooth.
“Do you feel ready to date?”
Ruby’s eyes trace paths along the limbs of the tree overhead. “Mostly, I’m going out because they think they’re helping. My mom always says when someone wants to help you, let them, even if you don’t need it, because letting them help you helps them even if you aren’t sure how.”
“Letting them help you like this is an extreme act of generosity.” My dry tone makes her laugh.
Each of them in their own way could be described as “extra.” Even Sami, who seems the most low-key in that condo, becomes electric when she transforms into her stage-prowling alter ego, Lady Mantha.
When they form alliances, it amplifies every one of their personality traits as they fuse into a superhuman force. I am not being dramatic.
It’s inspiring to watch, unless you’re the target, in which case you should be more nervous than a CEO at a Coldplay concert.
“Maybe I’m curious,” she says. “Except for Ava, they’ve only known me with Niles, so what kind of guy do they think I should be with instead? If ten is most curious, I’m a two.”
“Why did you pick him? What made you stay?” I’ve always wondered.
“You may be the only person who hasn’t asked me that yet.
” She bats away a bit of tree fluff drifting toward her.
“People have had a lot to say about him. In hindsight, I see he’s bland.
But like, in an unobjectionable way? I’m the one who wasted my time, but you’d think it was everyone else who lost five years. ”
“They didn’t hate him. They hated him for you.” Niles wasn’t a “bad” guy. He was just bad for Ruby, always trying to sand her edges. But the things he found abrasive, aren’t. Not for the people who love her. “But something about him worked for you. So what was it?”
She focuses on a bit of thread poking up from the nylon of her chair arm, plucking at it a few times before she answers.
“I confused blandness with calm. That’s all I can come up with.
You know I love my family, but our house was chaos.
Mostly good. Jokes, teasing. But also angsty teenage boys who were loud and bad with boundaries.
” She sighs. “If I hadn’t had Ava’s house to escape to, I might still be one frayed nerve, two seconds from snapping. ”
“And you picked the opposite with Niles.”
“Yeah. His infrequent family dinners at low-to-moderate volume. His unchaotic accountant brain. His lists.” She gives a small laugh. “I thought I loved his lists. Packing for trips. Shopping for Christmas presents. The grocery store. Weekend entertainment. Easy. Structured.”
I consider this. “I always figured that kind of organization appealed to you. That it’s why you became a librarian. Order and quiet.”
We mull that for a second before we both burst out laughing. Libraries are never quiet.
“I probably saw him as the eye of the storm after my brothers,” she says. “I liked his steadiness, but really, everyone in my family is steady. They’re just loud steady.”
I give her a searching look. “Seems like Niles was more lack of noise than he was quiet.”
She meets my eyes with a slight smile. “Trust you to know there’s a difference.”
Yeah. Trust me to understand you every which way, Ruby. “I hate that he turned you into a checkbox.”
“What girl doesn’t love getting a proposal because she’s finally met the metrics?”
I pour out some of the Coke she brought me. “Bye, Niles. No one misses you.”
“Truth.”
“What will you look for now?”
“I don’t know.” She falls quiet.
We’ve never been in the habit of filling each other’s silences. To me, that’s another green flag, but I’m pretty sure Ruby takes for granted how easily we do this.
“I don’t have a physical type,” she says after a while. “Maybe I don’t like gym bros? And maybe I have a soft spot for preppy boys? That’s about it.”
Right, so . . . me. But I wait her out, because she’ll think past superficial appearances.
“I want enough in common to have lots of stuff we like to do together. But I also want enough differences that we always have things to talk about. Does that even make sense?” Her forehead wrinkles and she glances at me like she’s trying to see if I’m tracking.
I always do. I always have. “I get it.”
She shifts in the chair, getting even more comfortable.
“At my friend’s bridal shower, they asked all the married women to share a piece of advice, and that’s one that stuck with me.
Her grandma said to support each other’s separate hobbies and interests, because those things give you stuff to talk about besides the bills or the kids. ”
“Makes sense to me.” Especially since Niles’s interests had dominated their relationship. Whenever Ruby had put her foot down to make him do something she wanted to do, on his best day he acted like he was indulging her. Usually, he complained. “What else are you looking for?”
She frowns, thinking. “I feel like I’ll know it when I see it, but I can’t put it into words. It’s like when I saw who each of my besties needed. It was obvious. Even if I didn’t know the exact person, I knew the type.”
“Basically, you’re waiting for your superpower to kick in for yourself.”
Ruby points at me like, Yes, that.
It kills me that her superpower isn’t kicking in for her either. I’m right here.
She’ll need the epiphany. Sunlight breaking through a cloud and smacking her right in the face with love for me . . . or something.
That’s what my plan has to be. Creating opportunities for that epiphany to happen. For Ruby to go, Whoa, Charlie, I’ve just realized I want to make out with you all the time and this chemistry has been there all along.
It’s one of my favorite fantasies because I’m a realist, and there’s no way I’ve imagined the gravity of our orbit around each other. It’ll happen.
So the plan is to give her light bulb moments. Illumination. Be the Thomas Edison of love. No, that guy wasn’t a good dude. I’ll be . . .
I sift through my memories from a senior trip to Houston where we saw this art show that was all about light.
Turrell. That was the artist. He made a giant sphere, and the viewer was rolled inside it on a slab.
When the lights came on, it was so bright you started to see things that weren’t there, like floating rainbows and sharp shapes.
Except it was you seeing the biological structure of your own eye.
Mind-blowing.
I’m going to be the Turrell of Ruby’s eye. Mind?
Heart.
And because Ruby gave each matchmaking scheme for her roommates a ridiculous—and yet unironic—nickname, I’m giving this plan one of my own.
Operation Thunderstruck is about to go down.