Chapter Eighteen
Ruby
I spend my Sunday off by sleeping late, then indulging in one of the huge omelets Josh often makes everyone on the weekends.
By noon, everyone has left, busy with plans. It leaves me with the whole condo to myself, which is rare.
I enjoy it for the first hour. Then it’s too quiet. When I curl up to read a new release I brought home yesterday, the silence is distracting.
I give up and start wondering what my parents are up to. Maybe I should go over there. Or see if Madi and Oliver need the cats entertained. Or if Charlie is out with Sydney, and if not, maybe we should do a debrief on his date, so I can compliment his improved PDA. No doubt now that he likes her.
It’s kind of weird I’ve never seen Charlie on a date before last week.
Part of me thought he would be awkward, but it shouldn’t surprise me that he wasn’t.
He doesn’t talk to hear himself talk, but he does talk to people easily.
He can throw down when things get outrageous in the condo, usually at Madi’s instigation.
I grin, remembering a party they threw right after my breakup, trying to distract me.
They’d made up a ridiculous premise, saying it was for Sami’s birthday, and chose the theme “S for Sami.” We could only drink or eat foods that started with S and we had to dress in S clothes.
Oliver and Charlie came, pretending they were there for Sami when they were there for me.
Charlie always is, even when it means he’s wearing a Super Mario shirt with seersucker pants to a made-up party and doing a dramatic reenactment of a terrible movie called Soul Survivors.
I’d been doing a lot of post-breakup crying, but that night had made me cry tears of laughter.
I pull up a picture Madison posted that day and text it to him.
Was thinking about this day
lol
Alton wouldn’t have survived it
Alton who
Don’t know. Forgot.
Exactly
Done with shoe stuff. Need to touch grass. Walk?
Treehouse?
Yeah. Be there soon.
Park in Josh’s spot
I slip on some sneakers, check the weather on my phone, and skip a sweatshirt. It’s seventy degrees at Nap O’Clock in the afternoon, that sleepy time when you barely have energy on a regular day and don’t need to have energy on a Sunday.
I sit on the patio to wait for Charlie, enjoying the spring air until it’s disrupted by a rude shout.
“Kiss me, hot stuff!”
I turn to glare up at Ahab, who is birdcalling me from Mrs. Lipsky’s balcony. “At least buy me dinner first, you peeping pervert.”
“You tell him, sweetie,” Mrs. Lipsky says. “He won’t listen to me. I’ve been trying. Watch this.” She holds up a treat in front of him. “Say ‘hello, friend,’ Ahab.”
“Bossy!” he squawks.
Mrs. Lipsky scowls, and I giggle.
“Manners,” she says.
Ahab makes a flatulent sound, and I laugh harder. Finding it funny must be the stinky fruit of growing up with only brothers.
Mrs. Lipsky gives him the evil eye and makes a big show of pitching the treat into the bushes below them. “That squirrel gets your cashew, you twerp.”
Ahab gives an indignant flounce. “Hello, friend! Hello, friend!”
Mrs. Lipsky makes a clicking sound and produces another cashew from her fuchsia caftan. “Good boy.”
He snaps it up, gives a few parrot chomps, and screeches, “Kiss me, hot stuff!”
“Don’t make me come get that cashew back, you miscreant.”
As if. The second she doesn’t have a witness, Mrs. Lipsky will give him a half dozen more cashews for no reason.
“What are you up to this afternoon?” she asks. “It looks like nothing, which I approve.”
“Lazy day,” I say. “Charlie’s coming over and we’re going for a walk.”
“I approve your walk, and I approve of Charlie. Good choices all around.”
Charlie’s green car pulls into view, and I wave at Mrs. Lipsky as I cross our small yard to meet him.
“Don’t be too good,” she calls, which makes Charlie pause when he emerges from his car.
My cheeks get warm, but I don’t know why. Mrs. Lipsky knows it’s not like that with us.
I shake my head. “She’s spending too much time with Ahab. Need anything before we go?”
“Nah.” Charlie locks the car. It’s not just green but bright green.
Bright mossy green, if that even makes sense.
It’s a midsize Volkswagen SUV so he’ll have room for shoe inventory, and it’s new, thanks to that inventory.
If anyone else drove a car this shade of green, I’d assume they only chose it because they got a discount due to the color. But Charlie? It works. No, it’s right.
He slides his keys in the pockets of his shorts, gray flat fronts he’s wearing with his favorite Adidas and a peach T-shirt with a line drawing of the sun on the horizon. It looks old and soft. This is Charlie’s max comfort setting.
The walk to Pease is only about ten minutes. Sometimes on our walks, we both talk. Sometimes I mostly talk. Today is one of those days.
I catch him up on all the nothing that has happened so far, and he nods but doesn’t add anything. When I tell him about Ahab’s antics, he doesn’t even smile, which means he’s not paying attention. He loves Ahab stories.
“You good?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
His tone is normal, but I don’t believe him. “How did the rest of your date go with the pickleball princess?”
There’s a long pause before he answers. “I don’t want to talk about dating right now, if that’s okay.”
Ah, Sydney is the problem. That’s fine. He’ll talk when he’s ready. “How about pickleball?”
“Do you have a lot you want to say on pickleball?”
“Not really.”
“Pass, then.”
“Hmm.” I mull for a moment. “Movies with scenes involving sports with nets?”
A soft chuckle. “Ranking or rating?”
“Let’s take it easy today and go with rating.”
“King Richard, tennis. A-plus.”
“B- for the movie choice. That was too easy. I’ll go with Top Gun, beach volleyball. A.”
“Not an A-plus? You surprise me.”
“Some of those haircuts . . .”
Charlie nods. “I’ll give it a C.”
“What?” I squawk like Ahab. “That scene is iconic.”
“Some of those dudes are playing beach volleyball in jeans.” He shakes his head. “Sand, Ruby. Jeans.”
“Oh, fair. Scene downgraded to a B-, film still an A.”
We continue like this as we reach the park and wander toward the south end and the Treehouse. It’s been a major draw since it was installed a few years ago. A happy squeak escapes me when we find it empty.
It’s an open-air globe made of rebar, bisected horizontally by thick mesh netting.
Stone blocks set directly on the ground invite gathering.
Ramps to a steel bridge access the second level where you can lie on the net, looking at the tree canopy through the open top.
The net can accommodate up to twenty people, and often does. Today, we get to be the only two.
Without needing to discuss it, we take the bridge to the net, then crawl into the center and flop back to stare through the opening above us. It reminds me of a paper lantern.
After a couple of minutes of quiet, I scoot against Charlie’s side. “It’s chillier than I thought it would be with the airflow beneath us.”
He folds his hands behind his head to give me more room to nestle.
So what if this is the kind of thing the girls have been side-eyeing?
I don’t need them to understand it. This is perfect, lying here and listening.
Birds trill and chirp. We’re surrounded by trees, leaves rustling as squirrels go about their business.
“Do you know much about this?” I ask in a lazy murmur suited to the mood.
“About what?”
“The Treehouse. I read up on it when they announced it was reopening.”
“Tell me.”
“The idea is that as the canopy grows denser over time, it will feel as if the trees define the shape of the enclosure, not the rebar.”
Charlie ponders that for a bit before he says, “Neat.”
He means it. That’s Charlie. Succinct but sincere.
We’re lying side to side, the top of my head up near his armpit, and I press my arm against him, a brief touch to emphasize what I say next.
“I’m glad we’re like this. That I can tell you I researched a playground attraction to understand the designer’s vision, and you not only don’t think it’s weird that I did it, but you think it’s interesting. ”
We fall quiet again, but after a couple of minutes, I sense the mood has shifted. We haven’t moved, but it feels like Charlie has drifted back into the mood that held him as we walked here. I tilt my head to see if he’s fallen asleep. He’s looking up through the globe, but his gaze is distant.
The silence changes. It feels like things not being said, and I have a premonition that this isn’t about Sydney.
His body tenses as he gathers himself to sit up, and I move to give him room. He leans back on his hands and looks down at me, his eyes serious.
“Can I talk to you?” he asks.
My fingers curl around the mesh. “Am I in trouble?”
He grimaces. “I’ll rephrase. Can I tell you something?”
I push myself up to a sitting position, and we shift until we’re facing each other, cross-legged. I rest my elbows on my knees and prop my chin on my fists. “What’s up?”
“Sydney and I were never dating.”
“Huh?” So eloquent, but what the heck? I was there for both of their dates.
He rubs his hands over his face, and when he drops them, I notice for the first time the faint circles under his eyes, the light stubble on his jaw. His hair looks like he’s dragged his fingers through it several times today. This is more than a scruffy Sunday aesthetic.
“I’ve been thinking nonstop about how to explain this since yesterday.” He sighs. “I still don’t know.”
A cold, prickly feeling numbs my arms. This happens when a big wave of anxiety hits me.
I’m not sure what’s happening in my nerves and synapses for real, but it feels like turtling.
It’s like if my soul is a transparent version of me that fits in my body like me-shaped vapor, it all starts to contract and shrink into the smallest possible target, turning into a knot between my chest and my stomach.
“I’m kind of freaked out.” I try to say it in an unfreaked out way. “Should I be freaked out?”
“No.”
“And yet . . .”
He gives me a slight headshake and a trace of a smile. “I guess I’ve already started this the worst way possible. Might as well go all in.”
I have no idea what he should do since I have no idea what this is about, so I keep my mouth shut and wait, trying to get the knot in my mid-section to retake vapor form and expand.
“Sydney is a friend of Katie’s. Katie told Sydney to scope me out because she thought we might hit it off.”
“Okay . . .” Nice one, Katie, but why is everyone so bent on setting up Charlie? I’ll have to tell her I’m handling it.
“The thing is, I’m hung up on someone, and it seemed pointless to go out with anyone else.”
I know my job is to ask who he’s hung up on, but the premonition is back, now with more panic. I don’t want any more information.
He meets my eyes, his soft but resigned.
Don’t say it. Don’t say it, Charlie.
But he does.
“It’s you, Ruby.”