Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
Charlie
I sit on my sofa and stare into the distance.
Stacks of shoes surround me. Packaging supplies litter my coffee table.
I see none of it. Even with my eyes wide open, I can only watch the replay of that kiss with Ruby. The heat. The soft sounds.
The way she jerked away from me.
I frown.
The way she turned from Niles toward me, her eyes full of hurt. Full of evidence that she still cares.
Niles and I, we’re built different. If she loved a guy like that, still loves a guy like that, I don’t think she can love a guy like me. Whatever boxes he checked I can’t check for her. It would mean being different from who I am, and if that’s what it would take, what would be the point?
In a handful of minutes this afternoon, I learned that kissing Ruby is more incredible than I could have imagined. That “addiction” is the right metaphor.
I ignored Ruby’s last text. I ignored her FaceTime call.
Is this ego? Is my pride hurt because I “lost” to Niles?
The belt loop tug. The way her lips parted. The tangle of her fingers in my hair.
Is this disillusionment in Ruby for not expecting better for herself?
Her taste. Her gasp. Her moan.
No. This is loss.
And now I have an even deeper sense of how much I’m losing.
There’s a knock at the door. I stiffen, already knowing it’s Ruby.
She knocks again.
I get up and answer without checking the peephole. “Boundaries, Ruby.”
She’s on my doorstep in her tea party dress but hatless and barefoot, her shoes dangling from her fingers. Somewhere she’s picked up a Spurs jacket that’s way too big, the sleeve hanging past the fingers on her free hand.
“Boundaries are for protection,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“That’s what I want to tell you. You’re safe with me.” She’s smiling like this is the most exciting thing ever.
I stare at her, trying to figure out what this is about.
She reaches up to scratch her nose, her oversized sleeve flopping. “Can I come in?”
I step back to let her pass. She stops short inside when she sees the towers of inventory. “You’re going to die buried beneath sneakers you don’t even like.”
“Dramatic irony. I’ll take it.”
She drops her high heels by the door and heads for the sofa, claiming “her” corner, the one she takes when we watch movies here. She sits story time style facing “my” corner.
“You know, when you’re not here, this whole couch is mine.”
She frowns. “What?”
“Nothing.” I take my spot. “Why are you barging in here like Kramer, Roo?”
Her smile comes back, bright and happy. “Because I love you.”
“Me too, which means respect the line.”
Her smile wobbles and fades. “No, I mean I love you.”
She looks so confused that it confuses me.
She throws those words around all the time.
If I bring her a treat or do something nice for her, I get a variation of I love you, Charlie Bucket!
Or if I do something that amuses her when we’re hanging out at the condo, or get drinks for all the girls from the kitchen, she’ll holler something like, “We love Charlie!”
“I heard you. I said me too.”
She wiggles in her seat, trying to straighten like she wants to show me this is serious. It doesn’t look that serious since she’s still sitting crisscross. “I mean I love you like you love me.”
“Aren’t we saying the same thing?” I squint at her. “Are you punking me?”
“No! What in the . . .” She huffs. “This didn’t feel hard to say until I said it two times and you didn’t get it.”
This feels like playing Hot Wheels with my oldest nephew, who tells me the rules for how to win—“push the car the most far”—then changes them three seconds later when I do because actually, the winner is who pushed the car the best, and it was him.
Since words have failed me, I make the “what do you want from me” gesture.
“I’m in love with you,” she says. She looks pleased and her body relaxes a bit.
Oh. The words turn me into a bruise and press against me.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asks. “Even, like, ‘Finally, Ruby’ or something?”
“What makes you think that?” I can’t repeat the rest—that you’re in love with me.
“Because I do.”
I’m not doing this, whatever it’s supposed to be. I stand and walk to the door. “Go home and sleep it off. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
There’s rustling as she gets off the sofa too. “Charlie!”
I turn with my hand on the knob, ready to show her out. “Yeah?”
“This is supposed to be amazing. We’re in love. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
It's worse each time she says in love. “We are not. I am. It hasn’t been going great, to be honest.”
She starts toward me. “That’s what I mean. I figured it out today.”
“Because we kissed.” I lean back against the door, and she stops a few feet in front of me.
“Exactly.”
I close my eyes and shake my head. “Nothing changed.”
“Uh, everything did.” She’s starting to sound exasperated.
Welcome to my world, Ruby. “No, it didn’t. You’re just being you.” It probably sounds condescending even though I don’t mean it to. I’m feeling resigned and defeated, not even close to arrogant.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demands.
My frustration is getting harder to control. “You shouldn’t have come over, Ruby. Take the hint.”
“I come over here to tell you I’m in love with you and you’re mad about that?”
“Because you’re not!” The last thread of my patience snaps.
“This is you reacting to Niles making you feel bad and finding some way to feel okay instead. That’s how you are, Ruby.
You’re reactive, and you’re trying to drown out the crappy way your ex made you feel by giving yourself a new story about the afternoon. ”
She backs up a few steps until her legs hit the side of the sofa, and she sits down on the arm. “You’re not wrong much, but when you are, you go big.”
“I’m not wrong.” I wish I were. “We must not have been sharing the same kiss because the second you heard his voice, you turned to him.”
“Because I forgot he was there! Then I made it clear I wasn’t up for his nonsense and turned right back to you.”
“With so much hurt in your eyes. Only people you care about can hurt you like that.”
“First of all, of course people can hurt you even when you don’t care about them. Or at least they can hurt me. Just knowing someone wants to hurt me specifically, even a total stranger, can hurt me. Secondly, Niles didn’t hurt me. I was annoyed and wanted to get away from him and back to you.”
“You were hurt when he showed up.”
She waves an impatient hand. “See point one. Then I realized how pathetic it was and got over it, and then see point two.”
She’s saying all the right things, but they don’t feel right. Not when I’ve spent weeks understanding how I had us all wrong. I’ve mapped it with logic and emotion, both. Her debate points won’t change what I know and how I feel about it.
“Ruby, you don’t suddenly catch feelings for someone you’ve known for years.
If I were a real option for you, you’d have taken it and never needed anything else.
Instead, you started going on date after date.
I was right there, Ruby.” I walk past her to my kitchen, needing a beer or a therapist for the rest of this conversation.
She follows me but stays on her side of the breakfast bar to give me space. “But I wasn’t trying to find love. I was going on those dates to make my besties feel like they were helping.”
“You went on them to stick it to Niles because you’re still hung up on him.”
“Sticking it to Niles was a fringe benefit. I never looked forward to any of those dates. It seemed pointless, and now I know why.” She leans forward, resting on her arms so she can lean farther into my kitchen. “You, Charlie. You’re why. None of them were you.”
I hold up a beer in a silent question. She shakes her head, and I pop off the cap and take a long swallow, watching her. “This is everything I’ve wanted to hear, but it doesn’t feel right.”
She drops her head to her arms and groans.
In spite of myself, in spite of today being the worst day yet since I told her how I feel, I want to take care of her. I want to make her feel better, even when I’m miserable because of her.
“We’ll be okay, Ruby,” I say quietly. “I’m not going to quit being your friend. But when I tell you I need space, you have to respect that.”
She’s quiet for a moment before she mutters, “Even if you’re trying to protect yourself from someone who just wants to love you?”
I give something between a grunt and a laugh. I prefer the dramatic irony of suffocating under the inventory that’s supposed to help me make a living over this irony. “I read this poem recently. You heard of Khalil Gibran?”
She shakes her head without lifting it. “Am I going to like this poem?”
Probably not this part. “There’s this line about how you can see a friend more clearly in their absence, like how you can see a mountain better when you back away from it.
I took that like I needed to give you space so you could see me.
But now I think it’s more about how I need space to put you in perspective. ”
She doesn’t say anything to that, and I let her think. After a few more swallows of my beer, she straightens.
“I also know a poem,” she says. “If you love something, set it free. If it returns, it’s your best friend telling you she’s figured out her feelings.”
I choke on my drink, setting it on the stove so I can thump my chest. “Funny.”
“Not being funny.” She shakes her head and looks down. Her posture shifts, her head tilting as she studies something, and too late I realize what it is.
“Strategies for Turning a Friend into More,” she reads, picking up the list I’d quit using.
“It’s trash. You already know what’s on it.”
She backs away when I reach for it, not taking her eyes off it. “Create opportunities for her to see you as dateable.”
“Seriously, toss it.”
“Number three, stay safe but become less comfortable.” She reads the rest and looks up. “You’re not supposed to destroy evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“That I matter to you.” She holds it out to me. “Am I still worth this?”
I take it and crumple it, not looking at it. “If we were going to happen, I never would have needed these strategies.”
She snorts. “Are you joking? This is me we’re talking about, the girl who married off my three best friends using strategy.”
I frown. “Actually, you only married one of them off and they’re already divorced.”
“Only so they can get married again for the right reasons. Sami and Ava are just a matter of time. And it never would have happened without strategy.”
This argument is slipping away from me. I know I’m right, but I am losing every angle of how to get that through to her. “You’re not supposed to argue when someone tells you they don’t want to be with you.”
“That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do. It’s called fighting for what you want. It’s what that list is.” She walks around the counter, and I back further into the kitchen. But it’s small. Very small, and she has my back literally to the wall in four steps.
“Charlie.” She takes hold of my T-shirt and slowly bunches the fabric in her hand, pulling as she does. I refuse to leave the safety of the wall, so all it does is reel her in toward me.
“Charlie,” she repeats, her voice soft, her eyes softer as she looks up at me. She uses her grip for balance as she rises to her tiptoes, her mouth turning up to mine.
Nothing has to happen right now. I’m tall enough that she can’t close the gap without my participation. The train is still on the rails . . .
Until I dip my head and meet her lips, and it’s over.