7. Ruby
7
RUBY
“…and she thought I was joking when I said I’d be back the next day for breakfast. And lunch. And then again for dinner.”
Ronnie’s laughter is easy, spontaneous. He is talking about his girlfriend, Sumaira. They met at a roadside diner when she poured his coffee and served extra maple syrup with his pancakes, and blushed when he asked if he could take her out on a date.
“She obviously said yes.”
Ronnie is easy to get on with, and the boy can talk. Harry hasn’t said much, but I can tell that he’s comfortable just listening to the conversation play out around him. He looks tired, the flesh around his eyes growing shinier and blacker by the moment, but he’s fighting it to stay awake in case he misses something.
Outside our bubble, the world has grown dark and silent, smothered by a blanket of snow. And still, it keeps falling, as if the sky can no longer contain it.
The nurse fetches blankets for me and Ronnie. “This goes against hospital regulations, but these are not regular circumstances, and I can hardly turf you out in this weather, can I? Besides—” she gives Harry a half-smile, and I realize that he has drifted off to sleep “—after what he’s been through, your company is probably the best medicine we can give him.”
I curl up on the seat with my legs under me and pull the blanket up to my chin. On the other side of the bed, Ronnie takes the other seat, stretches out his legs and crosses them at the ankles, the blanket barely covering his knees. He’ll ache all over by morning if he tries to sleep in that position. We both will.
But neither of us are going to complain.
“It’s not exactly the Hilton,” the nurse says before she leaves, “but at least you’ll be warm and dry.”
I should feel awkward sharing a room with two guys I hardly know, but I don’t. It’s cozy. The gentle blip-blip of the equipment wired up to Harry is soothing, like a child listening to its mom’s heartbeat, and it doesn’t matter how uncomfortable the shiny plastic seats are, I feel protected. Safe.
We both watch Harry sleeping for a while, and then Ronnie’s eyes meet mine. “He likes you; you know.”
I smile. Was this what I wanted to hear? Was this the reason I rushed here the instant I heard that he was involved in the car crash?
That’s not how it works, is it? Love at first sight is for fairy tales and Disney movies, not real life. So, why do I close my eyes with a warm tingling feeling in my gut and a smile on my face?
During the night, I open my eyes and glimpse the nurse standing beside Harry’s bed. The lights are dimmed, the room is enjoying its own company in familiar silence, and Ronnie is snoring gently from the other seat. My eyelids flicker shut almost instantaneously despite the discomfort of being curled up like a hedgehog in a peanut shell.
When I finally unfurl myself and stretch my legs, a dull burning ache spreads up my spine and across my shoulders, it is morning, and Ronnie is missing.
It takes me several moments to get my bearings, by which point, Harry is watching me from the bed, propped up against the pillows. I rub the sleep from my eyes and arch my back, suddenly self-conscious with his eyes on me.
“Morning,” he says, like getting snowed in at the hospital and crashing on a visitor’s seat happens every day.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like the truck came back in the night to finish me off.”
“Ouch.” I glance across the room at the empty seat. “Where’s Ronnie?”
“He’s probably having a coffee down at the nurse’s station.” Harry smiles, and his face appears shadowy with the bruising spreading beneath his eyes.
Right on cue, the door opens, and Ronnie enters backwards carrying a tray, the aroma of freshly cooked toast and coffee wafting in with him. He sets breakfast down on the mobile tray and pushes it across the bed, motioning for me to join them. He has somehow sourced a mountain of toast, sachets of butter, marmalade, and jelly, and three cups of steaming coffee.
“Where did you get this?” I help myself to a slice and spread it thickly with butter and marmalade, shreds of orange peel glistening in the glow of the stark overhead lights. I’m suddenly ravenous.
“The woman in the cafeteria was most helpful when I explained that we’re snowed in with our reckless friend here. Told her I’m stranded until they thaw out the wings of the next flight back to New York.” He slathers honey on a slice, takes a bite, and then fills his mouth with coffee at the same time.
“You’ll have to excuse him.” Harry shakes his head. “Old habits die hard.”
“What?” Ronnie studies his toast, eyebrows lowered, as if Harry just suggested a spider was crawling across it. “I’m washing it down. Nothing wrong with that.”
I don’t always eat breakfast. Most days, I’m running late for work, and I’ll either skip the meal completely or grab a cookie from the biscuit barrel in the kitchen on my way out, much to my dad’s dismay. But sitting on the side of Harry’s bed, licking jelly from my fingers and wishing the coffee cup was three times bigger than it actually is, this is the most delicious meal I’ve ever eaten.
When only a few crumbs remain on the plate, Ronnie reaches into his pocket and produces a pack of cards. “Picked these up too from the shop on the first floor. Thought it would help pass the time.”
“Anything else we should know about?” Harry’s smile is a hundred times brighter than it was when I arrived the day before, and I wonder if it’s because he’s feeling a little better or if it’s all down to the company.
“It’s still snowing.” Ronnie shrugs and clears a space on the tray for us to play a game. “The weather reports say this will make the blizzard of ’79 look like a flurry.” He sounds unfazed by the news.
Harry looks at me. “If you need to get home, we’ll help.”
Ronnie arches an eyebrow while he shuffles the deck of cards like a professional, ruffling them between his hands and making them dance. “You’re going nowhere, and I’m not letting her step foot outside this building. I’m sure she’d rather keep all her fingers and toes. Wouldn’t you?” He winks at me.
“Yes.” I rub my hands together. “Harry is only worried that I’ll beat him at Rummy.”
“Harry probably doesn’t even know how to play Rummy.”
“Don’t you?” I ask him, and he shakes his head. Or rather he moves his eyes from side to side, his head still too delicate to roll across the pillow. “We’re going to need more coffee then because I learned from the best: my dad.”
We play Rummy until the porters come to take Harry for a brain scan.
While he’s gone, Ronnie gets more food from the cafeteria, and we sit and talk about Sumaira. It’s obvious how much he loves her—it shines through his eyes and his voice turns to runny honey whenever he talks about her.
“I wish she were here,” he says like we’re on vacation in a log cabin somewhere in the snowy mountains. “She’ll be gutted that she missed this.”
We don’t mention Alessandro Russo. It’s an unspoken agreement between us when Harry isn’t in the room, that we’re here for him, and we’ll deal with the difficult stuff once he’s feeling stronger.
That afternoon, we play Crazy Eights and Go Fish, the two men frustrated that I won every round of Rummy. The nurses come and go. They take Harry’s vitals , the assistants bring his food, the cleaners clean around us, but mostly they leave us alone.
The day barely makes an appearance before night waves hello again. The world outside the hospital feels like someone built an igloo around us, and we must wait for it to melt before we can leave. The window is half covered by snow, and we leave the blinds drawn, making us feel even more like caterpillars inside a chrysalis.
Day two degenerates into boisterous games of Hearts and Snap. Even Harry manages a chuckle when Ronnie slams his hand down hard on the tray and yells, “Snap!” for the tenth time in a row.
“I think you’re cheating.” I watch his pile of cards growing while I only have a handful left, and Harry is down to his last three cards.
“I think you’re a sore loser.” Ronnie flips over the Ace of Hearts and sets it down on the mobile tray. “Come on. If you win this game, I’ll buy you all the chocolate in the shop downstairs.”
I place my card, the Ace of Diamonds, on top of his and shout, “Snap!” before he can react. “Challenge accepted.”
Ron wins the next three games, but he goes to the shop nonetheless, and returns with a carrier bag filled with chocolate. I eat so much that I’m buzzing with the sugar rush, and we move onto Charades instead.
I’m miming dipping my head underwater and opening my mouth to scream when the nurse walks in and says, “ Jaws .”
“Where was the shark?” Ronnie shakes his head, but his smile is wide. “We’d have gotten it right away if you’d tried eating the end of the bed.”
That night, I sleep fitfully. I must sense that our bubble is about to burst. The snow has finally stopped, and even though the temperature inside the building has been constant, the sky is a shade lighter, and I don’t shiver whenever I glance at it.
I wake up a couple of times to find the same night nurse standing beside Harry’s bed. Later, I’m jolted from a bizarre dream in which Harry is trying to scale the John Hancock Tower in his hospital gown while Ronnie zooms around him in a hot air balloon. I suddenly realize that Harry is awake and trying to sit up in his bed.
I’m out of the seat in a heartbeat. “What are you doing?” I keep my voice low so that I don’t wake Ronnie.
I go to cover Harry’s chest with the blanket, but he grips my wrist gently. “Get in with me, Ruby.”
I instinctively glance at the door. “I can’t. What if the nurse comes in?”
“She won’t be back around until morning.” His eyes are like huge dark stones in the dim glow of the night lights. “Please.”
He must sense it too, that this is coming to an end. This has all been so surreal that it can’t possibly continue for much longer. It isn’t real life, and right now, Harry’s reality is brain scans, a fractured arm, and grieving for a friend who died in the same wreck that put him in hospital.
“What will Ronnie say?”
“He’ll say that I finally got lucky.”
I can hear the pleading in his voice. He’s worried that when the snow clears, I’ll walk out of here, and he’ll never see me again. He’s worried that, in time, this will become a distant memory, something to be confused with a dream he had one night induced by the strong pain relief administered to him by the medical team after the accident.
It’s just one night, I tell myself.
What harm can it do?
When he’s fully recovered, he’ll go back to New York, and I’ll stay in Chicago where my mom will continue trying to push me into the arms of another eligible bachelor, to make our life easier.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I climb onto the bed, slide my legs under the covers, and snuggle up against Harry.
His warmth heats my skin instantly, like someone set a fire blazing underneath the bed. He wraps his good arm around my shoulders, and I rest my head on his chest. I never thought about how it would feel to be in his arms, but now that I’m there, I realize that it feels like the most natural thing on earth. Like there’s a dip in his chest beneath his collarbone that was made for my head.
“You will keep your promise, Ruby,” he whispers, stroking my arm with his thumb.
I freeze. “My promise?”
“I asked you a question when you first got here.”
Shit! I thought he’d forgotten about that.
Propping myself on an elbow, I rest my chin on his chest and study his face. “Ask me again when you know me a little better.”
It’s a cop out, but I know he’ll thank me for it when he’s back in New York, and his life settles back to normal. I’m saving him the hassle of finding a plausible excuse for calling it all off when he comes to his senses.
“I know all I need to know. The rest will be a bonus.”
Then his lips are on mine, and even though I’m scared I’m going to hurt him, or raise his blood pressure, or give him another panic attack like he had when I first arrived, I kiss him back.
His hand is in my hair, gripping it tightly so that it’s pulling on my scalp. I straddle him on the hospital bed, my tongue probing his mouth because suddenly, inexplicably, the bubble is just for the two of us, and nothing else exists.
I want Harry Weiss.
There, I’ve allowed the thought to take form and grow wings. There was no bolt of lightning when he bumped into me—literally—at the skating rink. He didn’t make me go weak at the knees, or blush, or giggle like a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl, but Harry Weiss has gotten under my skin anyway. My pulse races. Between my legs tightens and tingles, and my nipples harden as he crushes my breast with his hand.
“Ruby…” His breath is warm on my face. “Marry me.”
“You don’t mean that.” I kiss him harder.
I can’t believe I’m doing this. He almost died a few days ago. His arm is broken, his face is covered in bruises, but I want to feel him inside me just like in all the historical romances I’ve ever read. He isn’t Heathcliff. He isn’t a swashbuckling pirate with long hair, a gold tooth, and a way of undressing women with his eyes.
He’s just Harry.
But just Harry has made me feel things I’ve never felt before.
I pull away from him and tug my sweater over my head, tossing it onto the floor beside the bed while Harry studies my breasts as if it’s his first time too.
“You’re so beautiful, Ruby” he whispers.
I feel beautiful. I’m not wearing any makeup, my hair is greasy, I haven’t changed my panties in three days, but Harry makes me feel like I’m the most gorgeous woman on the planet.
His eyes devour me as he squeezes my nipples, pulling me down to him so that his lips can close around them. He nibbles them between his teeth, his tongue circling, licking, sucking. Every part of me is tingling, and my breaths come in short, ragged gasps.
Harry shifts his hips, pain flaring behind his eyes and then disappearing, but I’ve already felt it. His cock is hard beneath me and I raise my butt so that I can slide my hand between my legs and feel it. It takes my breath away. But at the same time, it excites me in a way that no one else has ever made me feel.
“Not like this,” Harry murmurs, his voice husky.
I lean closer, kissing his lips, his eyes, his face, tiny butterfly kisses, my lips barely touching his skin. “Why not?” If we don’t do this now, it will never happen. We’ll both go home, carry on with our lives, and this will forever be the moment that almost was.
What if no one else ever makes me feel this way again?
“No.” His eyes flash in the comforting twilight of the hospital room. “I want to do it right, Ruby. I want to … make you happy.”
He pulls me back into his arms, my head resting on his chest, my naked breasts squashed up against him under the covers, and I close my eyes. We stay that way until the nurses’ footsteps along the corridor as they start their early morning rounds jolt me awake.
I’m sitting in my seat, fully clothed, my lips and nipples still tingling from Harry’s kisses when the door opens, and the nurse comes in.