Chapter 3
Chapter three
Ruth
True to her word, Katy picks me up from the airport when I land back in London.
There’s little in the way of food in my kitchen, and even though I’ve just flown across an ocean, I’m wide awake and desperate for some girl time, so when Katy invites me to hers for an impromptu wine-and-takeout evening, I practically bite her hand off to say yes.
I place the order for an obnoxious amount of Chinese food from the car, and drag my suitcase from the back seat when Katy parks up outside her house.
We both plan on drinking plenty of wine tonight, so I’ll either crash here, or get a cab home.
I kick off my shoes as Katy closes the door behind me.
The hallway is dark, but not in an oppressive way.
The remnants of daylight emanate from the kitchen window at one end, and the warm glow of string lights beckon from the living room.
I hang my trench coat on an empty hook on the wall and follow my best friend to her kitchen.
We prepare two cups of coffee and two glasses of wine, before settling in the living room.
I slip my oversized tote off my arm and drop it on the floor beside the sofa, before plopping dramatically into my seat. Katy laughs, wrapping her slender arms around my neck.
“I’ve missed you, Roo. Tell me about New York.”
“So there was a guy,” I begin. Katy slams her coffee cup down on the arm of the sofa, careful not to let the dark liquid slosh over the sides, and pins me with her dark brown gaze. I wait for a beat.
“Please, continue,” she urges with a slight tilt of her head and a wiggle of her eyebrows. I giggle.
“He bought me a drink in the airport lounge. We talked a little. And… then we got on different planes to different places.”
“And?”
“And…”
Katy takes a mouthful of wine and lifts her eyebrows.
“I can’t stop thinking about him. Shit, K, he was fucking hot as hell.”
“I knew it!” Katy cries, setting her wine glass beside her coffee and kicking her feet. “I knew there was something! You’ve been different the whole drive home.”
“Jesus, nothing even happened,” I grumble. “But he’s tall, dark, and handsome with that southern drawl and tight jeans and—”
“And he looked like he wanted to take you all the way to fun town?”
“Jesus, Katy.” I throw back half a glass of wine in two large gulps. “He looked like he’d eat me for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then come back for seconds.”
Katy shrieks, clapping a hand over her mouth.
“Who is he?”
“I don’t even know,” I moan, dropping my head into my hands. “The first physical reaction my body has had to another human being in about six years, and all I know about him is that his name is Everett and he can fill out a pair of Levi's.”
“It’s a start,” Katy hums with a salacious waggle of her eyebrows. You’ll just have to go to New York more often and sit in the lounge before your flight home. Maybe he’s a frequent flyer.”
I roll my eyes and drain my wine, before wrapping my hands around the hot coffee cup and breathing in the rich, earthy aroma. Katy always has the best coffee—and the silliest ideas. But, the longer I ponder it, the less silly it seems.
I’m still thinking about Katy’s idea the following night, after putting Maisy to bed with no fewer than three stories, two cups of water and one tantrum narrowly avoided.
Telling an over-tired three-year-old that Daddy can’t read her a bedtime story because he’s late getting home from work might be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
It’s especially hard to have her cling to me and cry for her Mama, because I know it’s something I’ll never have for myself.
I found out about my infertility when I was fifteen.
My periods were always irregular, but painful—and I mean the kind of pain that left me dizzy and vomiting—so Mum took me to see the doctor.
A few scans later, and it was determined that my ovaries were riddled with so many cysts the ultrasound technician could barely see them, and my uterus simply hadn’t formed properly. A congenital anomaly, they called it.
A gigantic pain in the belly is my preferred nomenclature.
I’ve been using various forms of contraception since then, and they control my periods pretty well and keep the worst of the pain at bay. It was an option far more preferable than having everything removed, as a teenage girl, and spending the rest of my life on artificial hormones.
And I’m okay with it. At least, I was.
Now, though?
Now, I’m not entirely sure.
I push the thoughts back into a box. I need to get some work done.
Amie’s house is quiet and cosy, especially with the curtain of fairy lights hung behind the sofa.
With wind howling and rain lashing at the windows outside, and low clouds having stolen the day’s light long before nightfall, the lights offer a warm, comforting glow.
Now I’m curled at one end of her too-comfortable sofa with a thick stack of papers in my lap, a pen tapping against my lip, and my new reading glasses—which I do in fact need, according to the optician, despite my insistence to the contrary—perched on my nose.
The only thing Amie’s house doesn’t have is Taylor Swift’s discography on vinyl.
It’s my daily soundtrack. Instead, I have the Lover album playing quietly on my phone through Amie’s sound system.
It’s not quite vinyl, but it’ll do the job.
Regardless, the mellow melodies are making me smile.
Until Katy’s phone call interrupts the music, that is.
“Lo is busy and Amie’s away and I’m bored.”
“Hello to you too, Sweet Thing.” I tuck the phone between my chin and shoulder, carrying an empty coffee cup to the kitchen and rinsing it in the sink.
“I need you to entertain me before I do something dumb, Roo.”
“Dumb like dye your hair, or dumb like open your legs?”
“Ruth Bevan, wash your mouth out!”
I cackle—quietly, since Maisy is asleep above my head—and rummage in a cupboard for a fresh tea towel to dry the mug and the dinner plates I’d left on the draining board earlier. I wait for Katy to continue.
“I almost downloaded that stupid dating app again.”
“Don’t do it, K,” I beg dramatically. “Remember Halitosis McHands?” That app matchup swore me off men—maybe forever. He lived up to the epithet, and after cutting the date short early, I found myself crying on Amie’s doorstep with wine in one hand and ice cream in the other.
“How could I forget?” Katy giggles. “So, entertain me. Tell me things. How was Maisy today?”
“Maisy was fine… Cam missed bedtime, but he’s on his way home, so he’s probably flying.
He’s late, though. Amie is who knows where, I haven’t heard from her at all.
She should be home but I don’t think she’s even taken off yet, according to that app she made us all download.
She’s okay, right?” I return to the sofa and grab a handful of papers, scanning them quickly without really taking anything in.
“Yeah, babe, I’m sure she’s fine. She’s working. You know we don’t hear from her when she’s working.”
“You’re probably right,” I hum, not entirely convinced. “Anyway, my dumb brother is going camping alone in the woods.”
“Yeah, he said that.” If I didn’t know Katy any better, I’d swear she was smiling as she speaks.
“He shouldn’t. His leg, you know?”
“He seems okay, Roo,” Katy says patiently.
“His leg is okay.” Katy has adopted Jay as a friend, and they’ve met once or twice for lunch at a new craft beer place.
It’s nice—I mean, not that my brother and my best friend are doing whatever it is they’re doing, but to know my brother isn’t at home, stewing alone and moping about being discharged from the army.
It’s nice to know he’s spending time with Katy, because she’s the best person I know, and out of everyone in the world, I trust her to take care of him.
“Yeah, well.”
There’s a soft snick as the front door opens, interrupting my grumblings, and then a light thud as a suitcase is wheeled over the small step at the threshold before the door closes again. Then, a quiet, gravelly voice calls out “Honey, I’m home!”
Seconds later, I hear “Amie?” and I stand and stretch, plopping my paperwork on the coffee table as Cam flings the living room door open.
“Oh, hey Ruth—Amie isn’t back yet?”
“I gotta go, K, I’ll call you tomorrow?” I wait for Katy to say goodnight before ending the call and turning to Cam.
“Nope.” I roll my shoulders back and then forward, trying to ease the tension from having been hunched over contracts for the last few hours. “I can’t get hold of her, either. The radar app thingy says she hasn’t even taken off yet.”
Cam checks his watch, then mumbles a curse under his breath.
“It’s still bad out there,” he admits. “I hate that I couldn’t be here for bedtime. I couldn’t even call.”
“She was okay. Sad, but she knows you’ll be here when she wakes up in the morning.”
“Thanks, Ruth. I just—it’s the first one I’ve missed, you know? We were delayed on the ground, and then we made at least four laps of the hold, and we had a go-around.”
For the first time since he entered the room, I pause to look at him. He looks tired. Purple half-circles sit below his eyes, and his usually sure and steady hands tremble ever so slightly as he sits on the edge of an armchair and unties his shoelaces.
“Not sure what that means, but it sounds gross.”
“It was turbulent and it took a long time.”
“Yep. Gross.”
“What’s Amie’s flight number?” Cam pulls his phone from his pocket.
“Uhh…” I rack my brain. We have a shared calendar that Amie has put her flights on for years, so we all know where she is and when to expect her home. It’s even more valuable to us now that she has Maisy, with Katy, Paloma, and me taking turns to look after our goddaughter. “B-I-A six-two-six.”
Cam’s thumbs work furiously at the screen. Less than a minute later, his phone makes a quiet noise with an incoming message.
“Air traffic slots,” he says. “Fuck’s sake.”
Whatever that means. Something bad, I assume.
“She’s okay though?”
“Eh.” He makes a sound of contemplation before continuing. “They wanna restrict the flow of traffic in the airspace. More separation between aircraft.”
“Because of the weather?”
“Because of the weather,” he confirms. “So she’s sitting in a queue. She can’t leave yet, because she can’t enter the airspace until there’s enough space in it, and there’s nowhere else for her to sit and wait.”
“So she’s safe, right?”
Cam’s lips quirk, but he nods. “Totally safe.”
Whew.
“Okay.” It’s a whisper, but it’s resolute.
I feel better knowing the reason for Amie’s delay, even if it is because of bad weather, and even if all of those horror stories and the memory of the Jurassic crash last year—the one that killed some of Cam’s friends, and the hours we spent not knowing whether he was involved or not—are swirling through my mind right now.
“Fuck, I hate your job.”
Cam chuckles at that. “Noted,” he says. “I won’t offer to take you up in a little two-seater.”
I shudder at the thought. My stomach revolts again, even though I’m still on solid ground. The thought of being on any kind of plane makes my skin itch. And yet, I fly regularly, for work.
“Do you want me to stay for Maisy, so you can get some sleep?”
“Nah,” he says. “She’s asleep anyway. I’ll make sure Amie texts you when she gets home.”
I smile weakly and begin to gather my belongings. I push papers into a cardboard folder and tuck pens into a floral case, then drop everything into my tote bag before slipping it over my shoulder.
“Thanks, Cam. Give Maisy a kiss for me when she wakes up.”
“Will do,” he says with a tired smile. “Go home. Stop worrying. She’s fine.”