Chapter 9 Ruth
Chapter nine
Ruth
Years ago, when the four of us went on holiday, Paloma bought us all selfie sticks that turn into little tripods.
I teased her relentlessly for succumbing to the millennial selfie stick trend, even as I used it to take pictures of us while we were in Budapest, but I can’t deny the damn thing is coming in clutch. Even if it took six years.
I unearthed it from the back of a drawer a couple of days ago, and of all the small plastic objects to change my life, I can’t believe it’s this one.
I’m curled up in bed right now, and my phone is tucked into the phone holder, tripod legs splayed on my bedside table so I can see Everett smiling at me without having to hold the phone up to my face.
“Tell me about your family, Ruth,” he says. A gentle demand. His grey eyes dance in the sunlight as he sits out on the front porch.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything. I want to know everything about you, baby girl. And then, I’ll learn it all again.”
“Okay, but what, specifically, about my family?”
“I assume you have one. Who are they? What do they do?”
“My parents own their own business. Businesses, I should say. Dad is a butcher. Mum is a baker. Breads, mostly, although she dabbles in cakes occasionally. Her Belgian buns are the best. They have a double-fronted shop not far from their house, which is the same house I grew up in.”
“You have a brother, right? Just one?”
“Just one. Jay. He’s eight years older than me. He used to walk me from school to the shop, and we’d sit in the back doing our homework until closing time. He’s—was—in the army. He, um, he got hurt recently. I can’t remember if I’ve told you about it.”
Everett’s face remains neutral while he listens intently, and he gestures for me to continue.
“I don’t really know what happened, to be honest. He never talks much about his time in the army, and especially not about getting hurt.
He was a paratrooper. He jumped out of his plane or whatever, and then…
it was an ambush, I think? In Afghanistan.
He got to a jeep, but then that hit an IED, and he got hurt.
He almost lost his leg. He was in a coma for months, with operations and skin grafts and infections… ”
“Oh, baby girl…”
“He’s okay now. He’s doing okay… but fuck, Ev, I’ve never been so fucking scared in my entire life.”
Curled beneath my duvet, tears fall unbidden as I remember the phone call from my hysterical parents.
They’d received The Visit from men in uniform, and almost immediately afterwards, a phone call from Caleb Dalton’s parents.
Caleb was Jay’s best friend. They trained together, deployed together, performed hundreds of parachute jumps together.
They’d been together in the jeep that day, too.
Caleb didn’t make it, and I can still hear the sound of my mother screaming in the background while Dad tried to hold it together, explaining what little they knew.
There’s so much I want to say—so much more I almost tell Everett—but I bite my tongue and keep it inside.
It’s not that I don’t think he’ll understand, although it doesn’t sound like he has a frame of reference for this.
It’s not even that I think he’ll judge me, because this man has never once made me feel anything less than worthy.
But there’s so much that I did, so many things I felt and said, that make my stomach twist now.
So many things I’m not proud of. So many things I don’t care to admit to.
“Oh, honey,” Everett says again. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
“I got blackout drunk that night,” I admit. “Just trying to pretend it wasn’t real.”
I wipe the tears from my cheeks roughly, almost angrily, before continuing.
“He’s okay. They managed to save his leg.
He’s walking again, driving, even. He has a new job.
He works in a casino now, as their security manager.
It’s safe. I mean, as safe as it’s gonna get.
He’s home. He’s just a regular guy now.”
He’s just a regular guy… but that doesn’t leave me any less terrified that I could lose him to the tiniest thing. And losing my big brother, my constant, is something I don’t think I could survive.
“Good,” Ev says. His voice is rough, thick, like he’s holding back tears of his own. He clears his throat before he continues. “That’s good. I’m glad he has you.”
“I’m glad I have him, too,” I whisper. “And I have my girls. My best friends. They’re like sisters, really. I’d do anything for them, and them for me.”
“Tell me about them.”
“Paloma is the oldest. Only by like, two weeks. She’s also the most insane.
She has true redhead energy, a million tattoos, and the best vibes.
We met her last. I met Amie and Katy at the same time, when we were almost seventeen.
Amie’s cabin crew—um, a flight attendant, I guess, and she’s dating a pilot, and they have a little girl, my goddaughter, Maisy.
She’s three. She’s the cutest kid ever. Their story is absolutely wild.
And Katy… Katy has the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met,” I say with a smile.
“There’s nothing Katy Keller won’t do for the people she loves.
And when she loves you, she does it with her whole entire heart.
” I pause. Everett reminds me a lot of Katy with his steady presence and calm, unwavering nature.
The way he offers his smiles without hesitation. The way he shows up, no matter what.
“Sounds like you’ve got a pretty awesome group, there,” Ev smiles, although it’s wistful, and I wonder what he’s thinking about. I hope he has someone too. I hope he knows the kind of love I have for my best friends, and I hope he gets it back the way I do.
“What about you?” I probe gently. “Who do you have, Ev?”
“I got you, baby girl.” His smile brightens.
“I don’t need anyone else. My mom and dad still live on the ranch, though.
They’ve been together since they were fourteen.
Mom owns the ranch now, since Grandaddy Smith passed.
Dad and I work it, with our team of ranch hands.
My little sister, Ashton, she’s in New York, you know that.
She’s studying sweets at one of the culinary schools right on the edge of the city.
Uh, let’s see. Brooks, my best friend—he and his family live and work on our ranch.
We grew up like brothers. They’ve been on the ranch almost as long as we’ve owned it, and it’s been in our family for over five generations now.
The Fishers own the next ranch over, and Jody is my other best friend.
The three of us were unseparatable as kids.
Is that the word? Unseparatable? Inseparatable? ”
“Inseparable,” I say with a smile. His stumble over the words just makes me like him even more.
He’s sexy as hell, and in spite of his lexical struggle, he’s far smarter than he gives himself credit for.
Still, there’s an innocence, a youthful, playful energy to him that makes me wish for all the things I’ve never wanted before.
And it’s his endless optimism, his relentless joy, the way he lights up with his entire body when he sees me that makes me believe that someday, I could have it.
With him.
“Gonna run inside and wash this up,” he says, lifting an empty pasta bowl into view.
I know it’s a pasta bowl because it quite literally has the word ‘pasta’ printed all over it in gold script.
Everett carries the phone through his small cottage to the kitchen at the back, and props it up against something behind the sink, before turning the water on.
“Is this too loud, baby girl? You can still hear me, right?”
“I can hear you,” I say with a smile. Even through my tears, I don’t think I’ve stopped smiling since he called me nearly an hour ago.
I don’t think there’s been a moment we haven’t talked where I haven’t been smiling uncontrollably, unstoppably, completely and totally taken in by the breath of fresh air this cowboy has brought to my life.
From my position overlooking his sink, I can see a small stack of plates and glasses waiting to be washed, so I turn the volume up just a little to let his voice drown out the sound of the water.
An hour later, we’re still on FaceTime. He’s moved to the sofa, where his phone is propped up somewhere and he’s folding paper while we talk.
“Come on, Ev! Slap bracelets? The AOL sign-in jingle? Hopscotch on the driveway? The Macarena?! All 90s-kid rites of passage!” I protest with a laugh, watching the way Everett’s forearms flex as he makes delicate, deliberate creases in the pink square.
We’ve talked almost every day for the last three weeks.
Hell, we’ve even been on a couple of dinner dates—albeit through FaceTime.
“I, uh, wouldn’t know. I don’t really remember any of it.”
Wait, what?
It suddenly hits me that I have no idea how old Everett is.
I’ve always just assumed that we’re a similar age.
I know that his birthday is in October, and that he—like me—loves Mexican food.
I know that he likes to draw and dabble in origami, which was the absolute last hobby I imagined for him.
I even know that he lost his grandpa a year ago, and that he’s still grieving the loss.
But for all I know, the man could be fifty. Or, looking at his easy, charming smile with just a hint of a five o’ clock shadow, he could be thirty. Either way, for the first time, I’m wondering if he might be younger than me.
I’ve never dated someone younger than me before. Not that Everett and I are dating—we’re just talking. We’re friends.
Would I like this to become more?
I remember those tattooed forearms and the flex of those muscles; the smoothness of his voice when he spoke low into my ear. Warmth pools low in my belly.
I think my slutty ovaries would like this to be more.
I swallow thickly before I ask, “How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-seven,” he answers smoothly. “I was born in ninety-nine. Just barely a nineties kid. When I said I don’t really remember… I mean I was literally a baby when it ended.”
Sweet baby Jesus. I’ve been daydreaming about this man for weeks, and he’s practically still a boy.
Get a grip, Ruth.
Okay—he’s not quite five years younger than me. That’s not huge. Amie is eight years younger than Cam, and their relationship is as strong as anything. But for some reason, I can’t get past the fact that Everett is still in his twenties.
And I can’t get past the fact that I can’t get him out of my damn head.
“Why?” he continues a beat later. “Forgive me for asking, but how old are you, Ruth?”
I know I could lie.
But I don’t.
“I’m thirty-two.”
A little light brightens Everett’s smile even further.
“I knew it. There’s always been something about an older woman.” He holds up whatever he’s been fidgeting with, and it turns out he’s turned the square of pink paper into a rose. The smile he offers just about takes me out at the knees, and I thank everything above that I’m already sat down.
“Less of the old, thank you very much,” I laugh.
God, everything is just so easy with him.
Truths. Secrets. Laughter. I feel like I could share just about anything with Everett, and he’d still offer me that heart-stopping smile and tell me that as long as I’m happy, everything else will fall right into place.
He could tell me that, and I’m pretty sure I’d believe every word.