Chapter 28
Chapter twenty-eight
Ruth
“What’s the matter, Ruthy?” Paloma presses the back of her cool hand to my forehead and my left cheek in turn, like I’m unwell. “You look like a kicked puppy.”
“Excuse the fuck out of you,” I mutter. Then, at a normal volume: “Did you know?”
“Did I know what?”
“Keller. And my brother.” I spit out the words like bad medicine. Paloma’s face twists into something I don’t recognise.
“I found out yesterday,” she whispers. “She showed up at Amie’s as I was leaving. She’s devastated, Roo.”
“So she fucking should be.” I don’t even recognise the venom in my voice. “Traitorous fucking bitch. I told her to leave him alone, I fucking told her, and—”
“Roo, come on.” Paloma’s long fingers curl around my wrist. Her voice takes on a hard tone I don’t think I’ve ever heard from her before. “You can’t help what you feel. You know that. Look at you and your cowboy boo.”
“That’s different,” I insist. It is different… isn’t it?
“Is it, though?”
A light knock at the door signals Amie’s arrival. She brandishes a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in one hand and a paper bag full of the most delicious-smelling greasy burgers in the other as she enters the room with a wicked smirk on her face.
“Stop leaving your door unlocked, Lo.”
“I left it open for you, you Muppet. Ruthy was just telling me how Katy and Jay aren’t allowed to be in love, but she’s allowed to be arse over tits for Cowboy Daddy,” Paloma announces.
She reaches into a large display cabinet, selecting from a colourful collection before setting three large wine glasses down on her coffee table.
It’s not really a table but an old wooden treasure chest, and I know for a fact it’s filled with all kinds of wonders, from board games to decapitated dolls’ heads to scrapbooks Lo and I made in our twenties.
“Oh, don’t let me stop you,” Amie says, motioning for me to continue. Even as she says it, although there’s not an ounce of judgement or criticism in her tone, I know I’m being a bitch.
“He’s always been mine…” The words come out in a whisper, and Amie’s eyes soften. She reaches for my hand.
“He’ll always be your brother, Roo. But he’s his own man.
He can make his own decisions. And honestly, honey, this one…
it’s a good one, babe. He loves her. And I’ve never known Katy like this before, not in over twenty years.
She’s absolutely fucking gone for him, Roo.
It’s not just a fling that’ll end in five minutes and leave you choosing between them. ”
“I’m just so fucking mad at them.” I sniffle, pressing my lips together. “Both of them. Katy fucked my brother, but Jay—Katy was my best friend, Amie. My best friend. And he—”
“She’s my best friend, too. And Lo’s. And the two of you are mine, too. It’s okay to be more than one thing, Ruth.” Amie’s eyes and words are patient, though I feel anything but.
“What if I lose them both?” I pitch forward, elbows on knees, struggling to breathe with the sudden and overwhelming weight of the sadness that just slammed into my chest. Paloma taps at my arm to get my attention, before opening hers.
I lean in and she pulls me into her chest. There’s comfort in the rhythmic thud of her heartbeat.
“No one is losing anyone, okay?” I feel her words as they rise from her chest beneath my head.
“What happened, honey? Why are you so afraid?”
“He almost died, Amie,” I bite back quickly, lifting my head from Paloma’s chest. “He got hurt by his raging bitch ex and it almost broke him. And then he actually almost fucking died, so excuse me for being fucking terrified that someday my brother might leave me an only fucking child.” Tears pour down my face before I even realise it.
Neither Amie nor Paloma say a word, and I sit with a desperate mixture of rage and sadness.
“He’s my big brother,” I say softly, after a moment of quiet.
“And I guess… I guess I’ve never had to share him before.
Granny Bevan, Mum, Dad… even you girls. I’ve always had to share you all.
But Jay was my brother, only mine, for my whole life.
And now he’s with Katy, and she’s with him, and it feels like they’re both pulling away from me, and…
” The sobs wrack my body as Paloma pulls me close again.
Amie wraps her arms around both of us, her face resting in the hair on the side of my head.
We stay like this for several minutes, until the sobs become sniffles and the tears begin to dry in cool, crusty lines down my face.
“You’ll never lose Katy, honey. Do you even know her? That girl is ride or fucking die. She’s ours for life, Roo. Men or no men. No matter what.”
“And you’re never losing us, either,” Paloma says into my hair. “My besties forever. Don’t let this ruin things, Ruthy. Talk to Katy. Talk to your brother. They both love you, sis. They miss you.”
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand as I sniffle and nod.
“Everything just feels like it’s falling apart.”
“Oh, honey.” Amie squeezes my knee, then pours a glass of wine and presses it into my hand. It’s barely noon.
“Everett’s in Austin, living his entire life a million miles away—”
“And moping after you, probably,” Paloma interrupts drily. Amie called him a cinnamon roll when I regaled them with stories from my last visit, and Katy and Paloma giggled over calling him a himbo. I looked up both terms, and they describe my cowboy to a tee.
“His ex-girlfriend is sniffing around. She’s tiny and blonde and pretty… I mean, if you like the Barbie look, anyway.”
“For fuck’s sake, Roo. The man is mad about you.
You, girl. I haven’t even met him yet, and I know for a fact he’s not interested in anyone else.
” Amie has this way of turning her explosive outbursts into some kind of pep-talk laced with thinly-veiled impatience.
I imagine it comes from years in a customer-facing role in aviation, where people tend to leave their entire brains behind somewhere en route to the airport, mixed with three and a half years of parenting.
In any case, I can’t bring myself to process her words right now. I just continue with my own outburst.
“—And Mum and Dad are talking about selling the shop.”
“Wow,” Amie remarks with a raised eyebrow. “I kind of thought they’d have it forever.”
“Me too. But everything’s changing. You have Cam. Katy and Jay, and now Mum and Dad, and—”
“I have Cam, and Maisy, but I’m still me. I’m still Amie. That hasn’t changed.”
“But—”
“No buts, babe. What’s this really about, Roo?”
“They’re leaving everything they worked for. They spent my entire childhood there to give me and Jay everything they could. They missed Jay’s football games. Jay used to walk me home from school and help me with my homework, because they were working. For us. And now they’re throwing it away?”
“They’re not throwing it away, honey,” Amie says.
She sighs, choosing her words carefully.
I can see her mulling them over as she watches my reaction.
It’s always amazed me, how she can sense the words someone needs to hear simply based on their expressions.
Probably another thing she’s perfected in the service industry.
“They’ve worked their whole lives. They’ve raised two kids into amazing adults.
They’re ready to retire, Roo, ready to reap the rewards of that life of work.
They’re adults too, babe, you don’t get to control their choices any more than they get to police yours. ”
She’s right. I know she is.
I know it’s petty and unkind and downright ridiculous but I can’t bring myself to stop.
I don’t know how to feel any other way right now.
I’m so angry, so terrified, so frustrated at life and at myself.
I want to scream and cry and throw things; everything is falling apart and spiralling out of control and I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t know how to fix it.
And I’ve always been a fixer.
“You have to let go of what you can’t control, Roo,” Paloma says quietly.
For all her wild child persona, she’s just as smart as she is crazy.
And I know she’s right, too. “Focus on what you can control, and let the rest of it go. Let your brother love your best friend. Let your parents be happy. Let yourself love Cowboy Daddy, let him love you, and just be happy, babe.”
The pain I saw in Katy’s eyes when we fought lances through my chest. She loves him. It was plain as day on her face, and I couldn’t even be happy for my best friend. This isn’t me. Everything feels so mixed up, so out of control, and I’m not sure if I know who I am anymore.