Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
“Ruby!” Abi cries. “You need to.”
“I’m sorry!”
“You just washed your hands!”
“I know!”
“You volunteered! You can’t back out.”
Ruby shakes her head, all wide-eyed. “I’m not backing out. I’m... I think I’m panicking?”
“That is the same thing!”
“I’m trying to mentally prepare myself.”
“For what?” Abi’s voice is like a whip. “My vagina?”
“Yes!”
“Oh my God.”
Ewan seems to hit his limit. He turns away from us and stalks into the kitchen while the girls keep arguing, shoulders hunched as he goes straight for the sink.
He shoves his sleeves up, twists the tap on harder than necessary and starts washing his hands with the sort of grim determination that tells me he’s already made a decision none of us are going to like.
Behind him, Abi is still shouting. “You both said you’d help!”
“I did help,” Brooke fires out. “I Googled it.”
Ewan scrubs harder at his hands, jaw tight, while Brooke and Ruby start talking over each other about who technically volunteered first and whether emotional support should count as practical assistance.
I watch him rinse the soap away, grab the tea towel and dry his fingers one by one before he turns back towards us looking thoroughly fucking done with the lot of us.
“Everyone shut up for a second.”
They do and I watch in pure fascination as he marches towards them.
“What are you doing?” Brooke narrows her eyes at him.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
Ruby stares at him. “You’re going to do it?”
“No, Rubes. I’m rolling my sleeves up for fun.”
Abi lifts her head from the cushion and looks at him. “Ewan?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not going to make this weird, are you?”
He stops beside the sofa. “Abi, I’m about to put my fingers inside you in front of my girlfriend and my best mate. I think we sailed straight past weird.”
Any other time I’d probably be impressed by his willingness to help someone he barely knows, but tonight it’s downright hilarious because he looks genuinely terrified.
Brooke passes him her phone with the torch switched on before moving to stand by Abi’s head and Ruby comes back towards me.
Slowly, painfully so, Ewan shuffles his feet closer to the sofa.
We all watch in the same horrified fascination as he takes up the mantle.
Brooke’s phone torch angled down, and I wish I could look away.
Abi’s whole body flinches when Ewan’s hand disappears behind the sofa’s back. We all seem to stop breathing at the same time, Brooke clutching Abi’s hand while Ruby’s reaches out and grips my bicep.
One second passes. Two. Then Ewan removes his hand and, between his index and middle finger, is a shrivelled-up condom. “I got it.” He holds the thing in the air like he’s just extracted the crown jewels and we all stare at it in stunned silence as though it’s about to speak.
Abi whimpers. “I want to die. I am going to die.”
“You won’t,” Brooke gently soothes, taking the blanket from the back of the sofa and draping it over Abi’s legs. “But you might want a drink.”
There’s a silence while we absorb the entire ordeal, and I find myself watching Ruby rather than Abi.
Her expression changes so slightly. There’s a flicker behind her eyes, something that pulls her mouth tight and makes her look away from the sofa.
Without saying anything she disappears into the kitchen.
A second later I hear cupboards opening, followed by the clink of glasses.
My first instinct in this world is becoming go after her.
When she goes quiet, when she leaves a room, when I haven’t heard from her for a few hours, when I think there’s even the smallest chance something has upset her.
How the fuck am I supposed to maintain this imaginary boundary I’ve spent all evening insisting exists when every part of me seems to have already crossed it?
“I’m getting us a drink,” she calls. “All of us.”
“There’s vodka above the fridge,” Ewan calls back.
Ruby appears a moment later holding the bottle up. “This?”
“Yeah.”
She looks at Abi. “Shot?”
Abi nods weakly. “Multiple.”
Ruby pours five into mismatched shot glasses, handing one to Abi first and then Brooke. Ewan takes his next, still looking mildly traumatised by everything he has just experienced, and Ruby comes towards me with the fourth.
Our fingers brush when she passes it over.
Ruby takes the last glass for herself and drops back into the armchair.
We all raise them.
“To condoms,” Ewan says.
“To idiotic boys who flee the scene,” Brooke adds.
“To not dying of embarrassment,” Abi mutters.
Ruby glances towards me. “Got anything?”
I think about the playlist still playing quietly through the speaker.
About the argument. About everything I told her that I wish I could drag back inside myself now, and the things she said that have lodged somewhere I don’t know how to reach.
I think about the fact that I have nearly kissed her multiple times and, despite all the reasons I gave her for why it was a bad idea, my strongest feeling about being interrupted is still frustration.
I lift my drink towards hers. “To things that are almost ours.”
Ruby’s eyes stay on mine. “Almost?”
“Yeah.” I knock my cup against hers. “Almost.”
The vodka burns all the way down, Abi immediately reaches for the bottle again, and Brooke starts telling her that surviving the condom doesn’t mean she should now give herself alcohol poisoning.
Ruby has tucked her feet underneath herself in the armchair, still holding the empty glass between both hands, and when she looks over at me there’s enough awareness in her expression that I know this hasn’t disappeared for her either.