Chapter Thirty-Seven
Sunday
Ruby:
Josh doesn’t come back.
He ignores my calls, my texts, everything, and by the next morning I’m driving Oscar’s Fiesta towards his house with my hands wrapped tightly around the steering wheel.
Give It All by Foals is playing out the radio and it’s making me so much more emotional.
My head is full of all the things I want to say to him.
I’ve gone from worried, to hurt, to angry, then straight back to worried again so many times that I’m exhausted by myself, and every unanswered message has made the promise he gave me at the door feel like a total lie.
He said he needed space and I gave it to him. He said he’d come back and then vanished completely. I told him the worst thing about myself and he ran away.
The gates open after I press the buzzer and give my name. His house looks as enormous and cold as I remember, the Christmas decorations hanging perfectly around the windows, and I almost laugh at myself for arriving here uninvited in Oscar’s battered Fiesta.
I park near the front steps, get out before I can change my mind and march towards the door, knocking twice before Josh finally answers. He’s all bleary-eyed and surprised. “Ruby?”
“Hello.”
“What are you doing here?”
Everything in me seems to be frozen, except my pounding heart. “I came to check you’re okay.”
Josh stands in the doorway, keeping the door tight to his body, not wanting to let me in. “I’m fine.”
I narrow my eyes. “You could have text me to tell me that.”
“Yeah. Sorry.” There is something strange about him that I can’t place.
“I thought you were coming back?”
“I was coming back.” He nods. “I just needed more time.”
I stare at him, waiting for something else, but he stays quiet. “Are you going to let me in?”
Josh hesitates before stepping back. “Yeah. Course.”
I walk past him into the hall, shrugging my coat off while he closes the door behind me.
The house is warm, but it has this empty feeling about it, all polished floors and huge rooms with nobody making any noise in them.
It’s got a horrible, depressing atmosphere that makes me want to walk straight back out again.
Pictures of a boy who looks like a blonde version of Josh seem to be covering every surface, and I realise his parents left him in a home that is basically a shrine to his dead brother.
Ignoring the way that thought makes me want to comfort him, I drape my coat over the back of a chair and turn around to find Josh standing exactly where I left him, hands shoved into the pockets of his joggers, shoulders tense and eyes tired.
I study his face, feeling confused and scared with every second we stand here. “Have you slept?”
“A bit.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s up? Or are you just going to give me barely-there answers?”
Josh gives me a long look, blowing out a pained breath. “I need more time.” He isn’t dismissive, which only confuses me more. He just seems tired. Completely wrung out.
“Okay.” I nod, brushing my hair over my shoulders. “I can give you more time but only if you occasionally let me know you’re alive.”
“Look, yesterday was a lot...”
I wait for him to go on, but he doesn’t. “I know it was.”
“No, I mean…” He exhales hard and shakes his head. “I’m trying to get my head around it.”
“I understand. I’m only asking you not to completely freeze me out.”
“I’m not trying to freeze you out. I needed to clear my head, and something came up, and I’ve just been fucked. Okay?” Josh turns on his heel, starts moving to one of the living rooms. I follow through. “Sometimes I do that. I told you that.”
“You’ve never done that to me before.”
Josh stops in the doorway of the living room and looks back at me. “I know.”
“That’s what I’m saying.” I go in and perch on the arm of one of the sofas while he stays standing, which only makes the whole thing feel more awkward.
“If you need space, fine. I’m not going to force you to talk before you’re ready, but you can’t disappear and then act surprised when I come looking for you. ”
“I wasn’t surprised you came looking.” His mouth presses into a line and he looks away from me. “I was surprised you came here.”
“Why? Where else would you be?”
“I dunno, Rubes. I’m not thinking clearly but you didn’t need to come here.”
“I needed to know that you were okay.”
“I’m fine.” He bites out, walking back and forth. “I just need more time.”
I stand again because sitting there while he paces around the room is making me feel worse. “What came up?”
Josh rubs a hand over his face and lets out a tired breath. “Rubes, can we not do this right now?”
I stare at him, irritation starting to push through the worry. “Do what? Ask you basic questions?”
“This.” He flicks a hand between us. “I can’t do this today.”
I throw my hands up. “Can you please explain what the fuck is going on? I’m at a complete loss here, Josh. You found out the worst thing about me and you’ve completely left me. Is this thing with us ending now?”
Josh stops pacing and looks at me like I’ve slapped him. “What? No.”
“Then what is happening?” My voice wobbles and I hate it. Tears start pooling in my eyes and I refuse to blink, scared that if I do the dam will break. “You left after finding out, ignored me for a day, and now I’m standing in your house feeling like you can barely look at me.”
“I don’t fucking know how to explain the shit in my head.” He spins on his heel, giving me his back so I can’t see his face. “I want to tell you everything. I just don’t know how.”
I stare at him, feeling a fucked-up concoction of emotions rush through me.
“Josh, I am trying so hard to give you what you asked for, but you can’t keep telling me you need time while refusing to tell me what I’m waiting for.
If you need a day, say that. If you need a week, say that.
If you need me to leave you alone completely, then at least have the decency to tell me instead of making me guess. ”
He spins on me quickly, green eyes filled with fear and loneliness. “I don’t want you to leave me alone completely.”
I’m at a loss. Nothing is making sense. “Then what do you want?”
His mouth opens, then closes again, and that weird hesitation is back. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” I breathe, my throat burning. “How can you not know?”
He’s unable to meet my eyes and has been this whole time. I want to cry and beg. I want to stamp my feet and demand he loves me back. I want to scream and shout and cry. But I don’t do any of that. I’m too exhausted.
Then I notice a pale coat hanging over the back of another chair near the doorway. It’s cream, belted, with a fur-trimmed collar. It’s like everything slows down, you know like on TV before something horrific happens?
“Whose coat is that?” I croak, pointing at it.
Josh doesn’t even turn to it, he just looks at his feet, guilt written all over him. “It’s no one’s. It doesn’t matter.”
My pulse starts hammering harder. “Why doesn’t it matter?”
“Because it just doesn’t.”
I straighten, a knowing slamming into me. Call it women’s intuition or gut instinct, call it whatever you want but in that moment I just know. “Is someone here?”
“No.” His eyebrow does that little twitch when he’s not being entirely truthful.
“You’re lying.”
“Ruby, leave it alone.”
“Who is here?” I look towards the hall, then towards the stairs beyond it, and when I start moving Josh trails closely.
“Ruby, don’t do this.”
“Do what? Find out why there is a woman’s coat in your house while you’re lying to my face?”
“It’s not like that.”
A laugh escapes me, high and disbelieving. “Oh my God. Said every man ever.”
“Ruby, please.” He is literally begging.
“Who is upstairs?” I hotly demand, but he doesn’t reply so I head for the stairs, moving faster when he reaches out an arm to stop me. “What room is yours?”
“Please stop.”
“Which one?”
“Ruby, listen to me, okay? Nothing happened.”
I reach the landing and start opening doors, fighting off Josh as he tries to stop me.
I’m a woman possessed, knowing what I know and needing to see it for myself.
The first is a bathroom, the second a guest room with a bed so perfectly made it looks unused, and the third opens onto another empty room while Josh follows behind me, voice growing more strained every time I reach for another handle.
“Ruby, please. Just wait.”
“No.” I hiss, an unstoppable force making me move. “Tell me which one is yours.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Says every lying, cheating, scumbag of a man.”
“How can I cheat if we’re not even together?”
The urge to slap him hits me so hard I have to grit my teeth.
“You did not just say that to me.” I mean, technically he’s right.
We haven’t put a label on this. We haven’t stood in front of everyone and announced ourselves.
We’ve just kissed and slept wrapped around each other and told each other things we don’t tell anyone else and behaved in every way that matters like this is more than friendship.
“I’m fucked in the head right now, Ruby. I’m not trying to hurt you.”
“Well, you’re doing a brilliant job by accident.” I snap, grabbing another handle and shoving the door open.
The room is darker than the others, curtains still mostly drawn even though it’s the middle of the afternoon, and for one strange second all I register is the mess.
Clothes over a chair. A glass of water on the bedside table.
A phone charger trailing onto the floor.
Then my eyes move to the bed and everything inside me breaks.
Bonnie is asleep beneath Josh’s duvet.
Her hair is spread across his pillow, and she’s turned towards the wall, one arm tucked beneath her head. There is a dress folded over the chair near the window, her shoes kicked off beside it and a little necklace on Josh’s bedside table.
“Oh my God.” It’s so much worse than I could have imagined.
Josh is behind me, breathless from following me through the house, and I can hear the panic in his voice. “I swear nothing happened.”