Chapter Nine Ruby
Ican’t keep it to myself anymore. Ben has a point. If we’re about to spend the next five hours alone together, the tension is just going to get worse and worse. Unfortunately, I’m just not the type of person who can put on a brave face and pretend to like someone when they’ve done me wrong.
So, maybe if I tell him the full truth, he’ll help me understand why I never heard from him again. Maybe he has a good reason for it.
Then maybe, just maybe, I won’t be at risk of gaining a real enemy on the Board of Directors.
“Remember what?”
Ben’s response makes my blood boil with annoyance, but I know I need to stay cool and calm during this particular conversation. I don’t want to come across like a child. God forbid Ben starts to think I’m too immature to handle a principal role. He has too much influence for me to continue being so stubborn about this.
We need to clear the air.
I run my fingers through my hair and take a deep breath.
“We’ve already met before, Ben.”
He looks at me sideways for perhaps a little too long, considering he should be paying attention to the road, but he seems like a decent enough driver.
“What do you mean?”
“Last summer, we met at the Strand. The bookstore. We spent the whole day together. We… you walked me home.”
Ben is quiet for a long time. So long that I’m wondering if I should just wrench open the door and let myself roll out onto the highway.
“That’s not—that wasn’t—that…” He trails off, stumbling over his words in a way that I’ve never heard him do before. “That girl’s name wasn’t Ruby. It was… I mean, I think it was, like, Riley, or something like that. Rosie, maybe?”My brow furrows deeply. “No, Ben. Her name was Ruby. Because it was me. Ruby. That’s my name.”
He shakes his head. “No, I—”
“Yes.”
Ben’s grip tightens on the steering wheel. He looks at me again. There is blatant recognition in his eyes, along with immense amounts of guilt and horror.
Then, once again, he shakes his head.
“That girl had dark hair, though. Not blonde.”
“No, she—” I stop myself, realization dawning on me.
I remember that I had been talking to Eva about wanting to try a new hairstyle. I’d been keeping it long and natural my entire life, mostly because it was easiest to twist up in a bun like that. Instead of a daring new cut, however, Eva suggested I try dyeing it.
So, I did. Just a few shades darker. Barely brunette, and it washed out by the end of the month.
But still. Ben is right. I was very much not blonde when we met eleven months ago.
“Fine. My hair was light brown at the time,” I tell him. “But you can’t honestly think I believe that a change in my hair color was enough for me to now be unrecognizable to you.”
“Actually, I’ve been trying to figure out why you looked so familiar. I thought maybe it was because I’d seen you on stage so many times. And then I figured it might also be because I’ve bought a couple of your twin’s paintings. It felt stupid to ask you outright, though. If we’d met before, I mean.”
“So… you do remember?”
Ben frowns at me. “Of course I remember. Maybe I didn’t connect the dots that it was you, but I do remember that day. It’s a little hazy, but… yeah. We kissed. I wouldn’t forget something like that.”
I turn my face toward the window so he can’t see the flush that’s suddenly warmed my cheeks. At the same time, however, I’m still annoyed. He remembers kissing a girl who looked extremely similar to me, but he couldn’t even recall my name?
I swallow hard and face him again. “Then why did you disappear off the face of the planet?”
Ben lets out a low string of very impressive curse words. The car slows slightly, as if he’s so caught up in his thoughts that he’s forgotten to keep his foot fully on the gas. He blinks fast, remembering that we’re on a major highway, and picks up the pace again.
“First and foremost,” he begins, “I should tell you that I’m not very good with names. I also struggle with something called prosopagnosia.”
“What?”
“Also known as face blindness.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s not a thing.”
“It is a thing,” he retorts, an unexpected harshness creeping into his tone. “Listen, I don’t talk about this often, but… when I was kid, I had an accident. I was usually left with an endless cycle of nannies and au pairs because my parents were too busy being, you know, Hawthornes. One of the nannies was kind of careless, I guess you could say. Long story short, she didn’t notice when an eight-year-old boy put on a pair of roller skates inside the house, nor did she notice when I fell down the stairs. At least, not until I hit the first-floor landing. With my head.”
“Holy crap, Ben.”
“Sounds worse than it was. I only got, like, ten stitches, but the reason I keep my hair longer is because it helps cover the scar. The worst part was the concussion. I had a little bit of amnesia, and ever since then, my memory hasn’t been that great.”
“Did your parents fire the nanny?”
For some reason, Ben chuckles. “Yes, Ruby. They fired the nanny.”
“Well, I’m sorry you went through that and I’m sorry you’re still dealing with the effects of the injury.”
“But…”
I purse my lips. “But I really don’t understand how a minor head injury that occurred, like, twenty years ago is a decent excuse for ghosting someone,” I force myself to say.
“What? You ghosted me!” he exclaims.
“Excuse me? I don’t ghost people. It’s rude.”
“Yeah, I agree that it’s rude! Therefore, I also don’t ghost people!”
I stare at him. “So, you’re telling me that you spent hours with me, kissed me in the dusty back aisles of a bookstore, bought me dinner, then walked me home, and yet decided to never text or call me ever again? That doesn’t seem like ghosting to you?”
Ben opens his mouth to continue arguing, but then he lets out a long exhale and briefly shuts his eyes. Luckily, the highway is mostly empty and perfectly straight ahead of us. Even so, I think it’s pretty clear that neither one of us is paying that much attention to where we’re going. Not like it matters. Given the detour that’s apparently necessary to take, we’ll be on this stretch of I-495 for at least the next hour.
“I think I know what happened,” he admits quietly.
“Enlighten me.”
“It was last May, right?”
“You tell me,” I reply sarcastically.
“Fine. It was May. I know that. Because the day after we met, my father sent me to England to represent the family at a charity gala for the London Symphony Orchestra. I remember because it was the most boring event of my life and was more of a threat than an olive branch on his part.”
“A threat?”
“My father is a difficult man,” Ben explains. “He’s hard to please. And, for most of my life, I didn’t really bother pleasing him in the first place. I have three older siblings and they’re impressive enough. I’m the great shame of the family because I wasn’t as interested in flaunting our surname all over the world. He sent me to London because he wanted to remind me that he could control me—control my schedule and my responsibilities and my metaphorical purse strings.”
“Was the position on the board a threat too?”
“No, not at all. I actually wanted that. Anyway, my point is that even though I got shipped off to a different continent for a week, I didn’t forget about you. I texted you.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did. Like, twice. Except, now I’m realizing that those texts must’ve been lost in the ether because my phone was in airplane mode or my international plan wasn’t working right. Either way, you never replied.”
“Because I didn’t get them,” I respond through gritted teeth.
“I’m just telling you what my perspective was,” Ben bites back. “I texted a pretty girl after spending a nice day with her and never heard from her again, so I cut my losses and moved on.”
“So, you’re telling me it was nothing more than a communication issue.”
“Yes.”
I roll my eyes. “Two attempts to contact me were unsuccessful, so you just completely gave up. Wow. You must’ve really cared.”
“It’s not like you ever texted me!”
I clench my jaw tightly. I hate that he has a point. When I didn’t hear from him the day after the Strand, I was disappointed, but I didn’t immediately lose hope. In fact, I spent the better part of the next week trying to decide if I should reach out to him first instead. It’s the twenty-first century, after all. Women can make the first move.
But then work got more intense than usual and I decided it was better to stay focused on ballet. I was embarrassed that so much of my mental energy was spent on whether or not some random guy liked me. It felt childish and wasteful. I told myself that he wasn’t as into me as I thought he was—that I made it all up inside my mind.
For the most part, I moved on quickly.
It wasn’t until I realized exactly who that mystery man was and where he ended up that I started to get angry about it.
Then the Giselle thing happened.
So, sure, maybe most of my hatred for Ben Hawthorne is based on a technical issue and a misunderstanding, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a self-important fool with more money than any one human needs.
Whatever connection we had eleven months ago was a fluke.
“Fine,” I say after a while. “We ghosted each other.”
Ben laughs softly. Clearly, he doesn’t find it easy to stay mad at people.
Clearly, he hasn’t been holding a grudge against me for the past year because I never reached out to him after that day. I’m the only one who did that.
It’s hard not to feel lame and pathetic.
“I can’t believe that was you,” he murmurs. “I should’ve known. I feel like a moron for not realizing it right away.”
“Whatever. It doesn’t matter anyway.”
Ben glances at me, but then the car goes over a huge pothole and he drags his gaze back toward the road.
“Why not?” he asks.
“Because we might not have discussed our careers or shared our last names last May, but we would have had to stop whatever that was as soon as those details came out.”
“Why?”
I try to ignore the way my stomach flips at his genuine confusion, as if he’s not even willing to consider what might stand in the way of us dating.
“Seriously? Ben, I can’t date a benefactor.”
“There are rules against it?”
A huff of frustration escapes me. “No, there aren’t any written rules against it. But I can’t afford to be involved with someone with that much power in the company if I’m trying to be promoted. Everyone will think that I just flirted my way to the top.”
There’s a brief pause, and then, “Oh. I see. Makes sense.”
If I’m not mistaken, I’m pretty sure there’s a tinge of pink on his cheeks. I have no idea why, though.
“Anyway, we’re not dating and we won’t date, so it doesn’t matter. That random day—and that random kiss—was just a stupid thing that happened in the past. We cleared the air. It’s all good. The end.”
Ben’s expression shifts into a deep frown. “Uh, right. Yeah. Just a stupid thing.”
“Glad we agree.”
“So… you don’t hate me?”
“Does it really matter that much to you?”
He shrugs. “Yeah, it does. I don’t like being hated.”
“You know that’s completely unrealistic, right? You can’t be likable to everyone all the time. Even the people who you think might like you could just be playing nice to your face.”
“What an optimistic way to look at things.”
“People are going to dislike you, Ben. It’s just life.”
“I doubt people dislike you.”
I choke out a laugh. “Are you kidding? I’m a professional ballet dancer. I work in one of the most competitive and cutthroat industries in the world. There’s a reason they’ve made, like, a thousand horror movies about ballerinas, Ben. I’m sure there are plenty of dancers in the corps who hate my guts simply because I got promoted to soloist and they didn’t.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“It is what it is. It’s not like they hate me for a good reason. They’re just insecure. It’s a normal human reaction. Immature, yes, but pretty normal.”
“That’s oddly very wise. I’ve never thought about it that way.”
“Good. Because I’m definitely not the first person who has ever disliked you.” Despite my words, I feel a small smile forming on my face.
“That’s encouraging.”
“Think about it,” I continue. “I mean, don’t you have an ex-girlfriend with whom things ended badly? Or an old friend you had a massive falling out with? Maybe a coworker that you disagreed with a little too harshly?”
Ben shrugs. “All my past relationships have ended amicably, my lifelong friendships are stable, and disagreeing with coworkers is only something I’m recently becoming familiar with.”
“Well, look at you. So nontoxic.”
“What about you?” he asks.
“What about me?”
“Surely, there’s an ex-boyfriend or two of yours who falls to his knees and curses at the sky every time he’s reminded of you?”
I blink in surprise. “Uh, no. I don’t think so. I haven’t really—I mean, I don’t have any ex-boyfriends. Not technically.”
Ben stares at me for so long that I’m worried I’m going to have to forcibly yank his face back in the direction of the road ahead.
“How is that possible?”
“Are you kidding?” I bark out a laugh. “I’m a professional dancer, Ben. I live, eat, and breathe ballet. That’s been the story for my entire life.”
“Ah.”
“I mean, I have dated before. Casual things that didn’t last that long. It’s not like you were my first kiss. Or first anything. I’ve already experienced all those, uh, firsts. I am a grown woman, after all.”
I hate the smirk that graces his lips when I manage to stop babbling. I hate that he has undeniably nice lips. Really nice lips.
More than anything, I hate that I still remember exactly what it was like to kiss those lips. I’ve never done anything like that before. Never kissed a stranger simply because he was sweet, handsome, and interesting.
If I could go back in time, would I change it? Would I simply shake his hand when he offered it to me and then politely walk away?
The answer should be yes, but I’m not sure it is.