Chapter Thirteen Ruby
The sky is spitting rain. It’s practically biblical. I’m tempted to call Gram and ask if the winds have anything to say about our fate, but I also don’t want to give her the opportunity to suggest that fate and destiny are conspiring with Mother Nature to force me and Ben into close proximity. She basically already hinted at that when she slipped those stupid rocks into Ben’s pockets.
As if he can sense the direction of my thoughts, Ben starts digging around in the front pocket of his jeans with one hand on the wheel. It’s completely dark now, and even though the traffic has lightened on this scenic highway route, the storm doesn’t seem to be going anywhere as we continue pushing south. Ben can barely go more than forty miles an hour thanks to how heavily it’s raining and how hard the wind is gusting.
Basically, I’m doomed.
“So,” Ben says, finally yanking his hand out of his pocket. “Are you going to tell me what these actually are?”
In his outstretched palm are three crystals. If only to ensure he can keep both hands on the wheel, I take them from him.
“What makes you think I know?”
Ben huffs out a laugh. “Because I saw what your grandmother’s house looks like. And I heard a rumor there was a wise woman of the beach. In fact, I’m pretty sure I saw her myself out on the cliffs. I put two and two together quite easily.”
I groan. That old woman needs to stop climbing around on those jagged rocks. Mythical guardian sirens or not, that part of the shoreline is seriously unsafe.
I pick up the smooth oval stone. By the light of my phone, I can tell that it’s a soft pink.
“This is rose quartz,” I tell him. “It’s a soothing stone, meant to inspire passion and support emotional healing. It also represents love and is thought to attract that sort of nonsense into your life.”
He snorts loudly. “‘That sort of nonsense’?”
“That’s how I see it.”
Ben makes a sound in the back of his throat that I can’t translate, then says, “What about the others?”
“The tiny one is a raw… um, ruby. It represents passion and energy.”
I stop talking, suddenly feeling nervous. I can’t believe Gram’s audacity. She doesn’t even know about that day at the Strand. She had absolutely no reason to think that I had any connection whatsoever with a random guy who blew into town.
“That’s it?”
“Yep.”
I can feel his eyes on me for a brief moment, but I am very purposefully staring down at the stones in my hand.
“And the third one? I thought it might be tourmaline.”
I nod. “It’s very meaningful. Black tourmaline, I mean. Gram usually slips it into the pockets of those who are going through periods of growth or change. It’s supposed to offer a sense of balance and inner peace. To keep you grounded.”
“You’re a veritable fortune teller.”
“Not at all. It’s just a side effect of being related to the local wise woman.”
Ben chuckles. “Why would she give those stones to me, though? There’s no way she knows anything about what my life is like or what I might be going through.”
“Honestly, I’ve known the woman for twenty-six years and I still haven’t puzzled out exactly how she seems to know everything. The only explanation that I can come up with is that magic might actually be real.”
I expect Ben to laugh at that, acknowledging how ridiculous that is.
Instead, he nods thoughtfully. “Maybe magic is real. It just doesn’t work the way we think it does.”
A smile dances on my lips. “Now I understand why you like poetry. You talk like a fool.”
Ben reaches out blindly and pinches my arm. A surprised laugh escapes me as I squirm away from him. I drop the stones into the cupholder and settle back in my seat. We lapse into silence with nothing but the sound of crashing rain and howling wind. For the first time since I got into the car earlier today, I feel… comfortable. I mean, I’m still riddled with anxiety and barely keeping myself together, but there’s also this discordant sense of peace that’s starting to overwhelm me. Like, no matter what, I can be assured that everything is going to be okay. Probably.
As long as I get back to New York tonight.
The storm beats down on us as we finally make our way into Connecticut. I check the map on my phone and confirm that we’re still about two and a half hours away from my apartment in downtown Manhattan—in perfect weather, that is.
It’s half past seven in the evening. We’ve been traveling for over seven hours but have barely made it a hundred and fifty miles. Yet, I still have hope that I can make it home by midnight. That will give me enough time to shower, squeeze in about six hours of sleep, and then wake up for my morning class. I already have plenty of clean leotards and tights neatly tucked away in my closet and a reliable pair of pointe shoes in my dance bag hanging off the coat rack by the door. All I’ll need to do is grab a protein bar and a green juice from the fridge and hop on the 1 train to midtown.
Thank goodness for being a highly organized person.
I scroll mindlessly on my phone, checking the news to try to make myself feel more assured about this current situation.
Except, almost as soon as I open the X app and flip over to the “for you” trending tab, I see an update that states the NYC mayor has declared a shelter-in-place order for all five boroughs. I become absorbed in all the related comments and replies, showing videos of the downpour currently terrorizing the streets of the city. Trash bins are flying around like tumbleweeds in the wind, traffic is sloshing through inches of standing water in lower Manhattan, and tons of power outages have already been reported.
Shelter in place? Seriously? Is it really that bad?
One article, posted just two minutes ago, reads: Tropical Storm pushing boundaries, potential to be classified as hurricane.
A hurricane? Let’s not be dramatic about this. It’s just… raining. Really hard. It’s super windy, yes, but it’s not like we’re at risk of being tossed off the side of the road.
Even as I have the thought, a particularly strong gust slams into the side of Ben’s car. Only his careful maneuvering keeps us traveling in a straight line.
“Oh, shoot,” he mutters.
I glance up from my phone. I don’t know how long I was absorbed in it, but it was apparently long enough for the somewhat optimistic traffic situation to change for the worse.
I squint at the glare of red lights ahead of us—a never-ending sea of braked cars on the two-lane highway. Ben rolls to a stop. The cars aren’t moving. Not even inching forward.
“What’s going on?”
“Probably an accident up ahead,” he murmurs, reaching over to turn on the car radio. He scans the channels until it lands on a local news station.
“—several major road closures as severe flooding continues to escalate in the region…”
I tune out the rest of the radio announcer’s sentence.
The road is closed. That’s why the cars aren’t moving. They’re being redirected, probably very slowly, to an alternative route.
It’s eight o’clock. This journey through hell is never going to end.
Eventually, the cars start rolling forward, little by little. I am too annoyed, too horrified, to do anything other than sit silently and watch as the darkly shadowed forest outside the window goes by. Ben keeps the radio on, which delivers increasingly pessimistic updates about the storm’s progress.
I get a text from Gram, asking me if I made it back to the city safely. I don’t have it in me to lie, if only so she won’t worry, so I tell her the truth.
Stuck in traffic somewhere in Connecticut, I type back. I’m fine. Love you.
Barely two seconds after the message sends, my screen lights up with an incoming phone call.
I sigh loudly and answer, shooting an apologetic glance at Ben.
“I said I’m fine, Gram,” I answer in lieu of hello.
“You tell that boy to get off the roads right now, Ruby Jane Sullivan.”
“I won’t be doing that,” I reply evenly. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. We just have a couple more hours left until we reach the city.”
On the other end of the line, she scoffs loudly. Gram rarely gets visibly upset, but it’s evident that she’s not pleased to discover that I’m caught in the storm.
“It’s not safe. You’re really going to risk your life like that? You won’t have any toes to dance on if this hurricane sweeps you away into the sea!”
“Okay, well, it’s not yet a hurricane in this particular area,” I say, trying to sound calm and rational even though the sound of Gram’s panic is making me feel panicky all over again. “And I think my toes will be fine. I’ve got to go, okay? I’m distracting Ben and he needs to focus on the road. I love you.”
“Ruby—”
Even though I know I’ll regret it later, I hang up. To my relief, she doesn’t immediately call back, but I’m sure I’ll have a very strongly worded text message soon enough.
“You weren’t distracting me,” says Ben. “It’s not like the car is moving that much at the moment.”
“This is a disaster.”
“Literally,” he agrees. “A natural disaster.”
It’s hard not to notice that we both have to raise our voices to be heard over the monstrous storm. Just like that, I become a little too aware of the fact that nothing but a steel frame and flimsy glass windows act as a barrier between us and the raging tempest outside.
Then I consider that not choosing to heed the wise woman of the beach’s warnings is a recipe for self-destruction. Or worse.
Still, even though I’m sure Ben heard everything she said loud and clear, neither one of us says a word.
Eventually, after thirty excruciating minutes, we see a mass of flashing yellow lights in the distance. They illuminate a huge road barrier that is bright orange and so reflective it causes me to squint after being so used to relative darkness. There are other lights too—red and blue—from two police cars parked at the front of the mass of traffic, right underneath a sign directing us onto an exit ramp that I hadn’t even realized was coming up.
It takes another twenty minutes before we finally get our turn to get off the highway. Immediately, we are plunged back into darkness. The GPS announces that it’s “rerouting” in a robotic, vaguely feminine voice.
Nearly nine o’clock.
Ben exhales low and long. “Ruby…”
“What?”
“I think we need to find somewhere to stay for the night.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s just not safe. We can’t drive directly into a hurricane.”
“It’s a tropical storm.”
Ben takes a left onto a narrow country road. I catch a glimpse of a fluorescent-lit convenience store, one paltry streetlight, and little else. I imagine we’ve found ourselves in a small town that very few people travel through on purpose. Thanks to the flooding and rerouting, I bet this town is seeing more traffic than it has in years.
The GPS says that we’re heading in a general northward direction, back up toward western Massachusetts. I curse quietly at the lack of progress.
“You promised you’d get me back home,” I say, feeling like a whiny child even as the words come out.
“Yes, and I meant alive. I’d prefer both of us to stay alive. Listen to what they’re saying on the radio, Ruby. Flash floods. Falling trees. Power outages. It’s extremely dangerous to be on the roads right now.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and close my eyes. This can’t be happening.
“I know,” I admit.
“We need to find a hotel for the night.”
“A hotel?”
“I’ll pay for you to have your own room, of course. It sounds like the storm should pass overnight, so we can head out early in the morning. I can’t guarantee we’ll make it in time for your class, though.”
I stare at him while he stares at the unfamiliar road ahead. The traffic slowly drifts away around us as people head off on their own respective journeys to safety.
I realize that I don’t really have any other choice. I can’t ask Ben to risk his life—and his precious Porsche—just so that I can make it to the studio in the morning. It’s not that crucial. If I send the instructor an email tonight explaining the situation, I’m certain that she’ll understand. In five years with the company, I’ve never missed a single class. This will be the first ever blip on my record. The first imperfection.
As long as I’m in the studio by Wednesday, when rehearsals for the season officially begin, everything will be fine. There’s no way this storm can keep me away from New York for two entire days, is there?
My stomach churns with nausea. Still, I need to be reasonable about this.
The fact of the matter is that I would much rather wait out this storm in a warm bed than remain cooped up in a car with Ben on these treacherous roads.
Honestly, even though I told him I wouldn’t be able to sleep until we reached New York, I think I’d give anything for a bed right now. Even if it’s not my own. This has been a long, insanely frustrating day. I need some privacy. I need to stretch and roll out my muscles. I need to put on the pair of soft-soled ballet slippers I have stowed away in my bag and run through some simple combinations.
“Okay,” I say at last. “Yes, fine. Let’s find somewhere to stay for the night. I’ll look for the nearest hotel.”
“Sounds good.”
Unfortunately, we’re not the only travelers who have decided it’s best to get off the road. The online reservation sites are clocking and it’s impossible to get through on the phone. We head to the nearest hotel fifteen miles north, but it’s obviously at full capacity. The clogged parking lot and glaring no vacancy sign is visible even through the stormy nighttime gloom.
The second option, a rundown motel located another five miles west, is also at full capacity. They don’t have a sign announcing it, though. Ben has to run inside to talk to the front desk attendant, then run back out to the car to deliver the news. In just that short amount of time, his shirt is practically soaked through. I do my very best to ignore the way it clings to his toned chest and stomach.
Droplets of water drip down his face. He wipes them away with the back of his hand, but not before I notice one droplet slip past his lips. I must be more tired than I thought, but it’s suddenly hitting me all over again just how gorgeous he is.
I clear my throat, forcing all of those thoughts away. “We’ll keep trying. Let’s head further north”
“Roger that.”
Throughout this entire fiasco, Ben has remained reasonably pleasant. Even now, he has the patience to deliver a lighthearted response to me. Meanwhile, I’ve been nothing but difficult and surly. Maybe I really am the problem. Maybe it’s true that everyone in the world likes Ben and the only reason I didn’t—I don’t—is because there’s something wrong with me.
I turn back to my phone and direct Ben to the third hotel option.
When we realize that one is also full for the night, we sit in the parking lot and stare at the warm glow of lights inside the building for several long minutes.
The fourth, a motel which looked fully operable online, is apparently permanently shut down. The windows are all boarded up and someone has graffitied the front of the building.
“Nope,” Ben mutters, immediately executing a U-turn and pulling out of the lot.
Our fifth option is another fifteen-minute drive in the general direction of Springfield. At this point, we’ve crossed right back into Massachusetts, but about as far from the Cape as we can get while still being within state lines and not all the way west to the Berkshires. I hope everyone in Mermaid Shores is staying safe. A storm like this will be even more ferocious on the coastline.
I’m definitely the worst granddaughter in the world for not making sure Gram was alright before I hung up on her. I’ll call her in the morning and apologize, then have a fresh bouquet of sunflowers sent to her house.
When Ben pulls into the parking lot of the fifth option, a motel, the vacancy sign is flashing bright blue in the window. In unison, we exhale in relief. It’s a bare-basics type of place, but as long as there’s a bed and a roof over my head, I have no intention of complaining about anything.
Beyond the car, the wind howls ominously.