Chapter Seventeen Ruby
Warm sunlight turns the inside of my eyelids buttery yellow. I feel scratchy fabric against my face and breathe in the scent of generic laundry detergent.
When I crack open my eyes, my gaze lands on a set of thick polyester curtains, maroon and patterned in a way that was probably tasteful about twenty years ago. The sun filters brightly through a narrow crack between them, revealing hundreds of tiny dust motes swirling through the air.
My eyes flash open all the way. Sunlight.
Sunlight! The sun is shining! The storm is over!
I bolt upright, then reach for the bedside lamp. It doesn’t turn on when I flip the switch, so there’s still no power, but that’s okay. I’m sure power companies all over the region are scrambling to put the lines back together after the second tropical storm in the span of a week.
The good news is that it’s no longer raining. The widespread flooding can start drying back up. The road crews can clear the debris away.
And Ben and I can finally get back to New York City.
I twist around toward him. He’s still fast asleep, sprawled on his stomach with one of his arms dangling off the side of the cot. His face is smushed into the pillow, his hair a wavy mess from being slept on while still damp.
For some reason, I smile to myself.
When I realize that it’s Ben Hawthorne I’m smiling at, I stop.
Then I think about how my idea of Ben Hawthorne has changed drastically since this weekend started. It’s easier to smile at him now. Maybe I want to smile at the idea of him now.
As if he’s coaxed awake by my idiotic thoughts, Ben’s hand twitches where it’s dangling in midair. Slowly, he pulls his arm back onto the narrow cot and lets out a low, tired groan. My heart stutters at the sound.
Quickly, I reach for my phone and look very busy staring at the weather app so that it’s not obvious I was just openly staring at him. In my peripheral vision, he pushes himself up into a sitting position and yawns loudly.
I glance over at him, hoping that I look totally casual and as if I completely forgot he was even here. I also really hope that my hair doesn’t resemble a rat’s nest.
“Good morning,” I rasp.
“Morning,” he croaks.
For a moment, we just stare at each other. There is so much intimacy in this moment—seeing each other in our drowsy, vulnerable states in a way that so few people in our lives are privy to—and it’s clear that both of us are a little too aware of it.
I clear my throat too loudly. “Um. The sun is out.”
Idiot,I grumble to myself. He’s literally squinting at the sunlight right now. He knows the sun is out.
A soft, sleepy grin forms on his lips. The ridiculous beauty of him strikes me for the umpteenth time. I expect a spark of annoyance at my unwilling acknowledgement of his handsomeness, but it doesn’t come. Is it possible that I don’t find Ben annoying anymore? What changed?
Maybe nothing at all has changed. After all, when I first met him, I didn’t find him annoying in the slightest. I was completely enthralled by him. I liked him. A lot.
So maybe, even though it’s the worst thing that could possibly happen, I’m going full circle. I’m returning to the version of myself that enjoyed one of the best days of my life with a perfect stranger and foolishly dreamed that it might turn into some kind of love story.
If that’s the case, maybe I should go jump into the floodwaters and let them sweep me away.
“Did you sleep okay?” he asks, running his hands through his wild hair. It looks soft. Idly, I wonder how it would feel to tangle my fingers in that unfairly shiny hair of his.
Stop it, Ruby. Stop it right now.
“Yeah! Yeah, I slept fine. Totally fine… you?”
“Hmm?” Ben is staring at me with a strange look on his face. Self-consciously, I comb my fingers through my hair and use the long lengths as a shield to hide the blush I can feel rising to my cheeks.
“Did you sleep alright?” I repeat.
“Surprisingly, yeah.”
“Maybe I should have let you take the bed,” I murmur. “You’re bigger than me.”
Ben shakes his head. “No way. You’re the professional athlete. I’m not going to let it be my fault that you have a sore neck or back because you slept on a rickety cot.”
I roll my eyes and toss my hair over my shoulder, having tamed it as best as I can. Still, he keeps looking at me with that unreadable expression on his face.
There’s an awkward pause. In the light of the new day, everything that happened yesterday feels like a weird nightmare. Everything we talked about… and argued about… and that insanely personal conversation I initiated late last night… I feel like the entire world has been turned upside down.
I feel completely out of control.
“We should probably get on the road,” I say.
Ben murmurs his agreement. I slip out of the bed and pad over to my suitcase. Cancelled class or not, I have every intention of heading to the studio as soon as I drop my suitcase off at my apartment downtown, so I grab a leotard, some leggings, and my favorite warm-up cardigan. Without glancing in Ben’s direction, I scurry into the bathroom.
One glance in the mirror assures me that I don’t look like a total disaster. My eyes are a little puffy, but nothing so dramatic that would give Ben a reason to stare at me like that. Maybe he’s just not a morning person.
I get dressed, wash my face, and then return to my suitcase to pack everything neatly away again. I’m embarrassingly aware of every movement he makes as he rummages through his own weekend bag and then shuffles into the bathroom.
The pointe shoe I threw at him last night is neatly tucked into its companion. I huff out a quiet laugh. I’m not usually so impulsive, but at least he seemed to find it funny. Perhaps people on the board simply expect to be attacked with pointe shoes at least once or twice during their career.
By the time I zip up my suitcase, he’s also ready to go. He’s not as meticulous about making sure everything fits neatly into his bag. Somehow, for the first time in my life, I find that sort of untidiness oddly endearing. It suits him—the haphazardness of it all.
It’s only seven thirty when we check out. A few other hotel guests are milling around in the lobby, frowning at the meager breakfast pickings thanks to the power outage. Luckily, it looks like we might be the first people to get out of here. Hopefully, that means we’ll beat the bulk of the traffic.
Hopefully.
Ben and I fall into an easy, steady rhythm. Though we’ve only spent a handful of days together at this point, there’s a silent sense of understanding between us. We move like magnets, instinctively aware of each other without having to say a word.
In no time at all, we’re in the car and back on the road.
To say the least, it’s a disaster zone. Ben has to do some careful navigating through this forgotten small town to avoid hitting large branches and suspicious lumps of foliage scattered across the road.
“If we get another flat tire, at least I know how to change it this time,” he comments.
“Do you have another spare back there?”
“Oh… no, I don’t.” He flinches, realizing that his new skill is basically useless if he doesn’t have a fresh tire to actually put on the car.
I feel the need to make him feel better. “At least you learned something new.”
“True.”
The awkward silence returns. I’m not sure I really know what’s going on. Is he finally annoyed with me? Is he sick and tired of being in my presence after all the chaos of yesterday? Did he finally reach his tolerance for my persistent bad attitude?
If that’s the case, I can’t exactly be mad at him for it. It’s only fair. I’ve been cold and unfriendly toward him since the rehearsal dinner. I wouldn’t blame him if he regrets letting me ride with him back to the city.
When we finally hit the highway, I’m relieved to discover that it hasn’t been too badly ravaged by the storm. There’s some scattered debris, but it looks like the flooding didn’t hit this area—or it otherwise dried up in the past few hours. Better yet, the traffic hasn’t accumulated yet. It’s easy enough for us to pull off onto an exit with a Starbucks drive-through, collect our breakfast and caffeine, and get back on the road.
“It’s eerily clear out here,” Ben comments after about half an hour of smooth sailing. “I was expecting bedlam on the roads.”
“We’re still in western Mass,” I remind him. “We might reach bedlam the closer to New York we get.”
“Good point.”
Then, once again, unbearably, the awkward silence returns.
I stare out the window, stretching my legs without really paying attention. Ben turns the radio on to a local news station—ongoing reports of the aftermath of the twin storms becomes a dull hum in the background of my thoughts.
I don’t know what to say to him. It feels stupid to blurt out Thanks for the ride, by the way. How did words flow so easily between us yesterday and now refuse to come today?
I think about what he told me last night. About his family. He shared so much of himself so willingly, like he considers me a friend or like he’s never had any reason to think that someone might use his personal troubles against him. Maybe Ben is so used to being adored by everyone that he never bothered to learn how to guard his back. That’s why he’s an open book. It must be nice to be that way. To trust easily. To want to offer your heart to anyone who offers you even the slightest of smiles.
I’ve never been that way. Anxiety and natural introversion created a cocktail of instinctive distrust within me. Even my own twin didn’t get access to every facet of my heart and soul. Then, when I started taking ballet more seriously, it was a good thing that I was private and kept to myself. It helped me stay out of the way of the more viciously competitive dancers and kept me safe from the petty sabotage that sometimes occurred in those junior classes full of spoiled teenagers.
So, if Ben is an open book, I am a locked door that someone has thrown away the key to. Still, I don’t mind that he knows things about me that I don’t usually tell anyone else. I don’t think I’ve even told Eva about the anxiety stuff before. At least, not in as much detail as I told Ben last night.
Lost in my thoughts, it takes me a moment to realize that Ben is staring at me again. He keeps glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, careful to stay on the road while still very clearly observing me.
“What?” I snap, though it doesn’t come out nearly as harshly as it might have before. “Why do you keep staring at me? Is there something on my face?”
To my surprise, the tips of Ben’s ears turn ever so slightly pink as he whips his head forward, feigning intent focus on the road ahead.
“No,” he murmurs. “I was just trying to figure out how I could have possibly forgotten a face like yours.”
Oh, hell. What am I supposed to say to that?
“Well, isn’t that kind of the point of prosopagnosia?”
Ben blinks as if he didn’t expect me to remember that detail of his backstory, let alone how to pronounce it. I refuse to admit it aloud, but I might have googled it last night while lying in the dark beside him. Not because I didn’t believe him, but because I was curious.
Evidently, I am incurably curious about this man. I’m incapable of minding my business.
“I guess so,” Ben replies with a soft chuckle. “But still.”
“Right. Well… oh, well. It is what it is. What happened, happened. At least we understand each other now.”
“Yeah… at least there’s that.”
We head into Connecticut and find ourselves faced with the first emergency re-route due to flooding. Ben smoothly follows the trickle of traffic along the safe alternative route, paying careful attention to the orange signs and ignoring the protests of the GPS.
In no time at all, we’re back on track.
“We might reach the city by noon,” he says.
“Okay. Cool. Good.”
I look at the clock. It’s nine thirty. Only two and a half more hours left in this car with him. Yesterday’s Ruby would have been thrilled at the news. Today’s Ruby is… confused. Utterly confused.
Ten minutes pass.
“Hey, Ruby?”
“Yeah?”
Ben grips the steering wheel tightly as if in need of physical support for what he’s going to say next. “Do you think you’d maybe want to see me again once we’re back in the city? Maybe we could meet at the Strand? Again?”
“Oh. Like… as friends?” The question comes out a bit breathless.
He pauses. Then, “No. No, not as friends.”
My stomach flips. “You’re asking me out?”
On a date?
Me? On a date? With Ben Hawthorne? On purpose?
Ben smiles sideways at me. “Yeah, I am. I know we’re not in the most romantic setting at the moment, but I knew I needed to ask before we got to Manhattan and you disappeared all over again.”Why do I want to say yes? That’s the foolish part of my brain talking.
“We can’t,” I say before I can think too hard about it. After all, didn’t we already have this conversation? Didn’t I already tell him that the ways things happened eleven months ago was a blessing in disguise, because as soon as we found out who each other actually was, we’d never be able to stay together?
“Can’t?” Ben echoes.
“I can’t,” I clarify. “I can’t be seen fraternizing with a benefactor. You know that.”
“Is that the only reason you’re rejecting me?”
“Ben, I—”
“Because if it is, I’ll step down from the board. I’ll make sure the Hawthorne donations are anonymous. I’ll pretend I never had anything to do with the NYC Ballet.”
“But, why?”
A harsh laugh escapes him. “Isn’t it obvious? I like you, Ruby. I want you. I mean, I want to date you. I want to—I just don’t think I can walk away from you. Not again.”
My heart thuds heavily. My head spins vaguely. I’m really glad I’m already sitting down.
I don’t know what to say. No is the correct answer. No, I can’t let you give up this opportunity that you’ve told me you’re so excited about just because you want to go on a date with me. Because what if it’s not worth it in the end? What if we don’t work out? What if I never even get promoted at all? What if everything we do is useless and stupid and a waste of time?
Worse yet, what if I say yes and then I end up falling in love with you?