29. Ruby
And here I thought that Sam had been weird because I’m shit in bed, or because he regretted sleeping with me. That would have been an issue we could have worked through more easily than the mess he just presented to me.
In the past few days, I went through all stages of a heartbreak at once. At first, I tried telling myself that he’s just another man that walked in and out of my life without leaving footprints, but at some point, I stopped believing my bullshit.
This wasn’t—isn’t just a little crush. No, I’m head over heels for this idiot and I don’t want any other man in my life ever again if it means I can have him.
Yes, even if he kills my father, and this is something I should probably talk through with a professional. I’m going to add it to the list.
Maybe this is some weird karmic shit and my father was right when he said that I don’t deserve love. For all my life, the people I’ve grown attached to left me, eventually.
Apart from Richard, but maybe Richard just doesn’t leave me because he’s too old and too polite.
I even tried stalking Sam online, but he’s like a ghost. No social media profiles, not a trace of his name anywhere. No school pictures, no nothing.
Yesterday, I was so sad that I thought about driving to the mall to talk to Richard, but I didn’t do it, and the embarrassing reason behind that was that I feared Sam would be gone when I come back.
And now I want him gone, but I also don’t.
There’s so much that I want to say and do. Starting with punching him until my knuckles hurt, followed by yelling at him until I lose my voice and then I want to kiss him until I lose my breath.
But I don’t do any of that.
Instead, I let the tears flow freely as I close the door behind me. My short-lived attempt at calming down and collecting my thoughts sinks like the Titanic as I let myself fall onto my bed.
I sob into my pillow, not even entirely sure why I am crying. Everything is too much. The revelation that I was right, that something was off about him. That there will be consequences, probably not only for my father but also for me. The nagging thought that everything Sam did was calculated, only to gain my trust. And the cherry on top is the fact that the man who is the reason behind my tears is the only one I want to console me right now.
He didn’t go after me and I’m still torn if I’m angry or happy about it. I feel so disconnected from everything, static buzzing in my whole body, and still, it hurts so fucking much. My head and my heart fight and I’m right in the middle, ripped apart between them.
He said he stayed for so long because of me, said that he likes me, but he lied before, so why wouldn’t he lie now? To save himself and to get me to help him.
He’ll drop you after he gets what he wants, the mean voice in my head tells me. You’re not worthy of love.
With a sob, I bury myself in my blanket. Guilt rises in me. Guilt for being so self-centered. I’m worried about myself, about my feelings, about my future. It probably makes me a horrible daughter, but I silence the almost nonexistent part of me that’s still a small girl, wanting to be loved by her dad so badly.
He’ll never be proud of me, would never love me, no matter what sacrifices I’d make for him. Use and discard, a pattern I start to recognize. Maybe it makes me a horrible daughter, an ungrateful piece of shit, but I prefer him facing the consequences of his actions before I—or even more people—have to suffer under his greed any longer.
I either cried myself unconscious or fell asleep because when I wake up, it’s pitch black outside. My head hurts like hell, and my entire brain feels dried up, throbbing behind my forehead as I sneak down to the kitchen.
As I come back up the stairs, I see light coming from under Samuel”s door and, for a moment, I contemplate knocking. Just to talk to him, to sort this out like adults, but I can’t bring myself to do it.
My heart feels like it was ripped out of my chest, crushed underneath heavy boots, and I’d still collect the remaining pieces and hand them over to Sam.
The next day goes by in a haze. I alternate between crying and sleeping, only interrupted by rushing down to the kitchen after checking the cameras to make sure Sam isn’t there.
The first time I go down there, I take all of his sweets with me. I don’t even like them, but he doesn’t deserve them right now. He can eat dry bread and burnt omelets for all I care.
Late at night, there’s a soft knock on my door.
“We need to talk about this, darling.”
He’s probably right, but I still can’t look at him, let alone talk to him. Nonetheless, I walk over to the door. My hand is on the handle, but I don’t open it.
Instead, I sit down on the floor, my back pressed against the wood. If he ever wants to talk to me again, he has to let me have my dramatic moment first.
“I don’t want to talk to you. And stop calling me darling.”
“Why?”
“Because—I don’t know, because I fucking say so.”
“Okay. Is dipshit better?”
I bite down on my tongue, pissed at myself for smiling.
“Shut up, Sam.”
He places something in front of my door and, with a sigh, he retreats to his own room. I wait until I hear his door falling shut before I take a look.
A plate of pancakes stands in front of my door. He must have made them himself, judging by their funny shapes. He even formed a sad face with blueberries on the top one.
I smile as I take them into my room, but at the same time, tears run down my cheeks.
It’s more than sweet, especially from someone like him. But maybe that’s exactly what he wants me to think.
The next night, it happens again. He knocks on my door, but this time, he doesn’t even ask if we can talk. He just knocks, places something on the floor, and walks away. Judging by the smell that reaches me on my bed, it’s pizza.
It’s like he’s trying to lure out an angry pet from under the couch by shaking a bag of treats and, sadly, this approach also works on me.
He ordered my favorite pizza, I realize as I slam the door shut.
I’m at the stage of grief where I’m mad. The only question is if I’m mad at him or at myself.
On the third night, I hope for sushi.
Instead, there’s a piece of paper lying on the ground, the words I’m sorry scribbled on it. I pout as I read it, not because it isn’t sushi, but because it’s getting harder and harder to be angry.
He just did his job, after all. It’s not like he came here to make me fall for him just because he thought it would be fun to break my heart. Actually, I’m more of a toxic asshole, because making him fall for me, at least on a sexual level, had been my intention before I lost my focus like a moron.
His door opens, and he comes out with his hands in the air as if I’m holding not a piece of paper but a gun. I glare at him as I keep on standing there, trying to decide what I’m going to do.
I promised myself not to talk to him for at least a week, but now I wonder what I’m hoping to get out of this silent protest.
“Can we talk? I promise I’ll go back to my room as soon as we’ve cleared a few things up.”
“Okay,” I mumble as I walk back into my room, expecting him to follow me. I sit down on my bed and for a second he stands there, unsure what to do with himself.
“Couch,” I say. “You’re stressing me out when you’re standing around like that.”
He walks over to my couch, shoving a ton of clothes to the side before there’s even enough space for him to sit down. My room went back to its natural chaotic state after I angrily decided that I’d never ever let Samuel in here again. Or anyone, to be honest.
He plays around with a few bikinis, inspecting them before he folds them.
“New?”
“Ditch the small talk,” I say, but it doesn’t come out as mean as I want it to.
He breathes in deeply, and then he starts talking. I would say that we talk, but it’s mostly him. We speak about what kind of information he needs, but we don’t speak about what happens once he gets it.
We also decide against luring my father back here. It would have been easy to tell him I ran off again, or that something happened to me, but we both assure each other that it’s better not to do it.
It would be suspicious.
I can’t speak for Sam, but that certainly isn’t my primary motivation for dragging out the time we have left.
After we are done forging our plan, he leaves. Just like he promised to. And the spark of self-doubt in the back of my mind flares up again, telling me he leaves because all of his efforts have nothing to do with me.
That it was never about me.
But the next evening, he stands in front of my door again, two bowls of ice cream in his hands and the sweetest half-smile on his face.
At that moment, I stop being mad at him.
I decide to just keep on living in fantasy land until reality catches up to me. It’s all going to shit anyway, so why not enjoy it while I can?
“You wanna watch a movie?” he asks with a smile.
I shove myself past him, nudging him softly with my shoulder, and this time, he’s the one who hurries behind me like a lost duckling.
“Look, I even put fresh strawberries in there,” he says as he hands me my bowl. He gives me the remote and in some kind of attempted peace offering, I start License to Kill.
That’s the closest I get to voicing my emotions, not that I’m very good at that to begin with. The last few days had been a deep dive into my psyche, into a few of my self-destructive behavioral ways, and I didn’t enjoy that at all.
But my decision stands and somehow, Sam”s seems to stand too. Looks like we are going to completely ignore the dark clouds that loom over our heads.
He takes my movie choice for the very thing it’s supposed to be and pulls me in his lap. God, how much I missed feeling his touch.
“At least I managed to force a bit of culture into your pretty head,” he says with a laugh. I grumble in protest, and he kisses the top of my head in response.
I’m fucking doomed.
My heart hurts as if he’s squeezing it in his hand, and still, I can’t bring myself to keep my distance. I’m too touch-starved, too desperate for his affection to tear myself away.
I don’t care if it kills me in the end.
Somehow, we form a silent agreement on blissful ignorance. His arm is around my waist, keeping me close to him while we eat our ice cream.
“What is it with you and those movies? Did they send you on this mission just for you to live out your James Bond fantasies?” He scoffs behind me, his breath tickling my ear. “Oh God, please don’t tell me that’s why you said your name is James.”
“Dipshit,” he says with a sigh, softly squeezing my waist. “Maybe. And no, my captain thought I needed a break. Told me I should view this as a vacation.”
I chuckle, tilting my head back to look at him.
“Worst vacation ever,” he whispers, smirking down at me before the smile vanishes from his face.
“I was a bit—,” he struggles as if he doesn’t know how to say it.
“Samuel, I think the word you are looking for is incompetent.”
“You’re a horrible person, Ruby Barron,” he says, holding his hand over my mouth. As if this could keep me from talking.
“You know, I can be your Bond girl,” I muffle from beneath his hand, and he only pulls it away as I lick it.
“You’re way too annoying to be a Bond girl.” There’s no real venom in his voice as he wipes his hand dry on my shirt. I don’t complain, it’s only fair.
He puts his arms around me again, absentmindedly playing with our bracelets as we watch the movie, and I wish I could ignore how much all of this still hurts.
Hours pass as we sit there, snuggled up. The movie ends but none of us wants the night to end, so Sam starts up GoldenEye, his hands never leaving my body.
Usually, he prefers devout silence when Mr. Bond is talking, but this time, he explains to me in great detail how this one is his favorite Bond movie.
It’s strangely wholesome how he shares something with me that must be important to him and I’m pretty sure that I would have zoned out twenty minutes ago with every other guy, but with him, it’s different.
Everything is different with him. Better, and I hate that I won’t allow myself to get used to it.
Someone gets shot on screen and a thought shoots through my mind.
Sam is visibly startled as I jump up from his lap and dash away to my room.
“Got something for you,” I yell back downstairs as I enter my room to search for a box that arrived a few days ago. A few days after we fucked, precisely on the day this house of cards tumbled straight to the ground.
Maybe this is my weird way of showing him I really like him. Either that or it’s completely selfish because I want him to have something from me if he doesn’t take the bracelet.
At least dropping my last name was good for anything as I called auction house after auction house, even a few private collectors in search of a special something for Sam.
He tells me to slow down as he sees me running down the stairs and I follow his command. I don’t want a fresh injury now that my hand doesn’t hurt anymore. He did a good job stitching it up.
“I almost forgot about it because I was so mad at you,” I say as I shove the wooden box towards him. I’m kneeling on the couch, almost bouncing with excitement because if I love one thing, it’s giving people presents.
Reluctantly, he inspects the box. Nothing could spoil what’s inside, especially after I was smart enough to leave the tag that came attached to it in my room.
“What is it?” he asks, and I really can’t blame him for being hesitant. My last present caused quite a bit of drama between us.
“Open it,” I say, shrugging my shoulders.
His eyes widen as he sees the handle of a gun and I can’t keep quiet any longer.
“It’saHeroWaltherPKK,” I blurt out, so quickly that he probably couldn’t understand it either way, “the original one they used while filming GoldenEye.”
“No. Ruby, no. You’re fucking insane,” he mutters as he takes the gun out of the box with uttermost care. As if he’s just handling the British Crown Jewels. Well, for him, those two things are probably equally important.
“I’m happy you like it,” I whisper, snuggling up against him.