Ruby stopped reading. Fate had made that their last encounter, and later that day, she’d met Simon at her job interview. He’d been the assistant manager at Mona’s, and he was the one who’d interviewed her. As soon as he saw her, he’d said, “Ruby, hi. It’s so nice to see you again.”
She hadn’t recognized him. At all. He was tall and cute, with curly brown hair and hazel eyes. He’d looked embarrassed. “I was in your art class…?” She’d started to squirm, wishing she could place him. “Three years ago? A beginning painting class?” She’d stared at him blankly.
He’d given a bitter little laugh. “Shoot, I just sat next to you for an entire semester. Why should I think you’d remember me?” She’d sighed. Sean had been in that art class, and he’d been her entire focus. So much so, that she hadn’t even noticed this cutie, who had obviously noticed her.
Because she’d been so disheartened about Sean, when Simon asked her out a month later, she went, and they’d dated happily and then comfortably and then unhappily, for almost three years.
Now she was back in Kamata to try again with Sean. She’d come full circle.
She was no longer that shy, almost nineteen-year-old with only one previous lover—and he’d been bad—college freshman.
Sean didn’t stand a chance.
She began flipping through the book again. The next few pages were filled with numerous sketches of Sean. Some were cartoons, while others were quite realistic.
She came upon a list of strategies to get him and smiled. Some were good. Well worth trying. She especially liked number twelve. “When Millicent is out, call and leave a message saying either, ‘Thanks for last night, you were great,’ or ‘Went to the doctors and I’m definitely pregnant. How are we going to hide this from Millicent?’”
She’d been both smarter and more ruthless than she remembered being.
She’d wanted a baby by him, and on the very last page she’d written down their future kids’ names. One boy, Dylan (which she no longer liked. Now it would be Garrett or Liam), and twin girls named Cheyenne and Kiowa. She shook her head, grinning sheepishly. She’d been into American Indian tribe names because Sean was half Hupa, but now those names made her cringe, and twins were too much work. Now she only wanted two kids. One boy, one girl. Three years apart, in that order. The girl would now be Shane. Garrett or Liam, and Shane Chaplin. Beautiful.
She pictured them. They’d have long, silky black hair, and the girl would be blue-eyed like her. Maybe a ballet dancer. The boy would look more like his dad, and he’d be into sports. They’d both be tall and thin and graceful and gorgeous.
She set the book down and went over to her drawing table to get a good pen.
She yawned and opened the scrapbook up to the first fresh page in the back. She titled the page, “Sean Search,” and put Wednesday, October sixth underneath it.
She caught the book up to date with all the stuff she’d done to find him in the past month, and the glorious finds from the last two days. The pictures she had snapped from her car last night were tiny and blurry. She needed a new cell phone. In that entire burst she’d taken, only one frame would maybe work. She’d already printed the picture, and she pasted it to the page, wishing it were better. If she hadn’t known that was him, she wouldn’t be able to tell.
She couldn’t wait to paste in his pictures from the yearbook. They were the first clear photos she’d ever had of him.
She’d drawn him from memory thousands of times, but she’d never had an actual photo to gaze at before. Sean did not have an active social media life that she could find. He wasn’t on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, and she had wasted a serious amount of time looking for him and James Monroe, who was the only one of his friends whose name she knew, so she could steal his pictures. …Nothing.
She finished writing, but she didn’t set the book down. Instead, she hugged it to her chest, burrowed deeper into the quilt, and closed her eyes.
Sean waited at the front of the church, looking nervous and impatient and sexy in his beautifully fitted tuxedo. Pink and white roses were everywhere, and the church was filled to overflowing with friends who had come out to celebrate their day with them. When the doors opened and Ruby appeared in an ivory lace, form-fitting, mermaid wedding dress—her butt so perky it was the envy of every female within a ten-mile radius—his eyes grew wide. She was perfect. He kept his grin as tears began flowing, unchecked, down his cheeks, choked up with the happiness that overwhelmed him when he realized that he had done it. He had won her hand and was going to be allowed to marry her! He was so overcome with desire that he raised her veil and kissed her immediately, before their vows, while the minister laughed and admonished him gently and the audience chuckled…
She wiped her eyes. She hadn’t felt this hopeful about things in a long time.
Her home phone rang. She glanced at the clock and it was just after one a.m. This could not be good. …She went over and looked at the caller ID on the phone, surprised to see Hilary’s number. She’d been expecting The Creepy Weirdo Rapist. She picked up the phone.
“Why didn’t you call my cell?”
“I did, multiple times, and you didn’t pick up. I tried this number as a last resort, but I figured you were having a better date than you had expected. So, how’d it go?”
Ruby smiled. “My cell never rang. Anyway, isn’t this a little late?” She fished her phone out of her purse and looked at it. It was dead again.
“We both know you weren’t asleep. Lemme hear all the gory details. I’m living vicariously; the hubs isn’t due back for over a week. Thrill me.”
Ruby plugged her cell phone into the charger and snorted. “I had a terrible date if you want the truth.”
“Aaaaaah. Even better.”
Ruby stood up and stretched. She locked the yearbook and her Sean scrapbook in the drawer in the coffee table and hung the keys back up. She told Hilary everything, unloading the dishwasher as they talked. She finished up with, “He was boring and weird and scary. For a few minutes, I thought he might rape me.”
“You were lucky to get away,” Hilary said, sounding outraged. “Call the police!”
“And tell them what?”
“That he almost raped you.”
“How do you prove someone almost raped you? Impossible.”
After a moment Hilary said in a disbelieving voice, “How do you find these men?”
“God only knows.” She brightened. “I do have some good news on the Sean front though. Turns out, Jeremy went to Kamata High, same as Sean. I borrowed his yearbook from Sean’s senior year and I’m gonna scan all his pictures tomorrow, and—”
“Wait a second Ruby,” Hilary said. “That sounds like…Remember what happened with that friend of Simon’s, what’s his name?”
“That was a completely different situation—”
“…Curtis! Curtis McSomething-or-other. It’s not that different. I’m just reminding you that you can get…obsessive.”
“What?”
“I promised myself I’d say something if I thought you were close to crossing the line again. Well, you’re close. Use your head. Pull back. Be careful.”
“I don’t need a nanny,” Ruby said, stabbing the phone off with her thumb. “Nosy bitch.”
CHAPTER 6
Ruby was up early, yawning, as she scanned yearbook pictures into her computer. When she was finished, she only allowed herself a quick half hour to screw around online. Email, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, her two favorite blogs, and a quick check of Pinterest—done. She needed to finish drawing her strips.
She spent the rest of the morning at her drawing table, making good progress, until she got stuck on a panel of one of her longer Sunday strips. In the strip, Shelby was painting her toenails and talking on the phone with her best friend, Lila. Ruby kept trying to draw this rather mundane scene, but it wasn’t working for some reason. She knew from experience that if she tried to force it, the results would suck.
With her deadline looming, she forced it anyway.
She lost track of time as she drew and discarded drawing after drawing in disgust. Finally, after a frustrating hour, she got the drawing passable, which she was willing to settle for. She taped it to her light table, plugged in the table, and nothing happened. She flipped the switch on and off a few times fruitlessly. The bulb was burnt out.
She checked her supply drawer, and she didn’t have an extra bulb. Damn it. Now, she’d have to take the time to drive all the way down to the art store and…Hey. While she was in town, she could drop the yearbook off in Jeremy’s mailbox. She wouldn’t have to see him, and this would leave him with no excuse to contact her again. She’d be rid of him once and for all.
She clapped her hands together once, stood up, and glanced at her watch. 12:31. Might as well grab some lunch while she was out, since she still hadn’t bought groceries.
That decided, she stretched and padded on bare feet to her bedroom to change. She passed her bike leaning against the wall in the hallway, and, on a whim, decided to bike there.
She’d bought the bike with her first paycheck from her strip, but she’d only used it a handful of times because San Francisco had been too hilly. She needed to start making more time for exercise. Sitting at a drawing table all day was bad for the figure. She was thin, and she wanted to stay that way as she got older.
It was a cool day. She put on black yoga pants that she knew made her butt look amazing, a white thermal top and her cross trainers. She dug around in the back of her drawer until she found her ancient blue and purple tie-dyed T-shirt. The neck was stretched out, it was threadbare, and had several tiny holes around the bottom hem, but Sean had once complimented her on it, and she knew it made her blue eyes pop.
As she fluffed up her pixie cut, she glanced in the mirror and noticed a faint smudge on her neck. She rubbed the area, wincing. It did not wipe away. Hickeys were so…trashy. She looked again, and it was suddenly so huge and conspicuous that she couldn’t believe she hadn’t spotted it earlier that morning when she’d brushed her teeth. Damn him. She wasn’t some piece of meat.
She smeared gobs of concealer on her neck, but it was still noticeable, so she covered it with foundation. How obvious. She turned this way and that in the mirror, sighed, and grabbed a light blue infinity scarf that covered the hickey, but looked strange with her outfit. That couldn’t be helped. She wasn’t the first unfortunate soul to bear the ravages of being attacked. Hopefully, it would fade soon.
She decided against lipstick. She was exercising for heaven’s sake, and she wouldn’t let her fear of meeting Sean rule her life.
She stuffed the burnt-out bulb, the yearbook, and her wallet, cell phone, and keys into her backpack, put on her bike helmet, opened the front door, and darted back into the bathroom so she could put on the darkest shade of red lipstick that she owned. You just never knew who you might meet, and it would help to draw attention away from her neck.
▬▬▬
When she arrived at the art store almost an hour later, she was out of breath and sweaty. Her butt ached, and her thighs were shaky from all the unaccustomed exercise. Though it was a bright, crisp, windy day, she was steaming in the thermal underwear top.
The art store was in the middle of town, easily eight to ten hilly miles from her house. This was already, by far, the longest bike ride she’d ever been on in her life, and it was only half over. She’d been reduced to walking her bike uphill twice, and this was not turning out to be one of her better ideas. She dreaded the ride home with that long trudge up Shiloh Hill waiting for her at the end of it. And the return trip would be into the wind most of the way.
She locked her bike to a telephone pole covered with fliers for a Green Party rally, clipped her helmet onto her handlebars, and went inside the shop.
She browsed the store happily, filling the bottom of her basket with pens and brushes, Bristol board, an expensive watercolor set that she’d read about on a blog and had been longing to try, as well as two fluorescent light bulbs for her light table. She was trying to decide between two different brands of non-photo blue pencils, when she felt somebody pat her butt.
“Hey!” she yelled, smacking at the offending hand as she turned. “Get off me!” She recognized Jeremy as the butt patter, as everyone in the tiny store turned and gaped at her. She spun counterclockwise so her back wouldn’t be to him, took a step backwards, and felt her calves touch the shelf behind her. She reached out a hand to steady herself.
“Ruby! What a surprise! I thought I recognized you! You do a lot of squats, huh? Are you feeling better? What are you doing here?” he said.
She scurried away from him and began weaving around the store trying to lose him, while he shadowed her closely, keeping up a running commentary. “Ruby? Hey, didn’t you hear me? Ruby? Hello? Hellloooo—”
She considered ditching her basket, but she really needed and wanted these supplies. She finally gave up and got in line, turning sideways so he couldn’t grab her again. He stood beside her and poked her in the shoulder as everyone in the show craned their necks to watch the spectacle.
“Ruby? Hello? I said, ‘What are you doing here?’”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” she finally muttered.
“I’m here buying art supplies too. What a coincidence!”
His hands were empty.
“I’m already done though. I only bought one thing. They gave me a tiny bag that fits in my pocket.” He patted the front pocket on his pants. “I must have been in the rest room when you arrived. What luck, huh?” She felt the tension in her shoulders relax. In the light of day, and far from his creepy, old-lady house, her terror from the night before felt ludicrous. This man was not a threat to her, he was a buffoon.
The clerk rang up her total while Jeremy shook his head. “I just can’t get over the coincidence of us both needing art supplies at the same time. It’s like fate is trying to tell us something, huh?”
Ruby threw him a blank look, collected her ATM card from the clerk, and stuffed her bag into her backpack. She noted his yearbook again. Good. At least he had saved her tired body the bike ride to his house to drop it off in his mailbox.
She pushed the door open, and he followed her over to her bike. She put her pack on the ground, squatted down, and fished the yearbook from inside it. She handed it up to him. “Here. I might as well give this back to you now. Thanks.”
He took it reluctantly. “But I thought you wanted to show it to Hilary so she—”
Ruby stood up and used her fake laugh she’d learned by watching her mother. “I talked to Hilary, and I got it wrong. The boy she dated went to Calua High school with her, not Kamata. I was planning on riding by your house and giving this back to you when I was finished here, but you’ve saved me the trip.”
He looked distressed. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have waited for you! We could still go back there now if you want.”
She unlocked her bike. “No.”
Jeremy said, “Oh, wow. Another amazing coincidence. I rode my bike here too!” He pointed down the street to a dark green mountain bike chained to a parking meter. It was the car parked behind the bicycle that caught her attention, though. It was a cherry red convertible with vanity plates that said “Player.” As she stared at it, something stirred in the back of her mind but before she could grab it, the thought swam away.
“Nice bike,” she finally said, fastening her helmet.
When she put her chin down, Jeremy was staring at her neck, eyes shining. “What…what happened to your neck Ruby?” he asked.
She fluffed up her scarf, feigning unconcern. “It’s a hickey. They happen sometimes.”
He smiled, and she was reminded of a cat who’d swallowed a canary. “Yes, they do. And they sure are fun to work on. Right?” He grabbed her hand, brought it quickly to his mouth, and kissed it.
Ew. “Let go of me,” she said, snatching her hand back. She scrubbed it up and dow
n on her side, but the slimy feeling wouldn’t scrub away. She scrubbed harder.
“You going home now?”
Don’t lead him home! She turned to him, smiled brightly, and said, “In a little while. First I’m gonna go get something to eat.” As soon as she finished speaking, she clapped her hand over her mouth, wishing she could pluck the words back out of the air, unspoken.
“Me too! Why don’t we go someplace together?”
The time had come for the talk. She felt a flutter of dread, which she smothered by taking off her bike helmet. She couldn’t have a serious talk in a bike helmet. Hell, no one could.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said, as she hung her helmet on her handlebars again. He started to speak but she cut him off. “I’m not ready to be in a relationship with you right now.”
“That’s okay. I’m a patient man. I can wait until you’re ready. In fact, I have sort of a surprise for you. I was planning on calling you later, but since you’re here…”
“Look, you are just not getting this. I’m not interested—”
“I have two tickets to see Carmen Figaro lecture at GSU Saturday afternoon! I was wondering if you’d like to go with me? And maybe get some supper afterwards?”
Ruby caught her breath. Carmen Figaro was her favorite romance writer of all time, and she’d tried to get tickets for her and Hil to go to the lecture, but it had sold out quickly.
“How…how did you know I liked Carmen Figaro?” she said. She knew she had never mentioned that to…well, to anyone, really, except Hilary, who loved her books as well.
“I noticed one of her books in your car. I told you that I have a photographic memory for little details.” He looked almost apologetic about this.
“When? At the grocery store?” At his nod she said, “But…then how’d you get the tickets? That lecture’s been sold out for months.”
“My mom was an advisor at GSU for years before she died, and I still have contacts at the college. What time should I pick you up?”
She sighed, wishing he’d just give her the tickets so she and Hilary could go. Easy come, easy go. “No. I’m not going. I told you, I’m in a serious relationship. You and I have no future—”
Drawn To You: A Psychological thriller Page 6
