by Cara Malone
They went upstairs after preparing the bar and got cleaned up for the party. Ruby changed into a cute tea dress that she found in her closet – she vaguely remembered it from one of her Delta Zeta formals – and Max was wearing her khaki pants again with a blouse she’d borrowed from Ruby. She told Max it wasn’t a formal event – she just liked wearing dresses, but Max insisted, and while she looked good in the blouse, it seemed obvious to Ruby that it wasn’t her usual style.
They went out to the patio together, where Jade and Celeste were chatting near the pool and her father had come home from work and was lighting the grill. A couple of tables were set up in front of the pool, although no one was using them yet, and Ruby led Max over to one of them.
Ruby smiled at her and Max asked, “What?”
“You’re beautiful,” Ruby said. She reached across the table to take Max’s hand and added, “Thank you for coming to Chicago with me.”
“You’re welcome,” Max said, squeezing her hand. “And I can’t hold a candle to you. You look stunning in that dress.”
“This old thing?” Ruby asked, grinning facetiously at her. “I’ve had it for years.”
It was nice to have this quiet moment together before the chaos began, but it didn’t last long. The guests began to arrive, Ruby’s mother and sister carted plate after plate of food from the kitchen to the grill and to the buffet tables near the bar, and Celeste flipped through radio stations on an iPod near the bar that controlled the sound system to pump music into the back yard.
Jade’s high school friends were the first to arrive, giving a cursory hello to Ruby and Max before gathering poolside, and a few of Lorna and Lamar’s friends also came and sat at the other table. Ruby and Max got up to make themselves a plate when Ruby’s father put the first batch of kebabs on the buffet, and as they were standing in line, she noticed Megan coming through the kitchen.
Ruby was sure the party must have gone on around them, but to her it felt like everything stood still for a split second while she waited for Max’s reaction. She didn’t know how Max would take Megan’s presence, and to be perfectly honest she didn’t quite know how she would react, either. The last time she’d seen Megan, she was asking her to leave her dorm in Granville. Ruby wasn’t expecting butterflies or fireworks or anything like that, but she thought it might hurt to see her again.
Megan glanced around as she entered the back yard, caught Ruby’s eyes for a moment and gave her a quick smile, and then made a beeline for Jade and Celeste. That was it, and Ruby felt nothing. Nothing mixed with a bit of relief.
The world spun back into motion and Max slid her arm possessively around Ruby’s waist as she passed her a plate.
“You should eat some of these veggie sticks,” Max said. “I hear the sous-chef who prepared them really knows her stuff.”
At least Max wasn’t fixating on Megan’s presence. She barely looked at Megan, and now all of her attention was firmly on the food, but that was just fine. Ruby could get through a night of ignoring her ex-girlfriend, but she wasn’t so sure how she would have handled it if Max had decided to obsess over her presence.
“I intend to,” Ruby said, wondering if she’d turned a mole hill into a mountain after all. “I bet you can really taste the knife skills on those perfectly cut carrots.”
Her first indication that Max wasn’t comfortable with Megan after all came when she tried to lead her over to one of the tables to eat. Jade, Celeste, and Megan, along with Jade’s high school buddies, had taken possession of one of the tables, and Ruby was angling for the other one but Max wouldn’t budge from the end of the buffet.
“Come on, babe,” Ruby said. “I don’t want to hold my plate and try to eat a kebab at the same time.”
“Do you want to eat in the kitchen?” Max asked.
“Umm, not really,” Ruby said apologetically. “The party’s out here.”
“Okay, how about at the bar?” Max pointed to the bar stools that went around one side of the counter. “It’s quieter over there.”
“Sure,” Ruby said. At least it was a compromise.
They went over to the bar, which was not highly trafficked yet since everyone was still eating, and sat down. Ruby felt isolated there, far from the action. Her father had finished the kebabs and was now waiting in line at the buffet to taste the fruits of his labor, and her mother was walking around, making sure everyone had what they needed to enjoy the meal. The rest of the guests were all chatting together at the tables by the pool, and it felt like Ruby and Max were an island unto themselves.
None of Ruby’s high school friends had arrived yet – the bunch that were coming were the chronically late types anyway – but she wondered what they’d think if they came into the party and saw her sitting in the corner like this? It was so unlike her not to be mingling.
They talked for a little while about unimportant things, like how the tablecloths kept getting picked up by the wind and how delicious the ambrosia turned out, and then Ruby set down her fork and said, “Max?”
“Ruby?”
“I know parties aren’t your thing, but would you do me a favor?”
“What?”
“Would you meet my friends when they get here, so I don’t have to feel like I spent the entire night sitting a million miles away from everybody else?”
“We’re only about twenty-five feet away,” Max corrected, but then she added, “But we can go talk to people if you want. Can I eat my kebab first?”
“Of course,” Ruby said, smiling at Max. “Thank you, babe.”
Unfortunately, this order of events was not the one that ultimately played out. A few minutes later, as Ruby was reaching over the counter to grab a bottle of beer and Max was finishing off her second kebab, Megan ambled over with Celeste in tow.
“Hey,” Ruby said as she approached, feeling a bit of trepidation rising in her throat. She usually prided herself on her ability to navigate any social situation with ease, but she was at a loss when it came to this one.
“Hi,” Megan said. “Jade told us we could serve ourselves.”
“Oh,” Ruby said, suddenly remembering that they were sitting at the bar, not just in the two farthest chairs from the rest of the party. She wondered if she should ask Celeste whether she was of age, but that would probably only make this situation more awkward. Instead, she just gestured to the bar and said, “Have at it.”
She watched Max, who had her eyes down on her plate and was pretending that Megan and Celeste weren’t even there. Megan stepped behind the bar, grabbing a couple of glasses, a bottle of whiskey, and the sour mix.
Ruby snorted before she could stop herself and said, “You still haven’t learned how to make anything else?”
A whiskey sour was Megan’s signature drink, the thing she made at every single sorority party Delta Zeta threw, and it had become so habitual for Ruby that even now, it was the first thing she thought of when she was drinking liquor. She’d had one at The Rainbow Room last week and it hadn’t even occurred to her that the reason she ordered it could be traced back to Megan.
“I know how to make other drinks,” she said defensively. “This one’s my signature.”
“Sure you do,” Ruby said, rolling her eyes. Then she glanced over at Max, hoping that she hadn’t unintentionally gotten too familiar with her ex. Max just looked irritated that she hadn’t been able to finish her meal in peace, though, and Ruby was feeling supremely uncomfortable with the dual imperatives of making sure Max handled the interaction well and also being a good host to her guests. Maybe because of this discomfort, Ruby was suddenly having trouble keeping her mouth shut. “Well, you may be a one-trick pony behind the bar, but you make a good whiskey sour. I still drink the damn things, you know.”
Well, that definitely sounded too familiar, she thought, wondering how to get herself out of this moment. For all the times that Max was brusque and scared away people who misunderstood her blunt demeanor for rudeness, she thought now would be a good time to use
that to their advantage, but Max just watched the exchange between Ruby and Megan.
“You want one?” Megan asked, then she glanced at Max. “I could make you both one.”
“Oh,” Ruby said, becoming flustered. She was being an absolutely terrible hostess, and she couldn’t remember a time when she’d been this nervous before. She’d never had to broker an exchange between her ex- and current girlfriends before. “Sorry. This is Max, my girlfriend. Max, this is Megan.”
Megan smiled warmly at Max, extending her hand across the bar, and Max took it grudgingly, for just a second before dropping it and picking up her fork again. She stuffed a bite of ambrosia into her mouth and said, “I don’t drink.”
“And I’ve got a beer,” Ruby said, laughing nervously. “But thanks.”
“No problem,” Megan said tentatively, glancing back over to the table where Jade and her friends were all laughing and carrying on. She obviously wanted to be there instead of here, but she’d begun to make the drinks and so now she was stuck at the bar until her task was complete. Like Ruby, she had a hard time turning off the charm in social situations, so she continued chatting with them while she mixed the drinks. “So you’re staying with your parents all summer?”
“Yeah,” Ruby said. “And you’re still in Evanston?”
“Yep,” Megan said, pouring a double shot of bourbon into a cocktail shaker along with the requisite lemon juice. “It’s only thirty minutes away so I can come into the city whenever I want, visit my parents, and crash a Satterwhite party or two.”
Celeste and Ruby laughed politely, but Max just kept watching her mix the drink with a resentful look on her face. Ruby wondered why Celeste was still standing there – surely she didn’t want a whiskey sour so badly that it was worth subjecting herself to this painfully tense conversation.
“It sounds like you’re getting friendly with my sister,” Ruby said, ribbing Megan without any sincerity.
“You could say that,” Megan said, distributing the contents of the shaker into two tumblers and passing one of the whiskey sours to Celeste. “We’ve hung out a few times.”
She took a sip and Max continued to scowl at her, and Ruby thought that one of two things needed to happen – Megan had to take her drink and leave, or Ruby would have to turn the conversation around. She slid her arm around Max’s waist, cuddling into her a little more than she would ordinarily do within her parents’ sight lines, and asked Megan, “So how’s medical school going?”
It was better than the stilted conversation about how good of friends Megan and Jade were becoming, and Ruby figured this just might give Max an entry point into the conversation. There were a million questions one could ask a medical student, and a dozen different ways that Max could ask her go-to question – what’s your favorite book?
“Fabulous,” Megan said sarcastically. “I’ve made one friend, she’s a stage five clinger, and I’m pretty sure everyone else thinks that if I get an A, that means there are less As to go around for them.”
The last time Ruby spoke to Megan – when she came to Granville in the fall – she mentioned troubles with her classmates, and it sounded like things hadn’t improved.
“That’s not how grading systems work at all,” Max said. “If anything, curving grades produces the opposite effect.”
“Yeah,” Megan said with an uncertain laugh. “Well, they don’t curve in medical school.”
“They don’t curve in library school either,” Max said. “Or user experience design school.”
It was clear that Max was trying to challenge Megan, to one-up her, and Ruby decided to play along.
“Max is double-majoring in grad school,” she said, and while this elicited a look of surprise from Megan, Celeste was the one who seemed to be impressed with this statement.
“That’s an accomplishment,” she said. “I have a hard enough time keeping up with my classes and I’m studying English. I don’t want to brag, but it happens to be my native language.”
The four of them laughed and Ruby was thankful for the comic relief. Then Megan asked, “So what do you want to do with those degrees when you graduate?”
“I plan to be a systems librarian,” Max said curtly.
Ruby waited for her to elaborate, to provide the explanatory information she knew that Megan and Celeste would be waiting for, but she didn’t. Ruby couldn’t let her answer just hang there like that, though, so she added for Max, “They’re the behind-the-scenes people who keep all the technology at the library running. She’ll be handling stuff like the servers, the databases, the library website, and all the public computer terminals.”
“Wow, that sounds intense,” Megan said. “I feel like I spend about forty hours a week at the library since I started med school and I had no idea all of that was going on while I sat in my little study carrel.”
“There are a lot of technical services people in the library that you never see,” Max said.
Again, the answer was curt, and while Ruby couldn’t really blame Max for it, she wished that her explanation of their relationship earlier – and her apology for Megan’s presence tonight – had been enough to allay Max’s jealousy for the evening and avoid this chilly reception. She made one last ditch effort to keep the conversation going and to endear Megan to Max with the question, “So what’s the best book you’ve discovered so far in med school?”
It wasn’t quite Max’s typical inquiry, but it was the closest thing Ruby could muster based on the conversation at hand.
“Well,” Megan said, considering for a moment. At least she was putting more thought into the question than Jade had. “One of my textbooks is Gray’s Anatomy, which I find pretty interesting due to the history of the book, but I’d have to say that my favorite is one that I picked up on a whim at the bookstore a few months ago. It’s called Working Stiff, and it’s a memoir written by one of the forensic pathologists who worked in the aftermath of 9/11. I couldn’t put it down.”
“That sounds so morbid,” Celeste said, looking a little bit alarmed as she took another sip of her drink. Ruby was studying Max’s face, though, and she thought she could see a glimmer of interest in her eyes.
“It was really fascinating,” Megan said, and she was about to elaborate when Max stood up abruptly.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she announced, picking up her plate and walking away from the bar. She went over to the trash bin at the end of the buffet and pitched her plate, then headed straight into the house.
Ruby watched, bewildered at this sudden turn.
“Did I say something to offend her?” Megan asked.
“Umm,” Ruby stuttered, not giving a response. The truth was that she had no idea if Max was offended, or angry, or if she really did just have to go to the bathroom. Ruby turned back to Megan and Celeste and said apologetically, “She’s just not much of a party person. I better go check on her.”
As she rose from her bar stool, Ruby thought that she finally understood the exhaustion that Max always complained of in social situations. That conversation with Megan had been one of the most strenuous of Ruby’s life, and if every bit of small talk with a stranger felt like that to Max, then Ruby had to give her credit for even trying. She never quite understood it when Max tried to explain it to her before – mostly because they’d been so caught up in themselves that they hardly ever left their dorm and she never got the chance to see Max socializing. Ruby found that she didn’t have much stamina for it, and she hoped that the rest of the conversations they’d have tonight wouldn’t be nearly so difficult since they wouldn’t involve negotiating a contentious peace treaty with her ex-girlfriend.
CHAPTER 8
Max headed for the house. She really did have to go to the bathroom, but she realized it only after she’d made up the excuse. Mostly, she just didn’t want to be stuck in a conversation about how interesting Ruby’s ex-girlfriend was. Max didn’t want to know Megan’s favorite book because she hoped never to see her again.
&nbs
p; The night Max ran into Megan in Granville, she’d been sloppy drunk and hanging all over Ruby. They had been on the verge of fucking, to Max’s eyes, and Max wanted Megan out of her life just as much then as she did now. The thought that she would have Ruby all to herself all summer was enough to make Max feel sick to her stomach, and it didn’t help that she was gorgeous.
Max hadn’t gotten a good look at Megan when she was visiting Ruby last fall because she was distracted by how angry Megan’s presence made her, but she saw her tonight and Megan was beautiful. She had the same preppy, sorority girl vibe as Ruby, and her Irish red hair and sparkling green eyes were enough to suck anyone into them. She was charming and fun, and seemed like she’d end up being the life of the party tonight while Max did all she could just to keep her head above the quicksand.
Max went inside the house and steered straight for the guest bathroom in the foyer. Like everything else in the house, it was unnecessarily large and expensively decorated, with gold-trimmed wallpaper and the softest hand towels Max had ever used. It would do just fine as the setting for the anxiety attack she felt brewing in the back of her throat.
When she was done with the toilet, she went over to the sink and splashed water on her face, careful to keep it away from her hair, which she’d spent a lot of time on this afternoon. She’d have to go back out there at some point, and she didn’t want to look like she’d just had a breakdown in the guest bathroom, even if that’s what actually happened.
She leaned against the marble sink and looked at herself in the mirror, gilded bathroom accessories all around her. This room, like the rest of the house, was a reminder that nothing in Ruby’s world seemed to make sense to Max anymore. She thought she knew Ruby when it was just the two of them in Granville, but after a week in Chicago, Max was finally beginning to understand what Mira meant about being in a bubble. If Max hadn’t anticipated this house, and Ruby’s parents, and Megan, then maybe she didn’t know her after all.
