by Cara Malone
CHAPTER 15
The rest of the week went by quickly and relatively smoothly after Max’s momentary jealousy during the yoga class. Ruby was able to win her over with a little extra attention – and a very slow, sensual, teasing massage that evening – and then because she didn’t want to spoil the trip with the risk of any further unwarranted jealousy, they spent the rest of the week doing what Max wanted.
In the mornings, they got up early and worked on the landscaping crew, and it only took another full day to get all the pea gravel dumped into the flower beds. Ruby was so sore from the effort of hauling over fifty heavy bags of gravel back and forth that she could barely move that evening, and that worked out just as well for Max. Her primary objective in the evenings was to pull Ruby into her room as soon after dinner as possible and stay there all night, watching movies, making out, and dozing off here and there.
It felt a lot like life at the university, and things were finally getting back to normal between them. The specter of Max’s proposal was no longer looming over them, and the subject of Megan hadn’t come up at all since Ruby’s first night in Granville. She hoped this meant that Max had finally realized her jealousy was unfounded.
The night before she was due to go back to Chicago, Ruby and Max found that they had the house all to themselves. Janet and Nick went out for the weekly date night that they had maintained ever since they started dating twenty-five years ago – something Ruby found charming and inspiring when Janet told her about their history that morning over breakfast.
“I think it’s really sweet that your parents still take the time to do that,” Ruby said to Max as they watched Nick and Janet pull out of the driveway.
“Do what?” Max asked.
“Date each other,” Ruby said. “It shows how committed they are to their relationship, and I bet it helps them keep things fresh.”
“I guess, but they go to the same restaurant almost every time,” Max said. “If it’s not the steakhouse we went to the other day, then it’s the Italian place that makes the gnocchi my mom likes.”
“I don’t think the food is the point,” Ruby said, slipping her hand into Max’s. “It’s the gesture of setting aside time every week to show each other you still care to spend time together. Speaking of which, what do you want to do tonight?”
Max shot her a lustful look, then dragged her into the bedroom. They made urgent, emotional love, trying to memorize each other’s bodies for their final weeks apart before the school year began. Then when they were spent and laying in a heap together on the bed, with at least another hour left before Nick and Janet would be home, Max ran her hand through Ruby’s thick hair and asked, “Do you want to watch a movie?”
“Sure,” Ruby said. “You know, we only have one more on the list.”
“What is it?”
“Amelie,” Ruby answered. “I brought it with me just in case.”
She crawled out of bed, wrapping a sheet around herself as she went over to her duffel bag and dug through it and Max watched her fondly.
“I think watching movies is like our version of date night,” she said as Ruby found the DVD and took it over to the television in the corner of the room.
“Yeah,” Ruby said. “It’s definitely one of our traditions. Might be nice to go out to eat every once in a while, though, instead of getting take-out all the time.”
“Well, since we’re done with the Greatest Hits in Cinema According to Ruby Satterwhite, I guess we’ll have to,” Max said as Ruby climbed back into bed.
“That would be nice,” Ruby said. “Although there’s always the Greatest Hits According to Max Saddler. We’ll have to work on creating that list next.”
She got comfortable, wrapping her arms around Max, and settled in. She’d seen Amelie at least a half-dozen times already, discovering it in her high school French class and watching it so many time since then that she had the whole thing practically memorized. The film was subtitled, so Max watched intently and Ruby let her mind wander a bit, stealing glances over at Max periodically.
They only had a few more waking hours together before she headed back to Chicago, and something had been persistently at the back of her mind all week. When Amelie discovered the memory box belonging to the previous tenant of her apartment, Ruby reached for the remote.
“Max,” she said tentatively, pausing the movie. “Can I ask you a question?”
“You just did.”
“Can I ask another?” A grin was spreading involuntarily across her lips now, and her heart was beating a little faster in her chest.
“What?”
Ruby sat upright, facing Max and taking a deep breath before asking, “Can I see the ring?”
“You said no,” Max said, a confused expression clouding her eyes. Ruby hoped she hadn’t just said something that would end their week together with a fight, or hurt feelings.
“I know I did,” she said carefully. What she said next was a thought she hadn’t even fully articulated in her mind yet, and her heart was racing now. “I didn’t mean no forever, though. I just meant no in that moment. You were upset, and I didn’t want to get engaged in an emotional moment.”
“Almost all proposals are emotional moments,” Max pointed out.
“You know what I mean,” Ruby said. “It was emotional in a bad way. I just don’t think I can go home still wondering what the ring looks like. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it all summer.”
“Do you want to wear it back to Chicago?”
She shouldn’t have mentioned it. Ruby felt trepidation rising in her throat, and she wished she could take back all of her silly curiosity and just watch the movie. She admitted, “No, I still don’t think I’m – we’re - ready for that. I just really want to see it.”
“I’m not going to show you the ring if you’re not going to wear it,” Max said, and Ruby was relieved to see that Max didn’t seem upset by this. She looked mildly annoyed, but mostly because Ruby was making a pest of herself, batting her lashes at Max and acting like an impatient kid begging to peek at her presents on Christmas Eve.
“Please,” Ruby begged, grinning at Max. “I’m dying.”
“You’re not dying.”
“Okay, I’m not,” Ruby said, “but I’m incredibly curious. Is it white or yellow gold?”
Max glared at her.
“Silver?”
“Fuck off,” Max said, pushing Ruby away but failing to keep a straight face. A smile spread over her lips for just a moment, then she went back to acting surly.
Ruby climbed into Max’s lap, grinning as she straddled her. “Is it in your end table?”
She lunged for the drawer, and Max put her hand out to stop her.
“Are you insane?” Max asked. “Who would keep something that valuable in a drawer?”
She pulled Ruby back into her lap, holding her by the wrists to keep her from rooting through more of her stuff. Ruby was having fun teasing Max, and they were both laughing at this new game.
Ruby narrowed her eyes at Max and asked, “Do your parents have a safe?”
She made a move to lunge off the bed, but Max held her in place.
“I’m not showing it to you,” Max said, and after a tense summer in which Ruby felt like she was always searching for the right words to bring Max back to her, everything felt right again.
She kissed the tip of Max’s nose, then raised an eyebrow and asked, “How many diamonds does it have?”
“Zero,” Max answered, “because I’m going to return it first thing tomorrow morning.”
Ruby opened her mouth wide in mock horror and Max threw her down on the bed, climbing on top of her and kissing her. They rolled around on the bed for a few minutes, making out and wrestling each other for the dominant position. Then when Ruby had managed to get Max on her back, she pulled away momentarily to say, “You know I’m teasing you, right?”
“About what?”
“I don’t care how many diamonds it has,” she said
. “Or if it came out of a gumball machine, or if there’s no ring at all. I love you, Max.”
“I love you, too,” Max said. “And if you’ll settle for plastic then I’m definitely returning this one tomorrow.”
Ruby grabbed the nearest pillow and smacked Max over the head with it, and the night ended much the same way most of their nights in Granville ended. They made love again, their bodies becoming one in a way that always made Ruby feel like she was exactly where she should be, with the one she was meant to be with.
CHAPTER 16
The next morning, Max woke up early. Unable to fall back asleep and not wanting to disturb Ruby out of her sleep and hasten her departure, Max went into the kitchen. Their week together had been wonderful and reaffirming, and her heart ached with the knowledge that in a few short hours, Ruby would be gone and Max would be putting in another long day of landscaping.
She poured herself a bowl of cereal and pulled a stool up to the counter to eat it, and by the time she was done, her parents had begun to stir. She heard the shower turning on down the hall, and then her mother joined her in the kitchen, making a pot of coffee for the thermos that Nick brought with him to work every day regardless of the weather forecast. It was supposed to be a hot one today, and the July sun always made the heat waves from the asphalt more intense. Max always just packed an extra bottle of water for herself.
“Ruby’s packing up,” Nick said as he joined the three of them, his hair still wet from the shower. “You should take the day off to bid her a proper farewell.”
“You don’t need me?” Max asked in surprise. “I thought we were going to mulch around city hall today.”
“We’ll get along okay without you for one day,” Nick said with a wink, and Max thought fondly of spending one more morning alone with Ruby. Her dad would be leaving for work soon, and her mom usually did her weekly grocery shopping on Mondays, when the stores were empty and most people were trudging through their morning commute. They’d have the house to themselves one last time.
“Okay,” Max said.
Max put her empty cereal bowl in the dishwasher and went down the hall to her bedroom. She thought maybe she would sneak up behind Ruby and kiss her the way so many of the people in Ruby’s favorite movies did.
She was standing in front of Max’s bed, her bag open on top of it and her back to the door. Last night Max’s mother had insisted on laundering all of Ruby’s clothes, and now she was carefully folding them and packing them up. She stood just inches away from Max’s bedside table, where the engagement ring was indeed located, and Max wondered if she had guessed it by her reaction to Ruby reaching for the drawer last night.
Had she peeked?
Max thought she might show Ruby the ring after all, if the moment was right. She stepped into the doorway, then paused when she heard a voice and realized that Ruby had her phone laying on the bed and was talking to someone on speaker phone.
“I just worry about you driving through Chicago traffic.” The voice sounded like Lamar. Ruby must be checking in before she got on the road. “You’re not used to it anymore and it can be dangerous.”
Max waited, not wanting to interrupt their conversation.
“I’m not going to hit rush hour, daddy,” Ruby said. “If I leave in the next hour, it’ll be around one in the afternoon when I get into the city.”
“That’s just when everyone’s rushing back to work from their lunch breaks,” Lamar said.
Ruby and her dad went back and forth a few more times and Max figured it was probably pretty difficult to win an argument over traffic patterns with a man who studied them for a living. Ruby was doing an admirable job of standing her ground, though, trying to keep Lamar from worrying about her.
Then Max heard a voice in the background that instantly made her tense up.
“Do you have any coffee brewed or should I make a pot?”
It was an innocent enough question, but it didn’t sound like Lorna or Jade, or even Celeste. Max would have staked her life on the fact that the voice belonged to none other than Ruby’s ex-girlfriend, Megan. What the fuck was she doing at Ruby’s parents’ house so early in the morning, asking about coffee like she owned the place?
Someone – another girl’s voice – answered Megan, but Max didn’t stick around to find out whether the Satterwhites had coffee or not. She was seeing red and she felt sick to her stomach, like her breakfast was threatening to repeat on her. Ruby had spent the majority of the summer trying to reassure Max that her ex-girlfriend wasn’t a threat, and she’d even told her that she barely ever saw Megan, and yet she was hanging around her parents’ house even when she wasn’t home.
Max crept away from the door so Ruby wouldn’t hear her, and then she went quickly through the kitchen, barking at her parents as she passed them, “I’m not taking the morning off. I’ll be in the truck.”
“You don’t want to-”
“No. I’ll be in the truck,” she repeated, trying to keep the tears out of her voice, and then she went outside.
She felt so small and so out of place during her week in Chicago. She spent the whole trip feeling like she’d never be able to fit in with Ruby’s family, and she put her foot in her mouth more times than she cared to remember. Ruby kept telling her that it was okay, that she’d find her place eventually, and Max even started to think that everything was fine again when they got back to their roots this week in Granville.
Hearing Megan making herself at home in Ruby’s house, though… that brought every single one of Max’s insecurities right back to the forefront in a way that was impossible to ignore. No matter how hard Max tried, she would never be as effortless or as natural as Megan was with that family. She’d never be low-maintenance, or easy, or socially inclined like Megan was. Her best chance was to keep Ruby away from people like that so that she wouldn’t realize what she was missing out on, but they were waiting at every turn.
There was Tracy touching Ruby’s hips every week in her yoga class, and Megan waiting for her in Chicago. Max didn’t stand a chance, and once again she felt like she was just waiting for Ruby to realize this and realize they didn’t belong together.
She didn’t want to see Ruby off. She just wanted to get to work, shovel smelly mulch all morning, and clear her mind of the inevitable heartbreak that was coming for her. Max climbed into her dad’s truck and waited impatiently for him.
***
In her rush to get out of the house, Max left her phone on the corner of her desk. She was in an exquisite state of panic all the way to city hall, and nothing Nick said could calm her. He didn’t understand her sudden change of heart, or her refusal to see Ruby off, and Max just wanted to get to work.
She wanted to forget Megan’s voice on Ruby’s phone, and she needed some manual labor to keep her distracted. That worked for the majority of the day – she found that if she focused entirely on the task of shoveling and spreading mulch in all the flower beds around the building, she could shove those unwanted and painful thoughts out of her head. That was good, because every time they broke through, her fears grew bigger and by the end of the day, she was already imagining the words that Ruby would use to break up with her.
Maybe it wouldn’t be Megan who caused it – maybe Ruby really didn’t have feelings for her any more, and Megan wasn’t trying to steal Ruby away from Max. But she’d certainly play a part in awakening Ruby to the fact that Max was just too different and too alien to her world for their relationship to work. She could only keep Ruby distracted with sex and movies in bed for so long.
When she got home at the end of the day, Max went reluctantly into her room. A small, irrational part of her hoped to find Ruby waiting for her there, but instead all she found was a neatly folded bed with a note on her pillow.
Max picked it up and read it with equal parts pain and regret.
Hey babe, where did you go this morning? I waited but your mother said you left. I didn’t get to say goodbye :( Love you!
-
Ruby
Max crawled into bed, pulling her blankets over her and re-read the note a few times. Of course Ruby would not have understood her sudden disappearance – she never noticed Max standing in the doorway while she was packing her bags this morning. She felt guilty for leaving her like that, but the adrenaline in her veins had been telling her to run away.
After a few minutes, Max got up the nerve to crawl to the foot of her bed and grab her phone off the corner of her desk. She wasn’t sure what would be worse – finding a dozen missed calls from Ruby, or none at all. What she found was one missed call and a handful of text messages. Max read the messages.
Hi, babe. I tried to reach you but it looks like you left your phone behind. I guess you’ll get this message later. I hope everything’s okay.
I’m on the road now, just stopped for some coffee. Call or text me when you get this.
Well, I’m back in Chicago. Is there something wrong? Please call me, Max. I love you.
There was one from Mira as well.
Being a librarian is so fulfilling. I just had to ask my first porn-watcher to cease and desist.
Mira loved to share tales from the reference desk with Max, and she’d been relatively quiet this week since Ruby was visiting. This message was a welcome distraction from the real problem at hand, though, because Max had no idea how to explain to Ruby that she was tired of competing against a secret rival across a distance of three hundred miles. She decided to answer Mira instead of thinking about Ruby’s texts.
You public services people are strange. I would hate having to do that.
She crawled back under the covers, bringing her phone with her, and closed her eyes. She knew that she’d reacted poorly this morning, but that didn’t change the feeling of powerlessness she was experiencing. Max thought she might just stay in bed beneath her weighted blanket from now until it was time to go back to the university three weeks from now.
