[Rulebook 01.0] The Rules of Love

by Cara Malone

  They ate quickly – Max because she seemed keenly aware of the time constraints of their meal, and Ruby because the longer they shared a meal, the more it began to feel like a date. So she grabbed a cafeteria tray and the first slice of pizza she came across, then sat down next to Max and focused her attention entirely on the act of consuming it.

  Max was mostly quiet, continually true to her distaste for small talk, and in that moment, Ruby appreciated that about her. Then as Ruby was making her way doggedly through the chewy crust of her pizza, Max threw a curve ball at her.

  She said, “I’m going to take myself out of the running for GLiSS president.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think you’ll make an excellent president,” she said, keeping her eyes down to her plate. “Besides, I’m taking twice as many classes as you for my second major. You’ll have more time to devote to the organization.”

  Ruby rolled her eyes at this inevitable dig and said, “Okay.”

  Nineteen

  Max

  Being with Ruby was turning out to be the happiest Max had ever been – especially in the blissful moments when she was inhabiting the space between Ruby’s thighs or closing her eyes and clutching the bedsheets as Ruby touched her. She’d managed to lure Ruby back to her apartment most nights that week, and even though their interactions were somewhat brief and Ruby always had somewhere to dash off to afterward, Max found heaven in those moments when they were together.

  She never had to think about interpreting or decoding Ruby in those moments – she knew exactly what to do and how Ruby felt, and they were the only moments in her day when she felt completely at ease. She would have walked through fire to get to Ruby and feel that again.

  Fortunately for Max, Ruby seemed to need her just as much, and it was never hard to convince her to come over after class.

  “I have a ten a.m. class and then I’m going to yoga afterward,” Ruby told Max this morning when they ran into each other in the hall and she’d tried to tug Ruby into her apartment. “But I could come over after if you don’t mind letting me use your shower.”

  “What’s mine is yours,” Max said, and Ruby slipped her hand out of Max’s to head to class.

  She spent the rest of the morning sitting on her couch beneath the weighted blanket, doing her readings for the following day and absorbing almost nothing of the articles because she was too preoccupied with waiting for Ruby to come knocking on her door. She’d done less work in the last week than she’d ever done to prepare for classes in the past, and it was easy to see now how people might get so caught up in a new lover that they would do something foolish like, say, putting off a psychology paper until the day it was due.

  When the moment finally came and she heard a knock on her door, Max leapt off the couch and pulled Ruby straight toward the bedroom.

  “I’m all sweaty,” Ruby objected, dropping her yoga mat on the floor.

  “I don’t care,” Max said, trying to pull her into the bed, but Ruby resisted.

  “I do,” she said, sliding her hand free of Max’s and heading for the bathroom.

  Max slumped impatiently onto the bed, rolling onto her back and hanging her head over the edge of the mattress to let the blood rush into her head. Upside down, she could see Ruby’s yoga mat, an expensive-looking rubberized one slung through a slim gym bag. Her phone poked halfway out of a shallow pocket, and while Max was looking upside down at it, the screen lit up and it vibrated against the mat.

  A text had come in.

  Max tried to ignore it. Decorum dictated that she shouldn’t read Ruby’s texts. She rolling back over on the bed and glanced toward the door. She heard water running in the shower, and she looked back at the phone. She’d seen the name of the message sender, and now she was having a hell of a time ignoring the phone as another text came in.

  Megan.

  She heard Ruby say that name just once, long before anything physical had transpired between them. Max doubted if Ruby even remembered telling her that was the name of her ex-girlfriend, but Max couldn’t forget it. It was one of a million little details that seemed to float right through most people’s minds, but it stuck in hers.

  Max sat up and folded her hands in her lap, trying to wait patiently for Ruby to come out of the bathroom. Part of her mind said she should hop in the shower and make Ruby forget all about Megan… but a much larger part couldn’t tear her attention away from the buzzing of the phone. Another text came in, and it was eating at her. What business did Ruby’s ex-girlfriend have with her?

  After a protracted internal argument, Max decided to turn off the vibration mode on Ruby’s phone and put it face-down so that it wouldn’t tempt her anymore. But as soon as it was in her hand, her eyes swept involuntarily over the texts.

  Every single one of them was from Megan, and now Max couldn’t stop herself from scrolling through the ones on the lock screen, reading them in reverse chronological order.

  I miss you, Ru-Ru.

  Do you want to talk on the phone? Or Facetime?

  What are you doing tonight?

  It’s alright. Nothing like it was when you were here. I get my first crack at the cadaver lab next semester – I know you’re going to cringe at that but it’s cool!

  They had all come within the past hour, probably since Ruby’s yoga class began, and they made Max’s stomach hurt – especially the nickname and their shared history. Max couldn’t compete with that.

  She heard the shower shut off and she shoved Ruby’s phone back into its pocket, then jumped back onto the bed. Ruby came into the bedroom, her hips swaying seductively beneath the plush towel she wore tucked around her chest, and the sight wasn’t nearly so satisfying as Max had expected it to be now that she realized she was probably playing second fiddle to Megan.

  Max was already imagining that Megan was a thousand times better than her in every way – more attractive, more feminine, more intelligent if she was in some kind of program that involved cadaver dissection, and obviously more socially capable. Was Max nothing to Ruby except a sexual stand-in for this other girl who occupied all the moments that Ruby wasn’t with Max?

  That thought hurt deep in her chest, and the only thing she could do to push it away was to grab Ruby and pull her onto the bed. If all she was to Ruby was a sexual outlet, then Max was going to be the best goddamn lay she ever had. She’d make her see stars and forget Megan’s name, if only for a few minutes.

  Twenty

  Ruby

  Ruby didn’t even make it all the way into the room before Max was yanking the towel off her. She orgasmed four times and thought that she might pass out from the exertion before Max finally let her crawl from the bed.

  “What’s gotten into you?” Ruby asked as she grabbed the towel off the floor and covered herself again. She was still a little bit out of breath and Max was laying naked on the bed, continuing to give her seductive glares.

  “Nothing,” Max said. “Come back to bed.”

  “I might die of exhaustion if I come back to bed,” Ruby said, and she was only half joking. Between the writhing, screaming orgasms that Max had given her and the weakness in her arms and abs from the yoga class just before she came over, Ruby was feeling shaky and famished.

  “We don’t have to fool around anymore,” Max said, and Ruby thought that a hint of desperation passed through those words. It made her pulse rate jump up again.

  Max never liked to let her go after they had sex, and all Ruby wanted to do was escape. When she let Max talk her into going to the dining hall together last week, she’d been jittery and her stomach filled with butterflies – not the reaction of an emotionally detached hook-up – and it wasn’t a feeling she was eager to repeat.

  She didn’t want to come back to bed, or hear the pleading tone of Max’s voice, or rest her head on Max’s chest and listen to her heart beating. Ruby just wanted to get dressed and escape back to her own empty apartment. Besides, there was a nagging desire in the back of her head that hadn�
��t shut up since just before her yoga class, when she finally gave in to the urge to send Megan a tentative text message.

  Her pulse raced as she typed the three little letters – hey – and she knew it was a bad idea, but her fingers tapped across the screen anyway, and then she’d put away her phone and willed herself to pretend like it never happened. Megan wouldn’t answer, and if she did it wouldn’t mean anything because they were already through. Ruby didn’t check her phone after class, either, because she couldn’t bear to know if Megan had chosen to ignore the feeler she sent out. She’d even come over to Max’s apartment in search of another few hours of distraction, but now she couldn’t wait any more.

  Ruby needed the isolation of her empty apartment to find out if her message had been answered.

  “I want to lay beside you for a little while,” Max said, patting the bed beside her.

  Ruby felt a pang in her chest – the whole situation had gotten so out of control, from the moment she saw Megan’s voicemail, and she knew that she shouldn’t keep letting her body draw her back to Max while her mind was stuck on Megan. It was a wretched feeling to be split in two like this, but there was something magnetic about Max.

  And at the same time, there was so much history with Megan, and so many emotions. If Ruby could keep those memories alive, even just within a text message or a voicemail, then she was powerless to turn away from her.

  “I have to go,” Ruby said, watching Max’s face fall.

  It was obvious that Max had been lying when she said she didn’t want a relationship, and watching the disappointment wash across her face, Ruby found herself getting just the slightest bit angry at her. Had she not been perfectly clear from the beginning that their arrangement was purely physical? She shouldn’t have to feel guilty about leaving after sex, or sending her ex-girlfriend a perfectly platonic text.

  She shouldn’t have to make up excuses to leave, either, and yet she found herself saying as she pulled on her clothes, “The GLiSS meeting is tomorrow. I know I don’t need to give a speech now that I’m running unopposed, but I still want to properly introduce myself to everyone.”

  She grabbed her yoga mat, slinging it over her shoulder as she walked out of Max’s bedroom without another backward glance. The moment she got to the hall, though, she pulled her phone out, her heart pounding the whole time.

  There were half a dozen messages from Megan waiting for her, and she hurried back to her apartment to read them greedily. Ruby went into her living room and flopped down on the stiff orange couch, thinking guiltily of Max still lying naked in bed one floor down. Then she read the texts.

  There was her own message – hey. It was such a non-committal response, and yet those three letters opened a door to something that Ruby thought was lost forever when she drove out of Evanston for the last time.

  Ruby read through the texts.

  I miss you, Ru-Ru.

  That ridiculous nickname, given to her in jest while they were pledging the sorority together freshman year, when Megan said that sorority girls were vapid and Ruby dragged her to every Delta Zeta event anyway. By the time they became sisters (Megan making stupid incest jokes while they celebrated in her tiny dorm bed after the initiation ceremony) the nickname stuck. It became a term of endearment, and now it sent a little jolt of pain into Ruby’s chest to read it.

  Ruby lingered over Megan’s final question – do you want to talk?

  Her finger hovered over the dial button a half dozen times as she read and re-read Megan’s messages, trying to decode every little nuance of them. Was she sorry? Did she want to get back together? Or was she just lonely? Was Ruby just lonely too? She turned each question over in her mind again and again, and knew that there was only one way to find out the answer. When she felt exhausted from trying to guess, she gave in and dialed Megan’s number with a sense of defeat that she hadn’t expected to feel.

  The phone rang, once, twice, three times.

  Ruby’s pulse quickened with each ring, and she imagined Megan on the other end of the line, staring at Ruby’s name on her phone and trying to decide whether to answer. Ruby was on the verge of hanging up when she heard Megan say, “Ru-Ru?”

  Her heart cracked in half in her chest, the old familiar lump formed in the back of her throat, and she nearly forgot how to speak.

  “Hello?”

  “Yeah,” Ruby finally said, letting out a breath that she didn’t know she had been holding in. “It’s me. How are you?”

  Twenty-One

  Max

  Max waited anxiously outside of the library conference room. Other GLiSS members were filing into the room already, and a few of them who were running for various positions even looked a little nervous about their speeches. But no one could feel as anxious as Max was feeling just then.

  She tried to catch Ruby in the hall before she left the dorms this morning, or on her way to class, or anywhere, but Ruby was nowhere to be found. Max now knew exactly why so much television drama revolved around looking at the messages on other people’s phones, because the unchecked jealousy that was raging like bile in her stomach was the only possible reaction that could come from all those texts from Megan to Ruby. But it was too late for regret – Max couldn’t unread them.

  She might not have past experience to guide her, but if television told her anything, it was that revealing to Ruby that she’d seen those texts would be seen as a violation of privacy. This meant she couldn’t confront Ruby about them, or Megan. All she could do was continue to demonstrate her worth and hope that Ruby chose her, or that she now saw her ex-girlfriend in an entirely platonic light.

  Still, Max had to see Ruby one last time before the meeting started and she dropped out of the running for president. She wanted to make sure Ruby knew she was doing it for her and not because of that flimsy excuse about her course load that she’d made up, so Max was waiting in the hallway for her.

  Mira arrived first, in her typical frantic fashion – always rushing from one obligation to the next. She waved at Max as she approached and asked, “Are you ready for your speech, Madam President?”

  “Umm,” Max stalled.

  She’d forgotten until this moment that she wasn’t the only one who had a stake in her presidency. Mira had spent hours listening to her deliver and revise that speech – hours that she clearly could have used to lighten the burden on her own shoulders. Max didn’t want to tell her that she was dropping out, even if she could tell her that she was doing it for the sake of Mira’s number one goal – getting Max to socialize more.

  Fortunately, she saw Ruby coming up the hall before she had to give Mira a real answer, so instead of telling her the plan, she merely said, “I’ll see you inside, okay?”

  Mira followed Max’s gaze and saw Ruby, gave her a smirk that Max didn’t find entirely comforting, and then went into the conference room.

  “Hi,” Max said as Ruby approached.

  “Hey,” she answered, peeking into the room. “Come on, looks like everyone’s already here.”

  “Wait,” Max said, “I just wanted to-”

  “Are you having second thoughts about dropping out?” Ruby asked.

  “No,” Max said. “I just…”

  But now that she finally had what she’d been seeking all day – Ruby’s undivided attention – she realized there was nothing she could say that would adequately express how she felt. There seldom was. So instead, she said, “I just wanted to wish you luck.”

  “I’m running unopposed so I don’t think I’ll need it,” Ruby said, and before she walked into the room, she gave Max a small smile and said, “Thanks, though.”

  Max followed her in and took a seat at the end of the long table, pulling out her notebook and flipping to a new page through muscle memory alone. She’d lost her nerve and now that the moment had passed, she knew that what she should have said was closer to a declaration of love than whatever the hell had just transpired in the hallway. She watched Ruby sit down in the only other empty
chair on the opposite end of the conference table, and it felt like she was a million miles away instead of just a few feet.

  This was why the Megans and the Caitlins of the world always won, and why Max would always only be a Max and never a Brad. When it came time to fight, she just sank helplessly into her seat and became a passive observer with her infernal notebook that could never truly capture the human experience – the parts that were so elusive to Max and so painfully obvious to everyone around her.

  “Hi everyone,” Mira said from the head of the table. “Simmer down. Tonight we’re going to start with those speeches I know you’ve all been dying to give.”

  A collective, good-natured groan rippled through the room and Max watched Ruby straighten in her seat, smiling and turning on the charm as if it were a switch inside her head. Max just sank into her chair.

  Mira went on, saying, “Why don’t we just start right out with the big guns? Presidential candidates, who wants to go first?”

  Mira looked straight at Max, smiling expectantly, and suddenly she realized that she would have to stand up in front of this group of strangers who had probably already forgotten she existed to tell them that she no longer wanted to run. They’d all look around the table, trying not to be too obvious about the fact that they were always planning to vote for Ruby, and then she’d sink back into her seat with yet another failed attempt at being human to write down in her notebook.

  She hadn’t thought about this moment when she decided to cede the presidency to Ruby, and she couldn’t think of a humiliation more severe – except, maybe, for one named Megan.

  Max was just about to stand up and give her speech after all – it seemed better than the alternative – when Ruby stood up and announced in a tone that was so gracious everyone had no choice but to beam at her, “Actually, it looks like you’re all stuck with me.”