by Piper Lennox
“I’d say it boiled down to the paycheck, initially. My mom always wanted more, and Dad couldn’t say no.” I decide to breeze past this, before she can ask more. My mother’s the last subject I feel like explaining. “As for how many houses we’ve got…. God. Too many.”
“You might be the first person I’ve ever heard say that.” When I look at her, she hesitates and sits back, pulling my jacket shut around herself. “Everyone wants that whole ‘summer house, winter house’ thing. Addresses all over the map. The ability to just pack up and go, whenever you want.”
“Always packing up, never really unpacking,” I correct. I twist in my seat and study the glow of the stereo on her neck, highlighting her cheekbone. “Always going. Never staying long enough.”
Ruby’s eyes dance between mine. “Is that why you stayed this year? You got tired of always moving?”
I nod, then laugh at myself with disgust. “Such a first-world problem, isn’t it?”
“Feeling homeless because you’ve got too many homes,” she mutters, propping the tip of her shoe on the glovebox. “Poor thing.”
“What?”
Instantly, she sits upright again, looking horrified. “Oh, Jesus,” she says, clasping her hands over her mouth, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine,” I laugh, as entertained as I am confused. “You’re completely right. I was just...taken aback by how you said it, I guess. But in a good way.” Ruby is incredibly sweet, but every so often—like just now—something shifts, and I get a glimpse of a much tougher person than the outside lets on.
I absolutely love it.
“I should be grateful,” I nod, running my hands along the wheel. “And honestly? For a long, long time...I was.” I look out to the water again, pretending we’re sitting here during a July sunset, everything painted in bright orange. “Then something changed.”
Ruby fidgets with her purse strap, I guess still embarrassed about her burst of honesty. “What?”
“Me.”
Her mouth twists again. I get the feeling she just stopped herself from saying something else a little harsh. And totally accurate.
I decide to fill in the blanks for her. “Rich kid stereotype, right? Claims he knows full and well how hollow it is, but keeps using all the perks anyway. Stuck in the world his parents built for him because he’s too chickenshit to leave.”
Ruby gives a smile like I’m spot-on, but agreeing would feel rude.
I buckle up. She does the same before I pull away from the curb, aiming us into the cold, dark night.
“Financial stability would be nice, though,” she adds, seemingly to herself. “Not having to worry if you’ll make rent because your roommate skips town. No choosing between gasoline or groceries.” She pauses. “Being able to help your family, when they don’t have anywhere else to turn.”
The edge has crept back into her voice, laced with a sadness I don’t think she’d believe I understand. I know exactly what it’s like to want to help someone you love, but being powerless to do so.
I think about telling her this, but I don’t like the turn this date has taken. She’s been acting strangely ever since the restaurant.
Not that I would know what is or isn’t strange behavior for her. We met not even twelve hours ago. Somehow, I keep forgetting that I don’t know this girl.
So why the hell does it feel like I do?
Every time I look at her, my stomach floats up into my chest. Getting her to smile makes me happier than my entire summer.
I can’t explain it. All I know is, I hate the thought of tonight ending.
When I pass the restaurant where her car is still parked, she tracks it a moment before she asks where I’m taking her.
“I’m not. You’re taking me somewhere.” I dig a quarter from the cupholder and toss it to her. “Heads, we turn right. Tails, left.”
At the first intersection we hit, I crawl to a stop and nod at her.
She balances the quarter on her thumb inside her fist, then flicks it upward. The slap of her palms as she catches it fills the car.
Slowly, she peeks. “Tails.”
I creep into the intersection and turn left.
We do it over and over again. Ten times, twenty: I lose track.
“How long do we do this?” she asks, laughing when I almost clip a curb.
I glance at her, basking in that laugh. “Until you tell me to stop.”
“Well, this is a first.”
I step up beside Ruby at the railing and flick the strings of her new hoodie, courtesy of a roadside souvenir stand we were both shocked to find open at one a.m. “What? Drinking a caramel apple latte—which, by the way, is a lot better than I expected—or these banana cream pie donut holes that taste nothing like bananas?”
Stealing another from the thin cardboard box in her hand, I bite off half and hold out the rest. She hesitates, then eats it.
“Drinking a caramel apple latte,” she chews, “and eating banana cream pie donuts in front of Niagara damn Falls.”
“That was my next guess.”
We laugh, looking out again at the multicolored lights projected on the Falls. We talked nonstop during the second half of the drive, when the coin-toss was abandoned for the endless, open highway ahead.
“Can’t believe we drove seven hours,” she says. “Actually, strike that: I can’t believe I let you drive me seven hours away from my car. This has Dateline written all over it.”
“Relax. If I was going to kidnap you, I wouldn’t pick a tourist hotspot. And I doubt most captors have seven-hour conversations with their victims.”
“Instilling Stockholm syndrome,” she mutters, and I laugh again.
It was a complete accident, ending up here. I’d intended for us to settle on someplace in the city, but by the time we crossed the Hudson, we were so wrapped up in conversation it felt crazy to stop. If it weren’t for a lack of passports, I’m positive we’d be flying through Canada right now.
She relaxed, once the topic of money was officially off the table. Childhoods were an iffy subject too, I noticed, so we stuck to movies, music, books, and people-watching in the cars beside us.
I think it’s the longest conversation I’ve ever had in my life. Usually, I burn out fast: something about entertaining another person for several hours at once drains me. I find myself getting quiet, needing a recharge. But not with her.
“Last one,” she says, rattling the donut box. “Split it?”
This time, she bites it in half and offers me the rest. My lips brush her fingertips. For once, her smile doesn’t come with a blush.
As much as I like it, I think I like this better: the confident, amused quirk of her brow instead...and the way she licks the last bit of filling off her thumb.
“Did you know there’s a legend,” I ask, “that says the god of thunder lives down there?”
“And did you know,” she says, cupping both hands around her coffee cup, “over five thousand bodies have been fished out of those rocks? Thirty or so people die here, every year.”
My laugh sputters out. “Holy shit, Ruby.”
Smiling to herself, she sips and shrugs. “I thought we were sharing things we knew.”
“All right, Ms. Morbid. Tell me something that’s not depressing.”
She leans her elbows on the railing. “The first person to survive going over was a woman.”
“There you go. A fun fact that isn’t sad as hell.”
A devilish look flashes across her face, and I brace myself.
“And the first man who survived the fall,” she says, “later died because he slipped on an orange peel, of all things.”
“Wow. You couldn’t even last five seconds without getting all dark, could you?”
Ruby sips her coffee smugly and pretends to fight me off as I brace my hands on the railing around her. When I lock my arms, she gives up and settles back against my chest.
“I’m only doing this because you’re warm,” she
says quietly.
“Fine by me.” The perfume or shampoo I keep smelling makes my head swim, this close to her. I don’t care if I freeze out here. I never want to go home.
“That is interesting,” I add, a moment later.
“What?”
“That the guy died because of an orange peel. Not to sound all English class about it, but the metaphor is kind of fascinating. Things we call safe or harmless can still hurt us…yet we can also survive something basically guaranteed to destroy us. The odds of both are so small. But still there.”
Ruby sets her cup down, then turns to face me. I pull myself in closer, until her back is pressed completely to the railing.
“Maybe.” She pushes her curls from her face, eyes never leaving mine. “But in a way, going over the Falls is still what killed him.”
“Why?”
“What he really died from was gangrene. He broke his leg after he slipped on the orange peel, and the complications were probably because of his old injuries from the Falls.”
I watch her mouth while she speaks. Her teeth aren’t chattering anymore.
“So you could just as easily say that ‘safe’ or ‘harmless’ are completely relative. What matters isn’t the odds. It’s whatever we’ve gone through before.” She swallows. “How badly we were already broken.”
I lower my head, our mouths dangerously close. Her breath picks up, clouding the air between us.
“I thought what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
“Not always,” she says, eyes landing on my lips a millisecond before I lean in and kiss her.
5
Maybe there is a god of thunder down there in the rocks, because I swear something otherworldly is screaming at me to stop.
Screeching at me to get my hands off Theo Durham’s chest.
Begging me, for my own good, to resist kissing him back.
He draws away slowly, less than an inch between us when he whispers, “I’ve wanted to do that since those buckets almost killed you.”
My laugh sounds nervous. I’m nervous. He wasn’t supposed to kiss me yet.
I wasn’t supposed to let him.
Theo slides his hand up to my neck. “You’re shivering again. Should we go somewhere warm?”
Gathering my wits, I take his wrist and push up his sleeve to check his watch. “Pretty sure all those diners we passed will be closed soon.”
“I was thinking of a hotel, actually.” He puts his hand back where it was, thumb dragging across my bottom lip.
My hormones double.
The god of thunder yells, Don’t be an idiot.
Of course that whole chivalrous gentleman thing was an act. Even the cutesy romantic parts—coin tosses, a spontaneous trip to the Falls—were just a ruse. Something to weaken my knees so my panties would drop.
Something he’s probably done to a hundred girls before me.
But damn…do I want to be Number 101.
I shake my head at myself. He takes it as being meant for him, stepping back from the railing with his hands up.
“Too forward?”
“A little.” A lot. “Maybe we could head back to the Hamptons now?”
Theo looks like a puppy getting whacked with a newspaper. Good.
With one last glance at the Falls, we turn and walk back in the direction of the Jeep. He puts his arm around my waist, then seems to think better of it and moves it to my shoulders. Guess he’s reverting to gentlemanly behavior until my guard is down.
Well, I’ve got news for him: I’m never letting it down again.
“I, uh....” Theo rakes his fingers through his hair after starting the engine. “I hope I didn’t offend you. I’m sorry.”
Real Ruby has a fuckton to say to this, but I channel the too-sweet one he met in the hardware store and reassure him it’s all right. “It’s a little flattering, in its own way. Knowing you find me attractive.”
“It’s more than that.” He catches his lip between his teeth. “I love being with you. Which I know sounds crazy, because we just met...but it feels like there’s something here. And it’s been a long time since I’ve felt that.”
I can’t hear the rumble of the Falls anymore, but I feel it. It swam up my feet when he kissed me, now sitting in the pit of my stomach when I turn and try to force the lie out: that I feel the same.
But suddenly, I can’t. A tiny, dangerous part of me wonders if it is a lie.
And a much larger part of me wants to hear more.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But I’m not really in a position to question why something makes me happy.”
Dumbfounded, I watch as he navigates back to the interstate.
“Not many things make you happy, then?” I ask, when we’ve driven with nothing but the radio for at least thirty miles.
“They do. Some things.” He weaves the Jeep through some out-of-town minivans. “It just...never lasts this long.”
Give it a few weeks, I think.
What I actually say is probably even worse.
“I totally get that.”
Theo smiles, while I mentally pummel myself over yet another Real Ruby slip.
I’m not trying to relate to Theo, here. I can’t.
The last time I made that mistake, it cost me so much more than I ever thought it could.
But now he’s glancing at me, waiting for more, and my filter decides to take the night off. “I just mean...for me, at least, I’m always thinking, ‘This or that will make me happy.’ Not just for a moment, but forever. I think it’ll be permanent, because I want it so much...how could it not, you know?” I take a breath. “But then it doesn’t last. New jobs, new apartments, new clothes—it feels like happiness is this big tank we’re always trying to fill, but it’s got a crack at the bottom.”
Finally, my words bleed themselves dry. I stare out my window at the blur of dormant trees. Skeleton hands, clawing into the sky.
“Exactly,” he says.
Hours melt together, the same way they did before. We chat, listen to music, and laugh. I keep telling myself it’s okay that I’m actually having fun. It makes the act believable.
Instead of following a normal route back to St. James, he takes every turn exactly as we did before. I wonder why my stomach gets butterflies when I realize he memorized them.
The sun is up when we get back to Braise. I’ve never talked to someone through an entire night. It leaves me with a weird, hazy kind of adrenaline.
He eases up beside my car and unbuckles, turning to put one arm behind my seat. I feel his breath on my ear and loathe the fact I will always associate caramel apples and banana cream pie with him, from this moment on.
“I’ve got two favors to ask you.”
Look at him. For once, the whole shy thing isn’t part of my character. I’m really doing it, because looking him in the eye keeps unraveling me. I don’t know how much is left before I’m down to nothing.
As soon as our eyes meet, he puts his hand back on my face.
“First,” he whispers, “tell me one more thing about you. Anything.” His fingers brush my pearl earring. I feel it swinging like a pendulum, seeming to sync with my heartbeat. “Something I can think about nonstop until the next time I see you.”
Again, all I can think to tell him is something true.
“I really want you to kiss me, right now.”
A smirk flashes across his face. “That,” he whispers, “was going to be my second favor.”
As I sink into his kiss, caught up in the grip of his hands on either side of my face, the strength in his hold so counter to the softness of his lips, I sigh. It’s the quietest, happiest sound. He drinks it up like an elixir. Something that can magically fix the crack in that tank.
My hands follow their own path, a series of lefts and rights I had no part in deciding, until I’m touching his erection through his dress pants and adoring the moans he washes down my neck.
His fingers skate underneath my dress. When
he feels how damp and impossibly hot I am there, he swallows hard and breathes my name against my mouth. “Fuck....Ruby.”
“Oh, fuck…Aria.”
My instincts want to yank me away from him. Instead, I make myself do it gradually, everything coming to a safe and unsuspicious stop.
Theo sits back in his seat, panting through nervous laughter.
I shut my eyes and imagine the grossest, darkest, worst things I can think of. Anything to stop the fire between my legs. That’s not where I need it.
I need it to sit in my chest, where I’ve quietly nursed it all these years—raising it from a baby burn to full-fledged incinerator.
“Goodnight, Theo,” I whisper, reaching for the handle and stepping out.
“Good morning, Ruby.”
He doesn’t look away until I’m back in my own vehicle. My safe, Durham-free bubble, shivering and burning under his stare.
My townhouse is far too warm.
I don’t even have my heat on; the neighbors crank theirs so high, there’s no need. Before my roommate bailed last month to go star on some reality show, we’d sleep with our bedroom doors and windows open to make a cross-breeze, even when it was snowing.
Now I keep her door firmly shut, too pissed to tolerate that empty room, and this place becomes a perpetual toaster.
Strangely, it doesn’t bother me right now. There’s a chill nesting deep in my bones I can’t shake, even after I go upstairs and boil myself alive in the shower.
Briefly, I look at the detachable spray nozzle and think, What would be the harm?
His kiss left me wired. His touch took all the heat my body had and concentrated it in my core. Even while the rest of me is shivering, that ache won’t leave me alone.
I almost orgasm, the second the jet of water touches me.
No.
I open my eyes and chase the memories away. Every last fantasy my traitorous hormones started to concoct washes down the drain.
In the streaked mirror, I flash myself Character Ruby’s smile, just to know I can still do it: sweet, innocent—and in control.
