On the Rocks

by Kandi Steiner

  I had to let Ruby Grace go.

  Now, I only had to figure out how.

  Ruby Grace

  I wondered if I should just stay there at the bottom of the pool.

  It was quiet down there — peaceful. The sun’s rays only barely reached me, and the water was thick and blue, my hair floating around me like a red tide. My chest was burning, thirsty for air, but I starved it a little longer.

  I could just stay there.

  I could stay there until I ran out of air, and then I’d never have to get married. I’d never have to rise to the surface and face the life I had cornered myself into.

  I’d never have to look into Noah Becker’s devastated blue eyes again.

  It had been the absolute worst week of my entire life.

  At home, everything went on as it would have. Mom made last-minute wedding adjustments, Dad worked all day and told me each night how excited he was for me, and Anthony held me like he loved me, kissed me like he cared — and remained completely oblivious to what I knew about his true feelings.

  And I hadn’t seen Noah.

  In so many ways, he felt like a ghost to me now. I wondered sometimes if he was even real at all, if I’d imagined the events of the entire summer. But the bruises were there on my heart, the scars on my lips where his had burned mine — I felt him everywhere, like he was a permanent part of me, though I’d never see or speak to him again.

  I closed my eyes, my heart all but convinced to succumb to drowning. But, my feet kicked without permission, forcing me toward the top of the pool as my lungs set a fire inside my rib cage. When I broke the surface of the water and inhaled, my body rejoiced while my heart cried out against the injustice.

  I opened my eyes.

  “Trying to break your third-grade record?” Annie asked, swinging her feet in the water and rubbing sunscreen on her exposed belly.

  “Looked more like a poor suicide attempt to me,” Betty chimed in, floating her arms up overhead before leaning to one side. It was part of the warm-up in Noah’s water aerobics routine he’d been teaching there, and my heart squeezed at the memory, urging me to go back down for another try.

  “Ding-ding-ding,” I said, pointing at Betty. “We have a winner.”

  Annie frowned, exchanging a glance with Betty before she let out a sigh. “Okay, you’re not even allowed to joke about that.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, swimming to the edge where she sat. I laid my head on my arms, letting the sun warm my back. “I must be so miserable to be around right now.”

  “You’re not,” she assured me. “But, I do hate this for you. It’s four days before your wedding. You should be glowing, and happy, and have literal heart eyes popping out of your head like a cartoon.”

  I nodded. “I know.”

  “She also shouldn’t be marrying that no-good, two-timing prissy son of a dirty politician.”

  Annie laughed at Betty’s remark, and I tried to smile, but it felt like trying to run fast under water — impossible.

  “Seriously,” she said when I didn’t respond. “What exactly is your plan here? You’re just going to marry this man and then… what? Divorce him after your father’s debt is paid?”

  I shook my head.

  “Annul the marriage?”

  I shook my head again.

  Betty was adjusting her swim cap, and she let it snap against her forehead, lowering her goggles and blinking several times as she watched me. “Wait… you’re not actually planning on staying with him… are you? As in, marrying him, having his babies, being the dutiful politician’s wife he wants you to be?”

  When I didn’t answer, Annie cringed and Betty fumed, shaking her head and holding up one old, wagging finger. “Oh, hell no.”

  “What would you have me do?” I asked.

  “Call off the wedding like you were planning to,” she said, as if it were that easy. “And run to that boy who really loves you.”

  “Betty…” Annie tried to warn, but I was already pulled into the argument.

  “My hands are tied,” I said, standing to face her. “My father’s reputation, his job, our house, our entire life depends on me marrying this man. I can’t just feed my father to the wolves.”

  “So, you’ll feed yourself to one, instead?”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but no words came. So, I just shut it again, eyes falling down to where my fingers skated over the water.

  Betty sighed, making her way to the ladder at the edge of the pool before she slowly climbed out, Annie holding one hand behind her just in case. “Come,” she said, not even looking back at me. “Walk with an old woman, would you?”

  Water was still dripping off each of us as we walked in our towels, first around the tennis court and then back to the garden, where a path wound through each little corner of it like a snake. It was shaded, a nice reprieve from the sun, and it wasn’t until we were within those garden walls that Betty finally spoke.

  “I want to start by saying that no matter what you choose to do, I will love you through it,” she started, tugging off her swim cap and pushing her goggles up on her head. “Because you are like a daughter to me, Ruby Grace. Like the daughter we never had.”

  Her eyes shined at that, and I knew she was thinking about Leroy.

  I reached over, threading my arm through hers.

  “And maybe that’s why I feel compelled to say this to you. I know you already have a mother, but, the way I see it, you can never have too many moms in your life. And, if I’m being honest, I don’t agree with the guidance your true mother is giving you right now.”

  I swallowed.

  “I know it’s complicated. I know it feels like your hands are tied, like there’s no choice for you in this matter — but I want to be the one to tell you that there is. You’re young, Ruby Grace. Right now, it feels like you have to do what is expected of you, that there is a standard you must meet, that in order to be happy, you have to follow this list of rules and guidelines and you have to marry a certain kind of man and live in a certain kind of house and raise certain kinds of kids.” She sort of laughed, sort of scoffed. “But, honey? That’s all bullshit.”

  I smirked.

  “Can we sit?” she asked, a little out of breath as she pointed to a bench near the bed of Indian blanket sunflowers.

  When we were both seated, she took a few breaths, dabbing at the sheen of sweat on her forehead with her towel before she sat back.

  “There comes a time in your life when you look around you and you realize that you don’t want to play the game anymore,” she said. “You realize you don’t want the fake friends, or the toxic relationships, or the people telling you how you should live your life when they can’t even run their own. Some find it in their thirties. Some in their forties. Some, like the old woman beside you, not until most of their life has passed.”

  I frowned, reaching over to hold her hand. “You’ve had an amazing life,” I argued. “A man who loved you, a town that cherishes you.”

  “That’s just it, though,” she said. “Leroy wanted to stay in this town, whereas I wanted to flee from it. I wanted to travel, to see the world, to talk to strangers from other cultures and learn more than just what’s here in Tennessee. But I never did.” She held up a finger. “Now, I don’t want you thinking I wasn’t happy, because I was. I loved Leroy. I still love that man — even though he broke our pact to let me die first, the bastard.”

  I chuckled, eyes glossing over.

  “But, aside from his love, I never fulfilled myself. And that’s one area where Leroy couldn’t help me. He would have supported me, if I would have stood up for myself and said out loud what I wanted. But, I never did. Instead, I found my adventure by watching movies and living through other people — through celebrities. I waited until Leroy was gone from my life, until my legs were too old and tired, my lungs not capable of feeding me enough oxygen, my heart not steady enough to pump enough blood into my brain. It took me too long to speak up for myself,
and I regret it. Truly, I do. I could have seen the world, could have experienced so much more with the man I loved, if I only would have stood up and spoke.”

  I sighed. “And that’s what you want me to do.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I want you to do what you want to do — regardless of if I agree with it or not. Like I said, you’re my daughter in my eyes, and I will support you through anything.” She paused, running her bony, silky finger over my wrist. “But, let’s just say I’m speaking to you on behalf of future Ruby Grace. I’m speaking as Ruby Grace at seventy-four, in a nursing home of her own.”

  My heart kicked up a notch as I tried to imagine it — an older version of me, looking back on my life, on what I’d built, what I’d leave behind.

  What hurt the most was that I couldn’t even picture it.

  “All I’m saying is that I know it feels like you’re tied to a railroad track with a train coming straight at you. It feels like it’s this or nothing. But, I’m telling you, you have a giant pair of scissors in your hands that you can cut that rope with.”

  “Betty…”

  “It may be difficult,” she said, cutting me off. “You might get rope burn and you may cut yourself and bleed a little. You may let some people down. Hell, you may uproot everything you knew about your life before, about what you thought it’d be, and you may walk into something completely different, something you never expected.” A smile bloomed on her pale lips, then. “But, my dear, isn’t that the best part of being young? The possibilities are endless, the paths limitless, and you have so many different directions you can walk.” She shrugged. “You just have to decide if you want to walk the path of least resistance, the one where you are merely another traveler on the road. Or, if you want to forge a new path with those scissors, bit by bit, limb by limb, and discover something you never could have imagined.”

  “It sounds selfish.”

  She scoffed. “Selfish. What a silly word. Should you give to the ones you love? Absolutely. But should you lose yourself in order to better their lives at the expense of your own? Never.”

  With that, she stood, stretching her arms above her head with a yawn before she started walking.

  I frowned. “You’re leaving?”

  “I’m going to take a nap, like an old woman should,” she said, glancing back at me over her shoulder. “And I’m going to leave you alone to think. To really think — without your mom in your ear, or your sister, or Noah, or Annie, or me. I just want you to sit here, on this bench, in this garden, and I want you to ask yourself the tough questions.”

  “I know the questions,” I said on a sigh. “It’s the answers I’m having trouble with.”

  She smiled knowingly. “Well, then, sit here until they come.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “Then you didn’t sit long enough,” she tossed over her shoulder.

  Then she rounded an old oak tree, and she was gone.

  Later that night, I knocked on my father’s office door before letting myself inside.

  He looked up at me from where he sat at his desk, his reading glasses low on his nose and hands still typing away on his keyboard. “Hey, pumpkin.”

  I swallowed, letting myself in and closing the door behind me with trembling hands. Anthony and Mom were out on the front porch, drinking sweet tea like Mama loved to do after dinner, but just in case, I wanted another barrier between us.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said when I was inside.

  “Okay,” he answered, but his eyes were back on his screen now, fingers flying over the keys. “I’ll be out in an hour or so, just have to finish this up.”

  I ignored his request and sat down in one of the chairs on the opposite side of his desk, folding my hands in my lap.

  Dad glanced up at me, and I watched the concern wash over his face when he saw me — when he really saw me.

  I had to look as tired as I felt. I knew it. I knew there were bags under my eyes, that my blotchy skin had to be betraying the fact that I’d cried all evening after leaving the nursing home. I had barely eaten at dinner, which Mama covered up by saying I was worried about fitting into my wedding dress.

  Ever the damage control.

  But now, sitting across from my father, I didn’t want to hide it anymore. I didn’t want to pretend like everything was fine.

  Dad swallowed, pulling his hands from the keyboard and steepling them together as he sat back in his chair. “Or we can talk now.”

  My next breath was a shaky one, one that burned as much as it brought relief in the form of fresh oxygen. I looked down at my hands, at my manicured nails, at the engagement ring on my finger.

  “I know about the deal you made with Anthony and his father.”

  I couldn’t look at my father, then.

  I couldn’t glance up from my nails and see the man I’d admired my entire life paling at the realization that his little girl knew about the debt he owed, about the way he planned to pay it.

  My gaze stayed fixed in my lap, and that was the only way I had the courage to keep talking.

  “I want you to know that I understand why you did it. I understand that, sometimes, sacrifices have to be made to keep a family afloat. You and Mom have taught me that.” Tears flooded my eyes, and the next words choked out of me with less steadiness. “But, I also want you to know that I have never been so hurt in my entire life. And I never thought my father would ever be capable of selling me to the highest bidder.”

  “Pumpkin…”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head, effectively letting the first two tear drops fall into my lap. “I’m not finished.”

  Silence.

  I sniffed, wiping the back of my hand against my nose with my heart thundering hard in my chest now. “Anthony doesn’t love me. I know that now, and I also know that it doesn’t matter. You and I both know that at the core of my heart, of who I am — I am a giver. Just like you. Just like Mom. We sacrifice for others, and more than anything, we put this family first.”

  My heart ached, Noah’s face the only thing I could see as I shut my eyes and freed another set of tears.

  “I will do this for you,” I whispered, breaking with the admission. “For our family. Because it would kill me to do anything that would ever hurt you, or Mom, or Mary Anne.” I sniffed, finally pulling my gaze up to meet my father’s.

  When I saw the tears on his cheeks, his eyes red and glossy, I broke again.

  “But, you will do something for me in return,” I choked out on a sob. “You have to get help, Daddy. You can’t keep doing this — not at this expense. You have to go to Gamblers Anonymous. You have to stop with the casinos, and the card nights, and the horse tracks. It may have been all fun and games at one point, a way to pass the time and wheel and deal with the good ol’ boys in this town, but now, it has affected not just your life, and not just my life, but our entire family’s.”

  Dad rolled his lips together, two tears streaming parallel down his cheeks as he watched me. He was quiet for a long while, the air in his office stuffy and suffocating.

  “I’m so sorry,” he finally whispered. “I know… I know I’m sick. I know I have a problem. I… I never thought it would get to this point, I never thought…”

  He paused, face crumpling as a sob broke through. In all the years I’d been alive, I’d never seen my father cry.

  Not once.

  But that night in his office, he broke, reaching for a tissue on his desk and wiping the tears away, wiping his nose before his gaze sat miserably somewhere in the distance between us.

  Now, it was him who couldn’t look at me.

  “I don’t know when it got this bad,” he said. “I used to have a hold on it. I’d walk into the casino with what I was okay to lose, and if I lost it, I left. But, when I started going to Pat’s club… I don’t know. Everything changed.”

  Pat was my father’s affectionate pet name for Patrick Scooter.

  The man he now owed so much m
oney to that he couldn’t pay his own debt.

  “When my money ran out, I’d just hang around, drink, smoke cigars with the other city council members. But, Patrick would entice me, tell me to get in on the next hand, that he had me, he’d lend me the bet. It was innocent at first, and I easily paid him back. Somewhere along the way, though…” Dad shook his head. “I don’t know. I got pulled into something I didn’t even realize. It was bigger than I could have ever known. And when I started losing more, I would ask for more — small, at first, but bigger and bigger as time went on. I just thought one more hand, and I’ll win it all back.” A shadow passed over his face, like he was trying to pinpoint the exact moment it all happened.

  Like if he could, he could go back and change it all.

  His mouth hung open for a long pause before he continued. “Before I knew it, I was in over my head in a debt I couldn’t even wrap my head around.”

  I swallowed, trying my best to find sympathy somewhere in my heart for my father, for the man who raised me.

  I came up empty handed.

  “Your mom didn’t even know until it was too late,” he said, his voice low and cracking. “We were going to lose everything… and then… Anthony came to ask for your hand.”

  Just the sound of his name made my stomach roll so violently I nearly vomited what little bit of dinner I could choke down. Tears flooded my eyes again, so fast I couldn’t even try to stop them before they rolled down my cheeks.

  “That’s enough,” I whispered, voice shaking through the shallow breaths I managed to sip. “It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.”

  Dad opened his mouth, but after one look at me, he shut it again.

  “I just needed you to know,” I said definitively. “I needed you to know that I’m aware of what you did, and I needed you to know that as much as it hurts me, I will do what needs to be done for this family.” I shook my head. “Even if I wasn’t given the opportunity to make my own choice in the first place.”

  Dad didn’t say anything else, which was wise, because I was in perhaps the most unstable state I’d ever been in in my entire life.