Page 20 of Loving Her

Sasha all but choked on the bite of pastry she’d just taken. Hurriedly, she reached for her coffee. “Say what now?” she asked, stalling for recovery time. She wasn’t used to Ruby being so blunt! But then, until yesterday, she had never kissed or touched Ruby before, never left her high and dry. Is that what made the difference?

Ruby certainly seemed calmer and more composed than Sasha would have expected. She was continuing to sip at her coffee, hair damp and fragrant around her shoulders, eyes inquisitive, demeanor fully unbothered. “You said we needed to talk. You had my breast in your hand, you were kissing me,pulling my hair. I told you, that doesn’t come easy to me…” Her bravado melted away. “What did I do wrong?”

Of all the things Sasha thought Ruby would ask, that, in such a soft and wounded tone, wasn’t what she expected. Sasha put down her pastry and rushed over to sit next to Ruby, taking her free hand. “Nothing. You did nothing wrong.” But she was starting to panic, because she still didn’t know what to say. She could not, no way, tell Ruby she’d pumped the brakes because sleeping with Ruby, touching her, kissing her, making her come, would be the beginning of the end for Sasha.

She was already in love with Ruby. Getting physically involved was the last frontier, and if they did that now while they were in this weird fake relationship, it would kill Sasha to see it end once they were home. She couldn’t do it. But she also couldn’t tell Ruby the truth about why.

Sasha realized, however, that she could fudge things a little, and it would only be a little. “You did nothing wrong,” she repeated, scooting closer and pressing a kiss into Ruby’s hair. “But we were drunk. I wouldn’t want it to be like that, with you. With anyone. It’s just not right.”

“Oh.” Ruby swallowed hard. “Okay. I just felt…”

“I know. I’m sorry. I never meant to make you feel bad, or to leave you hanging, Rubes. But things weren’t supposed to get that far anyway, right?” Sasha tried to inject jovial cheer into her voice, to get that sad rejected look off of Ruby’s face. “We’re only girlfriends in public.”

“That’s true.” Ruby’s face was unreadable for a moment, but then she sat up straight and smiled. Carefully wiping her lips clean with a tissue from a box on her end table, she leaned over and kissed Sasha, just a soft, fleeting butterfly of a kiss on the lips. “Apology accepted, and I’m sorry for putting you in that position. Friends?”

“Friends,” Sasha agreed, firmly ignoring the dagger that word was to her poor tender heart.

The Fierelli house was bursting at the seams with dozens of family members ready to caravan over to Lorenzo’s Bar and Restaurant for Angela and Daniel’s rehearsal dinner. Ruby reveled in the hustle and bustle and loud conversation of it all as she and Sasha arrived downstairs. As much as she loved her life in LA with her chosen family, coming home to Winston and Natalie was never like this, never a loud and wonderful cacophony of love and bickering and happiness.

“Hey! Everybody listen,” Papa Dom bellowed, his powerful baritone bringing the multiple conversations to a screeching halt. “I got all the cars sorted out, come see me and I’ll tell you who you’re ridin’ with. Rubes, Sasha, you’re with me and Mama, plus Rosie and Jim, so you all go get in the Suburban. Everybody else, see me right now so we can get this show on the road!”

Grabbing Sasha’s hand, Ruby scooted out the door right behind her sister and brother-in-law. She and Rose were very familiar with Papa Dom’s strict rules when he was acting as Caravan Chief. When assignments were given, it was best to simply get out of the way. The four of them piled themselves into the Suburban and buckled in.

“What’s this Chiara’s place like?” Sasha asked, snugging her seatbelt up over her lap. “Italian?”

“Upscale Italian, and it’s in a mansion,” Jim said, his amiable face brightening up. “Beautiful place with incredible food. We had our rehearsal dinner there too, didn’t we, Rosie?”

“We did,” Rose confirmed. “So did Dom Junior and Dante.” A lovely, if sly, smile spread across her face, and Ruby narrowedher eyes at her big sister. Rose’s smile only grew bigger and she continued, “It’s become a sort of tradition. Maybe you’ll continue it, Ruby?”

“Maybe one day,” Ruby gritted out from behind her clenched teeth.

“You’ll have to tell us what you think of the food, Sasha,” Rose trilled out as Jim chuckled into his fist. Sasha went pink.

“Thankyou, Rose,” Ruby bit out, resisting the urge to reach out and yank on her sister’s high ponytail. The best strategy for coping with any of her siblings when they felt mischievous was to grin and bear it. Violence would only beget further violence, and she had no interest in finding out just how lethal Rose’s knucklepunch still was. Her sister had a real knack for finding the softest, most easily bruisable site on a person with the first blow. Ruby rubbed at a phantom ache that sprang up from her upper thigh, circa approximately 2002.

Papa Dom and Elena climbed into the Suburban. “Everybody got their belts on?” Dom asked, cranking the vehicle on. At the collective nod and the click of Elena’s seatbelt buckle, he let out a whoop and pulled out of the driveway. “Then let’s go eat!”

Ruby leaned over to whisper in Sasha’s ear. “I’m sorry about Rose.”

“It’s okay,” Sasha whispered back. “It’s cute that she wants to help plan your future wedding.”

“She’s not the only one,” Ruby sighed, looking down at her hands in her lap. She began to pick at her cuticles. “They all keep making comments to me. It’s… a lot.” And she’d never let them know how it hurt her, how she wished shedidhave someone to plan a wedding with.

A gentle hand wrapped around hers and squeezed. Ruby looked up to see Sasha smiling fondly at her, as if she understood what Ruby wasn’t saying. Ruby swallowed. She probablydidunderstand. Just like Ruby understood that Sasha was likelywishing she had a crowd of rowdy, interfering siblings of her own. She squeezed Sasha’s hand back. At least she had her, no matter how puzzling her own feelings were at the moment.

They let everyone else carry the conversation for the twenty-minute drive to Chiara’s, each of them occasionally interjecting some kind of agreeable noise when called for. It was nice, Ruby thought, to be here with such a good friend, one who knew her so well, who could sync in and just know how to move with her through a crazy week like this one.

Dom pulled up in front of the lovely old mansion that housed the restaurant. “Rubes, you two go in there and let them know we’re all arriving, okay? Make sure they’re ready for us.”

“But we’re all the way in the back seat, Pops,” Ruby replied, bewildered. “Why can’t Jim and Rosie do it?”

“Be a good girl, Ruby Margarita,” Elena said, twisting in her seat to fix Ruby with a stern glare she knew all too well. “Do as Papa says.”

Ruby exchanged glances with Sasha, who shrugged and reached for the door handle. “We can manage it, no problem,” Sasha said. “Rose’ll scoot over and let us out.”

“Yep,” Rose concurred, lifting the arm of her seat and sliding over to snuggle up to her husband. “There you go.”

Sasha eased herself out of the SUV and turned, extending her hand to Ruby to help her down. “Thank you,” Ruby said, blushing with pleasure.

---