Page 10 of Loving Her

Sasha, Esme, and Cam had had to put Ruby back together after Antonia disappeared in the night without a word to anyone. That had been a year and a half ago.

“I haven’t dated anyone since Antonia,” Ruby said, her words matching the timeline Sasha was putting together in her head. “I feel like I’m just bad at identifying love, like… what’s a soulmate? I have no idea. I write all those books but I keep missing the mark…”

Sasha desperately wanted to get Ruby out of her head. This wasn’t what she had intended when she brought up the topic of their histories. She’d thought they’d have a fun and light conversation, maybe crack a few jokes about a list, like Alice’s Chart onThe L Word. She wasn’t altogether sure what to do with this darker turn.

But while she was still casting about for something, anything that could break up the black storm clouds gathering over Ruby’s head, Ruby lifted her head, shook her hair back, and squared her shoulders. “OK, so that got depressing. Sorry, Sash. The book is giving me issues and it’s just bumming meout. I feel incompetent.”

“Well, you’re not,” Sasha replied loyally. “You’re a great writer. You’ll fix whatever is going wrong. You always have the best plots.”

“I forget that you’ve read everything I’ve written.” Ruby gazed at her fondly, and it warmed Sasha’s heart. “You’re such a good friend.”

“No, you’re such a good writer. Reading your stuff is a gift, Rubes. And you are…” Sasha swallowed. She felt like she was about to skirt a little too closely to her actual feelings. “You are a gift, too. Any woman would be so lucky to have you.”

“You’re too great to me, Sash. World’s best fake girlfriend.” Ruby tilted her head and smiled winningly. “Tell me about your history now. I feel like I remember you having a big ol’ hound dog phase…”

Sasha blushed. “Embarrassing.”

“But I’ll get to boast to my family that I’m the gal who tamed you, they’ll eat it up.” Ruby grinned. “Now, spill, lady. Idowant all the gory details.”

5

“Do you kids have extra chargers? Did you remember your toothbrushes? Condoms?”

“Esme!” Sasha went hot and, she was sure, red from her neck up to the roots of her hair. Next to her in the back seat of Esme’s car, Ruby could only cackle. Since Esme had met and married her wife Nora and since Holly had returned from Australia, her sweetly dry sense of humor had taken on a slightly bawdier twist. Ruby loved it, but Sasha was still having a hard time adjusting to it.

Ruby patted Sasha on the head. “You better develop a higher tolerance to dirty jokes in the next few hours, Sash. Esme is super tame compared to my brothers. And it doesn’t even compare to my mom after two glasses of red!”

“Oh, God,” Sasha groaned, slapping her forehead.

Esme giggled as she pulled over at LAX. “Get her airplane tipsy, that’ll give her a head start on courage, maybe.” She pressed the button to unlock the car doors. “Right, out, there’s a skycap already looking like he wants to call the cops on me for being here.”

Ruby scrambled to let herself out and run to the trunk, which opened as she arrived. Sasha came around from her side of the car, and they hauled their bags out together.

“No time for hugs,” Esme called out. “Go on, go!”

They’d barely cleared the curb when Esme screeched off. The skycap she’d noted walked up to Ruby and Sasha with a scowl. “You’re not supposed to park and drop here.”

“Sorry,” Ruby cooed, batting her eyelashes at him.

To Sasha’s surprise, the blatantly fake flirtation actually seemed to work, as the man actually blushed and ducked his head. “Well, you just make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“It won’t,” Ruby sang back over her shoulder as she turned towards the airport doors.

“Lies,” Sasha mumbled as they scooted off and away from the grumpy attendant. “We’ll do it again next week when Esme picks us up.”

“They don’t have to know that.” Briskly, Ruby headed for the American Airlines check-in kiosks. “Now come here. Give me your ID, hold my bag, I’ll check us in.”

It felt very couple-ish, the way they easily swapped the items and Ruby handled their check-in. Sasha liked it.But don’t get used to it, she reminded herself. This wasn’t real, and it had a time limit.

It was still nice, though.

Ruby pulled a pair of boarding passes off of the machine and pointed towards the bag drop. “Let’s get those bags off your hands.” Then, to Sasha’s surprise, Ruby leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

She didn’t know how to react to that. Speechless, she could only stare at Ruby, whose face flushed a very pretty shade of pink. “Sorry,” she whispered, pulling her messenger bag out of Sasha’s suddenly limp hands. “I was watching a bunch of rom-coms this week. And I remembered something we haven’t gone over. Or practiced.”

Sasha’s mouth was dry. She was pretty sure she knew where this was going. “What’s that?” she rasped out.

“PDAs,” Ruby replied, her cheeks turning even rosier. “I definitely should have remembered earlier. I mean, we’ve both been in relationships, I write romance… but in a real relationship you don’t have to think about those things. They just happen.”

---