Page 22 of Let It Be Me

Ruby drops her gaze and sinks down onto the deck stairs. I follow and we’re quiet. It’s over. She starts to wrap her hands around her legs, then pulls away when her finger touches blood.

“Here.” I fold up the hem of my T-shirt and lean close to her, using the clean side to dab the blood. The heat of the night has intensified the summery, coconut scent that clings to her all year round. My knuckles brush the smooth skin on the inside of her calf. Brad should care that I’m touching her like this, but apparently he doesn’t. Ruby’s eyes are down, watching my hand clean away the blood.

Maybe if the little things like this don’t have to change, I can handle her falling in love. I can put her happiness first even if it’s Brad making her happy. He’ll never be good enough for her, but then nobody ever will.

EIGHT

ruby

Tuesday morning,I’m not worried about Lorenzo’s surgery until the nurse hustles me out of the pre-op area and closes the curtain around him. A quick, uncomfortable series of what-ifs runs through my brain as I wander back to the waiting area. There’s always that chance, however minuscule, of something going wrong. Then what would I do? Without Lorenzo, I’m completely alone.

That’s when my brain goes to the place I hate most of all: life after college. I fill a paper cup from the waiting area watercooler and slump into a plastic chair.

A year from now Lorenzo will be starting his pro football career, I’ll be starting a job of my own—hopefully—and we’ll probably be hundreds of miles apart. The beginning of life without Lorenzo at my side. Dread doesn’t even begin to explain how I feel. Lorenzo likes to act like nothing will change next year, but for all his intelligence, he doesn’t see the bigger picture. He’ll be rolling in cash, swamped by the most beautiful women in America, and traveling constantly for games and endorsement deals. I’ll be lucky if I don’t have to move into my childhood bedroom. He won’t forget me, of course. I’ll get flowers on my birthday and an invitation to his wedding, but no one who knowshim in that life will ever get to know me. The thought brings a sharp curl of pain to my gut.

Sometimes I try to remember life before I met Lorenzo. My parents claim I had friends, but since I can’t remember them, I have doubts. Probably they were the disciplined, overachieving children of my parents’ disciplined, overachieving friends whose habits were intended to rub off on me.Full of piss and vinegar from day oneis how my grandfather has always summed me up. My dad can’t stand when he says that. He doesn’t approve of his father’s ways any more than he approves of his daughter’s.

But life after Lorenzo won’t be anything like life before him. Back then, I didn’t know what I was missing. Even now, when he’s not around, I feel it. When I’m with other people, even those I consider friends, I feel how strange I am, how hard I have to work to blend in. Everyone else seems to know what they want and how to get there. I’ve tried to pretend I’m the same, and I’ve tried to embrace being the rebel who doesn’t want to get anywhere in life. Neither quite works. I can’t be me unless I’m alone or with him.

Nerves prick at my skin, stealing my ability to sit still, so I head outside to walk the gravel paths that wind around the hospital grounds and shift my focus to more immediate unpleasant matters. I have to call my dad, and I might even have to grovel. Because as of two days ago, I’m jobless.

I haven’t told Lorenzo that when I called my boss to ask whether I could start a couple of days later than agreed on, the guy fired me. Does it even count as firing if you lose the job before you ever started? The memory of the conversation makes me warm with humiliation. My boss wasn’t even an asshole about it; he just sounded tired and disappointed and not particularly surprised. Maybe if I’d prepared better, I could have convinced him how much the job meant to me and how I intended to make up for switching my start date by being thebest damn fish facility care assistant Shafer University has ever seen. I’d have gladly made up the hours by coming in early or staying late. I blow out a breath, refusing to get stuck in the tangle of regret. If it couldn’t be Gina taking care of Lorenzo today, it had to be me. Anyone else would have stressed him out too much. And while that job meant something to me, this surgery means everything to Lorenzo. Giving up my job was an easy decision.

I find an empty table in a small courtyard and pull up the note on my phone where I made my calculations. Do I really have to do this? But my situation is right there in stomach-churning black and white: I have just enough money saved to pay my rent through summer. And I have zero left over to turn on the lights, run the fridge, buy groceries, or take showers. If I don’t land a job with decent pay—like right now—I’ll have to sublet my apartment and spend the summer back home, working for my parents. And every job I’ve called or emailed about in the last few days has either been filled or beyond my qualifications. I always told myself that as soon as I hit college, I’d make sure I never needed a thing from my parents beyond tuition, yet here I am, ready to grovel so they’ll swoop in and save my ass.

I dial my dad, my chest tight. I’ve heard that smiling can improve your attitude, so I force a smile as the phone rings. This is going to take everything I have.

“Hey, Dad,” I say when he answers.

“Ruby. Nice to hear from you at last.”

“Thanks. Yeah, it’s been a while. How are the preparations for summer workshops coming?” As headmaster, my dad runs programs for students of all ages all summer long.

“I’m fine-tuning the details as we speak.”

“So you’ve done all your hiring?”

Pause. “Ruby,” he says knowingly.

I breathe into the phone. Do I really have it in me to do this? “Yes?”

“Why are you inquiring about staffing?”

“I ...” Yes, I’m really going to do this. I have no choice. “I was wondering if you had any need for another employee.”

There’s silence and then a harsh crackling on the line. I picture my dad sighing deeply; Richard’sI’m disappointedsigh. “I don’t suppose you’re asking for a friend, are you?”

“Nope, I’m available.” I say it like this is his lucky day.

“I’ve been telling you since January I wanted you working here for the summer, and I just needed to know by May. What happened to thefishjob?” He saysfishlike it’s some absurd new trend.

I seethe for an instant. Why does everyone seem to find this job worthy of being mocked? It’s a university job, it’s steady pay with real responsibilities, and I was pretty fucking excited about it. I can’t tell him the truth. “Nothing happened to it,” I say, gritting my teeth. “Turns out it won’t be as many hours as I need, that’s all.”

“Well, Ruby, a loan is out of the question.”

“Did I ask for a loan?”

“We both know it’s coming.”

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