by Amelia Wilde
But tonight I had none of that focus. I was scattered and anxious, every desperate fear of imposter syndrome I'd been fighting for more than twelve years was coming out to fuck with my head. I knew without a doubt that if Ruby wasn't here, I would have done something I've never done before. In my life.
I would have bailed.
"You make me a better person," I told her.
She gave me a fond smile. Probably thought it was the whiskey talking. But it wasn't. In a short time, Ruby had gone from a thorn in my side to my reason for getting up in the morning. She was my moral compass, turning me in a direction I never thought I would be headed, but now I could see the path led me somewhere beautiful, somewhere breathtaking. Somewhere I couldn't imagine leaving now.
It led me to love.
I blinked as my body went stiff with the realization and then immediately settled into the rightness of it. Yes. I loved her. That was clear to me. Clearer than anything in my life thus far.
I looked over at her, ready to say it, then clapped my mouth shut. Her whole body was tense, drawn and leaning forward, a worried tic at her temple. "What's - ?" I started to say then looked out the window to what she was staring at.
The whole world was suddenly white. A snow squall had blown up in a sudden, gusting fury, whipping the snow into a tornado of white blankness. The headlights only showed a path about five feet in front of us, then disappeared against an impenetrable wall of swirling snow. Everything was uniformly white. I had no idea if we were driving down the road or through a field.
Ruby was tense and silent, leaned all the way forward. She had slowed to a crawl, leaning as if hanging over the steering wheel would let her peer more closely into the storm. I could feel the fear rising off of her in waves, the tight lines of her body stretched so taut she shook a little.
Seeing her frightened shook something loose in my head and I instantly sobered. "You're doing just fine," I murmured, not wanting to startle her. "Want me to drive?"
She shook her head without taking her eyes from the road. "You had a bunch to drink," she reminded me.
I was as sober as a judge. "I'm okay," I told her. "I could do it if you're nervous."
"I'm afraid to stop," she said tightly. The car was shuddering underneath us, slipping on the slickness hidden under the snow. It must have been right around freezing now, the melted snow from earlier now refreezing into a solid sheet of ice under our wheels. Ruby hissed and the car went a little faster. I could see the RPMs on the dash pinning, but we were going no more than ten miles an hour. "Jonah," she moaned, fear stretching my name out into nearly a wail.
"Look, there's the farmhouse with the blown down tree, right?" I pointed, trying to assuage some of her fears. "So you're on the road. You're doing beautifully, Ruby. You can do it."
She whimpered a little, but said nothing, giving all her attention to the whiteness swirling around us. "What's that?" she asked.
Lights were appearing out of the gloom. "Plow!" I shouted, right at the moment we both realized she was in the wrong lane.
"Jesus!" she cried, yanking the wheel to the right. We spun out, then caught the groove made by the cars before us, and the plow slid by, its bright lights like some kind of alien mothership in the gloom.
"Everything's gone," she whispered. "I have no idea where we are."
"Somewhere on Whalen Station Road because we haven't crossed the main road yet." I pressed my lips together, unwilling to think about how this was the road Gid had died on.
"Are you sure?"
"No," I had to admit. "That might have been it right back there, when the plow went by."
"That means - " she trailed off, not wanting to say it. Once you crossed the highway, Whalen Station changed over into highway 12, which hugged the creek, following it out of town. Highway 12 was nicknamed Snake Road around here for all the twists and turns. It was fun as hell to ride in the summer time.
In a whiteout it could mean death.
"No," I reassured her. "That wasn't it. We just passed the farmhouse, right?"
"I don't know," she moaned. "And we're climbing a hill now." The whine of the wheels was almost drowning her out, making her shout. "Is there a hill on Whalen Station, Jonah?"
I wracked my brain. "I don't know."
"Course you don't, because you haven't been here long enough to know."
"Ruby, let's not - "
"What? Talk about how you flit in and out?" she yelled hysterically. "Talk about how you're going to be leaving Crown Creek as soon as you find another manager? Talk about how this was just a nice distraction while you got back on your feet?"
"Ruby! Stop!" I shouted.
"For fuck's sake Jonah, where are we?!"
"I don't know!" I bellowed. "But I love you!"
"Fuck!" she yelped as the spinning tires suddenly caught dry pavement and we shot forward. She yanked the wheel over at the last second, saving us from nosediving into the ditch, but the correction sent the back end fishtailing. She steered into the spin like a pro, but the pavement was too slick and with a slow, sickening slide we pitched over into the blinding white.
37
Ruby
When things like this happen, it's supposed to be like it's in slow motion.
But for me it was more like a dream. In dreams you have this calm acceptance. "Oh yes, of course I should be surfing a wave made out of maple syrup and yes it isn't odd at all that my fourth grade teacher is suddenly my surfboard." These things just happen and you watch them with a sense of complete detachment.
This was a dream and I calmly accepted that were suddenly be flying through the air. If course it made perfect sense that the air should be filled with the dust from the airbag. It was absolutely fine that a loud ringing noise should pierce the darkness.
Then Jonah shook me and I realized the ringing noise was my own scream.
"Ruby? Ruby?" He was shaking me but I couldn't stop screaming. It seemed like that would be what I would do forever more. This was my new reality. I screamed.
He unbuckled my seat belt and pulled me to him, crushing me in his arms until my screams fell away and the only sound was the ticking of the engine and the hiss of the deflating airbag. Everything else was silent and dark, muffled by the swirling white storm.
"Oh my god," I moaned, leaning back. There was a hot, burning feeling on my cheek and I touched int gingerly.
"The airbag," Jonah explained. I could barely see him. He was just a voice coming from a darker shade of the blackness. "Abraded your cheek. It got me too."
"Jonah?" My screams had subsided and now the shaking was setting in. "Jonah are we in the water? Oh fuck, did we land in the creek?"
"No, no, hush baby. We're off the road on the other side. You went to the left when we hit that skid, not the right."
"How do you know?"
I reached out blindly to touch his face and felt his cheek lift in a smile. "I know my own town," he said.
I pressed my lips together. "Are we stuck?"
He unbuckled his seatbelt and tried his door. "Well, something's blocking that," he said after a moment. He seemed totally calm, unruffled even, all of the traces of drunkenness that had clung to him gone now and I realized that this was the first time I was seeing Jonah King in his natural element. He had a problem that needed to be solved and he was going to find a solution.
A little tug at my heart made me remember what he had shouted at me just before the crash.
"Try your side," he encouraged me.
I nodded and tried my door handle. My door swung open about a half a foot and then stopped, I swung it back and forth and managed to clear another four or five inches before the dirt of whatever ditch we were in compacted to the point of blocking me entirely. "I can get it to there."
"Good," I could feel, rather than see him nodding. "Then we won't die of carbon monoxide poisoning."
"Oh god," I squeaked.
His hand quickly found mine. "We'll call for help," he said, fumbling in his coat
pocket. He pulled out his phone and turned it on. It immediately turned back off again. "Well fuck," he said matter-of-factly. "Do you have yours?"
I reached behind me and fumbled for my purse. "I don't feel it, did it fall behind you?"
He twisted and felt around. "I'm not feeling it."
"It must have tipped over." I grunted and felt blindly. "Goddamn, where's the?" I stabbed blindly at the buttons on the dash, but no light flooded the interior. "We must have smashed whatever controlled that. Fuck."
"I found your lipstick?'
"Oh good, we can call for help using that."
"Ruby."
"Sorry, I don't mean to be mean, it's just..."
"You're scared."
"How come you're not?"
"Because this storm is gonna blow past as fast as it came up," he said briskly. "Because people will be looking for us, waiting for us to show up at the Crown. Because someone is bound to drive by any moment now and see the car off the road and call the police. We just gotta sit tight."
"It's so fucking cold though."
"Come closer. I'm warm."
I slid over, draping myself across the center console. "Yes, you actually really are."
"I have a confession to make."
"What?"
"I engineered this crash to I wouldn't have to play and could spend the night snuggling with you instead."
"You could have just asked," I whisper screamed, but let my head fall back against his shoulder anyway. Now that the accident was over, the adrenaline dump had left me feeling shaky and sleepy. I closed my eyes, burrowing my face up into the place at Jonah's neck where he smelled most like himself. "I wouldn't have minded spending the night snuggling you."
He was quiet for a moment. In the absolute silence and blackness, we could have been the only two people in the universe, floating in space. I closed my eyes and opened them and couldn't tell the difference. The absolute darkness was surreal. "You heard me?" he murmured.
I blinked against his skin. Of course I knew what he was referring to, he didn't have to say it, except... "Say it again," I whispered. My nose was getting colder by degrees and I nuzzled him with it. "Again."
I heard his chuckle, felt his belly rise and fall with it, but I couldn't see him at all. I could picture his face though, the way his dark eyes would go darker when he said, "I love you, Ruby. I just sort of realized it as I got in the car."
"Sort of realized it?"
"It hit me like, of course. Of course I love her. That's the only reason the way I feel makes sense."
"How do you feel?" I breathed.
"Like my life is just starting," he said into the darkness. "Like coming back to Crown Creek was the first day of it, seeing you there in the parking lot all pissed off and ready to skin me alive. That was the first day of my life and each day since I've realized more and more than the only life I want is one where you are the most important thing in it."
I wasn't even breathing any more. The dead silence and suffocating black of the car interior made it seem like this all might be a dream. "Jonah, my life is here. I have a job and a house and, and a fucking cat and..."
"And friends and family, yeah me too."
I grabbed his shirt and clenched a fistful of the fabric. "Don't you fuck with me, Jonah King."
He chuckled. "I'm still figuring out a lot of things, but I'm not figuring out how I feel about you any more. That's for fucking sure. How I feel is love." He gripped my hand and lifted my fingers to his lips. "I love you," he said as he kissed them. "And you don't have to say it back because I know I'm blindsiding you and we were just in a fucking car accident so my timing is shitty as anything but I wanted to tell you right now because nothing else seemed as important. "
"Not even getting help?"
"I told you, this was all an elaborate ploy to spend the night with the girl I love."
"Oh my god, Jonah. I love you too."
I couldn't see him but I could feel his body heat with pleasure, his cheeks getting warmer against mine. "You serious? You love me?"
"I love you."
He breathed out.
"I really wish I could see your face right now."
"I don't need to see you," he said. "I've memorized you."
"Have you really?"
"You have a little freckle in the corner of your eye. There are three little eyelashes on your right eye that point straight out instead of curling up like the rest of them do. Your eyebrows grow up first and then down. Should I go on?"
"Okay okay I believe you," I said, laughing. "I know you by heart too. There is a little swirl of stubble on your cheek that looks like a spiral..."
"Oh I am aware. It's a real bitch to shave, let me tell you."
"Your eyes have more yellow in them close to your pupil, like your iris is an eclipse of the sun."
"You should be the songwriter not me. I'm totally stealing that, baby. I'll give you credit though."
I sighed into his arms. My legs were getting cold and I tugged at my dress. We both sighed again. "How long do you think until someone sees us?" I asked Jonah.
"Not long now. Look, the snow is letting up."
I tried to see what he could see but all I could make out was shades of black in the blackness. Maybe that was an improvement? Maybe not. I closed my eyes again, and shivered a little.
"I got you. Here, we can make our coats into a blanket, unzip, that way both our body heat gets trapped, it'll keep us warmer."
But I was starting to shiver in earnest now. The last vestiges of the heat had been sapped away by the swirling snow. I wanted like hell to open the door but I knew that letting in the cold was a bad idea. I closed my eyes again, trying to will away the feeling of being trapped by reminding myself that Jonah loved me. His arms were around me right now. I was as safe as I could be and any minute now someone would come.
38
Jonah
"Ruby? Ruby? Wake up."
Her teeth chattering had woken me from my own frozen sleep. I leaned forward and could no longer make out the shapes of the dark trees ahead of us.
The snow had covered the windshield so thickly I could no longer see anything at all.
While we slept we were slowly getting buried.
My mouth felt like a sock had been stuffed in it and a headache was starting behind my eyes, traces of the whiskey still leaving my system. We'd been in here too long, why had no one come to pull us out? "Ruby, baby, I know it's hard but you have got to wake up, okay?"
She mumbled awake, setting her teeth to chattering at once. "Jesus," she shivered.
"I know."
"How long have we been here?"
"It's still night. I think. I don't know."
"It looks dark."
"I think that's because there's so much snow on the windshield."
I tried to keep my voice light, like 'oh look at that' but Ruby immediately caught the danger in my words. "We're getting buried and no one has found us yet? They won't be able to see us, Jonah, how can they find us...?"
"Okay." The fear was clearing my head, but it still felt like my brain was moving slowly, thoughts stuck in the thick sludge of cold. That was bad, I knew it. "Okay, baby?" I wished I could kiss the cold out of her cheeks. But it was only getting colder. I took a deep breath. "I need you to climb out, okay? We gotta start moving here."
"Jonah..."
"Ruby, we're going to be fine." I was decidedly not fine, but I didn't want her to know just how cloudy my brain was. "We just need to get out of here now and go back to the farmhouse with the blown down tree. We're not too far from it, right? Just have to stay on the road and we'll be there in no time."
She took a deep breath and then shoved her whole weight against the door again. I heard the scraping grind of the metal against the ground, the chuck of a rock glancing off. "Can you squeeze out now?"
"I can try." I could hear the panic in her voice and reached out to squeeze her hand. "I'm sorry," she said with a shuddering breath, pull
ing herself together. "I have claustrophobia really bad and I think it just occurred to me we're trapped here."
"We're not trapped, not at all, look, your door is open, right? You're just going to squeeze out there and then pull from the other end. I'm going to need you to help get my big ass out of here, okay?"
Asking for her help always did it. That's why I loved this girl. You told her you needed her and she was rock solid there for you. "Okay," she said, taking a wavering breath.
I heard the sound of fabric scraping and then the noise of her foot as she tried to find a place to stand. In the dark I reached out, putting a reassuring hand on her back. "If you need a push, I'm right here."
"Can you... not touch me?"
"Of course." Stupid me, she had just gotten done telling me she had claustrophobia. "You're doing great, Ruby."
"I'm almost out. Yes..." There was a scraping sound. "Ow!" she hissed.
"You okay?"
"Cut my leg. I'm okay."
But she sounded like she was in pain and for a second my rage was enough to surge me forward. "Can you step back baby? I'm coming out now."
I threw everything I had into squeezing through that door, ripping a hole right across the thigh of my designer jeans. I shook my head. Well I looked like a local now.
I blinked but the dark remained total. Out here, the wind was whipping around, stealing the last vestiges of warmth we'd held on to in the car. "Here," I said, shoving my hands blindly out. "Take my gloves."
"You need them, don't you?"
"I have pockets. Let's hurry."
I found Ethel's tire tracks almost by accident, and grabbed Ruby's arm. "Stay close, right here, with me okay? And I want you to keep talking."
"Talk about what?"
"Whatever you need to tell me.
I concentrated on staying in the track until suddenly the ground was solid under my boots and I knew we had hit the road. From the way we'd climbed, it suddenly made sense why no one had found us driving by. We would have been invisible. I heard a far off noise of an engine and froze, but no headlights pierced the darkness. The snow was falling steadily now, but no longer looked like a tornado of white. The worst was over.