by Katie Heaney
“Omigod,” she said, not altogether surprised by my confirmation. Interesting, I thought. I hadn’t talked to Alexis about my crush on Ruby at all, and if I knew Ronni, it had never even occurred to her to relay that information to anyone either. Which meant Jamie must have said something to Alexis. “What did she say?”
I looked at the screen but the bubble was gone.
“Nothing, honestly,” I said.
“Let me see.” Alexis reached for my phone, and I swatted her hand away.
“Really, it’s nothing. Last night I asked her what she was up to, and she just responded now.”
“Interesting,” said Alexis. She drummed her fingers together like a mad fortune-teller.
“Not really,” I lied. I risked another peek at Jamie, but she’d returned to her salad. She scraped the bottom of the Tupperware with her plastic fork, which made a horrible noise she knew I couldn’t stand.
“What are you going to write back?” Alexis continued. “I can help you if you want.”
If she’d had it her way, Alexis would have drafted every email, text, and Instagram caption the rest of us ever posted. It wasn’t that she thought we were incapable of communicating. She just thought everyone could afford to communicate a bit more like her. She had a lot of feelings about punctuation and emojis.
“I don’t think I should text her again right now,” I said. “But thanks.” I gave the screen another quick glance—no bubble—silenced the phone, and threw it in my backpack. If Ruby did text me again, I wanted to keep it to myself.
“Smart,” she said. “Give it a few hours.”
“So are you guys, like…?” said Ronni. She glanced at Jamie, unsure what was kosher to say in front of the person who really shouldn’t get to have any opinion on the matter, if you asked me. But Jamie didn’t look up. She just scraped. Ksss click kssssss.
“We’re just friends,” I said. And then, unable to resist, I added, “For now.”
“Yeahhhh. That’s what I thought,” Ronni said, grinning. She gave me a captain-ish clap on the back. Across from me, Alexis clutched her hands and wiggled her shoulders in delight.
My face was fire-truck red. I could feel it. I shouldn’t have said anything in front of Alexis, I thought. I didn’t want it getting out that I thought I was capable of seducing Ruby Ocampo. I only wanted everyone to know when it had already happened.
Jamie threw her plastic container back in her backpack and got up.
“Quinn, you ready?” she asked.
“Oh! Uh. Yes. Yeah, I should go.” I shoved the remaining quarter of my sandwich into my mouth and hoisted my backpack over my shoulder. “Bye, you guys.” Ronni waved, and Alexis mouthed, Text me later.
Once we were out of earshot I muttered my thanks to Jamie for helping me escape before Alexis could keep interrogating me.
She shrugged. “They were being annoying.”
“Agreed.”
We walked without talking until our routes to class diverged, and then we saw each other off with a nod. I loved Ronni a lot, and Alexis, too, but even now I felt more comfortable around Jamie in the tensest silence than I did around my other friends. I wondered if I’d ever feel that at ease around anyone else, friend or more. It was almost impossible to get to that place with someone, and when it did happen, it took such a long time. And even then, cruelly, there was no guarantee you’d both stay there.
* * *
—
After practice, I pulled out my phone and saw I finally had a text from Ruby. It took everything I had not to yelp.
It said: Wanna help me make posters for the show?
She’d sent it twenty minutes earlier. I hoped I hadn’t missed my window, that she hadn’t already changed her mind.
Yes!! I wrote. No, I thought. WAY too much. Delete.
Sure! I sent it quickly, before I could find something wrong with that, too. I knew from past experience that I could lose hours of my life this way.
Your place? I added. I wondered what her bedroom looked like. I pictured band posters and clothes everywhere. Maybe one of those big white vanities girls in movies had just for putting on lipstick and spritzing perfume on their wrists. I imagined her sitting there in a silky black robe, awash in golden light, and zoned out until Ronni shouted my name and I realized I was sitting alone.
Ruby still hadn’t replied, so I threw on my bag and dragged myself out to the parking lot, trailing behind the rest of the team. I waved goodbye to everyone and climbed into my truck, where I sat very still and stared at my phone until it lit up.
Eh.
Yours?
Ugh. Why did exactly zero of the rich people I knew ever want to spend any time in their own beautiful houses? If I lived in a house like that, I’d make everyone come to me. Wasn’t that the point?
I thought it over. My mom definitely wasn’t home from work yet, but would be soon. She was weird, but she was also busy, and would probably say hello and head right for her office. We didn’t have a lot to offer, snacks-wise, but if I remembered correctly there were ice cream sandwiches in the freezer. My room was fairly clean, and I’d taken down all the pictures of Jamie and me weeks ago. Despite its modest size and the general anxiety associated with letting someone like Ruby into it, my house was…fine. For a minute I thought about suggesting neutral territory—Triple Moon?—but that felt somehow disrespectful to Jamie. That my instinct was still to protect her feelings, to do anything to avoid offending her, annoyed me. But not enough to change my mind and risk it.
Sure, I wrote. Do you need a ride?
Shockingly, I’ve been cleared to drive. What’s your address?
I took a breath and texted it to her, both embarrassed and grateful that the name of my street would let her know not to expect much.
I raced home, shoveling drive-through tacos into my mouth on the way. I took the world’s fastest shower and then tried to survey the setting from an outsider’s perspective: the tiled entryway, in need of a sweep; the laundry room straight ahead, piled with dirty clothing (I shut the door); the papers and books scattered across the kitchen table, which I stacked in neat piles and then arranged slightly askew for a more natural effect. I hated the way the staircase overhung the entrance to the living room, and I especially hated the spaces between the steps, which had terrified me as a kid, and which sometimes still scared me if I thought too hard about getting my foot stuck in one of them. But there was nothing I could do about that in the next ten minutes or so. So instead I turned on various combinations of lamps and overhead lights until the room felt glowy and warm, and folded our most presentable blanket over the back of the couch. Then I swept the floor and dusted the TV and searched the pantry for a snack I could put out, clapping victoriously when I found a mostly full bag of kettle corn. I dumped it into a bowl and put it on the coffee table and then I sat down to wait.
Ten minutes passed, then twenty, then forty: three-quarters of the way into an episode of Chopped I’d already seen twice. At the forty-five-minute mark I sent Ruby a text.
Hey, are you on the way?
Then I felt bad for having texted her while she was in the car, because what if she got in a car crash and died, and the last thing the police found on her phone was a half-typed response to me? I had seen a commercial about this very thing happening once and it haunted me. I quickly typed another message.
Don’t text me back
If you’re driving, I mean
My phone buzzed anyway. She wrote: Almost there!
When the doorbell rang, another thirty minutes had gone by, and I’d dozed off to the dulcet drone of Ted Allen naming ingredients. I jumped up and slapped myself a couple times on the cheeks before answering the door.
I’d started to get a little annoyed with Ruby by then, but when I opened the door and I saw her I wasn’t mad anymore. Her hair was wet and her eyes
were puffy. She was wearing a hoodie, the front pocket lumpy with markers and pens, and she held a small stack of brightly colored paper under her arm. I took these from her and set them on the table.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She looked up at me, seemingly surprised and grateful all at once. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be able to tell that she’d been crying. But it was pretty obvious.
“Is it weird if I ask for a hug?” she said.
I didn’t answer. I just stepped closer and put my arms around her shoulders. She moved closer still, looping her arms around my lower back and resting her head gently against my collarbone. My body felt less solid where hers touched it, like a bubble that might burst if she pressed any harder. I wanted her to press harder anyway. I wanted us both to hold on for dear life.
“Tell me,” I said. We separated and sat on the couch, and I wished I had something to offer her besides popcorn, which now seemed irredeemably dorky.
“It’s stupid,” said Ruby. “I don’t know why I cried. I think I have PMS or something.” She rubbed at her eyes, leaving little shadows of mascara beneath them.
“I’m sure it’s not stupid,” I said. “At least, I’m pretty sure.”
“Thanks a lot,” she laughed.
“Boy problems?” I guessed.
She looked at me then, so intently I blushed. She shrugged. So I was right.
“Mikey?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
“What happened?”
“Just him being a dick, as usual.”
I wanted badly to agree but it seemed wiser to wait.
She sighed. “I talked to the guys about the show, and everyone seemed fine with it, and into it, and then a few hours ago Mikey texted me to say he wasn’t sure he was up for it after all, and it turned into a whole thing.”
“Do you think he meant it?”
“Of course not!” she scoffed. “He would never miss an opportunity to be adored.”
“Then what is he doing?”
“Getting back at me, I guess?”
“Boys are such drama queens,” I said. “Everyone acts like girls are the emotional ones, but have you ever seen a girl punch a locker? No.” I sound like Jamie, I thought.
“It’s true,” Ruby sniffed.
I paused. “Is it really that important to have a bass player?”
Ruby laughed spitefully. “Unfortunately, yes,” she said. “And he’s really good.”
“I feel like I could learn.”
“You have two weeks.”
“Okay, how about this: if I’m somehow not ready by then, Mikey can play.”
“So he’s your alternate?”
“Mm, I prefer the term ‘understudy’?”
There was that laugh again. We smiled at each other until we remembered why Ruby was in my house in the first place. The posters and markers were on the coffee table three inches away, but neither of us moved to touch them. As for me, I didn’t want to break the spell. As for her, I couldn’t tell yet. But there was something.
“You’re so lucky you’re not attracted to them,” she said finally.
“Who, bassists?” I said. She smiled patiently at my joke.
My heart thrummed in my chest. Obviously Ruby knew I was gay (everyone did), but something about the way she was bringing it up now felt loaded. There was always that moment when it came up with someone for the first time, not as an abstract concept having to do with one’s values but specifically about me, when I reflexively held my breath, waiting to see where they wanted to take me: the long-held questions they might have, which I was expected to answer as a representative of my people; the stories about the other gay person they knew, and how genuinely thrilled they were when said person came out; the soft-eyed affection that told me they were a Good Person who also, incidentally, thought of me as something entertaining and cute, not unlike a puppy.
Unless, of course, the person talking to me about my queerness was queer too. Then we could both be normal.
“Sorry,” said Ruby, rolling her eyes at herself. “That was not a woke thing to say.”
I shook my head. “No. I am lucky. Every time I meet a boy, I feel lucky.”
She laughed, and the tension broke, which was the goal. I was okay with being the joke so long as I was the one who made it.
I could have asked her then if she had ever liked a girl, or thought she ever could, but I wasn’t ready to know. At that moment, it felt possible, and I wanted to preserve that hope in amber. So I grabbed a poster and a marker and asked Ruby what she wanted the posters to say.
“We’re calling it the Rock Your Fucking Face Off tour.”
I paused. “I don’t think you can write the f-word on posters for school.”
Ruby laughed. “ ‘The f-word’? That’s adorable.”
I cleared my throat in an attempt to distract her from my reddening face. “I don’t know why I said it like that. I have said ‘fuck’ before.”
“Congratulations,” she smirked. “For the posters, we can censor it with asterisks and dollar signs.”
“Oh, yeah. That makes sense.” I held my marker close to the paper and paused. “You’re doing promo on Instagram and stuff too, right…?”
“Of course. But posters are so classic.”
Ruby watched me start to write a giant S on my poster and then stop again. “You’re making me nervous,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said. “For listening, I mean.”
“Oh. You’re welcome.”
“You’re sweet.”
Again with the fucking blushing.
“Where’s your bathroom?”
“Around that corner there.” I pointed over my shoulder, and then Ruby put her hand on my leg to hoist herself off the floor, and I almost passed out. It was there and then it was gone, not a squeeze or anything, but—given the alternative options she’d have available: the couch and coffee table—not nothing, either. She didn’t look at me, didn’t act like it meant anything in particular, but why do something like that unless it did? When I heard the bathroom door close I put my hand on the spot where hers had been, just above my right knee, and I held it. I actually held my own knee because a girl’s hand had briefly been there. That’s how far gone I was.
I heard the garage door creak open, and I leapt up like I’d been caught masturbating. My mom was home, at exactly the worst time. Not that the sex trajectory leaps directly from knee grazing to making out, but now it definitely wasn’t going to happen.
Ruby emerged from the bathroom at the same time my mom came through the side door, creating a brief yet torturous standoff.
“Hi, Mom. This is Ruby. Ruby, this is my mom…Ms. Antoniak…?” Most of my friends called my mom by her first name, but it had been a while since anyone new had come over and I wanted to be polite. Instead, I feared I sounded like I didn’t know my own mother’s name.
“Um, no. Call me Nadine,” said my mom. “Nice to meet you, Ruby.”
“Nice to meet you too, Nadine,” said Ruby. “I love your name.”
“Really? It’s so old-fashioned.”
“That’s why it’s cool.”
“Ha. Enjoy that association while it lasts.”
“Just say thank you, Mom.” Sometimes she could be so cynical and so self-righteous I wanted to scream. When I was younger I loved the way she treated the two of us as a team the world was out to get, but the older I got, the more exhausting I found it. Not every compliment was backhanded. Not everyone who seemed nice turned out to only want something from you. Not everything that was good had to go sour.
“Thank you,” my mom sighed. “I’m sorry, it’s been a long day.”
“Vintner?” I asked. For the last few weeks my mom had been the main reporter on a sexual harassment case involving our young, hand
some, and very well-liked mayor. It was obvious that she was excited to be covering it, but I could tell she was running low on steam; her face was pallid and puffy, and I was pretty sure she’d worn that shirt two days in a row at least.
She nodded. “Another intern came forward.”
“What a dick,” said Ruby. “I never trusted him. With that hair?”
My mom raised her eyebrows, and she smiled. “Indeed.”
I tried to contain my pride by shoving a handful of popcorn into my mouth.
“Well, I’ll leave you girls to your…arts and crafts?”
“We’re making posters for Ruby’s show.”
“Oh, right, you’re the rock star.”
It was amazing, really, how quickly embarrassment could replace every other feeling.
Ruby grinned. “You could say that.”
“Sick,” said my mom.
“Bye, Mom!”
She headed upstairs, waving and calling out, “Bye! Love you! Don’t stay up too late! Don’t forget to brush your teeth! I’ll leave your night-light on for you!”
“She’s kidding,” I clarified.
Ruby smirked. “Funny.” I couldn’t quite tell if she meant it, but there was no way I was going to ask. Instead we both checked our phones, or I pretended to while sneakily watching Ruby frown at hers.
“How is it almost ten?”
“How is this all I’ve accomplished?” I held up my poster, which read SV. Not even a full W.
Ruby laughed. “It’s okay. Let’s just knock out a bunch right now. And then I should probably go.”
I felt like Prince Charming, desperate for time to stand still so Cinderella could stay. But that’s not how it works, and when we’d made a reasonably decent thirteen posters, Ruby got up, and I walked her to the door, where she pulled me into a one-armed hug, the other holding her new advertising. Which made three times she’d touched me in one night. At that moment it didn’t feel possible I could get any luckier.
On the day of the Sweets show I woke at six for the ninety-minute drive to San Juan Capistrano, where we had a meet. Even then, the air was thick and soupy, and I sweat through my jersey by halftime in the first game. That left two and a half games to go, and only one backup jersey in my bag, and by the time I got home I was ready to trade the rest of my life for a long, cool shower. We’d won two of three, and I’d scored three times, which was the best I’d done in a while. I wanted to email UNC with a recap, but of course that wasn’t how things were done. With a radio silence as long as the one between me and UNC, you had to let them come to you.