Beautiful Secret

by Christina Lauren

  “Because you were.”

  I closed my eyes. It was shattering to see her like this. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I know you are,” she said, nodding. “And I think I get it. But I can’t help it. I’m mad at you.”

  Wiping my hand across the stubble on my jaw, I whispered, “Please let me in.”

  Looking up at me, she said very quietly, “Is it weird to feel like I need to say no? Like, I need to make sure I can? I gave you time to work through every tiny hesitation. I tried to be understanding and patient, but as soon as you had the chance, you didn’t give my feelings the same consideration. I lost myself somewhere in the last six months. I told you to trust me to tell you where my limits are. This is a limit. You disregarded me, and so obliviously.” She dropped her voice, looking straight into my eyes, and said, “I thought that wasn’t the kind of relationship you wanted anymore.”

  This was a knife to my gut and I pulled back, pained. And even though her lip trembled and her hands shook at her sides, even though I still saw every ounce of the emotion in her eyes that she had only a week ago, she didn’t take her sharp reprimand back, not with words or expression.

  I could push her. I saw it now, and another man—a more aggressive man—may have stepped closer, taken advantage of the pain in her eyes. If I kissed her right now, she would kiss me back. I could sense it in the way she watched my mouth, the way she continued to shake.

  Ruby still loved me as I loved her.

  I could press my way inside, put my hands on her body, peel away her clothes and give her pleasure, taste her sweat. With my mouth and hands and words I may even have been able to convince her for a night that I truly did love her.

  But she already was struggling with how much she’d lost the sense of herself in her feelings for me. I couldn’t manipulate her like that.

  I pulled at my hair, completely torn. “Tell me what to do. If I leave, you’ll think I don’t feel for you. If I stay, I’m not listening to your wishes.”

  “Niall,” she whispered. “I can barely be this close to you without feeling like I’d give you anything. It’s your turn to be patient.”

  I swallowed thickly and stepped back, walking two paces without turning. “Come to me,” I said, begging quietly. “When you’re ready, I’ll be waiting for you. Let me catch up in my time spent longing if you need me to. Distance from you won’t extinguish what I feel.”

  She nodded, eyes filling.

  “Promise you’ll come to me when you’re ready. Even if it just means you’re ready to tell me it’s truly over.”

  Ruby nodded again. “I promise.”

  Seventeen

  Ruby

  April was hell, but May was worse. At least in April I could replay, again and again, the memory of how Niall had looked coming to my flat, eyes wild and anxious. I could still hear how his voice sounded—so deep and hoarse and desperate—when he’d said he loved me.

  But in May, I hadn’t seen him in a month, and it was nearly impossible to convince myself that his affection hadn’t begun to dissolve.

  The Number of Days I Needed Niall Stella to Give Me Space: unknown.

  I’d felt like the needy, frantic girl, waiting for him to have dinner with the ex and then decide if I was the better option. I’d never been so desperate for a late-night phone call as I was the night he was at her place for dinner, but when it came . . . I ignored it. Not until he realized what I’d known all along—that Portia had never been good for him, that in fact I was the best thing for him—did I realize that I was . . . really, really mad.

  I knew I was capable of taking things in stride in a way that surprised Niall. It surprised people my whole life. But that evenness didn’t mean I couldn’t get hurt, be angry, feel betrayed.

  Somehow, even with the heavy pulse of heartbreak in every step I took, I had managed to piece little bits of my life back together. I was determined to salvage my chances at getting into Margaret Sheffield’s program. So, in early April, after days of sleep and silence, of nibbling sandwiches made from stale bread and hard cheese and sleeping in my clothes, I’d pulled myself together and taken a train to Oxford.

  There, Professor Sheffield had assured me that Anthony’s letter could only hold so much weight, that my grades and reputation from San Diego were impressive. But although she’d given me no indication that the distraction my former boss mentioned in his letter would lead to my rejection from the program, she hadn’t said I was a sure thing, either.

  While I waited to hear, I stayed in London. I was lucky enough to find a firm on the South Bank in need of an engineer to cover an early maternity leave. It was an easy solution and paid well, but on my very first day I decided to walk home rather than take the Tube, only to then realize I would pass just two blocks away from Niall’s flat.

  Gut punch.

  So of course it became impossible to choose to take the Tube rather than walk. Every day I felt my body tilt that way, as if pulled by some enormous heart magnet. And when I would press on, heading straight instead of right, it would hurt all over again.

  His distance and reserve really had been so impossible to take; everything was logical to him: Portia was ready to speak so he should listen. I had always encouraged him to communicate with me, and so of course that should apply to Portia, as well.

  I feel obligated to at least hear what she wants to say.

  I suppose I’m trying to have an open mind. I owe her that, at least.

  That last day it seemed emotion hadn’t come into play for Niall at all, until it felt too late. But for me, it was nearly impossible to get the echoing pain out of my head.

  Even when he’d found me in the office, packing up, and begged me to forgive him. Even when he’d come to my flat and told me he loved me.

  I was an idiot for sending him away. I knew it at the time. But more than that I knew that if I let him in that day, there would be a proud, resolved piece of myself I wouldn’t ever get back.

  But the silence seemed unending.

  Number of Days I’d Gone Without Speaking to Niall Stella:

  One.

  Seven.

  Fifteen.

  Thirty two.

  Fifty nine.

  In June I got my acceptance letter to Maggie’s program at Oxford.

  The innocuous-looking envelope was there waiting for me when I got home from work. Some days it was harder than others to resist the pull to walk toward Niall’s flat. Other days I could pretend to be absorbed in a song, or reading some news on my iPhone, and the knowledge that, if I wanted, I could go sit on his stoop and wait for him to get home was only a sharp jab between my ribs. But today the mental debate had been torture. Was I over my anger? And if I was, and if I went to his house, would he open the door and regard me blankly, and then with awkward apology, and tell me I’d been right to end things? That he’d been impulsive to get involved with me in the first place? That his life was better in an ordered system than with such a wild, emotional girl?

  The problem was that I could see him rejecting me just as vividly as I could see him embracing me. I knew Niall’s schedule, the facts of his life and his preferences for food and coffee and clothing. But I wasn’t sure I knew his heart at all.

  I tore open the envelope, heart pounding and unknotting in an odd sort of unison, and I read the letter three times, the papers clutched in my shaking hand. For what felt like minutes, I was unable to blink or breathe because it was happening. I was going to Oxford, I was studying with Maggie. That shithead Anthony hadn’t ruined my chances.

  I read through the letter again for dates, and filed through my mental calendar. Michaelmas Term for the program began in September. This meant I could work through the rest of June, July, and into the beginning of August, and use the first part of the following month to find a new flat in Oxford.

  Of course my first instinct was to tell Niall.

  Instead, I called my girl London.

  “Ruby!”

  “You are never g
oing to guess what happened!” I told her, feeling my smile for what had to be the first time in more than fifty-nine days.

  “Harry Styles is your new roommate and you’ve purchased a ticket for me to come visit?”

  “Very funny, try again.”

  She hummed. “Well, you sound happier than I’ve heard in months, so I’m guessing that you finally called Niall Stella, he welcomed you with open arms, and now you’re lying in a pool of postcoital bliss. And by ‘pool of bliss,’ of course I mean—”

  My chest ached sharply and I cut her off, unable to play along. “No.”

  Her tone softened. “But it sounded pretty good, didn’t it?”

  It did. But the prospect of seeing Niall couldn’t be better than what I had in my hand.

  It couldn’t, could it?

  But as soon as she’d said it, I knew that being back with Niall would be just as good. I wanted Niall just as much as I wanted to work with Maggie. And for the first time since I’d been fired, I didn’t feel embarrassed for it, or that I was betraying some inner feminist thread by admitting how deep my feelings were. If I went back to Niall, some days he would be my entire life. Some days school would. Some days they would occupy the same amount of space. And that knowledge—that I could find balance, that maybe I did need to separate my heart from my head after all—loosened a tension that had seemed to reside in my chest for weeks now.

  “I got into Maggie’s group,” I told her. “I just got the letter.”

  London screamed, made clomping noises, which I think might have been dancing on the other end, dropped her phone, and then came back and screamed some more.

  “You’re going to Oxford!”

  “I am!”

  “You’re going to study with your dream lady!”

  “I know!”

  She exhaled an enormous gust of air as if she’d just fallen backward on the couch, and said, “Ruby I’m going to ask you a question and you don’t have to answer it. Though, let’s be real, I’ve put up with your moping for months now so I sort of deserve an answer.”

  I groaned, knowing where this was going. “Can’t we keep talking about Oxford?”

  Ignoring this, she asked, “Was I the first person you wanted to call when you got the letter?”

  I didn’t answer and instead focused on picking at a loose thread on my sweater.

  “Why don’t you just tell him?” she asked gently. “He would be thrilled for you.”

  “He might not even remember me.”

  She laughed incredulously and it turned into a growl. “You make me insane.”

  I walked to my couch and sat down. “I’m just nervous. What do I say? ‘Oh, hey, I’m over being mad, still into all this?’ ”

  “The ‘Hey, I’m going to work with Maggie, got any tips?’ conversation is a pretty good opener.”

  Closing my eyes, I told her, “Even with everything I knew about him, I would have no idea how he would greet me if I called . . .”

  “You don’t call, Gem. You go to his house like you want to every day on your walk home, and you sit on his porch until he walks up and sees you and his dick gets hard, and you tell him you got into Maggie’s group, and oh, by the way, you love him and want to have his giant babies.”

  “What if I went over there and Portia answered the door?”

  “She won’t.”

  “Or, I don’t know, he worked through everything I said and decided that, logically, I was right. Boop beep boop, emotions managed.”

  “Are you listening?” she asked. There was a current of frustration in her voice and I knew London well enough to know she was about to snap. It always took her a while to get there, but when she lost her patience it was done.

  “Yes, I am. But—”

  London began hitting buttons on her phone, filling the line with loud beeps until I was forced to shut up and listen. “Are you done yet?” she asked when she returned.

  “Yes.”

  “Then hear this: This is real life, Ruby. This isn’t a movie where two single people come into a relationship with bad experiences that are actually completely hilarious and lighthearted and only made them stronger and healthier. In real life, relationships come with a side order of ex-wives and ex-husbands and stepkids and pets the other person hates. Sometimes people get hurt and they don’t have two parents who are shrinks to make sure they come out of everything okay. An ex-wife—especially one that left him feeling less than thrilled with himself—that’s a lot to just get over.”

  Swallowing, I told her, “I know. God, I know.”

  “Then can you please forgive him for being a dick and wanting to get some closure? You know I’m always here to support you, and I’m head cheerleader of Team Ruby ninety-nine-point-four percent of the time, but I think it’s time to go see him, to figure out if you can be together or if you need to move on. You’re in love with him. You’re the one who left it in limbo.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “He said he loved you, too,” she reminded me because I’d only told her about seven hundred times about the time he said it. “I’ve never met Niall Stella but I don’t think he’s the kind of guy who would say that and then talk himself out of it two months later.”

  I was left speechless, staring at the wall, knowing she was right.

  It wasn’t as simple as walking down the street and waiting on his stoop after all. The idea of seeing him again made me both giddy and painfully nauseous.

  Thankfully—or not—work made the decision for me on Monday and Tuesday of the following week: we had a visiting architect and they needed me around to fetch late-night coffee, takeout, and any other after-hours requests it seemed only a temporary employee could manage.

  The tension inside me was ratcheting up and I ignored London’s calls on Monday night and Tuesday morning. By Wednesday afternoon she was screaming at me in my text message box:

  HAVE YOU BEEN TO SEE THE MAN YET? FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, JUST CIRCLE ONE HERE, RUBY: Y / N

  With a tiny whimper, I finally replied: I’m going there after work today. I didn’t have a chance before now.

  Her answer came quickly: What r u wearing

  Laughing, I replied, Didn’t give it much thought.

  HAHAHAHAHA. Seriously though.

  I looked down at my outfit and felt the flutters zoom back into my chest before taking an awkward selfie of my short navy skirt and favorite silk navy and red polka-dot tank. It was a weird angle and made me look all-boob but I sent it anyway. London knew my wardrobe as well as she knew her own.

  Damn, Dolly. Are you wearing the red heels? she asked.

  Yes.

  God, she replied, his boner is going to be ENORMOUS.

  Smiling at my screen, I typed, Let’s hope and then shoved my phone into my bag. I could barely let myself hope we would have that kind of night. I’d be thrilled with even a smile, a kiss on the cheek, an assurance that he was still interested in trying if I was. I had to pretend I wasn’t craving more, everything, all of him.

  That workday, my God. You know the kind. Seconds are actually minutes, and minutes are hours, and the entire day goes by in the span of a decade. By the end of it I’d thought about the evening so many times that I started to suspect I had made up Niall Stella in the first place and this entire situation was a figment of my imagination.

  Finally, it was five thirty and the office started to thin out. I slipped into the bathroom in the hall on my way out to check my makeup and clothes and was jolted out of my odd fugue into a full-on panic.

  My silk top was massively wrinkled and sweet Jesus what was I thinking this morning? My sassy-short skirt suddenly seemed extremely short. Slutty short. What-do-you-charge-per-hour short. I groaned and leaned in closer to the mirror. My mascara was smudged . . . basically all over my face, and my blush had been rubbed off entirely.

  I did what I could to fix the mess, but the problem was that I was so nervous I wasn’t sure I would be able to keep down the water and cracker
s I’d barely managed at lunch. Should I stay in the bathroom in case I’m going to throw up? Should I carry an extra bag? Why had I waited so long to go see him? What if I couldn’t manage to get a word out?

  But then the oddest thing happened: I laughed. I was freaking out over seeing Niall Stella. I was checking my makeup and contemplating vomiting and worrying I would be mute or rambling.

  This was normal. This was what I did.

  Without another look in the mirror, I grabbed my purse and walked from the bathroom.

  Hallway, elevator, street. Seventeen blocks, one bridge, and there I was. On the corner, making a decision.

  That was when my heart decided to explode and my blood evaporated and I lost control of my brain.

  He didn’t know I was coming. I hadn’t seen him or spoken to him in over two months. I asked him to give me time, and he had . . . I was grateful and mad about that at the same time. What if he had moved on? That would break me more, I thought, than the unknown. I could keep walking forward and head home to a quiet flat. I could do cereal for dinner and Community reruns until it was time to sleep, then get up and do the same thing tomorrow. I could keep working at this easy, boring job until it was time to move, and then I could disappear from the city entirely without ever having to face this. Someday I might get over Niall Stella.

  Or, I could turn right, walk two blocks to his flat, sit on his stoop, and wait for him. I could tell him I still wanted to try and then let him tell me yes, or tell me no. If he said no, I would go home and do the cereal and the sitcom and the eventual painful heart repairs. But if he said yes . . .

  There wasn’t a choice, not really.

  I stared at the sidewalk as I moved, at my bright red shoes on the dull gray concrete. It made it easier to move forward to have something to watch. I counted the Number of Cracks Between Decision Corner and Niall’s Flat (twenty-four) and the Number of Times I Considered Turning Around and Going Home (about eighty) and went through what I wanted to say again and again:

  Hi. I’m sure it’s really weird to find me here on your steps and I’m sorry for not calling, but I wanted to see you. I missed you. I love you.