So maybe she’d taken him at his word and moved on to someone else.
Was that why she’d hesitated to kiss him? Was that why she seemed so jumpy? He’d thought she was shy. He’d thought she was… fragile.
Maybe she was just guilty.
Ah, shit. He was jumping to conclusions.
Evan frowned down at the flowers, catching sight of a little white card tucked between the green stems. He didn’t mean to look, exactly, but the word childish leapt out at him. Confused, he squinted at the golden, printed script
Don’t be childish, baby.
He shouldn’t have read that.
But he hadn’t meant to read it. It had just been there. His eyes had just…
“Evan?”
Her voice made him jump, as if he’d been doing something illicit. Which he had, really. Guilt flooded him as if he’d thrown the flowers out the damned window instead of just reading the card.
But Christ, he really shouldn’t have read the card.
Ruth came padding down the hall in a new set of pyjamas. The T-shirt was as oversized and high-necked as ever, the bottoms as long as loose as always.
He had no idea why people thought of her as a seductress. She was the least seductive person he’d ever met.
And you still want her desperately. So what does that tell you?
The same thing as the roses, he supposed.
Forcing a smile, Evan hefted the crystal vase—like she could miss it. “You got flowers,” he said.
Her face fell. His heart headed in the same direction.
This was the part where she broke down and confessed to having a boyfriend who was InterRailing around Europe.
Except she didn’t. Instead, she said, “For me?” Her voice was quiet, hesitant. She looked suddenly horrified, seeming to shrink in on herself, collapsing like a disturbed soufflé.
Evan’s gut twisted. The suspicions crowding his mind couldn’t change the fact that an upset Ruth was not something he wanted. “Yeah.” He searched for the right thing to say and came up blank. “They’re… I bet they’re from your dad, or something.”
Ruth laughed, but the sound was hollow. “I don’t have a dad. I mean—my dad’s in Sierra Leone. With his wife.”
Wow. Somehow, he’d managed to say exactly the wrong thing.
Nice one, Miller. Fucking fantastic.
All at once, Ruth strode forward. She pulled the vase from his arms with a grunt, taking the weight before Evan realised what she was doing.
“Hey, let me carry that. It’s heavy.”
“No,” she said flatly, heaving it down the hall.
“You’ll drop it.” He rushed after her, back toward the kitchen, holding out his arms in preparation for some tragic, Ruth-like disaster.
“Calm down.” She reached the table and put the vase in the centre with a heavy thud. Then she reached into the blood-red blooms and plucked out that fucking card.
Evan hovered beside her, holding his breath, watching her face as she read. How had this happened? Ten minutes ago, she’d been ready to kiss him. Now he was trying to figure out if she was seeing someone else.
She sighed heavily and put the card on the table.
“Who are they from?” The words shot from his mouth without permission. He hadn’t meant to ask something that sounded so damned desperate. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer that.”
She looked over at him, a little furrow between her dark brows. “It’s… an apology.”
An apology? Don’t be childish, baby?
She was lying. Except, he knew what Ruth did when she was being less than truthful, and she wasn’t doing any of those things now. Her face wasn’t carefully blank, her eyes weren’t dead, and she wasn’t pushing him away.
Like a robot jerking into motion, she straightened up and grabbed a fistful of roses from the vase. Ruby petals peeped out from between her knuckles, the stems dripping. She turned toward the dustbin.
“Uh…” Evan frowned. “What are you doing?”
Ruth shoved the flowers in the bin and looked up at him. “You want them?”
“No,” he said slowly.
“Well, neither do I.” As if that settled the matter, she grabbed some more roses.
“Ruth.” He stepped forward, reaching out to still her hand. She sucked in a sharp breath as his fingers caged hers, bringing her movements to a stop.
Her eyes flew to his, and for a moment their gazes met. With Ruth, that was so rare, it felt momentous.
Just as quickly, she looked away again. But he didn’t mind. It would be ungrateful to taste a drop of heaven and ask for more.
“You can go now,” she said, her voice flat.
She always said that. Suddenly, abruptly, at the end of a night filled with laughter and effortless intimacy, she would always, always say that. And Evan would leave.
But he wasn’t leaving her like this.
He tightened his grip on her hand, pulling her closer. She stumbled, but he’d expected that; she stumbled more than she walked. So he wrapped an arm around her waist to hold her upright, and he watched as her eyes widened.
“What if I don’t want to go?” he asked softly. “Would you let me stay?”
She tilted her chin. “Because you want to—”
“No.” That was her defensive voice, the same voice she used to tell him what an awful slut she was. He knew what she was about to ask, and he didn’t care for it. “I’m saying I don’t want to go yet.”
She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Because you want to sleep with me.”
Evan looked over at the decimated bouquet. “Who sent you the flowers, Ruth?”
She stepped back, away from him. He let go and thought his reluctance must colour the air around them, stronger than the roses. She didn’t seem to notice.
“Mind your business,” she said.
“You aren’t my business?”
“Nope. I’m your neighbour. Now fuck off.”
He’d expected nothing less, so he was prepared for the sting of rejection. Didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
“If you have a boyfriend,” he said, “you should’ve just told me.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend. I’ve never had a boyfriend in my life.”
“Bullshit.”
She grinned at him. The expression was almost manic. “You go and ask somebody. Anybody. Say, ‘Has Ruth Kabbah ever been in a relationship?’ They’ll tell you.”
“I don’t want someone else’s version of your life, Ruth,” he gritted out. “I just want you to trust me.” I want to know why you don’t go anywhere or see anyone, why people say your name like it’s a scandal in itself.
I want to know why you destroyed Daniel’s car.
She sighed. “I’m not the kind of girl who just trusts people, Evan.”
He swallowed down his bitterness. Maybe she was right. He barely knew her, and he’d come barging into her life, expecting to unlock all her secrets like she was some kind of puzzle. His conscious, reasonable thoughts didn’t help, though. They didn’t put out the searing flames of childish anger edged in hurt.
“Fine,” he clipped out. “I get it. We’ll just leave it at that.”
She stared at him, eyes sharp. “What do you mean? What does that mean?”
He shook his head and said, “Don’t worry about it.”
15
“What’s going on with you today?”
Ruth shot her sister a glare as they cleared the table. “In a minute,” she whispered.
Hannah rolled her eyes. “Mum’s got Deal or No Deal on. She’s not listening.”
As one, the girls turned to look across the dining-cum-living room. A few metres away, their mother stared, transfixed, at Noel Edmonds’s silver bouffant.
Patience Kabbah had a serious crush.
Still, Ruth wouldn’t run the risk. She said again, her voice hushed, “Wait.” Then she piled the last of the dishes into her arms.
“Woah,” Hannah laugh
ed, swooping in to take most of the load. “Give me those. We don’t need to spend the rest of the afternoon sweeping up china.” She headed to the kitchen, plates balanced expertly in her practiced hands, without a backward glance.
Ruth allowed herself a millisecond of childish resentment. She was perfectly capable of carrying plates to the kitchen, even if no-one in the world seemed to think so.
Then she remembered why Hannah was such an expert at carrying dirty dishes and wiped her mind clean of disloyal thoughts. Let Hannah be the overbearing older sister. She’d earned it.
With a sigh, Ruth collected a few glasses from the table and followed.
The Kabbah women cooked Sunday dinner together, even though Ruth was a known disaster area. She prepared cassava and sliced yam. Sometimes she peeled breadfruit, if Hannah had picked any up from the market in the city. The heavy-duty cooking was mostly left to Mum—but both daughters insisted that she sit out when it was time to clean up.
So as soon as Ruth stepped into the kitchen, her sister shut the door. Hot water was already filling the sink, and plastic Tupperware was on the counter, ready to hold leftovers.
Hannah paid no mind to anything but Ruth. She leant against the room’s narrow island, her arms folded. “Go on, then,” she said. “Tell me.”
Ruth walked carefully to the sink, sliding the glasses beneath the water, focusing on the iridescent bubbles gilding its surface.
How could something as basic as dish soap and tap water create something as wonderful as bubbles?
“Tell me,” Hannah said again, her voice firm. “You’re being super weird lately.”
“I’m always weird,” Ruth said. It was automatic. An in-joke dating back decades.
But Hannah’s mouth twisted. “Don’t say that. You’re not.”
“Yes I am.” Ruth slid on a pair of her mother’s pink rubber gloves. “And so are you. We’re the weirdos, remember?”
“Oh. Right.” Hannah laughed tightly.
She didn’t find it funny; Ruth could tell. Her sense of humour had changed. Everything about her was sterner and tougher than it had been before, and that was saying something.
With a sigh, Ruth turned off the running taps. “I’m fine, Han. I just have some things on my mind.”
“You’ve barely spoken all day.” Hannah grabbed a plate and started scraping soggy cassava into the bin. “You didn’t even notice when Mum mentioned her date.”
Ruth jolted, dropping a cup into the sink with a splash. “Her date?”
“Exactly. You weren’t listening.”
“Stop having a go and tell me about this date.” Ruth turned her most intimidating stare on her sister.
Hannah matched it with an equally unsettling glare of her own. “I’ll tell you about the date when you tell me what’s draining your brainpower.”
Sometimes, Ruth forgot who she’d learned her defence mechanisms from. The student would never outdo the master; at least, not when it came to Kabbah Bitch Face.
“Fine,” Ruth huffed, turning back to the sink. “I made a friend and then I fucked it up.”
“Okay…” Hannah sounded mildly confused. “So apologise. Check their Amazon wish list or something.”
“I don’t think I can fix it with presents. Also, it’s a real-life friend, so I—”
The sound of cutlery scraping against dishes came to an abrupt halt. “Like, a real person?”
Because, to Hannah, Marjaana and all of Ruth’s other friends weren’t ‘real people’. She rolled her eyes and clipped out, “That is what I said, yes.”
There was a pause. Then Hannah asked, sounding almost casual, “How did you meet?”
“He’s my neighbour.”
“So how did you meet?”
Ruth bit back a smile. “He came over to give me a shepherd’s pie.” She omitted their actual first meeting. She couldn’t mention Daniel Burne in front of her sister. Not ever.
“A shepherd’s pie?” Hannah echoed. Her voice was slightly shrill, as if shepherd’s pie was threatening rather than delicious. “When was this?”
“I don’t know… a few weeks ago?”
“And you’re just now telling me?” Hannah’s worried face filled Ruth’s peripheral vision. The older sister was crowding the younger, using her extra inch of height to command authority. “Look at me,” she demanded.
With a sigh, Ruth dropped the glass she was washing and turned. “What?”
Hannah pressed a hand to Ruth’s cheek. Her palms were rough. They hadn’t always been. “You have tons of friends,” Hannah said. Which was rich, since she was the one who insisted that online friends didn’t count. “And you fall out all the time because you’re snippy. It’s never made you come over all empty-headed.”
“I’m not empty-headed,” Ruth snorted.
“You didn’t even finish your yam. You are the definition of empty-headed-Ruth. Now you tell me some man has brought you shepherd’s pie. Did you eat it?”
“Yes,” Ruth grumbled.
“You didn’t tell him to fuck off and throw it back in his face?”
“No,” Ruth admitted. I saved that until last night. Pushing away her morose thoughts, she added, “If I’d done that, we wouldn’t be friends, would we?” Then, because she was feeling vulnerable: “He made me a lasagne too. He made me a lot of things. He cooks for me.”
Hannah threw up her hands. “So you are half-in love with him already.”
Ruth wondered why her first instinct wasn’t to vehemently deny those words. Disturbing. But she’d worry about it later.
For now, she focused on managing her sister. “I certainly am not. I just… I was quite rude to him yesterday, and I feel bad about it, and I’m not sure how to apologise.”
Hannah huffed, turning back to the leftovers. “Well, it’s reassuring to know that I’m not the only one you’re rude to.”
“How helpful. Thank you for that wise, sisterly guidance.” Ruth scrubbed the glass in her hands, watching light flash off of its gleaming surface.
“You don’t need guidance,” Hannah said. “You need me to tell you to apologise, because you can’t bear to do it on your own. Because you want to fix things, but you don’t think you deserve it.”
Ruth considered that for a moment, biting back the instinct to deny it. Eventually, she was forced to say, “True.”
There was a moment of disturbing tension, when the cat’s cradle of unsaid words and pent up frustrations between them seemed dangerously close to coming loose. Ruth had no idea what it would mean, if that did happen; she understood very little about the distance between she and Hannah.
She only knew that she disliked it and was too cowardly to face it.
But then Hannah sighed. “Just put on your big girl knickers and tell this friend that you’re sorry. I can’t stand it when you’re distracted. You’re like a robot.”
And everything was okay. For now.
Ruth snorted. “You do realise that you’re just as rude as me?”
“I’m your elder, and I keep it in the family.” Hannah slid another plate into the sink with a wicked smile. “Maybe if you did the same, you wouldn’t have to apologise so often.”
“Bugger off.”
“I love you, too.”
16
Ruth had been carrying a certain amount of guilt for quite some time, and she’d become used to it. Too used to it, clearly, because the extra guilt created by the way she’d treated Evan was unbalancing her quite horribly. She felt too big for her own skin.
She had come home from her mother’s yesterday determined to knock at 1B and apologise profusely. She’d managed step one just fine: knocking. Step two had been thwarted by the fact that Evan had not answered, because he was not in.
The man was bloody inconvenient sometimes.
But she found herself grateful for his absence. If he’d been there, what would she have said?
Sometimes my mind gets overwhelmed and all I can do to cut through the confusion is lash out.
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Sometimes I think about one thing and remember another and see another and hear another, and that’s just too many things, and I don’t handle it well.
You shouldn’t want to kiss me, because I clearly don’t deserve you.
There. That one worked. That one worked just fine.
Her determination faded overnight, and so did the bravery it had provided. Ruth wasted most of Monday trying to work, failing utterly, and talking to herself about why she should or should not apologise.
When she heard Evan unlock his front door that evening, she abandoned the pretence of work completely and lay down on the floor in her hallway, staring up at the ceiling.
The carpet was thin and scratchy. The floorboards beneath it were hard. She didn’t mind, because the blankness of it all helped her to think, and she wasn’t fit to do anything else.
It wasn’t even that bad. You tell him to fuck off all the time.
But you never meant it, and it never hurt him, so it didn’t matter. This is different.
The worst part was that he hadn’t seemed upset at all. He’d remained composed, had barely even flinched, while she pushed him away with careless, reckless words.
So why was she so sure that he’d actually been devastated?
“I just am,” she mumbled.
And what if she went over there, and apologised—and therefore admitted that she actually gave a shit about what he thought—and it turned out that he wasn’t even bothered?
“Of course he’s bothered,” Ruth sighed. “He wanted to kiss me. He… he caught me off-guard.”
No; the flowers had caught her off-guard. And she’d taken it out on Evan.
You crazy bitch.
“Fuck off,” she muttered. Sometimes her mind spit out recycled epithets instead of actual thoughts. Sometimes her mind was someone else’s weapon.
And sometimes Ruth reacted badly under pressure and made very poor decisions and pushed away people she kind of sort of needed desperately.
Things happened, sometimes.
“So fix it.” She let those words dissolve into the air. Usually, telling herself what to do elicited more efficient results.
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