by Piper Lennox
It just about kills me to remove them, but I manage.
“I’m worried you’ll get the wrong idea about me.” Yes, this is perfect—time for Character Ruby, the innocent and sweet girl I’ve daydreamed, to make a comeback.
That was my problem. I’ve been too “me” today, I guess because I told myself I was technically at work, not on a date. Of course I couldn’t resist him.
But the Ruby I’ve concocted in my plans? She’d have no problems saying no. Maybe the more I use her, the stronger she’ll get, like a muscle group.
Theo backstrokes across the pool, where my bra is floating near a filter. Next, he swims over to the stairs, where my underwear drifted. I watch him climb out and stroll the perimeter, assuming he’ll pass me my clothes.
Instead, he sets them on the railing and retrieves something from the poolhouse. It’s the largest, fluffiest towel I’ve ever seen.
I stare up at him while I climb the ladder, folding myself into his outstretched arms as he bundles me up.
“Thank you.” I shiver. The heat of the pool makes steam rise off us. Chill bumps speckle our skin.
“‘Wrong idea.’” With a smile, he pushes my wet hair off my forehead. “What would that be?”
“That I’m...easy.”
Theo rolls his eyes and uses the corner of my towel to mop his face, scrubbing hard behind his ears. “I’ve never thought that about anyone.”
“Then what would you call it?”
“I don’t call it anything. It’s just preference. Some people like to wait to have sex or fool around, and some don’t.” As he lowers the towel, I see his eyes shift between mine in the emerging moonlight. “And some do...but they’ll make an exception, when the connection’s right.”
“And which one are you?”
“Been a little of each, through the years.” He takes my hand through the towel, pulling me into the house.
I think about grabbing my jumpsuit along the way, but decide it would be a crime to exchange this absurdly luxurious towel for scratchy polyester.
Of course, it’s also all too easy to agree to that encore he mentioned, if I stay naked.
Your own stupid fault, I scold myself, for diving into that pool in your bra and panties. Talk about a backfire. I did it to give him blue balls, not score myself some aquatic head.
“I’ll put your stuff in the dryer, if you want,” he offers, seeming to read my mind. Thank God he can’t. “And if you want things to stop for tonight...I can do that, too.”
Since when are you a gentleman? I think, fighting a scowl.
The dryer will probably ruin my delicates, but I tell him sure. While he runs back outside to get them, he tells me to go upstairs to his room and pick out some clothes for the meantime. “It’s the door at the far end. Turn left at the top of the stairs.”
Confused, I tell him thanks and follow his instructions. Wasn’t his room at the opposite end of the hallway?
Maybe he moved. There’s certainly enough fucking space here to do that—relocate on a whim, just because you get bored. And I know this guy gets bored a lot.
I open the door, surprised by what I find.
My memory was correct, because not only is this not the room I remembered from the party, but it’s not even similarly decorated. Whereas the room in my memory is all lush textiles and crisp white linens, this one is gray and black, with little more than an unmade bed and dresser. There’s not even a lamp, and the overhead light is out.
I find a light switch in the hall and flip it on, then use the spillover to choose some basketball shorts and a tee.
When I get to the landing, I look down at myself. Christ. It’s a Juilliard shirt.
Theo is in the foyer, now in dry clothes himself from who knows where, when I come down. He nods at my shirt. “Looks way better on you than it ever did on me.”
I push down my bitterness. Back to sweet-as-pie Ruby. “You never did tell me what you studied.”
“I will, if you stay a while.” He checks his watch, as though he has anywhere to be. A few surprises have come to light about Theo Durham in the last few days, but not that: the fact he’s got no real responsibilities or obligations, free to live a life of leisure on his daddy’s dime.
On the other hand, I did think he’d have some kind of job. Not anything real—something high power, but ultra-easy, the kind of gig where you pull six figures by shitting on all the workers underneath you. Something scored with his daddy’s connections to fill his days and make people think he earned what he’s got.
I actually meant what I said outside. Something’s out of whack in his head. He lacks purpose.
That’s why he’s looking for some in me.
Well, keep hunting, dude. I’m not here to fix your life. Far from it.
I will say that a tiny part of me feels sorry for him, because I know how it feels to have zero direction. After the party, I gave up striving for popularity, and it wasn’t at all the relief Callum said it would be. I’d felt hopelessly lost—like if I wasn’t consuming magazines and analyzing cool kids on the beach or back at school, I wasn’t me. It was all I wanted, all I did, for so long...I forgot what else I could be.
Then again, I wouldn’t have lost that direction, or anything else in my life, if it hadn’t been for Theo. So my pity doesn’t stretch very far.
“I’ll stay,” I say reluctantly, but of course I don’t show it. I make myself sound and look like this is the ideal way to spend an evening.
In reality, standing inside this house again is fucking me up. Big-time.
I keep seeing this same entryway packed with bodies. That sterile, modern kitchen, spinning around me as cell phones shot into the air.
The sweaty pulse of music and people, liquor burning down my throat...the sweet solitude of that bathroom when I found him.
How unbelievably stupid I was, thinking that night would give me everything I’d always wanted.
“Come here.” He smiles and beckons me the rest of the way down the stairs, then to a huge door and second set of stairs. While we walk, I trail my hands down the polished banister and inhale the scents of this new room, glad I never set foot in it before. There are no memories to attack me.
It’s a wine cellar. Heavy wooden crisscrosses house hundreds of bottles. Some have dust; almost all are covered in fingerprints.
“I found this one a few years ago.” Theo grabs a step stool and climbs. Carefully, he slides an emerald-colored bottle from the highest rack and passes it to me.
Ruby, the label reads.
“I always wanted to try it,” he adds, hopping down. Bottles clink gently in his wake. “But I never did.”
“Why not?”
“It seemed...special.”
I turn the bottle in my hands. “It doesn’t look very expensive.” No more so than any other grocery store Wine of the Week, at least.
“Not special like that.” Theo takes it from me and walks over to a table near the center of the cellar. While he opens it, I find a rack and slide out two glasses by their delicate stems. “My friends will drink anything. They barely even taste it. Something like this, I wanted to share with another person. One-on-one.”
“I still don’t see what’s special about it. Unless you’re implying the name somehow spoke to you.”
“As a matter of fact, it did.”
“Yeah? Did it give you premonitions about saving my life in a hardware store?”
He bumps my shoulder with his. “Such a smartass. I like that.”
I find myself blushing, and not a fake one. The fact he likes Real Ruby’s smartass comments more than Fake Ruby’s sweetness makes me absurdly happy.
It also makes me think, Well, fuck. My plan keeps veering off-course.
But is that really so bad? As long as I hide the fact I knew him when we were younger, what’s the harm of letting the rest of my script slide?
All that matters is that I get Theo to like me. Then to love me.
However it happens—no
matter which version of me he falls for—the goal is still the same.
“The name spoke to me,” he says, “because every other wine my dad gets has some uppity, stuffy-sounding name. But this one is just ‘Ruby.’”
Theo pours some into each glass, higher than he did in the restaurant. My snark reflex wants to ask if we’re giving up aeration for tonight.
When he pauses to lick a drop off his thumb, I get a flash flood of unbridled horniness. I think my nipples actually harden.
Blame the T-shirt. It’s so stiff, it still feels new.
“It is kind of red,” I point out. “Not exactly a clever name.”
“Look at the label again.”
He turns the bottle to face me. I lean close.
“Grapefruit wine?” I laugh in disbelief. “Is that possible?”
“It’s technically a blend, but yeah. You can make wine out of pretty much any fruit. Just needs the right conditions.” Theo swirls his gently, nearly spilling. “But anyway, that’s why I like it. They picked the simplest name. No trying too hard, no pretense. Everything you need to know is right there.”
He holds up his glass. I clink mine to his.
“To the real Ruby,” he says, before taking a long drink, eyes never leaving mine.
11
I almost choke. While he wipes my chin with the back of his hand, I try to tame my pulse. “Real?” I cough.
“Sweet,” he says, tilting his head with a suspicious smile, “but sour, too. I knew our first date was just you trying to make a good impression.”
“You’re saying I can’t be sweet?”
“Oh, extremely.” The flash in his eyes tells me he’s thinking of the pool. “But I like this version better. You seem more...yourself, today.”
“You barely know me,” I mutter into my glass. I dump about seventy percent of it down my throat, and he gives me a refill immediately. Probably just trying to get me tipsy so I will, in fact, reciprocate.
“I know you well enough to realize who I saw before was only part of who you are. Who I’m seeing today? That’s the real deal.”
Prepare to feel very foolish in a few weeks, I think.
I don’t like the little flare of guilt that comes with it. Theo deserves the heartache I’ll bring.
I drink more. The wine is good, but strange. It sits on my tongue like a spoonful of sugar before sizzling up the sides of my mouth, tangy and knifelike.
“All right.” I wave away his next refill. Being tipsy around Theo is fine, but history pummeled the lesson into me that drunkenness is a line not to be crossed. “Tell me.”
He squints over his glass at me, confused.
I tug at the hem of the Juilliard shirt to fan out the logo. “What’d you study?”
“Oh.” He drains his glass, recorks the bottle, and nestles it in a wine fridge before starting back upstairs, grabbing me by the wrist as he goes.
We step through the glass doors of the porch again, and my guard goes up as soon as I see the pool. If he’s looking for more underwater adventures, I’ve got news for him.
At least, I hope I do.
As he leads me around the pool’s perimeter, I find myself glancing wistfully at the water. I stare at that submerged chair and imagine sitting in it, all the way at the bottom of the pool, while Theo kneels in front and eats me out like oxygen no longer matters.
Get it together. I feel myself getting wet, which makes me panic because I’m in his shorts...which just gets me wetter.
“Hang on,” he says, stopping in front of a small outbuilding. It’s a poolhouse, but modern and elegant, a tiny copy of his home.
For fuck’s sake. Even his shed is better than my actual townhouse.
While he mumbles to himself and frowns at the keypad, trying to remember the combination, I slip my wrist from his grasp. I don’t like that his thumb pressed right into my vein, like his own personal button to highjack my heartbeat.
“There it is,” he sighs, throwing his head back in relief and exasperation when the keypad flips to green. The door pops and hums. He opens it with a flourish and nods at me to go inside.
I blink as the lights flicker to life.
It is a poolhouse, given the supplies and nets against one wall, but the rest is cozy and sleek. There’s a kitchenette and pull-out sofa on one side of the room, and a narrow door I figure must be a bathroom.
On the other side of the poolhouse is a baby grand piano, in flawless white.
“Piano.” I can’t help the look of disbelief I shoot him. “You?”
“Well, shit,” he snorts, grabbing a sweatshirt from the sofa and pulling it on, “you don’t have to sound so shocked. You knew I played something.”
“Yeah, but....” I shake my head at myself. I don’t know what I expected. Honestly, I kind of thought the whole Juilliard thing was bullshit, or that he played something so obscure and weird there was no doubt his dad’s money paved his way.
Something about the piano seems too sensitive and classic for a guy who turns his hookups into cam girls against their will.
Theo leads me to the sofa and positions himself at the piano. “Any requests?”
I shrug. “Beethoven, I guess.”
“Do you actually like Beethoven? I want to play something you like.”
“I don’t know much piano music.”
“Doesn’t have to be piano. What’s your favorite song?”
The poolhouse is heated, but I hug my arms to myself anyway. The way he glances at me over his shoulder, mouth pulled into a charming and patient smile, makes me feel unhinged.
Like roulette, every song I know spins through my head. Whether I want to give him a popular one so I can accurately judge his ability, or something obscure just to hear him admit he can’t do it, I can’t decide.
But the little bouncing marble lands, time and again, on one track in particular, until I can’t think of anything else.
“‘How to Save a Life.’” The couch feels like it’s swallowing me whole. “The Fray.”
Theo nods, all business, and hums it to himself as he studies the keys.
At last, he starts playing.
The notes melt through the air. Those initial ones dig into me, sewing needles across my nerves. I shouldn’t have picked this song. I know it too well.
And, apparently, so does he.
Theo’s shoulders and spine flow with his motions as effortlessly as his hands, his left taking over the background music, while his right plays the notes of the vocals. I try to focus on accuracy—whether or not he’s getting the notes and timing just right; how smoothly the music flows—but all I can do is admire the movement of his body. The emotions in those notes.
The way the song swells through this space, and unsettles something deep in my soul.
“So...yeah. I play piano.” Theo laughs to himself as he picks out those last lingering notes, then spins to straddle the bench and look at me.
I feel the tears on my skin way too late.
He gets up and kneels in front of the sofa, prying my folded arms apart to take my hand. “That bad, huh?”
“No.” I laugh and sniff, shaking my head when he offers me a tissue from the bathroom. After a second, I take it anyway. “It was really good.” Amazing, in fact.
Theo is bizarrely talented. I can’t deny it. Whether it was enough to get him into Juilliard on his own merits or not, I’m not sure; my musical abilities and knowledge are way too lacking to make the call. But there’s no question he at least earned his audition slot.
“I’m just crying because of the song,” I confess. It makes me blush. A real one.
Theo joins me on the couch and pulls me in. Dangerous as it is, I let him. His broad, warm chest relaxes me.
“Who’s it for?” he asks.
Part of me is amazed he figured it out, but I tell myself not to be so easily impressed. Lots of people associate that song with lost loved ones. Or ones they’re about to lose.
“Just a friend.” Callum’s har
dened face appears before me like a hologram. “Someone I know I can’t keep in my life much longer.”
Much as I’ve thought it, this is the first time I’ve ever said it out loud: that Callum and I can’t stay friends. He’s got too many problems, one of which is our shared bad habit of always getting back together, just to dodge loneliness.
Add in the pills, alcohol, anger, manipulation…and I know our expiration date passed years ago.
“That’s never easy.” Theo wipes my tears away with the cuff of his sleeve, then pulls me closer. I spread my hand across his chest and breathe in time to his pulse, hoping mine can learn to match. “But sometimes…they don’t give us a choice.”
“You’ve had to do that, too?” I sniff and toy with the shoelace casing on his hoodie’s drawstring. I press it into my finger until it leaves an indentation, even through the callous.
I think about what Ronan used to tell me, whenever I’d haul mop water outside—that it was better to let him and his sons do that, because I had soft hands. They had callouses. And callouses were waterproof.
I wonder if emotions can harden like that, too. If a tough decision ever gets easier...or if our hearts build up enough scar tissue to keep going, regardless.
He doesn’t answer.
I try again. “Who was yours?”
“No one.”
“Come on, you can tell me.”
It should be Character Ruby who says this. The delivery is soft and kind; the offer implies secrecy that Theo doesn’t deserve in the slightest.
But it’s the real me who says it. The real me who pushes off from his chest to look at him, search his eyes, and prove, with nothing but a look, that she means it. He can tell me. And I won’t tell another soul.
Theo studies my face, wets his lips…then shakes his head.
“Some other time,” he sighs, getting to his feet. He swings open the door and jerks his chin so I’ll follow, like escorting a kid from a room they aren’t allowed to be in.
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him guard himself. The first time he’s the one hiding something.
Hypocrite that I am, I absolutely hate it.