by Cara Malone
CHAPTER 24
Ruby went straight back to the graduate dorms after class let out, and at nine o’clock on a Monday night, the quad was deserted. The air was crisp and helped to clear her head, and she walked alone across the nearly silent campus.
Her phone was still in the bottom of her backpack, and it hadn’t vibrated again since she put it there – Megan hadn’t texted back. She could be persistent, but she was never one to beg. Now it was up to Ruby to respond, but every time she tried to come up with the words, Max flashed into her mind.
If Megan came here, Ruby knew they’d end up falling into bed together eventually. Whether it would happen right away like a painful, inevitable reunion, or whether there would be a period of awkward pretending first – pretending to be friends, pretending not to want each other, pretending not to be hurt – she knew that all roads would lead back to her bed. What Ruby didn’t know was whether she could look at Megan in her cookie-cutter university apartment, on her uncomfortable orange sofa or her squeaky GSU-issued mattress, and see her instead of Max.
When she got back to Founders Hall, Ruby went straight instead of turning and heading up the stairwell to her own apartment. She went to Max’s door and she didn’t really know what she was expecting when she knocked.
She told herself that she was just checking on Max. She hadn’t come to class and that was unlike her. Max didn’t come to the door right away. Ruby waited a minute and then knocked again, a pit forming in her stomach. The way she glared at Ruby during the GLiSS meeting hadn’t made any sense, but the longer she stood in the hall outside of Max’s apartment, the more certain she was that Max was mad at her.
Ruby considered the fact that Max might not be home, but every time in the last few weeks that she’d knocked on the door, Max had yanked it open and eagerly pulled Ruby inside. Besides, she was pretty sure she heard the television faintly through the door.
“Max, it’s me,” she called as she knocked again. “Can we talk?”
Finally, just as she was about to walk away, the door wrenched open and Max was looking at her with the same angry glare that she’d given her in the meeting. “You mean you need to appease your conscience?”
“What?” Ruby asked, confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re here because you feel guilty for what you did,” Max spat at her.
“I didn’t do anything,” Ruby said. She’d never seen Max angry before, and she was bewildered by this sudden attack.
“You used me,” Max said. “All you ever wanted from me was the GLiSS presidency.”
“Are you kidding?” Ruby said. Of all the possible reasons why Max could be angry with her, this had never occurred to her. “You conceded!”
“I conceded because I wanted you to be happy,” Max growled. “You fucked me because it was the easiest way to get what you wanted from me.”
Ruby’s mouth dropped open, and before she even knew what her body was doing, her hand flew through the air and connected with Max’s cheek, the resulting slap shockingly loud. Max put her hand to her cheek and Ruby’s palm stung as she snapped, “Just because you have Asperger’s doesn’t mean you can talk to people like that.”
CHAPTER 25
Asperger’s.
The word came out of Ruby’s mouth and hung between them like a bomb frozen in the moment before it touches the ground. How could she know if not for Mira? This felt like a bigger betrayal than anything Ruby could have done in or out of the bedroom, and it settled on Max’s chest like an anvil squeezing the breath out of her.
There were no words to reply, no air to speak them. All Max could manage was a look of outrage, and then she slammed the door in Ruby’s face.
She stood there and stared at the backside of her door for a full minute, seething at Ruby’s words and at everything that had happened in the last couple of days. She tried to conjure up Flint’s words - eventually the pain will subside, and in the meantime all you can really do is ignore it. Max wanted nothing more than to go sit down at the built-in desk in the corner of the living room and bury her nose in a textbook. She should be throwing herself into her studies.
Her whole life, intellectual pursuit had always been the answer to every awkward social interaction and every failed attempt at humanity. When she was in elementary school and no one wanted her to sit at their table in the cafeteria, she’d sat next to the teacher and escaped into her library books. When puberty hit everyone like a bus full of hormones and acne, she watched all the preteen flirtation and the note-passing that came so naturally to them and then she retreated back into her textbooks. When her college roommate was the only person on campus who was willing to look past her social deficiencies, she threw herself into the goal of maintaining a perfect GPA.
Girls and love weren’t part of the picture because they never wanted to take the time to know Max, and she hadn’t found any worth pursuing. Until she met Ruby.
And Ruby had done such a perfect job of destroying her. That final invective was beyond her capacity to ignore. Just because you have Asperger’s… Max’s cheek burned and her stomach was doing queasy flips, and for the first time in her life, she truly didn’t give a damn about her education.
Max had spent every day of her life since she was diagnosed at the age of eight trying to compensate for her deficiencies and present as neurotypical. She had an entire shelf full of notebooks by the time she finished high school, every line and every margin scribbled with observations, as if she could flip a switch and fill in the myriad blanks in her mind if only she studied the problem carefully enough.
Mira knew all of this – besides Max’s parents, she was the only one that Max had ever confided in. She knew how important it was to Max that people didn’t look at her and see a diagnosis. She didn’t want people to think of her as “that autistic girl.” She just wanted to be Max. And yet Mira had betrayed her to the worst possible person.
Max went over to her couch and burrowed under the blanket. One hot tear slid down her cheek and she realized that she only had herself to blame. Hadn’t her first thought upon seeing Ruby been that she was a social butterfly who couldn’t possibly relate to her? She knew Ruby was out of her league and that she was far too popular and gorgeous to want someone like Max.
And when she did, when she pulled Max into that first kiss in the AV department, she’d allowed herself to get sucked in by the mesmerizing gaze of her eyes and the intoxication of her carefree affect. She never stopped to wonder what Ruby wanted with her, and she should have known that they didn’t fit together. Ruby was the antithesis of Max, and it should have been obvious that a girl like that could only be trouble.
CHAPTER 26
After Max slammed the door in her face, Ruby stormed up to her room seeing red and shaking the stinging sensation from her hand. She couldn’t believe Max had the gall to accuse her of something so base. Just thinking it made Ruby feel sick to her stomach, and when she thought about the fact that it had been Max’s idea to cede the GLiSS presidency in the first place, bile rose up in her throat.
Who the hell did Max think she was?
Ruby knew she’d stepped over the line when she mentioned her Asperger’s. She knew it the moment the word crossed her lips, but it was too late to take it back now. The idea that Max really thought she’d only slept with her to get some small-time student organization position, though – that was truly revolting.
Ruby went into her apartment feeling like she could use a shower, but instead of going into the bathroom and turning on the water, she flopped down on the couch and puller her phone out of her backpack. Megan’s last text was still on the screen – I want to see you – and Ruby sent her the address for Founders Hall along with a note that came more from her injured pride than from her head.
This weekend, Megs. I need you.
***
Ruby spent the rest of the week avoiding Max as best she could. On Wednesday she found an email from Max to the rest of the Information
Theory group, with a curt demand that she, David, and Lydia send their data to her so she could compile the report. Beyond that, though, they had no classes together until Monday and Ruby tried to stay out of the places where she was most likely to run into Max – the first couple floors of the library, the student union, and the halls of their building.
Ruby spent a lot of time Getting Bent, intentionally choosing classes that she knew took place during Mira’s MBA classes, and she spent most evenings studying and obsessively checking her phone for texts from Megan. They were few and mostly came in the lonely predawn hours – medical school was demanding – but she had their weekend reunion to look forward to, when they could both say all the things that wouldn’t fit into a simple text message.
And Ruby finally had time to catch up with her mother, now that her evenings were so long and lonely again. She called long distance to Chicago every night that week.
“How’s that arch rivalry going?” Her mother teased the first time she called. “You’ve been too busy to talk to me so I had no choice but to conclude that you must have killed each other in some kind of academic battle royale.”
Ruby sighed instead of laughing, and when her mother asked what was wrong, she said, “The rivalry has come to a head, that’s for sure.”
“Well, just keep your head down. Focus on your own school work and don’t worry too much about other people,” her mother said.
“I will, mama,” Ruby said. There was a beat of silence on the line, and even though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t, she blurted out, “Megan’s coming to visit this weekend.”
“She is?” Her mother asked.
Ruby knew better than to mention it. She knew her mother would take it as a sign that they were patching things up, and that Megan was coming back into the Satterwhite fold just like she’d hoped. But she couldn’t keep it a secret anymore – she had to tell someone.
“Yeah,” she said, then hurried to add, “but just as a friend. Don’t get any ideas.”
“I won’t, so long as you don’t close yourself off to the idea of working things out,” her mother said. “Megan’s a good girl.”
“Yeah,” Ruby said with a sigh. “She is.”
***
Ruby didn’t sleep much on Friday night, and she spent the first few hours of Saturday morning walking back and forth across the small space of her living room, tidying the room and waiting for Megan to call and say she’d arrived in Granville.
She couldn’t sit still, and she almost picked up her phone to tell her not to come a half dozen times. She couldn’t quite identify this hesitant feeling that came over her suddenly as she was trying to fall asleep the night before, but she couldn’t shake the memory of all the pain that came last time she saw Megan. What if this weekend was just another way for Megan to open that wound all over again?
It was after noon when Ruby’s phone finally rang, and her heart immediately leapt into her throat. She tried not to sound anxious or eager when she answered, asking, “Are you here?”
“Yep,” came Megan’s voice, as cheerful as ever, like nothing ever happened between them. “I’m in Lot F2, is that right?”
“Yeah,” Ruby said as her heart skipped a beat. “I’ll come out and meet you.”
When she got to the edge of the parking lot, Megan was just getting out of her car. Her curly red hair stuck out in a million directions, blown by the wind while she was driving, and she was already giving Ruby bedroom eyes as she slung an overnight bag over her shoulder and she came dashing across the lot.
“Ru-Ru!” She said, throwing her arms around Ruby’s shoulders, pressing her body against her and nuzzling her face into the crook of Ruby’s neck. Megan’s wild hair flew over Ruby’s face and her strawberry shampoo – along with the feeling of their bodies reuniting after so long - overwhelmed Ruby’s senses.
Something broke inside of her and she found herself choking back tears. By sheer force of will, she swallowed them down and got herself together enough that when Megan finally broke the embrace, her face was not wet with tears. Ruby remembered every inch of her body, and the exact way that her curves fit against Megan’s when they touched, and her scent and her smile and the sound of her voice – all of those things made up Ruby’s sense of home.
And you can’t go home again.
Everything about Megan was just the same as it had always been, and yet it all felt slightly wrong now. Max flashed briefly into Ruby’s head, and then the thought was gone – forced away – and Megan was smiling at her.
“I missed you so much, Ru,” she said.
“I missed you, too,” Ruby said, her voice going watery.
“Well, let’s see your new place,” Megan said, her cheerful tone back again.
“It’s this way,” Ruby said, leading Megan into Founders Hall. She walked a little faster than normal until they got up to the second floor, and tried to convince herself that this had nothing to do with the possibility of running into Max.
Ruby unlocked her door and stepped aside for Megan to enter her small, nearly empty apartment. She lingered by the door while Megan went into the living room, looking at Ruby with a glimmer of desire in her eyes. She came and took Ruby’s hand, trying to gently pull her into the room, but Ruby didn’t want to let the door swing shut. She felt her heart pounding, and suddenly she didn’t want to be alone with Megan.
She knew what would happen if the door closed.
Ruby slipped her hand out of Megan’s and gestured into the apartment. “It’s not much. This is the living room and study area. The bathroom’s over there, and my bedroom’s through that door. There’s a kitchenette around the corner but I don’t cook much because it’s really small.”
“The bedroom’s through here?” Megan asked, taking a few steps away and then looking back at Ruby with a glance that implored her to follow.
“Umm, yeah-” Ruby started.
Megan bit her lower lip in a gesture that never failed to drive Ruby crazy when they were together. Now it just made her stomach feel slightly unsettled, and she wondered what the hell was wrong with her for not chasing Megan into the bedroom like she so obviously wanted.
“I’m just going to put down my bag,” she said, then disappeared through the bedroom door. She was gone for a few seconds longer than necessary for the task. Ruby counted the beats of her pulse – one, two, three, four, five... and then Megan emerged with a cheery smile and asked, “Do you want to show me around campus?”
“Sure,” Ruby said, breathing a sigh of relief. She wasn’t dumb – she knew what Megan had come for the moment she got out of her car and gave Ruby that smoldering look. She wasn’t here to go on a walking tour of GSU, she wasn’t here to talk, and Ruby hadn’t really invited her here with the goal of talking. In the moments after Max slammed the door in her face, all she wanted was to forget everything and find a few minutes of comfort by pretending that she still lived in the world she knew when she and Megan were in love.
Now that Megan was standing in her bedroom doorway, though, she wasn’t ready to shove aside all their history or the pain. She wasn’t ready to confront her about their breakup, either, though, and she was grateful to Megan for offering up this tour idea instead.
“Show me your academic building,” Megan said as she squeezed past the narrow space between Ruby and the door frame into the hall, their bodies pressing together momentarily. “I want to see where you’re sitting while you send me all those texts.”
***
They spent the afternoon wandering around GSU, and when their stomachs began to rumble and Megan suggested pizza and a movie in her apartment, Ruby balked. Instead, she took Megan into the city for dinner. She was careful to choose a casual restaurant – nothing romantic or candlelit – and they ended up at the Italian place that Ruby ordered takeout from so often. It was close enough to walk to, and the atmosphere was chaotic.
Ruby thought that dinner would be just as good a time as any to start unpacking the events leading
up to their breakup, but every time she opened her mouth to ask Megan a question – Why wasn’t I worth fighting for? Do you regret it? Why are you here? – the waiter came by, or a screaming kid a few tables over interrupted her, or Megan asked her another question about library school.
“Do you want to order a bottle of wine?” She asked at one point, and Ruby found this suggestion to be more than welcome. Alcohol would help lubricate her tongue to ask the questions that needed to be asked, and Megan flagged down the waiter with a coy smile at Ruby. “It’s impossible to eat pasta without a glass of red.”
Ruby downed her first glass faster than she probably should have, and Megan kept refilling them until the bottle was empty. By the end of the meal the alcohol was swimming through her veins, and as they walked back to Founders Hall she felt pleasantly light-headed. Megan linked her arm in Ruby’s and it felt almost right again.
They walked slowly and Ruby enjoyed the breeze on the quad, unable to feel the cold despite the fact that she had goosebumps on her arms. She looked over at Megan, who was just tipsy enough herself to start telling the truth about this visit, and Ruby asked, “How’s med school going, really?”
Ruby had asked this question earlier in the day, and in text messages during the week, but she’d always gotten the impression that the answer Megan gave was short of the truth.
“It’s fine,” Megan said as they approached Founders Hall. Ruby reached into her pocket and realized that her fingers had turned to jelly at some point during their walk – from the cold or from the wine – and she was having a hard time grasping her keycard. Megan kept her hand wrapped around Ruby’s arm while she waited, and added, “It’s a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.”