Slow Burn

by Roxie Noir

  “You were also nineteen,” I point out. “Not that he’d be less gay at twenty-four.”

  “If I’d been older I might have been a little smarter,” she says. “But everything I knew, everything in my entire world was telling me that this was fine, this was a good idea, that I should marry Lucas. And I really really believed that if I tried hard enough, that if I was a good wife, I’d learn to love him, he’d learn to love me, and someday he’d…”

  She blows a strand of hair out of her face and looks at the wall.

  “I don’t know. Want me?” she asks, her voice suddenly quieter.

  Suddenly I’m angry for her, so I take another drink to mask it. It’s bad enough that she got conned into marrying someone who didn’t love her, who was never going to love her. But not to know something as simple as how it feels to be desired?

  Love’s complicated, but lust is simple. It’s not much to ask.

  For fuck’s sake, I want her. If we were in any other scenario right now I’d lean over the table, beckon her in closer, and tell her that all it took to get me rock hard was seeing her in pants instead of a skirt. I’d tell her that if she wanted to, I’d take her into the bathroom of Finnegan’s Pub and pin her against the wall.

  I’d tell her I’m hard again just thinking about it.

  But it’s not going to happen. Anyone else, anywhere else, yeah, but not her and not here.

  “I guess he never magically became straight,” I say.

  “He didn’t,” Ruby confirms, taking another drink, then sighing. “He tried. I know he did. He would bring me flowers, and take me on nice dates, cook me dinner, rub my feet, everything that good husbands are supposed to do. We did like each other, there was just never any spark.”

  She drinks again.

  “Probably because the entire time he wanted to be screwing other men,” she says in a very reasonable tone of voice.

  “Did you two ever have sex?” I ask.

  She smirks at me, her eyes sparkling.

  “Have you just been sitting over there, wondering that this entire time?” she asks.

  Yes.

  “It’s the obvious next question,” I protest, trying not to smile. “If your husband was gay, could he even…”

  I trail off, but point one finger skyward, like an erection. Ruby laughs.

  “I’m not a virgin after being married for six years,” she says. “Don’t worry, I’m not that weird.”

  “I didn’t say you were weird.”

  “You were thinking it.”

  “I was actually thinking that you’re shockingly well-adjusted.”

  Ruby looks skeptical.

  “I really was,” I say.

  “I don’t feel well-adjusted,” she admits. “I feel like everywhere I go, everyone’s staring at me all time, because I’m a grown woman who’s never had a real job and who got her first checking account last month.”

  She pauses and taps her fingers on her glass, then glances up at me.

  “My father doesn’t know about the checking account, by the way.”

  I mime a zipper across my lips.

  “Thanks.”

  “And after six years, you just got tired of it?”

  She leans her chin on one palm again, sliding the fingers of her other hand along the rim of her half-empty whiskey glass.

  “One day I was out running errands,” she says. “And, halfway through, I realized I’d left some coupons at home, and I wasn’t that far away, so I headed back to grab them.”

  She takes another long sip of whiskey, her glass half empty. Ruby’s starting to get a little more expressive with her hands, her cheeks faintly pinker, the façade she’s always wearing falling away.

  “And when I got home, I found Lucas and another man having sex in our kitchen.”

  I let out a low whistle. Ruby looks into her whiskey glass.

  “That’s a hell of a thing to walk in on.”

  “It took me so long to figure out what was going on, actually,” she says, shaking her head.

  Then she looks at me and laughs, embarrassed.

  “I thought I’d caught him watching porn at first,” she says. “That had happened once or twice, and it was always awful because he was so ashamed about it and then I was ashamed about it, but there were these… you know, grunting noises and squishing noises and this sort of rhythmic slapping?”

  Ruby is bright red, but she keeps going, still half-laughing at herself.

  “Rhythmic slapping and grunting sure sounds like porn,” I agree.

  “From the door I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but then he wasn’t in the den, and he wasn’t in his office, and finally I realize the sounds are coming from the kitchen. And I walk in, and…”

  She spreads her hands in front of herself, palms up, fingers spread.

  “Surprise! Gay sex, right on the counter. Not porn. I was so surprised that I just stood there and stared for a good thirty seconds before they realized I was there.”

  “I’d want a divorce too,” I say.

  “You know what ended up bothering me the most, for some reason?”

  “Besides the part where your very conservative husband was fucking another man in your kitchen?”

  “That’s it, actually,” Ruby say. “He wasn’t screwing someone else. He was bent over the counter, getting screwed.”

  Ruby leans back in the booth, then rubs her eyes with both hands.

  “I’ve actually never told anyone else this before,” she admits. “Not the details, anyway, just that Lucas couldn’t overcome his desires.”

  “I’m honored to be the first who knows about the rhythmic slapping sounds,” I deadpan.

  That makes her laugh, even as she rubs her face again.

  “No one wants to know anything about it,” she says. “It’s just this embarrassing failure that happened, and the faster it can get swept under the rug, the better.”

  “I’ve got all night,” I offer. “Tell me as much as you want about the squishing sounds.”

  I don’t particularly want to hear the details of her husband getting railed in the kitchen, but I want to keep talking to Ruby like this, as if we’re two regular people on an almost-regular date or something, not a trapped girl and her bodyguard.

  “The squishing sounds weren’t that bad,” she admits. “But Lucas had this look on his face of relief, and bliss, and suddenly it was just so, so obvious that I was never going to be what he needed or wanted. There was just no way. So I asked for a divorce a couple weeks later, and now, here I am.”

  My whiskey glass is empty, and I push it aside, then lean forward over the table.

  “You know it’s not you, right?” I ask.

  She sighs.

  “I know,” she says, arms folded over her chest, looking away.

  “You can’t make a gay guy straight any more than you can make a dog a cat,” I say. “It’s got nothing to do with you at all.”

  “It’s just hard,” she says quietly. “I really, really tried, and I couldn’t make it work, and then when I finally gave up thinking that maybe I could start over and be happy some other way, that was almost worse. I’m pretty sure my father only took me in because it’s election year and he’s campaigning. The house where Lucas and I lived was actually owned by the Church, and Lucas got disowned and left to be with his boyfriend, and it’s not like I had a job besides housewife, so here I am again.”

  She takes another long sip, and I study the lines in her neck as she swallows, then puts the glass down with a clonk.

  “And I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to do before I wind up married to Kyle,” she mutters. “Maybe I could arrange to be eaten by an alligator or something.”

  “A sexy cartoon alligator?”

  Ruby snorts, then looks up at me.

  “You knew that, but not why I got divorced?”

  “Your sister said something about it on the bus, so I got curious,” I admit. “Prostitutes are old hat, but the cartoon char
acters fucking were a new one to me. You’d think they’d run into licensing issues.”

  “I don’t think those likenesses were exactly above board,” Ruby says dryly.

  “You’re telling me Disney didn’t grant permission for that stuff?”

  “Maybe that’s part of the thrill,” she says. “Cartoons violating each other and copyright law.”

  I laugh again, and then Ruby starts laughing, too.

  We stay at the pub for a while. She goes a little deeper into the details of her divorce — she got left with nothing, surprise — and though I don’t exactly tell her why I left D.C., I talk about my time in the military and then working for the Secret Service.

  “Do you know any good state secrets?” she asks.

  “I only know where the Vice President’s wife hides the Oreos she doesn’t want the Vice President to eat,” I say. “They’re in a cabinet behind a toaster oven they’ve never taken out of the box.”

  “Sneaky,” she says, playing with her empty glass.

  I nod at it.

  “Another one?”

  Ruby shakes her head.

  “You’d have to carry me home and pour me into bed,” she says.

  Sounds fine to me. Fuck, her parents aside, it sounds more than fine.

  “I should get going, anyway. I’m always afraid someone will figure out that I’m missing,” she goes on.

  “I’ll walk you if you show me how to sneak back in,” I say.

  “Deal,” Ruby says, smiling.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ruby

  I don’t want to leave, but I know I should. Any one of the things I’ve been doing tonight — going out in pants, being alone with Gabriel, drinking alcohol, reading Harry Potter — would make my father flip out completely, but all of them at once?

  I’d never see the light of day again. Just like there are places they send gay teens to turn them straight, there are places they send out of control women to make them more pliant. And to the people who run those kinds of places, it does not matter that I’m twenty-six and well into legal adulthood.

  But right now? I’m having the best time I’ve had in months, probably since my little sister Joy and I were supposed to go pick peaches at the orchard, got turned around, couldn’t find the orchard, and ended up sitting on the rocks in the river at the state park, just talking for two hours.

  We got in lots of trouble when we got home without peaches, but it was worth it.

  When we stand, I’m a little wobbly on my feet and Gabriel steps forward, one hand out to steady me, but he stops short.

  “Am I gonna be carrying you home anyway?” he asks.

  I rest my fingertips on the table and take a moment, looking around until the world straightens out a little.

  “I can’t remember the last time I had two drinks in one night,” I admit. “And I think that second one was more than one drink.”

  “I’ll remember that if I ever need to get important information out of you,” Gabriel teases, as we walk for the door.

  He pushes it open for me, and as I step through, I feel his fingertips on my lower back. His hand may as well be a cattle prod, because I swear it sends an electric charge up my spine, jolting my back straight.

  It’s been almost a year and a half since someone touched me that intimately. I know it sounds pathetic, but all I’ve gotten since the divorce has been handshakes and awkward half-hugs, mostly from family members.

  So it’s not exactly surprising that my extremely hot bodyguard touching my back kinda, sorta like we’re on a date does some things to me. Any port in a storm, right?

  Well, except I’d be happy to dock the S. S. Ruby in Gabriel Harbor pretty much any time. Sunny days, rainy days, cloudy days, night time, morning time, tea time…

  You’re drunk and ridiculous.

  I take a deep breath of night air, finally cooling off, to try and clear my head. That second whiskey really got to me, though I’d never have accepted if I had to walk home alone. But since Gabriel’s here, I think I’ll be okay.

  We walk along the uneven sidewalk, side by side, not touching.

  Tell him you’re scared and ask to hold his hand, I think.

  And then tell him he’s gotten something on his shirt and if he gives it to you right now, you can get it off. Maybe his pants, too.

  I turn crimson and look away. It’s not like I’ve got a lot of practice in flirting or being coy, so my face is probably pretty easy to read, and right now it’s saying hey, I’d like to see you naked.

  “I should tell you something,” Gabriel finally says, as we walk past dark storefronts and houses, the Methodist church with the marquee that says GOD IS LOVE.

  My parents don’t like that church.

  “What is it?”

  “I told your father I’d report back to him.”

  I turn my head too fast, and everything spins for a moment. I stop in the middle of the empty sidewalk and shut my eyes, wait for the world to even out.

  “I haven’t,” he says, before I can ask any of my million questions.

  “About me, you mean.”

  “About anything you do that may be cause for concern, according to him.”

  I open my eyes and look at Gabriel, several thousand thoughts spinning through my head at once.

  “Like I said, I haven’t.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “No.”

  “When did he ask?”

  “Friday.”

  I think for a moment, looking at the GOD IS LOVE marquee and breathing steadily, trying to remember which day Friday was. It’s not like I have a job or any reason to delineate weekdays from weekends, so it all tends to blur together.

  “You didn’t tell him about drinking the vodka backstage?”

  “I haven’t told him anything.”

  “Anything.”

  “I think that’s what I just said, yeah,” he teases.

  We start walking again. I knew that my father would probably ask Gabriel to spy on me, tell him about every single move I make, whether he has any reason to worry about my current moral standing, but I’m a little dumbfounded that Gabriel just told me.

  If anything, I figured that my father just hadn’t asked him the right questions yet, and eventually, he’d spill.

  “Why are you telling me?” I ask, suspicious. It’s not like I have anything he wants, anything I can trade for his silence.

  Gabriel just frowns at me.

  “Because I thought you should know,” he says. “If your father’s asking me to be Big Brother, he’s probably asked other people, too.”

  I consider this for a moment, sneaking a glance at him from the corner of my eye. People never tell me things just because they think I should have information. Well, Lucas did, sometimes, but he wasn’t exactly in the habit of it and I don’t even know where he is now.

  “Are you going to tell him anything?” I finally ask.

  What I mean is, what are you trying to get out of me.

  “That’s actually why I brought it up,” he says, pushing his hands into his pockets. We come to a street corner, both streets completely empty, but he looks left and then right out of habit.

  Here it comes, I think. This is the part where he tells me what he wants from me.

  “I’ve got a meeting with him tomorrow morning, and I should tell him something,” he says. “If I just told him you’d been a perfect angel for the past week he might get suspicious.”

  “Okay,” I say, still not knowing what he wants.

  “But I don’t know what to tell him,” Gabriel goes on. “I’m not going to tell him that I caught you sneaking out to drink whiskey and read Harry Potter, but I also don’t know what would keep us above suspicion without getting you into trouble.”

  Us. He asked what would keep us above suspicion. I look over at him again, and he looks back.

  “What?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Lyi
ng to my father. Your boss. I can’t help you, I don’t have anything you want.”

  Gabriel stops again in the middle of the sidewalk, looking faintly puzzled. We’re on the edge of downtown Huntsburg now, the houses getting further apart, stone walls and gates separating them from the sidewalk.

  “I know,” he says.

  “If he finds out, he’ll be angry with you, too,” I point out, crossing my arms over my chest.

  Now Gabriel’s starting to smile, one side of his mouth just barely pulling up.

  “I know that too,” he says. “And I’m familiar with trouble.”

  “So why lie to him?”

  “You want to know the truth?”

  I roll my eyes, exasperated.

  “Yes, obviously, that’s why I’m asking.”

  Gabriel chuckles, and now he’s grinning at me.

  “Because your father’s kind of a creep and I like drinking whiskey with you,” he says. “Most of this security job is pretty shitty and I’d like to keep the few parts that aren’t.”

  I blink at him a few times.

  “That’s it?”

  “You also seem like you’ve put up with more than enough bullshit and I don’t see a reason to make your life harder,” he says.

  I still don’t quite believe him. I’m not used to people doing things because they’re nice or because they want to, I’m used to people doing things for gain or standing. After all, my father’s a politician who practically runs a miniature police state.

  “Is it that hard to believe that I just don’t want to rat you out?” he asks, arms still crossed.

  I rub my eyes, then frown at him.

  “No?” I say. “It’s just… unusual. But thank you.”

  I pause.

  “Really.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Gabriel says, and we start walking again. “But I still need something to tell your father.”

  I think for a moment, because I need to keep my father far, far away from my real vices — whiskey, Gabriel, Harry Potter, wearing pants, Gabriel — and give him something else to worry about. Ideally, something stupid. Really stupid.

  And I know just the thing. I look at Gabriel and grin.

  “Tell him a pale, translucent white rock fell out of my pocket,” I say. “And I seemed flustered that you saw it.”