by Ciara Smyth
“I was passing by and I saw you muttering to yourself.” He pointed at the wall beside the door and I stepped over the threshold and saw there was a small security screen.
“I was not muttering.”
“Yeah, you were. For ages. I was standing here laughing at you.”
I peered around for signs of any other nonspecific Quinn family members. Off the hall a door was ajar and music and laughter wafted out.
“I’m going to assume Ruby invited you in some post-sex sapphic haze, but you’re very late for dinner. Can I assume this is a booty call?”
“We didn’t—” I started but didn’t finish. I didn’t have to answer to him. I felt a small thrill when he said her name, though. A friendship thrill. New friends are exciting.
“That must be a first for you,” he said, smirking.
I rolled my eyes. Correcting him would only encourage him to think it was anyone’s business but mine and the person I was not doing it with.
“And someday you’ll have your first time too,” I said, squeezing his shoulder.
I eyed the room the music was coming from. Light from a screen flickered against the visible sliver of opulent wallpaper. What if I walked in there and Ruby was annoyed with me and told me to leave? Or what if she didn’t actually remember me? Maybe she kissed girls and invited them round all the time. She said it was a family thing, but she could have met loads of people since last week. What if that room was full of lesbians?
Well, I mean, that didn’t sound terrible, but still.
“You’re right, though,” I said, backing away, “I am very late and I shouldn’t disturb your party.”
“Oliver, is someone at the door?” a woman called.
I shook my head at him.
“Yes, Mum, we have a visitor.”
I gave Oliver my most potent death glare. It didn’t faze him. He dragged me into the room by the hand. It was lit by candles and expensive-looking lamps that cast eerie shadows on the wall, making the scene appear more sinister than it really was. It reminded me of the part of an Agatha Christie novel just before some rich person’s body is found on a Persian rug. There were a few helium balloons with “18” on them that kind of took the edge off the atmosphere. I wondered if Ruby hadn’t finished school yet, or if she was just one of the youngest in her class like me.
Oliver’s mum was sitting on one of a pair of Louis XVI–style couches, the kind that are fantastically uncomfortable but very chic. Did she know Jack Kennedy lost his virginity on one of those sofas? Judging by the fact that they hadn’t set them both on fire, probably not. Oliver’s dad was in the center of the room, a microphone in his hand, paused, evidently mid-performance.
Ruby wasn’t there.
“Mum, Dad, this is Saoirse,” Oliver said.
“Nice to see you, Mr. and Mrs. Quinn,” I said.
His dad bounded forward to shake my hand. I hated when parents did that. It was so awkward, but he had such a warm smile on his face when he told me to call them Harry and Jane that I couldn’t hold it against him.
“Saoirse, welcome to the party. Do you have a signature song?” He indicated the TV screen, which was still playing the lyrics from what I recognized as a Sarah McLachlan song, though someone had muted the background music when I walked in.
“Er, no.” I would not be singing. Not now, not ever.
“Don’t put the poor girl on the spot.” Jane shook her head. “Sit down, dear, I’ll get you the list to look through.”
I don’t know what panicked me more, the list of song options or having to choose between the two sofas not knowing which one was the sex sofa. I tried to get Oliver’s attention to silently ascertain the status of the couches, but he gave me a blank look in return. As soon as I sat and no one was looking, Oliver made the universal hand gesture for hetero sex and pointed to the spot I was sitting in.
I shuddered involuntarily.
“Ruby, we have a guest,” Jane said, and my head snapped up.
There she was, paused in the doorway, her eyes widened in surprise. I stood up automatically, as though she were a dignitary of some kind. She had a flute of something bubbly in her hand, nonalcoholic I assumed, and her messy hair was flipped onto one side, her lip ring glinting against the candlelight. She wore a denim pinafore covered in pins with pink tights with gold sparkly flats on her feet. I braced myself for the possibility that she would stare coldly at me and ask why I was there.
But she smiled.
I took her in, checking my body for signs of the wobble. For heartbeats skipped or stomach flipping. I was fine. She was just a girl. Just a girl I kissed who I could totally be friends with.
Then she crossed the room in a few steps and hugged me. The smell of fruity hair product wafted up my nose. Not that I smelled her hair, you understand. You don’t do that to friends.
She whispered in my ear, “I’m really glad you came.” Her breath tickled. She held my gaze for a moment as she pulled away, eyes twinkling. She gave me a long look up and down. Or maybe it just felt long. “I assume you’re hiding a present somewhere?” she said, her lips quirking slightly.
The wobble returned.
The wobble was a liability.
Before I could say something clever or just apologize, Jane spoke.
“Did you get through to your mum?” she asked with a sympathetic wrinkle of her forehead.
Ruby shook her head. She seemed sad but shrugged it off. Perhaps realizing that everyone was now looking at Ruby, Jane turned to me.
“Saoirse, how do you know my lovely niece already? She’s only been in town ten minutes and she’s made a friend.”
Ruby and I sat at the same time. Close enough that I could smell her perfume. Close enough that when I let my hand rest beside me, her little finger tickled mine. In a friendly way, of course.
“Oh, well, Oliver introduced us. Sort of,” I said meaningfully, reminding him I could rat him out about his party habit in return for not warning me about the sofa. There was panic in his eyes and I smiled smugly before continuing. “He is always getting people together, making connections and all that.”
“You’re in Oliver’s class?”
I nodded.
“What are your plans, then, for next year? University? Or maybe taking a gap year like our Ruby?”
“Saoirse is Oxford bound, Mum,” Oliver said before I could reply.
Ruby’s head turned in my direction. But I didn’t look directly at her. People have feelings about places like Oxford. They either think you’re some kind of genius (I’m not) or that you’re rich (I’m not) or that you think you’re better than everyone else (definitely not).
“Oh, very good, dear. What are you going to study?”
I shrugged and swerved around the question. “I might not even get in. It’s all conditional on getting enough points in the exams.”
That was the thing I kept telling people, that I might not get in. Because you can’t say I don’t want to go. Although it answered the question of whether she was still at school, I then wondered why Ruby was taking a gap year. Probably going to travel the world or some other exciting bohemian thing only rich people do. Did she think I was boring for not doing something more fun?
She shifted slightly and let her knee fall against mine in way that felt deliberate. Not boring, then.
“What about your summer?” Harry rubbed his hands together. “Any exciting plans?”
“I suppose I’m looking for a job, but I haven’t heard anything yet.”
“See, Oliver,” Harry said, pointing at his son, who looked around innocently, as though there might be another Oliver in the room. “You need to be looking for a summer job too.”
“Father dearest, we’ve been through this. . . . I’m busy.”
Jane laughed. “I’ll busy you. What do you think, Saoirse? Should Oliver have to get off his arse and actually do something?”
“What about a nice volunteer job? Give back to the community,” I said with wide-eyed innocen
ce.
Oliver looked stricken. Presumably, the only thing worse to him than working would be working for free.
Ruby had just taken a sip of her drink, so when she snorted with laughter at Oliver’s expression she choked on it. I put my hand on her knee when I asked her if she was OK and then took it off quickly when I remembered the friend thing. I didn’t want to give her the wrong idea.
“Oh, Saoirse, we haven’t even got you a drink, what will you have?”
“I’m fine, really, thanks.”
“Shush now, you’ll need some Dutch courage if you’re going to step up to the mike,” Harry said, laughing.
“That’s right, I said I’d get you the list of songs we have,” Jane said, standing up. “Are you more of a pop girl or a rock star?”
“Uh . . .”
“Saoirse is obviously perfect for a power ballad.” Oliver grinned, getting me back for my volunteer job comment.
I nudged Ruby with my knee and she caught my eye. I tried to send her panic signals, but I didn’t know if we were quite at the level of unspoken eyeball communication.
“Jane, I think Saoirse is maybe a little too shy to sing right now.”
It was Oliver’s turn to snort.
“Maybe later when you’ve seen the rest of us embarrass ourselves,” Harry said, and held the mike out to Oliver. “Son, weren’t you going to do ‘Kiss from a Rose’ next?”
I could barely contain my glee. I swiveled toward Oliver, expecting him to be embarrassed. He sauntered over to his dad and took the mike. He reached his arms overhead, and then stretched his legs on the arm of the sofa like he was warming up for a sprint.
“I have but one request.” He directed this at me.
I assumed he was going to ask me not to breathe a word of it to anyone. I was wrong.
“Please save your applause for the end of the performance.”
7.
After three more renditions from Oliver in various genres, two more Sarah McLachlans from Harry, and one amusing duet from Ruby, and a very sozzled, slightly dramatic Jane, Ruby reminded me I’d left my top upstairs and why didn’t I come upstairs and get it. Harry and Jane were too tipsy to question why or when I’d left articles of clothing in their house.
“Oliver’s actually not bad,” I said as I followed Ruby upstairs. “You know I wouldn’t tell him that, but he can hold a tune. I won’t be advising him to pack in his university plans or anything but . . .” I was rambling. I was nervous. Sitting beside her all night, even when I was watching Oliver belt out “A Whole New World” (both parts), I felt this hum of electricity, a static charge that kept building and building.
Her room was more lived-in than last time. The sports bag I’d tripped over was gone and there were books on the shelves. Ruby took a seat in a peacock-blue armchair that hadn’t been there last week, folding her legs onto the seat.
“So where’s my top?” I said.
“I have no idea. I threw it in the laundry and it disappeared.” She grinned.
I perched on the edge of the bed beside her open laptop. It was frozen mid-scene from a film I didn’t recognize.
“What are you watching?”
“Four Weddings and a Funeral,” she said. “I’m at the bit where Hugh Grant is telling Andie MacDowell he loves her in the rain.”
“Never heard of it.”
She looked genuinely shocked. “It’s a classic. It’s my favorite. The romantic comedy to end all romantic comedies.”
“I don’t really watch those. They give people unrealistic expectations of love.” If you were the kind of person who relied on romantic comedies to tell you what life was like, you were going to be very disappointed. Heartbreak isn’t eating a tub of ice cream and then running into the new love of your life at the independent bookstore. If that was how Ruby saw relationships, she probably wouldn’t understand my aversion to them.
“What films do you like?”
“If I had to pick a genre it would be horror.”
“Doesn’t that give you unrealistic expectations of how likely you are to be stabbed by a knife-wielding maniac?”
“Fair play,” I laughed. “But it’s the endings that bother me with rom-coms. You know, where they get together or get married or whatever and you’re supposed to think it’s happily ever after but you never see the sequel where the guy dumps her for her best friend or the girl gets sick of picking up skidmarked pants from the bedroom floor.”
“That would be a terrible movie.” Ruby’s eyes twinkled. I think she thought my unbridled cynicism was funny. It made my cheeks warm.
“So you said you were staying the summer?” I said casually.
“Until September.” She nodded. “My family are away, but they didn’t want me staying alone all summer.”
That was strange. If they didn’t want her being alone, why didn’t they just bring her with them? But their loss. I could keep her company for the summer. I was capable of spending a few weeks with a pretty girl and not needing to kiss her again. I wasn’t some kind of sex pest.
“I’m glad you came tonight,” she said, changing the subject. I watched her lips as she spoke. “You came late, but you came.”
“I probably should have mentioned I was going to.”
“But you didn’t decide until the last minute.” It wasn’t a question. Her teeth toyed with her lip ring, twisting her bottom lip. She pushed her hair from one side of her head to the other with her fingers.
“Sort of.”
“So what made you come?”
I thought we could hang out. I wanted to be friends.
“I wanted to kiss you again.”
For some reason I let the truth out. Even though I hadn’t admitted to myself until now that although we barely knew each other I felt like there was some kind of intangible connection, a grabbing, reaching, searching feeling that meant I hadn’t so much chosen to come here as much as I found myself pulled in her direction.
Ruby leaned her elbow on the desk beside her chair and put her fist to her mouth like she was musing on something very serious.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said eventually.
I dipped my head to hide my amusement. I could endure a little teasing.
“So are you and Oliver really friends?” she asked.
“Oh God. No. Absolutely not. I think mortal enemies is a more accurate depiction.”
“And why is that?”
“He stole my girlfriend in second year . . . and technically I dumped him before that, in sixth class. Broke his poor little rich boy heart. He was utterly devastated; I’m sure he’d tell you that. I think he stole my girlfriend as part of a long-game revenge plot. Poor fellow couldn’t handle that once I accepted I was a lesbian I had way more game than him.”
Ruby laughed.
I liked making her laugh.
“I don’t think either of you have game.”
I choked on my indignation, thumping my chest twice to get it all out.
“Excuse me. I bagged you and your cousin,” I countered. “Sure, we were eleven, but we kissed with tongues and everything. Sort of.”
“And yet you want to kiss me again, but you came to my birthday without even bringing a present?” Ruby pretended to fan herself like ladies of yore.
“I did too get you a present,” I said, hopping off the bed. “Hold on a second.”
With the paltry contents of an old pen pot and a ripped sheet of paper from a file pad on the desk, I got to work. After hastily scribbling for a couple of seconds, I beckoned her over to the window that looked out on the back garden. I thought I saw our cat creeping along the wall in the dark. My hand rested in the curve of her lower back, the left side of her body pressed against me. I handed her the sheet of paper.
I’d drawn a squiggly swirling border in blue marker, and with the black pen I’d written:
This hereby declares that “that star right there” is named after Ruby Quinn. Signed: Brian Cox, Owner of Stars.
Ruby gig
gled. “Which one is it?”
“That star right there.” I pointed vaguely at the sky. “It says so on the certificate, Ruby.”
“I’ll treasure it forever.” She wiped a fake tear away. Then she gave me a once-over, a look I can only describe as appraising.
“What is it?”
“Well, I don’t know if you’re going to like this,” she said, feigning a sort of theatrical sigh, “but you should know that is my favorite part of the romantic comedy.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, the grand gesture where the guy buys the girl a star because it’s way more meaningful than, like, a necklace or a bunch of flowers.”
“I’m no expert, but I don’t think this is the grand gesture,” I said, and Ruby turned slightly so my hand was now resting on her waist. She was looking directly me at me now and it was almost too close to bear.
“You gave me a star. How is that not a grand gesture?”
“The grand gesture comes after the fight, doesn’t it? We haven’t had the fight.” I tried to sound relaxed, though I felt like I might melt into a puddle.
“You’re right, actually,” Ruby admitted. “Like Hugh and Andie, or John Cusack holding up the stereo outside Ione Skye’s bedroom window.” Ruby poked me in the chest and narrowed her eyes. “How do you know that if you don’t watch them? Are you sure you aren’t a secret rom-com fan?”
“I don’t need to be, that’s my point; once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. They meet in some quirky way like bumping into each other—”
“The meet cute.”
“If you say so.”
Ruby stuck her tongue out at me and pulled away. The tension that had built up between us was like an elastic band pulled tight; the farther away she got the more I thought I might snap. She got on the bed and lay back. I resisted the urge to follow her and I leaned against the wall, hoping I looked devastating in the stream of moonlight from the window.
“So meet cute, then they have a falling in love montage of picnics and dates and general merriment, but oh no, what’s this contrived conflict? Big fight, hero realizes he’s a twat, then grand gesture and happily ever after. These guys wouldn’t have to work so hard if they didn’t act like twats in the first place, but I guess that would be anticlimactic.”