by Heidi Rice
But then his lips curved. He was joking.
She got breathless again; Luke Devlin really was gorgeous when he smiled. And even more gorgeous when he laughed, she’d discovered a few minutes ago.
Although he was most gorgeous when he ran his long tanned fingers over the skirting board to test for woodworm, she decided. She would probably have a spontaneous orgasm when she saw him in a tool belt
Ruby flushed at the arbitrary thought.
Earth to Ruby. You and Luke are not going to be a thing.
He was not and could never be her type. When it came to dating, she didn’t do hot and solvent, she only did geeky and dysfunctional. And she would hazard a guess she was about as far from his type as Hugh Grant.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t admire Luke Devlin in a tool belt – on a purely aesthetic level.
‘Not unless you really want to,’ she said, smiling back at him.
‘I can’t promise I can make any of the other screenings,’ he said, the stern tone not as convincing as it had been.
‘But you’ll stay for this one?’ she asked, the light-headedness becoming euphoria.
‘Sure, I guess it can’t do any harm.’
‘That’s so wonderful, Luke.’ She led him to their sofa in the back row, and gave Gerry and Jacie, who were watching from the bar, a thumbs up behind his back. ‘You have no idea how much this means,’ she gushed as they took their seats.
Because it could mean everything.
As the lights went down five minutes later, and Hugh Grant’s Will Freeman started spouting off about how cool his empty life was, Ruby sent up a silent prayer.
Over to you, Will. This is our chance to show Luke what family can mean – even to cynical loners. So don’t fuck it up.
But as she sat beside him, it was actually quite hard to concentrate on her – and Will’s – mission and not the industrial strength hotness vibes pumping off him.
***
‘How’s it going? What does he think of the movie?’ Jacie hissed, waylaying Ruby on her way back from the loo.
The film was nearly over and the tension had taken its toll on Ruby’s bladder. The school talent show – which was part of the film’s finale – was in full swing on screen. Will and Marcus sharing an uncomfortable duet of ‘Killing Me Softly’ had been Ruby’s cue to make a dash for the loo for a tension-busting pee. Sitting next to Luke and gauging his every reaction was hard work, not least because he was not a demonstrative man, and she’d become more than a little addicted to his gruff chuckles, which had a rough, rusty quality to them that only made them more precious. Until the scene in the middle of the movie, when Will and Marcus and the Irish Lady with the baby who Will wanted to shag walked in on Marcus’s mum after she’d made a suicide attempt. At which point everything had changed …
And Ruby had actually started to feel sick.
‘Good, I think,’ Ruby whispered, trying not to stress about it. ‘He’s laughed a couple of times, which is a big improvement on The Wizard of Oz.’
But who wouldn’t laugh at About a Boy? It was a very funny film which had stood the test of time. Will Freeman’s self-serving laddishness was infectious – you couldn’t help liking Will because he was so self-aware about being a selfish tosser and so unapologetic about it too. Will’s studied immaturity had also made him the perfect person to understand Marcus – a thirteen-year-old boy with a suicidal mum and no cool points whatsoever.
But the more of the film they watched together, the more she became aware of the massive flaw in her strategy to use About a Boy as a way to soften Luke up.
The notion she could put the kernel of an idea into Luke’s head, that family could come in all shapes and sizes, and that being rich and cynical could make your life poorer – had been delusional at best, and manipulative at worst. Especially as there were a lot of things about the movie she’d forgotten, or never realized in the first place.
After watching it with Luke, those omissions had become glaringly obvious.
First off, she’d realised Luke’s personality wasn’t that close to Will’s at all. Luke might be rich and cynical, but no way would Will have helped her over that gate or done something as cheesy as sung ‘Over the Rainbow’ with her, or gotten arrested, not unless he was trying to get into her pants – which Luke categorically was not.
And that was without even factoring in the massive misstep she’d made getting him to sit through the suicide attempt scene. That scene had taken on a different significance when she’d noticed Luke’s reaction. He’d immediately tensed, then his expression had become rigid, he’d disappeared to the toilet and she’d been scared he might not come back. But when he had, there had been no more laughing.
Why hadn’t she remembered that scene? And figured out the hideous significance it might have for Luke? She’d hurt him, and that had never been her intention.
‘That’s fabulous,’ Jacie whispered, hearing what Ruby had wanted her to hear, instead of the devastating truth – that by getting Luke to watch this movie, they might well have triggered extremely painful memories they had no right to trigger.
‘We can start the schmooze offensive big time next week,’ Jacie added. ‘Who’d have thought a knob like Will Freeman would help save The Royale.’
‘I’ll take Luke out by the fire exit once it finishes and everyone’s left the auditorium,’ Ruby said.
‘Why don’t you ask him to stay for the talent show?’ Jacie said. ‘Now we’ve softened him up we should go in for the kill.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Ruby said firmly, controlling the urge to snap at Jacie. It wasn’t Jacie’s fault Ruby had forgotten about the bloody suicide scene. Or that she felt super-guilty now for trying to use Luke. Jacie didn’t know Luke, not the way Ruby did. Ruby was the one who should have nixed the whole idea in the bud of trying to manipulate Luke into investing in The Royale with the help of a bloody movie. Instead she’d encouraged her staff to believe they could exploit his generosity in agreeing to do the community service. And not even just to save The Royale, but because she had gotten vicarious pleasure out of having him there beside her in the darkness.
‘Ask Errol not to turn up the lights until I’ve gotten him out of here,’ Ruby said.
The least she could do was protect Luke from prying eyes and get him safely out of the building before anyone approached him.
Then she needed to make sure he was okay. And that the scene with Marcus’s mum hadn’t brought back too many traumatic memories for Luke of his father’s suicide when he was only fourteen.
***
He killed himself. Because he was a careless, selfish bastard. It wasn’t your fault. Get over it.
‘Thanks for the movie, it was cool,’ Luke managed round the bitter taste that had been lingering in his mouth for over an hour.
He pushed open the exit door – which apparently wasn’t alarmed after all – and took a deep breath in, his first deep breath for over an hour. Even tinged with the aroma of rotting garbage from the nearby dumpsters and the pungent scent of urine, the lung full of night air was enough to loosen the vice which had a stranglehold on his ribs.
‘I’ll see you Monday,’ he said to Ruby, who had followed him out into the back alley.
‘Yes,’ she said, holding the heavy metal door open so she could slip back inside.
But as he pulled his cap out of his back pocket, she murmured. ‘Luke, I’m so sorry. I totally forgot that scene was in the movie.’
The vice clamped tight again as her eyes darkened with compassion and regret.
She knows? What gave me away?
He thought he’d held his shit together. Something he’d become an expert at as a kid. Ruby Graham, though, was more observant than most people.
He didn’t say anything, because he couldn’t. Instead he concentrated on putting on his ball cap and evening out his breathing. Again.
Should he pretend he didn’t know what she was referring to? Talking about it would only make
him feel more exposed. More humiliated.
But how could he pretend he didn’t know, when everyone knew what had happened to his old man. It had been plastered all over the world’s press for weeks when it happened. And every year since they still held vigils on the anniversary of his father’s death in Falcone’s old neighbourhood in the Bronx. He knew because he filed the invite he got sent by The Falconios in the trash every year. Last year, the damn anniversary had even gotten its own hashtag trending on Twitter.
Ruby only knows what everyone knows. There is no need to freak out.
Ruby was a Falcone nut, all she knew was that his father had killed himself. The familiar anger seared his throat. He swallowed to soothe the raw edge.
You’re not angry anymore, remember?
He was an adult now. What was the point in being angry with a dead guy? And so what if Falcone had been a crummy dad? A lot of people had crummy fathers, like both the asshat and the kid in the movie he’d just seen. Plus, his mom had spent a fortune on therapy to help him get over the fallout from that godawful day.
‘It didn’t bother me,’ he said, determined to mean it as he adjusted the cap. Or at the very least to get Ruby to believe he meant it. He’d revealed more than enough about himself to this woman already, and it made him super uncomfortable. Why had he done that? ‘No need to be sorry. I liked the movie, it was pretty funny,’ he added, which wasn’t completely a lie. Up until that bombshell moment, he had been enjoying it.
What bugged him was the scene had been a trigger, when it shouldn’t have been. Since when did movies freak him out? He’d known since he was a little kid they weren’t real.
Unlike Ruby, who bought into all that woo-woo crap, he knew how movies faked emotion. The moment when the nerdy kid found his mom collapsed on the couch was just a clever plot device used to shock the lead guy into giving a shit about someone other than himself. The guy had been enough of an asshole – albeit a hilarious one – to need dynamite to blast him out of his own orbit, so it made total sense the writers would need a big shock moment to make that happen. Hence the mom’s suicide attempt.
Freaking out about a plot device was beneath him.
Ruby nodded. ‘Okay, I’m glad.’ She didn’t look convinced by his denial.
‘I’ll see you Monday,’ he said, then realized he was repeating himself.
She smiled, the sweet sunny expression making the damn vice squeeze his ribcage again. What was with that?
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ she said. ‘Let me know if there’s anything you need me to do beforehand.’
He nodded, and tipped his hat, then walked away.
He didn’t look back once. Although he found himself listening for the sound of the heavy exit door slamming shut as she went back inside.
But the sound never came.
PART THREE
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Ruby Graham’s verdict: I can’t imagine anything more painful than loving someone so passionately your whole life and yet never being able to say it out loud. Not even to them. Jack and Ennis are like a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, and the poison that destroyed them was the secret they were forced to keep.
Luke Devlin’s verdict: No one should have to hide who they really are. Or who they want to be with. That sucks. But I wonder if Jack and Ennis would have been better without Brokeback Mountain, because all it did in the end was screw up both their lives.
Chapter 8
‘Bollocks!’ Ruby shrieked as she shot out of the shower, the water turning from warmish to freezing the second after she’d dumped a ton of shampoo on her hair. Naturally.
She grabbed a towel from the pile on the vanity, and folded it around her body, then wrapped a hand towel around her head to keep her soapy hair out of her eyes.
She did not have time for this today, The Royale’s LGBTQIA+ weekender was kicking off in approximately eight hours and she had about a million and one things to do – not the least of which was checking the print that had finally arrived for the Matty’s Classics screening of Brokeback Mountain, due to finish the weekender tomorrow.
Luke would be arriving in half an hour and she wanted to present him with Professional and Efficient Ruby not Wet and Wild Ruby – she’d even ironed the pencil skirt and blouse she usually wore to see the bank manager, especially for the occasion.
He’d started the repairs in the auditorium four days ago now, arriving each morning at seven on the dot, and then packing up and cleaning everything away in time for the first screening each day. She and Jacie and Gerry and the rest of the theatre’s staff had been tasked with being as friendly as possible and making sure he had everything he needed – including coffee and food – but he had declined all offers. To the point where she’d been forced to tell everyone to back off.
The schmooze offensive wasn’t working, all it was doing was making her feel more guilty about it. She hadn’t managed to even talk to him properly since the disastrous screening of About a Boy – when she’d managed to traumatise him by mistake.
She stomped out of the bathroom, opened the door to the stairs down to the foyer and shouted: ‘Gerry, call Mehmed, and tell him the boiler’s on the fritz again.’ She scowled, wiping the soap out of her stinging eyes. Mehmed was a retired plumber who lived round the corner, he didn’t charge an exorbitant call-out fee and would accept free cinema tickets in exchange for his efforts to keep the aging boiler in Matty’s flat functioning. Only problem was, she wasn’t sure he’d come this time as he’d been adamant a month and a half ago when he’d called round just before Matty’s funeral that the flat needed a new boiler – even though she’d been adamant they couldn’t afford one.
‘Tell him I think it’s a different problem,’ she lied smoothly. If she could just get him here, he would surely find a way to work his plumber magic one last time.
Gerry’s reply was muffled, but sounded like. ‘I’ll try.’
Shivering, she walked into the flat’s tiny galley kitchen and switched on the kettle. She could wait for ten minutes for Mehmed to get here. If he didn’t turn up in that time – which was highly likely – she’d just have to rinse her hair in the sink again. But she was having a cup of tea first to gird her loins.
‘Bloody boiler.’
She was still swearing furiously and shivering in her towel two minutes later between sips of her fortifying cuppa when she heard footsteps on the stairs.
She dropped her tea on the counter and dashed into the flat’s living room. ‘Mehmed, that was quick! Thanks so much for—’
Her greeting cut off. Because it wasn’t the seventy-something retired plumber who stepped into her living room.
‘Luke!’ Fire blazed from the top of her towel-clad head to the tips of her scarlet-painted toenails. ‘You’re early?’ she croaked, so mortified she was surprised she hadn’t incinerated on the spot.
‘Gerry said you had a heating emergency,’ he murmured.
Not anymore, she thought, as his gaze snagged on her bare legs, and the whole body blush hit fifty thousand degrees centigrade.
Crapola! She was completely naked under her towel, which felt like the size of a napkin under that hot blue gaze. Did it even adequately cover her bum? Which, let’s face it, needed more coverage than usual after the binge-eating she had been doing for six weeks to stave off her grief.
Ruby’s law: while other women waste away in mourning, I gain ten pounds.
She scooted the back of the towel down with her free hand, while keeping her other arm locked over her breasts, so as not to give Luke even more of a peep show.
‘Do you want to show me where the issue is?’ His deep voice reverberated in the hot spot between her legs where the full body blush had settled.
Yes, please.
‘Ruby? Where’s the boiler?’ he asked, the demand in his voice startling her.
She shook her head, trying to kick out the erotic visions which had stalled every last one of her brain cells. Visions of Luke, looking hot and b
uff and helpful, sorting out the overheating issue between her thighs.
‘Yes … Absolutely.’ She coughed, attempting to dislodge the frog in her throat which was making her sound like Ennis Del Mar on a Marlboro bender. ‘It’s right through here,’ she finished. But as she lifted her arm to indicate where the boiler closet was, the towel slipped. She grasped the hem, fumbled with it and then wriggled and jiggled everything back into a respectable place … or rather, as respectable a place as it was possible to get to when she was butt naked under a napkin in front of the hottest guy in London and blushing like a menopausal nun.
She fled down the corridor towards the closet, trailing her lust and her mortification behind her – while convincing herself she had totally imagined the answering flash of heat in those ice-blue eyes. Because that way lay humiliation. Humiliation of the he-doesn’t-fancy-you-you-only-think-he-does-because-you-fancy-him variety. And she had been there enough in school and later while using Matty’s terrible blind-dating services to know what a dangerous place that was – not just for her ego, but also for conducting a working relationship with Luke.
How many times had she broken cover with boys at school and then had to sit next to them in chemistry class for the rest of eternity – knowing they thought she was a loser, or a nerd, or worse?
She could not afford to go there with Luke. And neither could The Royale.
The bitter memories of her loser school days helped to douse the flames still flickering between her thighs as his footsteps followed her down the hallway.
After trekking to Siberia and back they finally arrived at the boiler closet.
‘It’s in t-t-there,’ she stuttered, as a violent shiver racked her body.
‘Hey, you’re freezing.’ Before she had a chance to object, he’d doffed the checked shirt he wore over a black T-shirt and threw it over her shoulders. It was still warm from his body, the scent of sandalwood clinging to the brushed cotton as she inhaled. Another shiver hit her, but this one had nothing to do with the chilly flat.