Chapter 12

12

“ C all me when you land,” Elena instructed, eyes darting between Ruby and Sasha. “I don’t care which one. Hell, both of you call. Just to be sure.”

“We will, Ma.” Ruby hugged her mother tight, blinking back the tears that had been threatening to spill since they started the trek to JFK an hour ago.

“And Sasha, you come back anytime. Bring Ruby with you.” Elena hugged Sasha tight and pulled back to take her face in her hands, beaming with joy. “We’d love to see you again. We really would!”

Dom gathered his younger daughter into his arms and gave her a bear hug. “You don’t come home enough. Let’s see you again before the next family wedding, huh?”

“I’ll try, Pops.” She inhaled deeply, taking in the smell of leather, strong peppermint candy, and Dial soap that always clung to him.

He held her closer. “She’s a good lady, that Sasha,” he whispered. “Make sure you keep her, eh, Rubes? I mean it.”

“I’ll do my best.” The nauseating tangle of emotion that she’d been experiencing since the night of the wedding bubbled up again in her stomach. Happiness, the joy of Sasha being beloved by her family, the confusion in feeling like she was with Sasha while knowing she wasn’t but coming so close to wishing that she could be, the apprehension of how they’d navigate everything once they got home. What was going to happen next? Did she even know what she wanted to happen next?

“Rubes?” Her father had pulled back and was staring at her in concern.

“Yeah! Yeah.” She ruffled his salt and pepper hair. “You got it, Pops. We’ll be back.” She gave him one more hug. “Love you.”

“Love you too, my girl.” He gave her a gentle push. “Go on, that TSA line looks long.”

The tears weren’t going to stay held back much longer. With another hug for her mother and some big waves at everyone, Ruby grabbed Sasha’s hand and spun on her booted heel to walk briskly to the TSA line.

“Hey. You okay?” Sasha wiggled her hand free to sling an arm around Ruby’s shoulder and rubbed her upper arm. “Dumb question. Sorry. Of course not.”

“I mean, yes? And no. It’s not a dumb question.” Ruby offered a watery smile as tears began to dribble from her eyes. “I’m ready to see Winston again, ready to be back at the Lounge, ready to go home to my apartment and give Natalie her thank you gifts and get all the gossip. I love living in LA.” She swallowed the lump in her throat, and it hurt. “But you know, my dad’s right, I don’t go home enough, once or twice a year at most. I feel like even though we spent a week there, it wasn’t enough time. And I hardly saw Danny, he was so busy with wedding stuff. Time just passes by so quickly.”

“He said he and Angela would come out and visit soon, though.” Sasha said, and Ruby could tell she was trying to sound reassuring. “Maybe they’ll talk your parents into coming out, too. Wouldn’t it be nice to have them for Christmas or something?”

There was something about the way Sasha was wording it that rubbed Ruby’s jangled nerves the wrong way. It was very… assuming. Very couple-ish. Ruby needed to ease out of the shimmering fairytale bubble and take stock of herself, of what she wanted, where they could go from here, where they should go.

Because the cold feet hadn’t let up, and she was starting to feel slightly panicked and confined as Sasha seemed to step so naturally into the role of girlfriend. But this was what Ruby had wanted her entire life, wasn’t it? This warm and cozy supportive kind of love? The kind of stuff she liked best to write about? The love she’d basically been manifesting while writing her books, it seemed like she had it now, and all she wanted was to take a few steps back and catch a deep breath, a moment to think.

Swallowing hard, Ruby ducked out from under Sasha’s arm and took two steps away.

Surprised, Sasha blinked at the empty space where Ruby had been, and slowly lowered her arm. “Rubes?”

“Yeah?” The smile Ruby was offering her was too bright, too artificial. Sasha moved forward, hand outstretched, and was surprised again when Ruby backed away and her smile grew harder.

Alarm bells began to go off in the back of her brain. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” But it was too firm, and that firmness didn’t match up with the frenetic gleam that had appeared in Ruby’s eyes.

She tried to stay calm. “You’re jumpy. Kind of all over the place all of a sudden. I’m worried, that’s all.”

“Well, don’t be.” Ruby handed her boarding pass and ID to the guy at the TSA podium, who quickly passed her through. Briskly, Ruby walked over to the indicated line without even a glance back at Sasha.

An ice-cold pit began to open up in Sasha’s stomach. She knew it had all been going too well. She braced herself, in an attempt to wrap her heart up from what felt like an upcoming break.

Quietly, she went through her own security procedures. Shoes off, electronics out, liquids bag in the bin. From the corner of her eye, she watched as Ruby moved with that uncharacteristic efficiency and quickness to go through the metal detector and grab her belongings. By the time Sasha had finished and was bringing her shoes over to the bench Ruby was standing by, Ruby had been standing and looking ready to bolt for a full two minutes.

Sasha took her time getting herself together, trying to figure out what was happening as she laced up her sneakers. Ruby was nearly vibrating out of her skin with nerves, so Sasha knew she had to tread carefully. She picked up her backpack. “Our gate is?—”

“This way.” Ruby set off once more at a brisk pace, leaving Sasha scrambling to keep up.

They didn’t stop at any of the shops or kiosks. Sasha could have used a bottle of overpriced airport water, but she was almost afraid to say anything at all to Ruby at this point. She gripped the straps of her backpack tight, so tight her knuckles ached.

What had gone so wrong, so quickly?

Did I say the wrong thing? Sasha thought to herself as she recounted the previous conversations in her mind.

They arrived at their gate and Ruby plopped down in a seat next to an older woman. She slung her backpack into the seat next to her and crossed her arms over her chest.

Well. Signals didn’t get much clearer than that. Sasha sat down across from Ruby and eased her own backpack around into her lap. All she could do was hug it for support as she went over the last couple of hours or so in her mind. They’d left the Fierelli house with Dom and Elena this morning, and in the car, Ruby had been her usual cuddly, friendly self. At the airport, she’d been understandably upset about saying goodbye to her parents. And then all of a sudden, she was… whatever this was now. Standoffish, hard, walled off in a way Sasha honestly couldn’t remember seeing in her before. And it had been so, so sudden. Clearly Sasha had done something wrong, but she just couldn’t put a finger on what it could have been. She shrank into herself and tried to shake off her anxiety.

The minutes until boarding crawled by, but finally, mercifully, it began. They were in the third boarding group, thanks to Ruby’s frequent flyer miles. Meekly, Sasha trailed after Ruby. How were they going to get through the next several hours? She was going to have to make Ruby talk, a task she did not, for once, relish.

Only when they had their backpacks up in the bin, their seatbelts buckled, the safety demonstration watched—with too much concentration on Ruby’s part, Sasha thought—and the plane was taxiing down the runway and therefore, every chance for Ruby to escape was theoretically gone… as the plane lifted off, only then did Sasha open her mouth. “Ruby…”

“Don’t, Sash.” The sweet, dreamy voice she loved so well was gone, replaced by steel. Sasha looked down at Ruby’s hands, which were clutching the armrests of her seat, white-knuckled. She gently touched one, and it was a dagger to her heart when Ruby snatched it away.

She took a deep breath. “Ruby, come on. I know something’s wrong. What happened? What did I do? Please just tell me.”

“Nothing, I,” Ruby’s eyes clenched shut. “Sash, please. Please, don’t push. Not right now.”

“But I want to help, I want to fix it, I can’t stand you being like this with me,” Sasha whispered, panic clawing its way up her throat. How had everything gone so wrong so quickly? What had gone wrong? “I need to know, Rubes, before we get home. I don’t want us to start off on the wrong foot.”

Sucking in a deep breath through her nose, Ruby opened her eyes and looked straight ahead. “ That is the problem, Sash,” she said, her voice low. “There is no us, not like that. You’re moving way too fast, and I need you to back off a second. I’m freaking out here.”

The words did take Sasha aback, literally made her lean back in shock. “Wait. What?”

Ruby paused before turning to Sasha to take her hands and hold them tight. “You are my best friend. The last few days have been… I can’t tell you enough how amazing they’ve been.”

“Then why are you being like this?” Sasha asked, unable to stop the tears of hurt from springing to her eyes. “I thought everything was perfect. That we were on the same page, you finally saw how good we could be together…”

“Finally?” Ruby sat up straighter in her plane seat. “I see. My brother was right, and I really was the last to know.”

“To know what?” Sasha was bewildered by the entirety of this conversation. Her stomach was utterly in knots.

“That you had—have—feelings for me. And everyone knows it. But I didn’t, because you didn’t tell me.” Ruby let go of one of Sasha’s hands and rubbed her forehead. “I had to guess. I should have talked to you about it before we slept together. But…” She held Sasha’s gaze steadily. “Would you have told me? Even if I asked you directly?”

“I…” She had no answer. She’d held back her feelings for so long, too afraid of being hurt. But now it seemed like she was going to get hurt all the same. How stupid had she been?

Ruby sighed. “Sasha. Believe me, I have loved this fairy tale whirlwind. But I need time to adjust, to catch up to where you are. It feels like you’re hundred steps ahead.”

“So you don’t feel the same way about me?” The tears were trickling now, salty and hot on her cheeks. “Why did you… why did we do this, then? If you don’t have feelings for me?”

“Of course I have feelings for you!” Ruby cried out, gripping Sasha’s hands again. “But you’ve had time and space to think about your feelings, and I haven’t yet! It’s all a big ball of happy pink love-bubble bliss, and it’s a lot for me to think about, and I just want to be sure. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to just let me catch my breath.” She paused, and bit her lip. “Did you think we were just going to fall into this together and go back to LA as a couple?”

Sasha could barely admit to herself that she thought that they had done exactly that. That she’d let herself get swept up into the perfect fairytale she thought she’d finally gotten. That she’d just assumed Ruby had understood.

How humiliating.

The Fasten Seat Belts sign went off. Sasha began to fumble with the buckle of her seat belt. Ruby grabbed her hand. “What are you doing?”

“I need to find a new seat. I can’t do this, I can’t sit next to you, not when… I feel… I can’t.” Getting to her feet, Sasha snatched up her coat and backpack. Tears blinded her eyes, and she hastily wiped them away so she could find a flight attendant.

A blue-blazered young man touched her arm. “Can I help you?”

“I need a new seat,” Sasha blurted out, as she felt Ruby’s eyes boring into her back. “Please, I wouldn’t ask, but I’ve just had an argument with my…” The tears flooded back as she realized she had no idea how to refer to Ruby.

To her great relief, the flight attendant seemed to grasp the situation immediately. “I have a fully empty row just over here. Follow me?”

In moments, he had her settled into her new window seat so far in the back of the plane, she couldn’t see Ruby at all. Deftly, he supplied her with a snack packet and a Dr. Pepper. “Can I get you anything else?” he asked, sympathy in his eyes.

“Double vodka on the rocks and a pack of tissues?” she asked, somehow able to muster up a meager half-smile.

“Done.” He paused, his face thoughtful, and then he squeezed her shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. I’ll be right back with your drink and your tissues.”

She didn’t wait for him to return before she gave in to silent, intense sobs and more hurt than she’d ever thought possible.