Page 60 of Nash
She's grinning. The full grin. The one that lights up her whole face and hits me somewhere I can't protect. She steps toward me, one hand on her jeans, the other reaching for my arm, and for three seconds the distance between us disappears. The Ruby I've been missing is standing in her kitchen in clothes that don't fit, pointing at me, grinning like she just won a war.
Then she stops.
Her hand drops. The grin folds in on itself. Her eyes shift away from mine, and she takes a step back, the oversized flannel swallowing her shoulders.
"Anyway." Her voice flattens. "I need to figure out what to sleep in."
She turns and walks back to her room. The jeans drag on the floor behind her. Her door clicks shut.
I stand in her kitchen. My hands grip the edge of the counter. Her laugh is still in my chest, trapped behind my locked jaw. The kitchen smells like vanilla. The air holds the shape of her grin. She was right there. Reaching for my arm. Three seconds of her reaching for me the way she used to, my whole body leaning into it before she pulled back.
I let go of the counter. My knuckles ache.
When she comes out, she's in sleep shorts and one of the oversized T-shirts because it's all she has. The shirt hangs to her mid-thigh, the collar slipping off one shoulder, and she looks small in it. Ruby doesn't look small. She fills rooms. Ruby takes up every inch of space she's given and steals the inches she isn't. But tonight she looks small, and it sits in my chest wrong.
She makes a cup of tea. Carries it to the couch. Sits on the far end.
I'm on the other end. TV on. Volume low. The middle cushion between us holds nothing.
Last week she sat there. In the middle. Her knee pressed against mine, her shoulder leaning into my arm, her body heat bleeding through my sleeve. She laughed at something on the screen, tipped her head back, and her hair brushed my jaw. I didn't move. I sat there with her hair against my skin and her laugh vibrating through my arm while I pretended to watch the TV. Every nerve I had was focused on the warmth of the woman beside me.
Now her pencil scratches across the sketchpad. Her tea steams. The TV plays something neither of us is watching. Three feet of empty cushion between us and I can feel every inch of it.
"Ruby."
Her pencil pauses. "Yeah."
"You sure you're good?"
"I'm great, Nash." She doesn't look up. "Watch your show."
The pencil resumes. I watch the side of her face. The set of her jaw. Her mouth bare, the red lipstick washed away in the shower. Her lips are softer without it. Pink. The bottom one fuller than the top. I've spent months watching that mouth perform, deflect, deliver jokes at full volume. Tonight it's pressed flat, quiet, stripped down to what's underneath the color she paints on every morning.
The urge to reach across the empty cushion hits hard. Put my hand on her jaw the way I did in the hallway. Turn her face toward me. Make her look at me. Make her tell me what changed.
My hands stay where they are.
I click the remote. Screen goes dark. She gets up and takes her tea to her room.
"Goodnight, Ruby."
She pauses in the hallway. Doesn't turn.
"Night, Nash."
The door closes and the click echoes down the hallway.
The couch is hard in the dark. The spring digs into my left side. Through the wall, her breathing evens out. She's not asleep. Her rhythms are different when she sleeps, and this isn't it.
My fault. All of it. Every empty inch between us on that couch, every glance she cut short, every grin she killed before it could reach me.
My thumb finds the headband and presses until the weave bites bone. The apartment is dark. Through the wall, herbreathing never fully settles into sleep, and mine doesn't either. We lie on opposite sides of the drywall, awake, and the distance between us fills the room until the first gray light bleeds through the window.
Chapter 16
Ruby
Thephotoarrivesatthree p.m. on a Tuesday.
