Page 82 of Nash
"Can I ask you something else?" she says after a while.
"Ask."
"Earlier, when I told you about watching the other girls get pulled away. Candace and Sloane and Darla. And you promised me every surface of the clubhouse." Her mouth curves, then fades. "But it wasn't really about the sex, Nash. It was about being chosen."
My thumb traces her knuckle. I wait.
"I love who I am," she says. "I do. My parents raised me to be loud and unapologetic. To take up space. My mom always said, 'Ruby, you are not too much. The room is too small.' I believe that. I live that."
"But."
"But being that person, being the loud one, the funny one, the one who fills every silence and carries every mood... People love being around me. They do. I'm fun and a good time. I'm the person you invite to every party because I'll make sure nobody has a bad night." Her voice tightens. "Then the party ends. Everyone pairs off. Everyone goes home with someone. And I'm the one closing down, putting away the bottles, wiping the counter, driving myself home." She pauses. "Someone has to, right?"
The words hit differently this time. I hear what's underneath them.
"I've always been chosen last, Nash. Or chosen for the wrong reasons. Chosen because I'm fun. Chosen because I'm easy to be around. Because I make other people feel comfortable." She sits up and looks at me. "Nobody has ever chosen me because they couldn't stand not to. Nobody has ever looked at me across a room full of people and decided I was the one they couldn't walk away from."
"Ruby."
"I know it sounds pathetic—"
"It doesn't sound pathetic." I turn her face toward me, my hand on her jaw. "And you're wrong."
"About which part?"
"The last part." My thumb traces her cheekbone. "I've been looking at you across rooms for over a year. Every room. Every time. You walk in and my chest changes. My sweeps go late. My jaw fights. Before my brain catches up, my hand reaches foryou." I hold her eyes. "Ruby, I didn't choose you. I couldn't have chosen anyone else."
Her chin trembles. Her eyes fill. She lets the tears come this time, two of them tracking down her cheeks, rolling over my thumb.
"That's the Dom thing, isn't it?" she says through the tears, trying to smile. "You see things I can't see about myself."
"That's not the Dom thing. That's a me thing. That's a you and me thing."
She laughs, wet, broken, beautiful. She presses her forehead against mine and breathes.
"I want to learn," she says. "About the dynamic. About what we are. I want to understand it."
"We'll figure it out together."
"You'll be patient with me?"
"Ruby." I pull back so she can see my face. "I've been patient with you for fourteen months. I think I can manage."
"Oh, THAT'S how you're going to play it? Throwing the fourteen months in my face? After the wall? After the GARGOYLE era?"
"Gargoyle era?"
"The period where you stood against walls without speaking, looking brooding and dangerous while I threw jokes at you like confetti. That era. The era I'm going to bring up in every argument for the rest of your life."
"The rest of my life."
She goes still. Hears what she said. Her eyes search my face.
"I didn't mean—"
"Yeah you did."
The silence holds. Her hand tightens in mine.
