I step closer to her, so our chests are nearly touching, and dip my chin down near her ear so she can hear when I say, “That would be a problem.”
When she turns her head to look at me, our lips are close, our gazes held in a moment of tension. Palpable.
Since arriving in the city for my surgical residency, I’ve done my fair share of picking up women at bars, taking them home, having a fun time. Things never go far. I’m not exactly the long-term kind of man. Not cut out for family life.
Even with how I’ve played the field—never with someone from work—it’s never felt quite like this. Ruby looks at me in a way that’s too fucking enticing.
Like she’s not at all impressed.
“It would?” she asks, and when she speaks I swear I can feel the ghost of her lips moving against mine. I nod, and the sensation only increases, until she shivers and draws backslightly, a gentle pink flush showing where her velvet dress dips down on her chest.
“Well, I wouldn’t be pretending.”
She opens her mouth, but then an older man in a gray suit and tacky green mask rounds the corner, and she takes my arm, flashing a pointed look at me. I take the cue and steer her away from the refreshments, hovering my hand just over the small of her back, but never touching her.
I see her shiver again as we near the side of the ballroom. I lean against the wall, and she faces me, saying, “That makes one of us, then.”
A laugh barks out of me before I can stop it, and her eyes widen with pleasure, like she wasn’t expecting to make me laugh. When I glance over her shoulder, I can make out the man in the gray suit wandering in lazy circles like a drunken bee, clearly searching for her.
“I’ll watch your guy,” I say, before returning my gaze to her. “And what does that mean? You’re not interested in me?”
Because she seems plenty interested—in the flush that’s now working its way from her chest to her cheeks. In how she leans toward me, how her hand still rests, almost possessively, on my forearm, despite the fact that we’re no longer trying to move through the crowd together.
Over here, we’re pretty isolated from the rest of the room, and I take it as an opportunity to continue drinking her in. The curves are really a fucking death blow—the kind of hips and ass that, when hugged just right by an outfit, can turn heads on the street and end otherwise happy relationships.
I wonder if she understands the power she has.
“Well, hard to be interested when I already know what I need to.”
“Oh, is that so?” I ask, heart picking up cadence in my chest. I’m starting to recognize what this is—a game. And I’vealways been competitive. “What have you deduced about me, Sherlock?”
Ruby stares up at me, her eyes darting back and forth between mine like she can find me in the space between, stare directly into my frontal lobe and read what’s written there. Better than her reading the temporal lobe, I suppose.
“You’re in the medical field,” she says after a moment, and I almost laugh again. It’s not exactly a reach to assume that—this fundraiser is hosted by an international charity, an organization that builds hospitals in rural and under-served areas. It’s known for its connection to medical professionals, who often volunteer their time to train staff and doctors in the new emergency rooms and treatment centers.
“Seems like an easy guess.”
“Oh, I’m just warming up.”
“Isee.”
Shifting, she moves in closer to me, like she needs the proximity to get a good read. After a moment, she shifts back, clears her throat, and says, “Surgeon. You’ve got the ego for it. And you grew up wealthy, if not just like, completely loaded.”
I school my features to keep her from seeing how right she is, giving her nothing but an amused, indulgent, carefully blank expression.
In all honesty, it feels good to be talking to someone who’s not treating me like my bones are made of glass. It’s clear Ruby here has no idea who I really am, and she has no idea that my father was just on the stage, using his illness as a lever to bring in more money for the charity tonight.
Ruby has no idea how much of a reprieve this is, so I let her go on.
“You expect everyone to like you automatically,” she says, tilting her head. “Because you’re handsome, and youknowyou are. Not just handsome, but so conventionally attractive.”
She delivers this with the confidence of someone who would claim not to be—even though I know skinny is coming back into fashion, I want to argue with her that a figure like hers will always be something beyond conventionally attractive. We’re all just mammals in the end, and hips like hers, and ass like that—they speak to a bloodline that could survive famine.
“…but none of this is therealyou,” she says, and this is when I feel her voice penetrating a little too far, getting to the meat of me that I’ve done a lot of work to keep carefully guarded. I shift and try to give her a blank stare, but my mask—both the real one on my face, and the carefully crafted expression—clearly isn’t doing enough work, because she seems to catch onto my discomfort like a predator on the hunt, going on.
“You’re putting on an act,” she says, simply, her eyes sparkling with triumph. “Hiding something that makes you feel like you’re not enough. Maybe you’re secretly a nerd with some sort of Star Wars collection, or something? Or you listen to embarrassing, slightly sexual ASMR to fall asleep at night?”
These last suggestions are an attempt at levity after striking so close to home, I can tell. But I don’t feel light. I feel like I’m pressing on a loose tooth—aching under the pain, but wanting more of it, all the same.
