“Still, I had these visions of our future,” I continue. “The house we’d buy, the life we’d build. Even while I watched her body betray her, I kept planning. As if my determination alone could change what was happening. But you can’t fight time. You can’t negotiate with fate. No amount of money or influence could change what was coming.”
I sit in silence for a while; I don’t know how long. I’ve never told anyone but my therapist this story in full. Yet here I am, spilling my past to Ruby.
“You know the worst part?” I whisper. “The hope. It’s cruel, how it lingers even when you know better. Every good day felt like a sign that maybe the doctors were wrong. Every time she smiled, every moment she seemed stronger, I’d think, ‘This is it. This is the turning point.’ But there was no turning point. Just a slow, relentless progression toward the inevitable.”
I pause again, wrestling with memories I’ve kept locked away for so long. Ruby reaches across the space between usand takes my hand. Her touch anchors me, gives me strength. Perhaps this is why I feel drawn to her—she understands the specific weight of losing someone you love so much.
“Elena wasn’t out to her family either,” I say. “We were both living this double life—the perfect Greek daughters to our families back home, different women entirely in London.” My coffee has gone cold now, but I take a sip anyway, needing something to do. “During our final year in university, she went home to Greece for what was supposed to be a short trip. Then she stopped answering her phone.”
Ruby’s fingers tighten around mine, keeping me tethered to the present as I navigate through these painful memories.
“I was worried sick. Elena had been getting weaker, but she insisted she was well enough to travel. After a week of silence, I managed to track down her parents’ number.” My throat constricts around the words. “That’s when I learned she had passed away five days earlier. Just like that. No warning, no goodbye. Her parents had no idea who I was—just a concerned friend calling to check on their daughter. They didn’t know about us, about how much we meant to each other.
“I missed her funeral,” I continue, swallowing down the lump in my throat. “Can you imagine? The love of my life was buried, and I wasn’t there.”
Ruby shifts closer, and I realize I’m crying.
“The cruelest part was when a team of professional movers came to our flat in London to collect Elena’s belongings. Her things were everywhere—half-empty teacups, books with corners folded down, a shopping list on the fridge in her handwriting. She’d left expecting to come back.” I close my eyes, remembering. “Her sweater was stilldraped over the back of a chair, like she’d just stepped out for a moment. But she was gone, really gone, and I had no one to share the burden of that grief.”
Ruby moves to my lounger and wraps her arms around me. I lean into her embrace, letting down my guard completely for the first time in years. Tears fall silently as she holds me, and I cling to her.
We sit like that for a long moment, my tears gradually subsiding as she strokes my hair. The intimacy of the gesture should unnerve me, but instead it’s comforting.
“Thank you for sharing this with me,” Ruby whispers against my hair. “I get you now. I understand.”
I know she does. Ruby understands not just my words but the spaces between them, the grief that shaped me. In her eyes, I see not pity but recognition—that quiet knowledge that comes only from walking the same broken path.
“I learned something from losing her,” I say. “I learned that losing love—real, deep love—it breaks you. So I’ve avoided relationships since. The club lets me control everything, keep my affairs surface-level, and I steer well away from emotions.”
“And how’s that working out for you?”
I don’t answer. I let myself be held, let myself be vulnerable. It feels like the bravest thing I’ve ever done.
TWENTY-FIVE
RUBY
The sky lightens gradually and the desert dawn brings with it a particular kind of silence—not the dead quiet of midnight, but the expectant hush before the world wakes. I check my phone—5:17 a.m. We’ve been here for hours.
“What happened last night?” I ask, still nestled against Athena on the lounger. “None of this feels real.”
“No,” she agrees, her fingers tracing patterns on my arm. “It doesn’t feel real at all.”
We’ve been talking, really talking. The kind of raw, honest conversation that only seems possible in these liminal hours between night and day. About my parents in California, who I rarely see, who send text messages that I sometimes take days to answer. About Claire’s family, who I’ve neglected but am finally reaching out to again—the awkward phone calls, the tentative plans to visit.
Athena tells me about her mother and sister in Santorini, who she visits when she can, though not as often as they’d like. About Sunday phone calls and guilt-laden text messages, about missing Greek Easter and namesake days. About her father, who passed away of a heart attackshortly after her graduation, putting her in charge of the family fortune. She was left with another black hole in her soul but enough money and contacts to start fresh anywhere she wanted.
“Why a casino?” I ask, tilting my head to look at her. Her features seem softer, more vulnerable. The sharp edges that make her so intimidating have mellowed, like watercolors bleeding into each other.
She chuckles. “Honestly? It just seemed cool at the time. I was young, grieving both Elena and my father, and I needed a distraction. Something to consume me twenty-four seven so I wouldn’t have to be alone with my thoughts.” Her eyes meet mine. “Much like you.”
I nod, recognizing the truth in her words. We’re more alike than I initially thought—both of us hiding behind work and success.
The mountains have turned rose gold now, and the desert awakens with sound. A family of Gambel’s quail scurries through the yard, their distinctive topknots bobbing as they move. A pair of mourning doves lands near the pool, their cooing mixing with the cry of a red-tailed hawk circling overhead.
“We’re in a weird space, aren’t we?” I say. The words feel inadequate to describe whatever this is—this strange dance of attraction and understanding, of shared pain and tentative hope. “There’s obviously chemistry…”
“Obviously,” she agrees, her lips curving into a smile that makes my stomach flip.
