Heather’s eyes dropped suddenly and this time her expression betrayed her. Ruby saw the surprise.
‘What is it?’ Rubywasgoing to push.
‘I don’t know, I mean it’s stupid. I kind of knew there was something going on but I also …’ Heather faltered and pulled her knees under her chin, her toes retreating with them. Ruby stared at the gap of white enamel that had opened up between their feet.
Heather took a deep breath. ‘I thought you might tend towards the dykier end of things.’ Heather laughed in an effort to hide her evident discomfort.
Ruby was contending with her own cauldron of feelings. She too felt embarrassed, but then there was something like the fear of being discovered, a dollop of shame and just a sliver of excitement. She thought of the feeling of Cindy’s lips on hers and the sliver grew. It was an awkward manoeuvre, but Ruby slid towards Heather, grabbing her face as she looked up.
Her eyes glowed like embers, and Ruby was frozen for a moment, suddenly struck. The constellation of freckles across her cheeks, the rays of fine laugh lines. Studying Heather’s face up close was like examining the spiral of a fern, or the texture of a petal, almost mesmerising in its composition.
Ruby couldn’t be sure how long they stayed like that, but it was Heather who braved the tiny but terrifying final inch of the tightrope. As their lips met, Ruby felt her chest expand, as though she was breathing freely for the first time. They kissed slowly, not tentatively but deliberately. Ruby had no sense of which way was up but they found themselves side by side in the tub, limbs intertwined and breathing in only each other’s air.
It took a long time for Ruby to form coherent thoughts again, to regain a sense of time passing, but as she did, the spikier feelings began to take over. Why was she doing this? Maybe it only felt good because she was stoned. Suddenly Heather’s hands on her waist felt too soft, too hot, too forceful. The crescendo of shame built quickly. And at the climax was that look Ruby had seen so vividly before. Heather’s face, a mirror of Cindy’s: shock, hurt, disappointment.
Ruby was out of the bath and pacing across the tiles, Heather’s arms slowly crossing over her chest in a haze of self-preservation and confusion.
‘Ruby …’ Heather started quietly.
But now Ruby couldn’t stand the sound of her voice, or look at her face. ‘Can you go, now, please.’ Ruby kept her eyes trained above Heather’s head as she spoke. Only a blur of vibrant red in her periphery confirmed that Heather was standing up to leave.
Ruby tried to concentrate on the sound of the door shutting, but found to her alarm that she couldn’t hear anything but ringing. She stood still in the bathroom staring at the spot where Heather had been for what felt like a long time, only then peeking her head around the door to make sure her bedroom was empty. It was.
And then, almost in a dreamlike trance, Ruby walked down the corridor. When Johan answered the door, he looked surprised to see her, but he didn’t say a word as he led her to his bed. She stood passively as he unzipped her dress, watching the plum fabric pool at her feet. He undressed and the two faced each other.
He could have his kiss, Ruby decided. She leant in and it was only the scratch of his stubble against her cheek as their lips met that broke the spell. There was nothing complicated here, just flesh on flesh. Desire surged in her stomach, but there was no tightening in her chest. She reached for his hardening cock and sighed into the sensation of his thumb grazing her nipple.
Ruby revelled in the simplicity of her hunger, unspoiled by any thoughts of the moments after these. With Johan it was a contained exchange of pleasure. He thrust until he found an angle that made Ruby’s brow furrow and her mouth fall slightly open, and then he wouldn’t stop until he heard her guttural moans and saw the vein in her neck dance beneath the skin. She in turn would take him onto his back and swirl her hips over him, watching him watch her until, almost imperceptibly, she ticked up the tempo and his eyelids fluttered shut and he shuddered beneath her.
Afterwards Johan stroked Ruby’s hair, as she lay on herback, and whispered in her ear. ‘So you’re notthatpissed about my little deception?’
Ruby found it borderline psychopathic that he had kept up the phoney accent even as he moaned her name, but her revelation of his true heritage didn’t affect her attraction to him. If anything it only solidified her conviction that there was nothing between them apart from sex.
‘I better be going.’ Ruby sat up. She could picture the look on his face without having to see it. He said nothing as she pulled his shirt over her shoulders. She waited for his plaintive cry for her to stay, but it didn’t come. As she closed the door she allowed herself one last look. He was facing away from her, and she was relieved.
Chapter 35
Opal only left her room once the whole of Sunday, and it was to scurry down to the kitchen for a slice of butter-slathered toast around midday. The house was eerily quiet, as though compensating for the merriment of the night before.
On second thoughts Opal wasn’t sure merriment was the right word; it would be more accurate to describe the night as eventful. She hadn’t been this hungover in a long time. The ache behind her eyeballs was blurring her vision, and her stomach responded temperamentally even to the glasses of water she tentatively consumed.
On her way back upstairs she paused momentarily outside Noah’s bedroom, the butterflies distracting her for a second from the nausea. She imagined pushing the door open to find him sound asleep. Maybe she would slip off her velvet dressing gown and cup her body around his so delicately that he wouldn’t wake. She would watch his eyes flutter through his dreams as her own dragged her under.
When she heard the creak of a floorboard from the other side of the door, though, she scampered to her own door, softly closing it behind her and catching her galloping breath as she leant against it. She ran her fingertips over her lips and tried to remember exactly what his had felt like, but the alcohol had already dulled the memory into fragments. His eyes widening, his hands on hers, the cool of his hair, as though he had been brushed, along with the grass, with morning dew. If she concentrated she could remember that he smelled faintly of peppermint, but the feel of him – that she couldn’t quite grasp.
And there was another troubling hole in her memory: who exactly it had been that had pulled away, not outside at the table, but when they were back in the house? Opal recalled walking up the stairs, their hands coyly reaching for one another, and then the quick retracting at the first sound of approach or attention.
They had lingered outside her bedroom, and Opal had been able to hear her heart in her ears then too, at the thought of undressing him, of finally laying herself on that bare chest she’d thought about so often.
But then, again, things got hazy. They’d been pulled apart by the sudden presence of Heather, who had looked as alarmed to find them lurking in the hallway as they were to be discovered there. She hadn’t asked any questions, though; instead she seemed in a rush to be somewhere, or maybe tonot besomewhere. By the time they were alone again, something had shifted and somehow Opal was left with a kiss on the cheek and a longing unfulfilled.
Opal was nervous about seeing Noah again, but as the group took their seats at the breakfast table in the orangery, under the brilliant July sunshine, he smiled at her, not betraying ahint of shame or regret, and took his usual seat to her left. She smiled back and hoped that the burning in her cheeks was not as visible as it felt.
‘Morning, everyone, I hope you’ve all recovered from the party.’ Opal looked around and was slightly unnerved by the universal lack of reaction. Ruby and Heather stared straight ahead, whilst Adam fiddled with his napkin. Johan was glaring across the table at Noah.
‘It was a rad do. Thanks, Opal.’ On second glance, maybe Noah’s reaction too was off. His smile had grown wider but less convincing, and his enthusiasm was lacklustre.
Johan scoffed. Opal had hoped not to have to acknowledge the ‘infiltration affair’, but Johan seemingly wasn’t going to let that happen.
