“Yeah?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
My chest swelled, burning with stupid, stupid possibility. “Good to know.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
I was buzzing from a good day at work, and I wasn’t even high. Though at least half my residents were.
I had hosted a high tea with infused beverages and cakes from a local dispensary with a café. The residents turned out in their Sunday best. Huge, flamboyant hats. Seersucker suits. It was genuinely delightful. Though it wasn’t until after I checked over the sign-in sheet that I realized Ruby had skipped the event despite RSVPing in the affirmative.
That night, I went back to the apartment to pick up Marlon for a walk. Well, technically, a walk and carry since he always protested after the first hundred yards or so and demanded to be held.
I headed over to Ruby’s because I’d told Hollis I would check in on her, and I was also a little bit curious to find out what exactly had happened.
On my way, I stopped at Leonard’s building and left one of the pamphlets from the funeral home in his mailbox with a note to check out the section on living funerals.
When I reached Ruby’s, I knocked on the door and waited for her to answer.
“The Winner Takes It All” by ABBA played at full volume from inside.
That was not a good sign.
I pounded on the door more aggressively this time. “Ruby!”
After a moment, she flung the door open and then walked away without saying a word. She wore a pink-and-orange-paisley apron and pink rubber gloves and held a Windex bottle poised like a weapon.
Oh fuck, she was in a frenzy. Ruby hated cleaning.Loathedit. But when she was backed into a corner and her brain was too full of her own thoughts, she would do anything to distract herself, including recklessly cleaning the house. I say recklessly because not only did Ruby hate cleaning, but she was also appallingly bad at it.
Behind her, I noticed her vacuum abandoned in the living room, clearly clogged, and the oven smoking, likely from a self-cleaning cycle gone wrong.
“Vera, dear, I’m a bit busy.”
“Oh, I can see that,” I said, stepping past her as I released Marlon onto the floor and into the chaos.
She huffed. “Well, since you insist on interrupting, I suppose you could at least take a look at my vacuum. I probably ought to buy a new one.”
I walked over and opened the canister of her brand-new Dyson to find it full of lint, dust, and probably Marlon’s hair. “You can’t just buy a new vacuum every time you have to empty yours.”
She turned her nose up and abandoned her Windex to spray the inside of the sink with far too much foam cleaner.
First, I would help her get this disaster under control, and then I would pry.
Humming along to the best of ABBA, I dealt with the stove and then finished the rest of the carpet and even vacuumed the sofas before emptying the canister again so it would be cleaned out for her next manic cleaning spree.
As the apartment began to return to its usual state, I lowered the volume on Ruby’s record player. “So I ran into Hollis today.”
Ruby turned her back to me and wiped the same stretch of countertop over and over again.
“She said you two were taking a break.”
Ruby paused, and then shook her head. “You can’t take a break from something that never existed.”
Ouch. I sat down on the couch and pulled Marlon up into my lap. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“What’s there to say?” she asked as she finally turned around and removed her gloves and apron. “We spent sixty years crossing paths at the worst possible times. We made debris of each other’s lives every chance we got.” She shook her head and leaned against the counter with her arms crossed. “I’m a fool for spending my life loving her—mostly from afar, and now... finally we’re here. In the place we always promised each other we would be at the end. I finally told the woman I loved her and she backpedaled out of that door faster than Ginger Rogers in heels.”
It took a great deal of force not to react to the declaration of love baked into that last statement. Having meaningful, heartfelt discussions with Ruby was as rare as finding parking at a Trader Joe’s. The moment it was time for vulnerability, she morphed into a moody cat who would receive affection only on its own terms.
