Their Freefall At Last by Julie Olivia

23

Ruby

Bennett’s hair is wilder in the mornings. I can’t help but reach out my finger to trace through the mess of it. The inky-black of each strand is highlighted by the sun’s morning rays, granting them a burnt-copper tint. I never knew it could look like that.

I start shaking again.

I should be overjoyed that I woke up next to this gorgeous man with his barrel chest pressed against my back and thick arm thrown over my waist. But instead, my gut feels like it’s filled with lead, heavy, and dragging me deeper and deeper into the depths of my drowning mind.

Too many questions.

Where do we go from here? Do we date now? Do we know how to date?

And do we know how to break up too?

I haven’t met a single couple that’s made a lifetime of love work. My dad. My mom. Bennett’s mom. Heck, all of my friends are nearing thirty, and none of us have encountered a successful anything. Valentine’s Days and first dates and anniversaries … it’s all just performative love. The type of emotions I have for Bennett are beyond holidays. We aren’t boyfriend-girlfriend material.

Sometimes, I hear the phrase, “This is my person,” thrown around by the youth at Honeywood, but they don’t get it. Not really.

People who haven’t experienced this type of friendship will never understand. A person is not your college drinking buddy or your nine-to-five lunch pal or your makeshift therapist roommate.

A person is when everyone else in your life—siblings, parents, close friends—are a third, fourth, or fifth wheel, no matter the circumstances. When the larger group or party or town is just ancillary noise around the bubble encapsulating the two of you. You will always feel ostracized from society, but the other odd bird is your person, so who cares that nobody else truly gets you? There’s a tether between your heart and theirs.

If you don’t have a person, you’ll never understand.

And Bennett is my person.

What if this crashes and burns, and I’m left with the scraps of a best friendship that once was? What will happen to the boy who spoke up for me in Honeywood? Where will my voice be once he’s gone?

There’s also the embarrassing fact that I begged my person to wrap his large hand around my neck and squeeze.

Yikes.

Honestly, how do you come back from that kind of truth?

The worst part is, I know we’ll laugh about it.

I know Bennett will run his large hand through my hair, tuck a strand behind my ear, and kiss right where the freckles meet between my nose and eyes before murmuring something like, Sweet girl, with a smirk on his face and a rumbling chuckle in his throat.

But then what?

Then what?

I do think we were meant to be each other’s firsts. I was waiting for him, just as he was waiting for me—even though it’s not like we ever shook on it or anything. And maybe we’re just both waiting for the hammer to drop on our thirtieth birthday. Another bit that we’ll laugh our way through because that’s what we always do.

Ha-ha, you bought a gown, right?

And, Ha-ha, here are my vows!

Everything is a joke.

But a real—big R—relationship?

Who survives that?

Marriage isn’t truly my destiny, and it never will be. So, where do we go from here?

I close my eyes and run a hand down my face.

I feel so ridiculous, like a little girl trying to reconcile teenage promises to reality, but what is there to reconcile? The fact is, I had amazing, nasty, wonderful, movie-production-level sex with my best friend.

And now?

I don’t know what.

I slowly slide a leg out from under the sheets and place a toe onto the carpet. Bennett doesn’t move.

I take step after step, walking silently backward toward the door, watching my best friend’s adorable, sleepy face fade away as I sneak into the hall and back to my own room.

My back lands against the closing door, and the moment the door snicks shut, a voice whimpers, “Ruby?”

I look at the floor. Theo squints up at me, still curled into a tight ball, covered in kicked-around blankets and hugging a pillow to her head.

“Hey,” I coo. “How ya feeling?”

Her eyes dart to my waist and back up. “Why are you coming in from the hall, not wearing any pants?”

Oh my God.

I fist the hem of my shirt and pull it down.

I left my freaking panties in Bennett’s room.

“I … it’s …” I can’t find the words. My face is red hot. My nerves are incinerating.

“Are you okay?” she croaks.

“I’m fine.”

“Where were you?”

“Just … getting … um …”

My brain cannot compute any response.

“Your eyes are red.”

They are?

From the bed, I hear a muffled voice ask, “What are we talking about? Is Ruby on drugs?”

I tug down the hem of my T-shirt again, making sure my ass is fully covered, and walk from the entryway to see Quinn, face-down in a pillow. Lorelei is next to her, squinting at me through the beam of sunlight filtering through the window.

I slowly nod and joke, “Yep. Sure am.”

Quinn’s fist pops in the air. “Hell yeah, Florida!” But then she immediately groans, flopping her face back into the pillow.

I wince. “You okay?”

She shakes her head side to side with a muffled moan. “No. Too much movement. Need. Coffee.”

“I can get us coffee.”

There’s a zombie-like chorus of agreement with words that sound like puhhh, but might actually be please.

I let out a weak laugh, tiptoe to my bag with my tee held in my fist, and dig out underwear and some pants. I’m not even gonna worry about a bra because who would notice anyway?

“Perfect,” he called them.

My small breasts were perfect.

I smile to myself, but wipe it clean just as quickly.

I don’t want anyone to know—not until I touch base with Bennett. I’m not worried about him telling. He knows how to keep a secret from anyone but me.

I’m shaking again, trying to maneuver my wobbly legs into the holes of my pants.

Theo, now cocooned in blankets, scrunches from the bathroom like a worm.

“I wanna come back here next year,” she mumbles. “Even Ruby parties hard.”

Ha. Yay me.

* * *

I’m trying not to look at Bennett, even though I love how my best friend looks when he drives. I love the way the Florida sun highlights those copper tones I only just noticed this morning. I love how he squints because he forgot his sunglasses, and I especially love the way his large arm looks bigger in his crowded truck as he lowers the visor.

But I focus on other things, like palm trees, or tiny strip malls with peeling paint, or cracked sidewalks, or the rev of a sporty engine as a red car races past us. I focus on anything, except discussing last night because I don’t even know where to start.

I startle when Bennett’s hand suddenly lands on my knee.

“Hey there,” he observes with a chuckle. “You’re jumpy.”

“Just nervous.” I try to smile. “We are meeting your scary old man after all.”

“Oh. Yeah … well …” He clears his throat. “I’m not entirely focused on that right now, to be honest.” The side of his lip twitches, but the smile won’t come out to play, no matter how hard he wants it to.

I curl my lips in. “Hey, today is about you, okay?”

Bennett’s palm tightens on my thigh before pulling away, greeting his other hand on the wheel. His jaw cuts back and forth. He winds his fists over the leather, causing it to whine under his grasp.

“Rubes?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you regret last night?”

“What?” I swivel my head to him quickly, watching as his stoic face stays on the road ahead.

The line between his brows cuts deep.

“No,” I argue. “I would never regret sleeping with you.” And I mean it. But the problem is more complicated than regret, isn’t it?

He lengthens his arms, stretching out before exhaling.

“You just seem off. And that’s fine,” he adds quickly. “That is fine. We did things we’d never done before. But I just wanna make sure that it was okay.”

I hate how easily he can read me. My thoughts are circling fast, and for thoughts that are unsaid, they sure are loud. I might as well have subtitles flashing over my head: [internally screaming]

When I don’t respond, Bennett sucks in, expanding his large chest, and lets more words rush out. “Listen, I know you better than I know myself sometimes.” He gives a choked laugh and raises an eyebrow. “I mean, yikes, that sounds kinda cocky.”

“Super cocky,” I agree with a grin.

“Right. But I know every twist of your beautiful lips, Rubes. I can call you beautiful now, right?”

“Sure.”

He chuckles. “Well, I know what it means when you speak less than usual. I know that you’re nervous when you pick at your fingernail. Like you’re doing right now.”

I gasp and jerk my hand away from my thumb.

He smirks. “So, what’s wrong?”

I open my mouth to joke, Well, I had your wiener inside me, but that doesn’t sound right. And neither does the truth of, I cannot live without you, so let’s pretend your wiener was never inside me.

Thankfully, the GPS cuts me off before I can speak, and reality sets in. We’re driving to his dad’s house. Today isn’t about us or me or whatever our complicated friendship might become. It needs to be about Bennett.

I point out the window. “Looks like a left up here.”

Bennett turns the truck into the gravel lot, mumbling in a singsong cadence, “Changing the subject …”

His truck rumbles under a peeling wooden sign, past rows of trailers with varying forms of wooden porches, concrete slabs, colorful doors, and plastic armchairs.

“Lot seven, right?” I ask, rolling down the window, as if that will help me search better.

It’s like when my mom would drive and say, “Turn down the radio! I gotta see where we’re going!”

But it’s honestly just something to occupy my mind.

“Oh, there it is!”

Bennett takes an empty parking space in front of an off-white trailer. There’s a rusted gold plate nailed to the side that reads 7. A silver and black motorcycle is parked out front. Deflated plants sit single file in terra-cotta pots. A tinkling wind chime hangs beside the screen door.

I reach for the door handle, but the lock clicks into place.

Bennett stares at me from the driver’s seat. The divot between his eyebrows is deeper. He looks in pain. When his hand reaches out, I take it without question because I can’t stand sad Bennett. I wrap his large mitt in both of my smaller palms, and he slides me across the bench seat to him.

“Don’t you want to go in?” I ask.

“I don’t care about him right now. Only you. So, talk to me.”

“But your dad—”

“Screw my dad.”

“I’d rather not.”

He grins as his free palm spreads over my leg, hooking behind my knee to pull me even closer. I’m partially in his lap now. My butt honks the horn, and I jump, causing the deep lines in his forehead to lessen as his face eases into a smile.

Bennett tilts his head to the side, running a hand up to my shoulder, over the strap of my tank top, then to my neck, where he gives a small squeeze. He quirks up a single eyebrow. My body erupts in goose bumps.

“Ha-ha,” I say sarcastically, sticking out my tongue and tugging his hand away. “Very funny.”

He lets out a breath of air through his nose, tonguing his cheek.

“Listen.” Bennett’s fingers fumble into mine. “We tell each other everything, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, what if I said I’ve kept something from you?”

I give a mock gasp. “For shame.”

He chuckles. “It’s just about one thing though. A very small thing.”

“Okay. What size of small are we talkin’ here?”

His lips twitch. “Mouse-sized.”

“Mouse? Not ant?”

“I’m pulling out the big stops. Is mouse-sized okay?”

“I can handle mouse.”

“Good.” He grips my hand tighter, and I give a quick squeeze back. “Ruby, I … Christ, this is hard.” His eyes dart up to mine, and slowly, a breath deflates out of him. “I want you.”

There it is.

My heart races. I imagine it skipping rope in my chest—doing all the fancy whips and double-Dutch gymnastics—and it’s all to the triple-word beat of I want you.

Bennett Shaw wants me, Ruby Sullivan.

His hand pulses against mine. “Penny for your thoughts?”

“That’s not mouse-sized,” I murmur.

“No,” he says with a chuckle. “I guess not.”

My mind isn’t fast enough to consider a snarky response or a silly bit or, worse than that, the truth—that I don’t know where we go from here because Bennett Shaw is my lifeline. I won’t brandish the scissors to snap our taut thread.

But what if it worked?my mind thinks.

What if it doesn’t though?

“This weekend was perfect.” I twist my hand in his, playing with the string on his wrist. “Why do we have to mess with something so perfect?”

It was a terribly wrong thing to say.

The energy is sucked out through the cracks of the truck, vacuumed away by my words. Every little line on my best friend’s face is smoothed out. But he’s not relaxed. He’s a corpse of himself. I wish I could rewind time just to never see his face look like this ever again.

“It’s just … I’ve seen so many relationships end horribly,” I add. “I haven’t seen a single one go right. Have you?”

He shakes his head. “No. You’re right. But it’s us, isn’t it?”

“And what makes us so immune?” I ask.

He opens his mouth and closes it. “Because it’s us.”

“And a gut feeling is gonna be enough?”

“Vows might be.”

My head jerks back. “Vows? Vows don’t work, Bennett. We know that.”

“Okay, but …” He blinks, as if my sentence just hit him. “Wait, don’t you want to get married one day?”

“To you?”

“In general.”

It’s a tricky question. If I were to marry anyone, it would be Bennett. But even then, it’d be a risky move.

Marriage feels so superficial. I don’t want a participation trophy for love. Commitment like that hasn’t been on my radar since my parents told me they were breaking up at twelve years old. I saw the ups and downs of it all and its inevitable end.

“No,” I answer. “No, I don’t really want marriage.”

Bennett stares at me with slightly parted lips, a slash of a line between his eyebrows once more. I look down at our joined hands, feeling every scratch and callous and rough, wonderful edge of his fingers. But his hand is limp in mine.

“I didn’t know that,” he says softly. “I mean, I did. Sure, after your parents divorced, I knew you didn’t like marriage, but … I didn’t exactly know it was a never kind of thing.”

I sit there, winding my finger through his bracelet as he does the same to mine. My heart is pounding. I wonder if he can hear it. We don’t speak, but I know I should.

“I mean, a piece of paper guarantees nothing. What if I lose you?” I ask, voicing the biggest fear of all. “Then, we’re just two people stuck in an unhappy marriage.”

“All I’m asking is to be your best friend forever,” he counters. A beautiful twitch at the edge of his mouth. A gracious smile. “That’s it.”

I want to mirror him, but I can’t.

He doesn’t get it.

“That’s all I’m asking for too,” I argue.

“But not really,” he says. “Not in the same way.”

I try to look away, but he gently places his forefinger below my chin. He tilts my head up. His eyes dart between mine.

And then my best friend repeats with all the confidence in the world, “I want you. And marriage, to be honest.”

“Bennett …” But the word fades away, lost in the cloud of his confession. And I want to agree, but, “I can’t?”

It comes out as a question, as if my brain wants to say yes.

I understand where he’s coming from. I do. We’ve always had a need to be together, like two halves of a soul clutching on to their matching piece. But he’s not understanding that our friendship transcends something as trivial and ephemeral as I want you.

When I don’t respond, he sighs. “I mean, not believing in marriage … it’s not like saying, I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Well, I don’t believe in ghosts either.”

“Do I even know you?” he jokes. To his credit, he is smiling, and it does seem genuine even if there is a crack—a small wink of unease.

He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear—a nervous move to stay close while still uncomfortable. I get it. I do. “I’m sorry. I just … how could I have not known this was a deal-breaker for you?”

“I didn’t know it was a deal-breaker for you,” I counter.

“It’s not. I mean … it shouldn’t be. It … I don’t know. Maybe it is.”

“I have thought about it before.”

“You have?”

“Yeah. When we made these bracelets. But after everything I’ve seen since then … the real world and all these failed relationships around us … I just … I don’t know.”

“But you’ve considered it?”

“At one point.”

Bennett is sitting there, playing with my hand, but blinking to himself. Partly here. Partly not.

I open my mouth, then shut it. I don’t know how to respond. He must know that, marriage or not, he’s the only thing in my life that matters.

“How about we talk about us after we meet your dad, okay?” I suggest.

After a second, a quick dash of his eyes to mine, he nods. “Okay. I can wait.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Then, he tugs on my pink bracelet, as if cementing the agreement. But it doesn’t matter how we slice the differences; I’m not sure what else can be said.