Their Freefall At Last by Julie Olivia

46

Bennett

I stare at the text.

Ruby:I couldn’t do it, Pirate.

I couldn’t do it.

I want to say I don’t know what Ruby means by that, but I do. I really do.

Shoving my phone in my pocket, I run my hand through my hair. It falls from the bun, and Jolene watches the strands cascade over my face. She stands with one leg out and her arms crossed. A power stance.

Honestly, I’m exhausted. I’m sad. I’m disappointed in myself. And when the woman across from me with pain slashed over her features looks like she’s having the very same thoughts about me, my disappointment buries itself further.

“Well?” She tilts her chin toward my phone. “What’d she say?”

We don’t need to discuss who it is. We both know.

“She’s not coming,” I answer.

Her shoulders roll back, but she says nothing.

I nod, rocking back on my heels until I lean against the brick wall behind The Bee-fast Stop. We’re mostly alone, except for a few familiar faces passing by the alleyway. They raise their hand in a wave.

I shake my head quickly, as if to say, Definitely not a good time.

“It’s fine,” I murmur. “A birthday is a birthday.”

We don’t talk for a moment, and as the silence continues, I find myself tracing the string on my wrist with my thumb. I thought I’d stopped the habit, but I’m still absentmindedly fiddling. The string is frayed and barely hanging on. It’s been rebuilt, rewound, and retied so many times that I don’t know where the original string starts or ends.

Jolene taps her foot on the cobblestone, sucking in a breath. “Bennett, I want to talk. About that.”

My eyes dart up to hers, and I follow her stare right back down to my wrist.

“What does the bracelet mean?” she asks. “And why do you both have one?”

I have no idea how to explain our history and what makes us, us. How do you shove years of protection and care and reliability into one sentence?

I try because Jolene deserves the truth.

“We made these when we were twelve,” I explain. “It was a promise. Just a silly wedding pact.”

But the truth isn’t what she wanted to hear.

Her green eyes spark like wild flames. Her fists are clenched tight by her sides. The roar of Bumblebee’s Flight screams over the track, but the screeching sound of steel can’t rival the anger that seems like it’s steaming out of her ears.

“A wedding pact?” Jolene asks.

“Jolene—”

“Ben.” The word is spit out, landing like splashes of venom against my chest, rising up my neck, radiating into my cheeks. She’s fuming, insisting with, “No. Please. Keep going.”

“It means nothing past simple nostalgia,” I say, reaching out to her.

She steps away.

“So, let me get this straight,” she sneers. “You basically had promise rings with your best friend? And I’m just now hearing about this?”

“Jolene, it was just something we did as kids.”

“But you still wear it.”

My head hurts. My heart hurts—no, everything hurts.

“So, what else did you do with Ruby?” she demands. “I want to know it all.”

I sigh, nodding. “Fair enough. Where should I start?”

“I don’t care. How about …” Jolene says slowly, as if trying the words, swashing it like mouthwash between her cheeks, only to spit it back into the sink. “Your tattoos?”

My stomach plunges into ice water. I look down at my arm and back up.

“I’m not stupid. I’ve noticed,” she taunts with narrowed eyes. “What? I assume she has one too?”

Ruby’s tiny tattoo—the cute little doodle that I’ve kissed, soft and sweet against her skin.

I nod stiffly, and Jolene looks away, tonguing her cheek. She begins to pace, like a panther stalking prey.

“Yes. A strawberry,” I answer. “On her hip bone.”

“On her …” Jolene stops pacing. “On her hip bone? How do you know that? Have you…”

I lift my chin up and meet her gaze head-on. I don’t say anything, but at this point, I’m not sure I need to.

I could say I was with Ruby when she got the tattoo, but that’d only be half the truth.

I clear my throat. “I slept with her once before you and I met.”

She blinks so fast that it’s unnerving. I can sense her processing, the little cogs and wheels trying to break this down to something more palatable. But I know it can’t be easy. And I hate that she’s going through this. That I’m the man putting her through this.

Jolene stalks closer, head dipping a little, shoulders arced up, jaw tightening and releasing.

“Are you kidding me, Bennett?” she whispers before shouting, “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

I swear birds scatter from the trees. The music feels more distant. The general ambiance of my very favorite theme park falls dead to her words.

I run a hand through my hair. “Jo—”

“What? You want me quiet, like Ruby?” She lessens her stance. “Demure, like Ruby?”

“I have never once said that.”

Then, she huffs out air through her nose, tapping her fingers on her hips.

“Wait. Wait a second.” She puts her fingers on her temple, closing her eyes and almost gasping for the next words. “Oh my … oh my God, did you lose your virginities together?”

“Yes.”

“Christ, Bennett!” Her exclamation is loud. Too loud, echoing off the brick walls and through the tree line.

I let her fume.

But where there was once fire in her eyes, there is now nothing. Her hands tremble by her thighs.

Then, she croaks out the one thing I would never expect. “You can’t see her anymore.”

My heart stops mid-beat. I didn’t know the world could feel as small as it does, but somehow, what felt so big and wide seconds before now feels too delicate.

“What?”

“You cannot see her,” Jolene repeats slowly. She sniffs and clears her throat. “Was I not clear enough?”

The idea of ripping Ruby from me is like stripping me of a limb. An arm. A leg. The very heart right out of me. And Jolene—the woman I love—is asking me to tear myself to pieces. And she knows it.

I can feel the sting behind my eyes. The tickling at my nose. And when my eyes are probably circled in red, I swear she looks at me with this sneer of disgust.

My mom told me men can cry. I now wonder if Jolene was taught differently.

“I’m sure you think I’m being unfair,” she murmurs, picking at the underside of her red nails. “But you know what’s not fair? What’s not fair is being second to the woman your fiancé really wishes he had.”

I shake my head. “That’s not true.”

“Then, don’t see her anymore.”

I love Jolene. I have spent nearly three wonderful years standing beside her and defending her feisty remarks and tenacious approach to life to everyone around us. I don’t mind explaining that she’s just headstrong, which she is, and that Jolene is simply a force to be reckoned with. It’s why I fell in love with her.

But this?

Demanding something like this?

It’s like I’m talking to a stranger.

And the idea of me wanting to be with Ruby instead?

That’s not true.

But then a sneaky voice asks, Is it?

And Jolene, with her eyes locked on me and a deep line between her eyebrows getting only deeper, makes me wonder if she heard that little whisper too.

I swallow. “You’re serious.”

With a concluding shrug and crossed arms, my fiancée nods and says, “Yes. And I won’t settle for anything less.”