Page 68 of The Book of Summer

Hattie sounded hurt, or upset, and Ruby aimed to find out why. As she pushed the door open a crack, Ruby glimpsed a flash of red. She recoiled and the door sprung back. When she pressed on it a second time, Ruby saw her pal, her newest yet dearest chum, sprawled across the carving table.

“Hattie,” Ruby gasped, though the guest of honor did not hear.

Hattie was on the wood table, topless, splayed out on her back. Her knees were bent; her skirt was hiked up and crumpled around her waist. She looked like a biology frog, not a woman. Even her boobs had disappeared somewhere into her chest. With her was Topper, pants around his ankles, rutting with force.

Topper grunted as he jammed into her. With each thrust, Hattie’s head smacked against a block of knives. She was grunting, too, when not bellowing out instructions using language that would make a sailor weep. Sick splashed up the back of Ruby’s throat. What she was watching was animal, primal. Both were willing, but neither seemed to be enjoying it at all.

“Harder!” Hattie cried. “Fuck me harder!”

Another gasp escaped Ruby. Meanwhile, Topper bore down, ramming Hattie with ferocity. He pounded her ever more vigorously, bracing himself against her breasts as they sank farther into her chest. Ruby cringed for the pain as Hattie bucked her hips with escalating might.

God, Ruby thought, maybe she and Sam had been doing it wrong. Maybe that’s why she wasn’t pregnant. Nothing in their marital bed looked remotely like this.

With a sudden and staggering grunt, Topper pulled out from inside Hattie. Ruby reeled at the sight of his member, slick and erect and grotesquely large. She made a gagging sound as Topper spun Hattie over onto her stomach and took her from behind.

As if the door were suddenly hot, Ruby let go. It swooshed several times before finally coming to a stop. She backed up, shaking her head as if that could make the scene evaporate. When she reached the hallway, she turned and scrabbled upstairs as quickly as her feet would take her.

Ruby was no authority, the sum total of her lovers exactly one, but what she saw did not check out. She couldn’t explain why, but it wasn’t supposed to be that way. It wasn’t supposed to look like that. Not even if you grew up in France.

***

Ruby sat on the edge of her bed, knees tucked up into her chin, teeth chattering.

She was disgusted by what she had seen, and what she had heard. Even this very room repulsed her, with its pastel colors, the alternating walls of coral and slate blue, not to mention the pale pink wardrobe lodged in the corner. Tennis trophies, horse show ribbons, and notices of scholastic achievement surrounded her. And, God, that cutesy collection of themed salt-and-pepper shakers. The place suddenly appeared so juvenile, the room of a girl who’d never grown up. She and Sam had pushed the twin beds together, but that was the only change in ten years.

Eyes stinging in hot repugnance, Ruby stood and crept down the hallway toward the bathroom, though no amount of scouring could chase away the bitterness in her mouth.

In the bathroom, Ruby turned the faucet. As she ran her brush beneath the water, her hands shook violently.

“Hiya Rubes!”

Ruby jumped. The toothbrush flew upward, leaving a splatter of water on the mirror.

“Cripes, Hattie,” she said, struggling for breath. “You scared the devil out of me. What are you doing?”

“I’m brushing the twags, same as you.”

When Ruby caught her friend’s face in the mirror, she saw that Hattie looked mostly the same. The hair was coiffed, falling in soft waves against her face. Her clothes were still expertly draped, hugging her body with grace, only a few new wrinkles to be found. Even Hattie’s makeup was decent for that time of night. There was nothing to indicate she’d just been pillaged. Where were the marks? Where was the shame?

“Scooch over,” Hattie said. She jammed her hand into her purse and extracted a toothbrush. “Move it, girl.”

Hattie gave Ruby a friendly pat on the backside. Ruby jumped again, this time nearly falling through the shower curtain.

“Whatsa matter, kid?” Hattie asked around the toothbrush lodged between her molars. “You seem jumpy. Literally jumpy.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t seem jumpy at all, which is strange.”

“Huh?” Hattie jacked up one brow. “You kill me, Rubes. You’re one cutup of a dame.”

She spit into the sink.

Hattie slept at Cliff House multiple times per week. If they attended a party or dinner, Hattie was almost always too pooped for the trek back to Points North. Because she stayed in Walter’s old room, the two girls often met like this, in the little white bathroom halfway down the hall. How many times had Hattie come to her immediately after being ransacked by Topper?

Because that’s what it was.

A ransacking. A plundering. A battering. A pounding. There were a hundred words running through Ruby’s brain, not a one of them anything close to love. Topper hammered into Hattie while she bucked to meet him, angrily, determined, like waves crashing in a storm.

“So,” Ruby said, and slapped a palmful of Pond’s onto her face. “Did you and Topper have a nice evening? You disappeared.”