Page 45

THIRTY-EIGHT

ruby

The drive to Lakeside on Friday is quiet—conspicuously so—and it’s my fault.

“You dreading the Rossi family bonanza?” Lorenzo asks, maneuvering past a growling motorcycle.

“Of course not. I love your family. I wish I was in your family.”

“You are.” He lays his hand on my thigh.

I look down, admiring the veins on the back of his large hand, the crooked pinkie from when he broke it years ago, the way his fingers curl around my leg just enough to make me feel like he’s claiming me. There’s nothing better than the feel of his protection. I run my fingertips over his knuckles.

“Something else wrong?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“Really.” I pat his hand and give him a quick smile before turning back to the window.

Nothing’s really wrong. Maybe it’s just the fact that tomorrow is August first—the Rossi family barbecue always marks the beginning of the end of summer, and today I have a cloud of uncertainty hanging over me.

I know what I want —even waking up to the reality of becoming a research chef hasn’t dulled the shine of that goal, but it’s a harsh reality.

It’s going to be nonstop hustle from now until I actually land that elusive career years down the road.

And the worst part: The odds of having Lorenzo at my side the whole time are almost nonexistent.

My phone beeps from my purse. It’s my mom. No words, only a link to an article: “Vancouver’s Best Neighborhoods for Young Adults.” I silence my phone and put it away without clicking the link.

“You still with me, Hayes?” Lorenzo’s voice jerks me out of my thoughts.

“Huh? I’m still here.”

“Are you? Because this song has been playing for two minutes and you have yet to dance.” He arches an eyebrow at me.

“Con Calma” is playing—our prom song. I smile but can’t muster the enthusiasm to bust out a dance move.

Lorenzo waits expectantly for me to do something, and when I don’t, he says, “Okay, that’s it.

” He grips the steering wheel with his free hand and moves into the right lane.

“What’s it?”

I watch as he signals a right turn, glances in his rearview, and pulls smoothly into a gas station parking lot. “Emergency snack stop. You leave me no other choice.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re in a mood, and I think the only cure is a bag full of ultra-processed foods from the dumpiest convenience store in town.

” He gestures toward the windows of the store, cluttered with neon signs advertising sodas, ice cream, and slushies, and he adopts an expression like the situation is dire.

I laugh. “I appreciate you understanding my junk food withdrawals, but I’m fine. Really. A little preoccupied, but that’s it.”

He shakes his head. “That shit might have worked when you dated losers you’d known for three days, but now you’re mine. I can tell when you’re having a bad day.”

“I’m not.”

He lifts up my sunglasses and gazes into my eyes. “Then what are you?”

Just like that, my smile dries up and suddenly I want to cry. Lorenzo sees everything. “I don’t know,” I say. “Overwhelmed. Scared, maybe. I’m not sure I have it in me to do what I need to do.”

He nods, letting me feel what I’ve been trying to keep at bay. “Would it help if I told you I am sure?”

“I think so.”

“Because I am.”

“I appreciate your confidence, Mr. Cheerleader.” I muster a small smile of gratitude.

“I mean it. You’re magic, Ruby Hayes. You prove it to me every day.”

Emotion wells up inside me. Coming from anyone else, the words could mean anything and nothing, and it wouldn’t make a difference to me. Coming from Lorenzo, they mean everything. “Thanks, L.” I turn his hand over and glide my fingers over the donut tattoo.

“Is that your way of telling me you’re hungry?”

I laugh and take off my seat belt. “Yeah. Let’s go blow the twenty in my wallet on sugar and food dyes.”

“Oh my god . Look at this!” I lift a plastic-covered photo from the cardboard box at my feet.

“Another baby Ruby photo?” he asks from the corner of my parents’ attic, where he’s poking through a plastic bin.

With my parents gone for the weekend, we’re taking the opportunity to dig through the attic to find a few of my belongings I want moved to my place. Actually, Lorenzo is taking the opportunity. I keep getting sidetracked by old mementos.

“No, baby Lorenzo,” I tell him, handing him our class photo from third grade. “Look how adorable you were.”

He takes it and cringes. “I was such a little pip-squeak. I look like I belong in kindergarten.”

“You’ve more than made up for it.” I smile as he stoops to avoid hitting his head on the slanted beams.

“So are we almost done up here? I found that poster you wanted.”

“You don’t want to stroll down memory lane with me?

” I lower myself to the floor and sit cross-legged in front of the box packed meticulously with old photos, report cards, and art projects.

“I can’t even believe my parents kept all this shit.

This must have been when they still had hope.

” I pick up a packet of folded papers, the dozens of letters Lorenzo wrote me during the summers I went to overnight camp.

“Memory lane sucks.” He leans over me, placing his hands on my shoulders, then letting his fingers slide slowly toward my breasts. “I can think of a few better things we could do with an empty house, can’t you?”

And there’s that voice—that irresistible low throb of a voice that I recognize from when I used to overhear him talking to a girl he wanted to fuck. I drop the photo back in the box as heat rushes through my body. “A few things? How many?”

“Let’s go count.”

I wake from a heavy sleep sometime later—much later, judging by the warm, orangey light stretching through the windows.

The worn cotton sheets are like butter against my naked skin, and I curl into the pillow, tempted to fade back into sleep.

Even with a nap, I’m spent from rolling around with Lorenzo, and only more sleep—or another round with Lorenzo—is the cure.

But I want to fall asleep in his arms, and the other side of the bed is empty.

I find a pair of sleep shorts and pull on the tank top that was discarded on the floor, then head downstairs.

Lorenzo isn’t there. I go back upstairs, checking the spare bedroom and even my parents’ room, but all are empty.

I’m about to conclude he went to his parents’ house to help with party preparations when I hear shuffling overhead.

I pop my head into the attic, and it’s so obvious by the way Lorenzo’s smiling that he’s been waiting for me. He’s sitting backward in an old, scratched dining chair, arms crossed over the back of it, a small book in his hands. And he’s shirtless.

I look around, taking in the floor that’s been cleared of the bins and boxes we sifted through earlier. All that’s left are bare floors and a stack of folders. “What are you doing up here?”

His eyes flash as they dart toward the folders, which sit waiting ominously. “Check it out.”

I eye them suspiciously, then eye him even more suspiciously. His sexy, boyish smile has me on alert—and makes me want to jump his bones. “If this is gonna be like that time you faked a letter to me from Justin Bieber, be warned I’m much better at revenge than I was at age twelve.”

He chuckles, then rests his chin on his bare arm stretched over the back of the chair. “It’s not.”

As I take the last few steps, my mind runs through the possibilities. Did he spend the last two hours up here while I slept?

“Start at the top,” Lorenzo suggests as I settle cross-legged on the floor.

I reach for the manila folder on the top of the pile but hesitate before I open it. I know exactly what it is. The material has softened with age, and the center bears the shield-shaped logo of our private school. This is a report card folder. Hardly the memento I’d look to for happy memories.

I gaze quizzically at Lorenzo, but his eyes are on the folder in my hands, a tiny smile on his face that tells me it’s okay to keep going.

I open it to find a stack of loose papers inside. On top is a page with elegant, teacherly handwriting, sections of it underlined with a purple pen. It’s the teacher comments that were always included in every report card, signed and dated by Mrs. Falk, my fourth-grade teacher.

“I didn’t think you’d mind me marking it up with some highlights,” Lorenzo says.

I stare up at him, then return my eyes to the folder, trying to figure out what he’s done.

The next sheet in the stack is similarly handwritten, but this one signed by Mr. Miller, my middle school science teacher.

Lorenzo’s underlined it in the same pen.

It goes on that way, a dozen or so pages from various teachers with Lorenzo’s handpicked highlights, words like diligent , joyful , and remarkably bright .

A flush creeps up my chest, a mix of surprise, pride, and sadness.

I can’t look up at Lorenzo, partially because I feel untethered by what I’m reading, far from this moment and this house.

And partially because I don’t have the words for what I feel for him right now.

No one else would ever do this for me. No one else would even think of it—including me.

“One more thing,” Lorenzo says quietly when I finally close the folder and run my fingers over the faded school logo. He hands me the little book he’d been holding. He looks ... nervous?

“What’s this?”

“My old di—I mean journal.”

“Journal?” No way Lorenzo ever kept a journal.

“It was doctor’s orders, okay? Remember I told you when we first moved here my parents made me see a therapist because I was having trouble adjusting? She made me keep one.”

“And you stashed it in my attic?”

“I went home and grabbed it while you were sleeping.”

I don’t know what I’m in for, but I smile at the thought of him sneaking around planning whatever this is. “So you want me to read your elementary school journal?”

“Dog-eared pages only.” He lifts an eyebrow. “I’m serious. For your own good.”

I give the journal a quizzical look.

“One of those pages may or may not contain an early jack-off fantasy. And, yes, I’ll be burning the whole fucking thing before this night is over.”

I smother a giggle. “Dog-eared pages only,” I say, skimming through until I find the first one with a folded corner. “Yes, sir.”

At first, it’s just cute—messy handwriting, boyish exclamations about how journals are stupid, Lakeside is stupid, everyone at his new school is stupid.

And then there’s a single sentence about the one kid in his class who isn’t stupid—the tall, unnamed girl who chased off the jerks at recess who’d surrounded him.

I smile. “Who’s this anonymous badass chick you mention on page two?”

“Sorry. Didn’t get your name that day.”

I turn to the next dog-eared page a few entries later.

At the sight of my name written in his childish scrawl, I feel a wave of nervous excitement—which quickly gives way to something new when I read about the Ruby of his childhood: how brave she was, how he couldn’t believe the way she stood up to the mean kids in class when she had no friends to back her up.

I swallow and move on to the next page. It’s a short entry written in bold lettering and outlining his three-step plan of action the next time he’s cornered on the playground.

The third and final step, entitled “Do It the Way Ruby Does,” summarizes my apparent method: Make a mad face, step toward the bullies, and yell “Get the hell away from me!” I don’t know if it’s the notion of angry young Ruby or timid young Lorenzo that makes tears prick the backs of my eyes.

There are more pages, the dates passing and the handwriting evolving—Lorenzo kept this journal for a few years—but the theme of us is consistent.

Me as Lorenzo’s backbone, the one who stood up to bullies and encouraged him to go out for football in fifth grade.

Lorenzo as my confidant, the one who understood instinctively the hurt I carried around. Us as best friends.

Emotion wells up inside me, a mix of nostalgia and longing for that full-of-fire girl who never questioned who she was. Then I look at Lorenzo, who’s watching me with those warm, dark eyes, and the emotion turns to pure gratitude.

“Lorenzo.” My voice catches on his name. I don’t know how to say the rest.

“I wanted to,” he says, understanding.

“Why?”

“Because you’re not okay.”

I exhale deeply, so grateful that I don’t have to explain. Grateful to have someone who just knows. I want to give up on everything except him. I look around at the papers and folders and the open journal. “I don’t really know what to say. Thank you.” I feel ready to cry.

He opens his hands to call me over. I get up from the floor and settle myself on his lap, wrapping my arms tight around his neck.

“You’re incredible, Lorenzo. You know that?”

“Yes,” he says, which makes me laugh. “And so are you.”

I snuggle closer to the warm mass of his body. “You make me believe it.”

“Because it’s true. You forget things too easily; that’s your only problem. You forgot who you are for a minute.”

“And who am I?”

“Ruby. And she can do anything,” he says softly.

I can’t resist kissing him, sealing those words to his lips so they might live inside him forever. “Yeah,” I say, giving him the smile I know he wants. As long as I have you .