Page 58

FIFTY

ruby

I’ve been telling myself the more I come back to Lakeside without Lorenzo, the sooner I’ll learn how to be here without longing for him. In some ways, it’s true. But not today.

The Labor Day block party was always bittersweet to begin with, the end of summer in a town that lived for the season.

This year the reasons have changed. For once, I’m ready to move on from this season and start fresh.

The smells of charcoal and beer and ripe fruit, usually so enticing, make my stomach churn.

I’m nervous as I weave my way through neighbors and their friends along the closed-off street.

I step over a red, white, and blue Popsicle melting on the concrete and sweep my hair off the back of my damp neck.

Any minute I’m going to see him and I’m supposed to know what to do about that.

The silence has gone on long enough—it can’t be like this forever.

But what can it be? I can’t imagine any incarnation of me and Lorenzo that would make sense after what’s happened.

Except the Ruby and Lorenzo who are in love. That still feels so right.

“Is Lorenzo coming?” I ask Gina when dusk gathers and I still haven’t spotted him. I’m striving to sound casual, but it’s the question itself that’s the red flag, not the tone.

She looks at me a little too long. “I was going to ask you the same thing. Last I talked to him he thought probably not.”

I expect relief but instead feel a sweeping sadness. “Oh.”

Gina rearranges a plastic vase filled with hydrangeas at the end of the folding table. Her eyes keep drifting between her work and my face. “You two must have had a spat.”

How bizarre that I had this beautiful, all-encompassing relationship with Lorenzo, and his mother has no idea; no one does. It came and went, and as far as the world knows, we’re the same as we’ve always been. When in reality nothing will ever be the same again. “I guess we did.”

“How long has it been since you ...” The way she studies me makes me uneasy. But she brightens quickly. “No matter, I’m sure you two will patch things up.”

I wonder whether she does have some idea after all.

From there, I head down to my parents’ dock.

It’s empty and quiet except for the crickets, which have begun their nightly chorus, and I sit on one side, dipping my feet into the water, finally warm after a long, hot summer.

For reasons I can’t explain, uncertainty has replaced the nerves of earlier.

Now that it’s possible I won’t see him tonight and the silence between us could go on so long it becomes normal, I don’t know what to think.

Something else has to happen between us. What if it doesn’t?

I close my eyes against the thought. The sounds and the smells are the same as every block party I’ve lived through: the scents of citronella candles and charred meat, the popping and crackling of sparklers in the hands of shrieking kids.

But none of that familiarity brings any comfort.

It’s scary how much can change in a year.

I thought I was a realist all those times I told myself life will be different after college, that I can’t get too attached to the idea of me and Lorenzo, but I didn’t imagine it would all turn upside down so quickly.

How different will we be by next summer?

“Ruby.”

His voice is like a star in darkness. My eyes pop open and there he is, the shape of his body instantly recognizable even as he stands in the shadows.

Lorenzo.

Everything inside me softens and collapses at the sight of him. One look and I know I’m not ready to move on from him. I never will be.

He walks down the little hill toward me, fireflies dotting the dark trees around him.

When he steps into the light of the dock, I see how much he’s changed.

He’s as handsome as ever, but his eyes look bigger and rounder, like he’s lost. I stand up, not sure what to do.

And when he doesn’t hug me, I’m disappointed.

Part of me thinks if we just touched, we could fix everything.

He stops a couple of feet from me. “Your mom told me you were down here.”

“I thought you weren’t coming.”

“I wasn’t, but—” He looks out over the water and then back at me. “That would be weird. After all these years.”

I nod. This is weird too. Not knowing how to talk to him or even what I have a right to say.

It used to be the only thing I couldn’t say to him was I love you.

Now I’ve dragged us back and forth through every incarnation of a relationship we could have, and we’re left, it seems, with nothing.

“So what’s new?” Truly the most useless thing that could come out of my mouth.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

This perks me up. “Really? Good news or bad?”

His mouth twists. “Undetermined.”

“Don’t leave me hanging.”

He glances behind him up the hill, where I can just make out his cousin and Mr. Rossi chatting.

“It’s a story for another time. I just wanted to see you for a minute.

” See me? How I wish I knew what he saw looking at me now.

His everything? Or his every regret? He puts his hands in his pockets and takes a few steps backward.

“Wait,” I say, moving for him. The reality of what we are now—capable of only this brittle interaction—washes over me with the crushing weight of guilt.

He waits.

“I didn’t do a good job with this. With us. You know me—a thought or feeling pops into my head and I just act on it.”

All he does is gaze back at me.

“I thought we could be more than friends, and I went for it. And when it didn’t work, I hoped we could go back to the way it was without thinking about how hard it would be.

And then it was hard, and I didn’t know how to do it.

So I did nothing.” My stomach knots with regret.

“I’m sorry. Where we are now is the last place I wanted us to end up. ”

He nods. “Me too.”

But he says nothing else, and I stand there looking at him, wishing he had more. Lorenzo has always had the answers.

“Look, maybe ...” he starts, trying to give me what I want like he always has. “Maybe we’ll work our way out of it.”

I feel so hollow. “Maybe?”

He offers what’s supposed to be a smile but is pure sadness. Then he turns his back and walks away.

My heart leaps into action, panicking inside my chest. “I’m not taking the job in Canada.” I don’t know what I’m trying to tell him, but maybe he does.

He turns around and regards me. “That’s good, Ruby,” he says quietly. “You’ll be happier, I think.”

My fingers twist together. That can’t be all he’s going to say, but it is. He turns around and heads toward the yard. I should have said more, that I need him. That I still believe in us. That caring about nothing and no one but him all my life isn’t my weakness; it’s my strength.

But my voice stays locked tight in my throat. I watch him go, my heart shattering. How many times are we going to break up? One for every type of relationship we’ve shared? Because this one—Lorenzo and Ruby, best friends—hurts worst of all.

From behind me comes the telltale whistle of the first firework of the night.

It pops, lighting up the sky and igniting hundreds of memories of summer nights past in this very spot with Lorenzo at my side.

From the backyard, there’s a stir of excitement, and guests begin to gather to watch the show, but he doesn’t react, just continues his slow path up the sloped lawn.

But when he moves into the shadow of the old hemlock tree, he stops.

He pauses there, his head bowed, while I stand frozen in place.

He looks at me over his shoulder, and I find myself hoping this isn’t the last time he looks at me like that, with no pretense.

Then he turns and heads back toward me, moving with certainty.

His jaw is set and determined, and the heat in his eyes flickers in time with the explosions of light in the sky. My heart drums madly in my chest, knowing that whatever he’s about to do is going to shake me to my core.

“I can’t do this,” he says when he reaches me. The lost look in his eyes has disappeared, replaced by a soft, burning energy.

“Do what?” I whisper, so afraid of what he might say.

“I thought our love was perfect. I wouldn’t change a thing if I could do it over, Ruby.

I really wouldn’t. I’d do it again right now if you let me.

But I know you have your plans and I know nothing’s going to stop you.

” He swallows, his throat contracting. “The thing is, these weeks without you have been the worst time of my life. And I don’t want to keep going without you.

So if you don’t want to be with me, I’ll find a way to accept that even though I am completely fucking in love with you.

” My heart strains. He takes my hand between his own and presses it to his chest, pleading.

“But if you’re not in love with me, I’ll live with it.

I’ll keep those feelings to myself, and I swear to god I’ll never ask you to be with me, and I won’t say a word when you fall for someone else, and we can spend the rest of our lives as just friends.

But please, Ruby, please be my best friend again. I can’t live without that.”

Tears sting the backs of my eyes. I wrap my fingers around his hands and squeeze as hard as I can. “I am your best friend. That never stopped.”

“And the rest?”

“You know the rest: I’m completely in love with you too.” My voice trembles. “I can’t remember what it’s like not to feel that way. That’s why I’m not taking the job in Canada, because I have to find my own way. And my own way is being near you.”

The words bring life back to his face, and my heart fills at the sight. “Then what are you afraid of?”

“Same thing I’ve always been afraid of. Loving you more than you could ever love me.

Or that we’re not really supposed to be anything more than friends.

Because when you think about it, Lorenzo, the way we ended up here .

.. it’s unbelievable. All because of something you said to me completely out of it on drugs. ”

He cocks his head and leans close, his scent washing over me.

“No. That was clarity for me: no pain, no distractions, no worries, and all I saw was you.” His words wrap themselves around me, as warm and soothing as his voice.

“It wasn’t the first time either. The day we met—when I needed a little girl to protect me—I should have been humiliated, but I was too busy being in awe of you. I fell for you right then.”

My breath catches. “You were afraid of me.”

“And a little in love too. And maybe it took me way too long to figure out what that feeling was, but as we got older, every once in a while, there was that clarity again. I knew it was always going to be you.”

“Lorenzo,” I say in a soft warning, afraid of how much I want to believe this.

“It’s true. I wrote it down in that ridiculous little journal a decade ago, Ruby. I’ve loved you since the beginning.”

My chest swells, joy threatening to make my heart burst. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“You know me: I want to do things in the right order, and I want the timing to be perfect. I was scared to get it wrong, to try a relationship and then have it go bad and take my best friend with it. I always thought it was inevitable, that someday, when we were adults with our shit together, we’d look at each other and the time would be right, and we’d be together forever.

But I finally figured out I can’t wait that long. ”

My eyes blur with hot tears. “You know I would have said yes to forever with you anytime. Even when we were kids.”

“Even today?”

I give him a cheeky smile, making the tears spill down my face. “I thought you just wanted to be friends.”

“I want all of it.” He raises his gaze to the sky beyond my head, the golden light of the fireworks exploding in his dark eyes, and then he looks at me. “I wish for you, Ruby. Forever.”