Now
Ethan locked eyes with me as I walked across the dance floor. Time seemed to slacken, and the crowd I moved through seemed to be twisting in slow motion. And then he smiled at me, and the world cracked open again, and the music was suddenly too loud and the dancing too frenzied.
‘Can we go somewhere and talk?’ I said to him, and he nodded and took my hand.
We walked silently out of the marquee and down onto the beach below. It was dark now, and everything was colored a deep midnight blue, the stars bright in the sky. I took off my shoes and stretched my toes in the sand. I felt almost preternaturally calm. Whatever happened, I was finally ready to face it.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m just going to say a bunch of stuff now, and you can do whatever you want with it. You don’t have to do anything with it if you don’t want to.’ He smiled at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and I felt a sudden flurry of nerves. ‘Okay, here it is. I’m just going to come out and say it.’ He nodded encouragingly. I took a deep breath, which only served to bunch my words up in my throat. ‘It’s – it’s just that –’
‘It’s okay,’ he said, placing a calming hand on my arm. ‘Whatever you’re going to say, it’s okay.’
In that moment, I stupidly believed that could be true.
‘I love you!’ I said, too fast. ‘I mean, I still love you. I never stopped loving you, I guess, even though I made myself think I did.’
‘Ruby –’ His face was lit up by the moon. The nub of his chin, the curl of his eyelashes, the soft, lopsided curve of his lips. I saw his eyes, black in the darkness, shine, and I knew then that he might love me, too, that those shadowy glimpses I’d seen over the past week hadn’t been imagined. But I also knew that I couldn’t let him say anything without hearing the truth. Even if I had never wanted anything more than to fall into his arms and keep lying for the rest of my life.
‘No. Wait. I have to get all of this out at once, otherwise I never will,’ I said. ‘When we broke up, I –’
‘That was the past,’ he said, moving towards me.
‘No, it’s not. I’ve been living with it – living in it – every day for the past ten years, and I can’t go another minute without telling you. If we’re going to do this – do whatever this is – it has to be with clear eyes.’
‘Okay,’ he said softly. ‘Tell me.’
‘When I first moved to New York, I was miserable. I was lonely and work was awful and the whole city just completely terrified me. I’d made such a big deal about living in New York, about how it was my spiritual home and where I belonged and all of that shit, and then when I realized that it wasn’t what I thought it would be, I decided that there was no way I could admit how I really felt about it. That’s why I was so weird when you came to visit that time – I wanted to prove to you that I was a New Yorker now.’
‘I remember. You made us go to that godawful speakeasy place. It was like you were on speed all weekend.’
‘Yeah, well, that was why. And when you left, I just got more and more depressed and sort of . . . I don’t know, helpless, which made me feel even worse. And Jess was having this amazing time going out all the time and meeting all of these fancy people, and I was either at work or at home missing you.’
‘I thought you were tearing up the town,’ Ethan said. ‘Every time I talked to you, you told me about a new bar you’d been to. Why didn’t you tell me? I wouldn’t have thought less of you just because you were having a hard time in New York. Everyone has a hard time in New York.’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know why I couldn’t admit it to you, but I couldn’t. I felt like I had to prove that I could make it on my own without you swooping in to help like some knight in shining armor.’
‘I would have swooped, you know.’
‘I know you would have. But I couldn’t let you do that.’
He stepped towards me again and took my hand. ‘You always were stubborn. I feel awful that you felt so alone, though. I wish I could have –’
‘I’m not done.’ I dropped his hand and turned away. ‘There’s more. One night, when I was at work late, this guy I worked with – Jefferson – asked if I wanted to go for a drink. He was the creative director there, so really senior –’
Hi brow knitted together. ‘Yeah, I remember you mentioned him.’
‘Well, he asked me to go for a drink, and I said yes. I don’t really know why – he’d always been nice to me, but I also knew that there was something off about him, too, you know? But I went, and we drank so much – martinis and then bourbon, so much bourbon that I can’t even smell it now without retching, and every time I tried to leave, he’d order another round and tell me he wanted to know more about me, and before I knew it, I was drunk and sobbing in this bar and he was helping me into a cab and then we were pulling up at his apartment and –’
‘Don’t.’ I looked up and saw his eyes on me, steady and unwavering. ‘Don’t say it.’
‘I have to,’ I said quietly. ‘Don’t you see? I have no other choice.’ What followed felt like an out-of-body experience, with me hovering above the two of us, watching the words come out of my mouth, watching him bow slightly as though he’d been punched, hard, in the stomach, watching me take a step towards him and try to take his hand, watching him push it away. Watching myself cry. Watching him walk away from me, up the sandy hill and back towards the party. I watched him go and I watched myself stay. I felt the howling vortex in the middle of my gut, and I thought, Well, it serves me right but at least it’s done now. At least now, it’s finally done.