Beautiful Secret

I missed her. I missed her with a kind of clawing ache that seemed to dig deep scars inside my chest, in a place I couldn’t reach, pushing aside things I required for breathing, heart beating, for moving about the world in a way that had once been reflexive. I’d never had the tendency toward melodrama, but in this case my self-pity was crippling. I’d never had to win over anyone before in my life, at least not consciously, and felt utterly unprepared for what was required of me in this instance.

“I know you want to be left alone,” I started, trying to shake off the way she seemed to wince at the sound of my voice, “and I realize that I’ve hurt you in a way that will be impossible to undo. But, darling, I’m so sorry. And if it means anything—”

“I think I’m going to lose my spot at Oxford,” she said in the world’s quietest voice.

I felt my entire body go still. “You what?”

“I was fired, but Tony also put a letter in my file. He sent me a copy of it—though after reading it I have no idea why he thought I would want to see it—and in essence it says that I was a tolerably mediocre employee because my affections for you had me preoccupied and, he thinks, affected the quality of my work.”

I took a step forward, blood pumping so fast in my veins my chest ached. “For one, that is utterly preposterous. I’d heard him rave about you on more than one occasion. And two, he had no knowledge of your affections prior to our trip!”

“I know. Thanks for passing that along,” she said dryly, reaching to put the tape back on the now-empty desk.

“Ruby,” I spluttered, “I mentioned it spontaneously, like a bleeding idiot, simply because I was still awed that you—”

“Niall?” she interrupted, and I could see tears shining in her eyes. “Don’t, okay? I get it. You didn’t mean to tell him that, or at the very least you didn’t mean for it to come off the way it did. I don’t actually care that you told Tony I had feelings for you before our trip; I don’t think it matters. Tony is an enormous prick for what he did. My problem with this,” she said, motioning between us, “is that he’s not entirely wrong. I was distracted. I was preoccupied. I made it clear I would do anything to be with you . . . and you went back to her.”

“I didn’t. I knew before I went into her flat that I had no intention of—”

“The way you left it last week,” she said, her voice thick with restrained tears, “felt like you were giving her another chance.”

“Ruby—”

“I threw myself at you. I was so in love with you—had been for so long—that I ignored all your signs telling me you weren’t ready. I told you I loved you after only a few weeks, and you clearly weren’t ready to have sex with me, but you did—”

“Ruby, please stop.” I felt nauseous. I couldn’t keep up, but her words grew brittle and toxic in my ears.

“—and the very next day you went to hear Portia out about reconciliation, assuming that I was so desperate for your attention I would still be here if you decided against it.” When she looked up at me, the tears in her eyes finally fell. “I think you assumed that because I always want to talk about everything that I would understand how much you wanted to hear what she had to say, and that would somehow override my need to feel important to you.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again.

“I think you assumed I would think it was a great idea because—hooray—it turns out Portia isn’t a robot and actually does have feelings and she finally wants to share them.” She swiped at her cheek. “But I didn’t. I wanted you to tell her she had eleven years as your wife to tell you those things and that you had a girlfriend now who had the privilege of talking about what was going on in your mind and your heart.”

She sucked in a lungful of breath before she continued. “Jesus Christ, I was so eager to hear everything you had to say, even if it meant talking about your sex life with Portia right after we made love for the first time. For fuck’s sake.” She laughed sharply, without humor. I’d never seen emotion so raw. Ruby wasn’t filtering for my benefit; she was just laying it all out in a rush before she could talk herself out of it.

“You could have told her she was welcome to come meet you for lunch if she had things to get off her chest, or to feel free to put it in a fucking email. But to go see her the first night after we’d made love? To be unwilling to make it clear that you were with me now?” She shook her head, wiping away more tears. “Even if what we had was raw and weird and sometimes had these awkward fits and starts it was way better. We had something good, we had something real, and you know it.”