Ruby puts her thumb to her lip for a moment, her knuckle against her teeth, staring into space like she’s trying to collect her thoughts. I force myself not to imagine my thumb between her lips, her teeth against my knuckle. Her tongue against the pad of my thumb as she sucks it into her mouth, those wicked eyes teasing me.

“Okay,” she says, like she’s decided something, and I snap out of it. “Lucas Dawson is the oldest son of Russell Dawson, the pastor at the Word of God Apostolic Covenant Church, which my family belongs to.”

I nod. The Church is pretty notorious — the only reason they’re not as famous as Westboro Baptist, the church in Kansas that protests soldiers’ funerals because gay people exist, is they think they’re too genteel to wave signs around and make spectacles of themselves.

“The Reverend first found Lucas’s stash of gay porn when Lucas was fifteen. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but instead of keeping it secret like I think most people would have, the Reverend decided that in order to lead his flock properly, he should make an example of his son.”

My blood’s starting to run cold. I can’t imagine being a gay kid in an environment anything like the Burgess’s household. Let alone being made an example of.

“The Church might not be quite as regressive about gay people as you’d think,” Ruby goes on. She’s got her head on one hand, the other splayed on the table, and she’s tapping her fingers one by one. “Even though they think homosexuality is caused directly by Satan and is horrible and evil, they have this hate the sin, love the sinner policy. Basically, what that means is: if you’re gay, and you pray really hard about it, and you never do gay stuff, and you really want to not be gay, you’re all right.”

“So it’s fine to be gay as long as you never actually touch another person of the same sex,” I say.

That sounds like hell. The prospect of a few months of celibacy is already wearing on me a little. I can’t imagine thinking that I’d never, ever be able to have what I really wanted again.

“Well, no,” Ruby says. “That’s step one. They’re also completely determined that, since gayness is a product of Satanic influences, if you get Satan out of someone, they’ll stop being gay.”

I have a bad feeling about what’s coming.

“How do you get Satan out of someone?” I ask, taking a long drink of whiskey.

“You send them to a re-education facility for a couple months.”

We both go quiet for a moment.

“Lucas didn’t really talk about what happened there,” Ruby says, quietly, looking at her glass. “But they sent him three times before we got married, and I was nineteen then. I think they kept finding porn, maybe even caught him with someone. I don’t know. I couldn’t ask. But he had nightmares, even years later. He used to wake up shouting.”

“Shit,” I mutter. I know how that feels, but my nightmares are about roadside bombs and being ambushed out of nowhere. I don’t know what happened to Lucas, but I’ve got the feeling it was pretty bad.

“Meaning, I knew Lucas was gay when we got married,” she goes on, her gaze flicking up to me and then back down. “But I also believed everything that my father and the Reverend told me, and I knew he’d basically gone to heterosexuality boot camp.”

She’s tracing circles in the condensation on the outside of her glass, and she pauses for a moment, like she’s gathering her thoughts.

“Lucas wanted to be straight, and I think he wanted to love me and he wanted to be attracted to me, so when our fathers suggested the match, it seemed like a good idea. We could please them and prove that gay people could forsake Satan and become straight.”

“And then you got divorced and proved otherwise.”

Ruby snorts.

“My father and the Reverend don’t think we proved a thing, but most of the world took it as evidence that praying away the gay doesn’t work. Because if the Reverend’s own son and Senator Burgess’s daughter couldn’t make it work, who else would even have a chance, right?”

Her voice is practically dripping with sarcasm, a bitter edge to it I’ve never heard before. Not that I can blame her, but I want to reach out, put my hand over hers. Tell her we all do dumb shit when we’re kids.

“You were also nineteen,” I point out. “Not that he’d be less gay at twenty-four.”

“If I’d been older I might have been a little smarter,” she says. “But everything I knew, everything in my entire world was telling me that this was fine, this was a good idea, that I should marry Lucas. And I really really believed that if I tried hard enough, that if I was a good wife, I’d learn to love him, he’d learn to love me, and someday he’d…”

She blows a strand of hair out of her face and looks at the wall.

“I don’t know. Want me?” she asks, her voice suddenly quieter.

Suddenly I’m angry for her, so I take another drink to mask it. It’s bad enough that she got conned into marrying someone who didn’t love her, who was never going to love her. But not to know something as simple as how it feels to be desired?

Love’s complicated, but lust is simple. It’s not much to ask.

For fuck’s sake, I want her. If we were in any other scenario right now I’d lean over the table, beckon her in closer, and tell her that all it took to get me rock hard was seeing her in pants instead of a skirt. I’d tell her that if she wanted to, I’d take her into the bathroom of Finnegan’s Pub and pin her against the wall.

I’d tell her I’m hard again just thinking about it.

But it’s not going to happen. Anyone else, anywhere else, yeah, but not her and not here.

“I guess he never magically became straight,” I say.

“He didn’t,” Ruby confirms, taking another drink, then sighing. “He tried. I know he did. He would bring me flowers, and take me on nice dates, cook me dinner, rub my feet, everything that good husbands are supposed to do. We did like each other, there was just never any spark.”

She drinks again.

“Probably because the entire time he wanted to be screwing other men,” she says in a very reasonable tone of voice.

“Did you two ever have sex?” I ask.

She smirks at me, her eyes sparkling.

“Have you just been sitting over there, wondering that this entire time?” she asks.

Yes.

“It’s the obvious next question,” I protest, trying not to smile. “If your husband was gay, could he even…”

I trail off, but point one finger skyward, like an erection. Ruby laughs.

“I’m not a virgin after being married for six years,” she says. “Don’t worry, I’m not that weird.”

“I didn’t say you were weird.”

“You were thinking it.”

“I was actually thinking that you’re shockingly well-adjusted.”

Ruby looks skeptical.

“I really was,” I say.

“I don’t feel well-adjusted,” she admits. “I feel like everywhere I go, everyone’s staring at me all time, because I’m a grown woman who’s never had a real job and who got her first checking account last month.”

She pauses and taps her fingers on her glass, then glances up at me.

“My father doesn’t know about the checking account, by the way.”

I mime a zipper across my lips.

“Thanks.”

“And after six years, you just got tired of it?”

She leans her chin on one palm again, sliding the fingers of her other hand along the rim of her half-empty whiskey glass.

“One day I was out running errands,” she says. “And, halfway through, I realized I’d left some coupons at home, and I wasn’t that far away, so I headed back to grab them.”

She takes another long sip of whiskey, her glass half empty. Ruby’s starting to get a little more expressive with her hands, her cheeks faintly pinker, the façade she’s always wearing falling away.

“And when I got home, I found Lucas and another man having sex in our kitchen.”

I let out a low whistle. Ruby looks into her whiskey glass.

“That’s a hell of a thing to walk in on.”

“It took me so long to figure out what was going on, actually,” she says, shaking her head.

Then she looks at me and laughs, embarrassed.

“I thought I’d caught him watching porn at first,” she says. “That had happened once or twice, and it was always awful because he was so ashamed about it and then I was ashamed about it, but there were these… you know, grunting noises and squishing noises and this sort of rhythmic slapping?”

Ruby is bright red, but she keeps going, still half-laughing at herself.

“Rhythmic slapping and grunting sure sounds like porn,” I agree.

“From the door I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but then he wasn’t in the den, and he wasn’t in his office, and finally I realize the sounds are coming from the kitchen. And I walk in, and…”

She spreads her hands in front of herself, palms up, fingers spread.

“Surprise! Gay sex, right on the counter. Not porn. I was so surprised that I just stood there and stared for a good thirty seconds before they realized I was there.”

“I’d want a divorce too,” I say.

“You know what ended up bothering me the most, for some reason?”

“Besides the part where your very conservative husband was fucking another man in your kitchen?”

“That’s it, actually,” Ruby say. “He wasn’t screwing someone else. He was bent over the counter, getting screwed.”

Ruby leans back in the booth, then rubs her eyes with both hands.

“I’ve actually never told anyone else this before,” she admits. “Not the details, anyway, just that Lucas couldn’t overcome his desires.”

“I’m honored to be the first who knows about the rhythmic slapping sounds,” I deadpan.

That makes her laugh, even as she rubs her face again.

“No one wants to know anything about it,” she says. “It’s just this embarrassing failure that happened, and the faster it can get swept under the rug, the better.”

“I’ve got all night,” I offer. “Tell me as much as you want about the squishing sounds.”

I don’t particularly want to hear the details of her husband getting railed in the kitchen, but I want to keep talking to Ruby like this, as if we’re two regular people on an almost-regular date or something, not a trapped girl and her bodyguard.

“The squishing sounds weren’t that bad,” she admits. “But Lucas had this look on his face of relief, and bliss, and suddenly it was just so, so obvious that I was never going to be what he needed or wanted. There was just no way. So I asked for a divorce a couple weeks later, and now, here I am.”

My whiskey glass is empty, and I push it aside, then lean forward over the table.

“You know it’s not you, right?” I ask.

She sighs.

“I know,” she says, arms folded over her chest, looking away.

“You can’t make a gay guy straight any more than you can make a dog a cat,” I say. “It’s got nothing to do with you at all.”

“It’s just hard,” she says quietly. “I really, really tried, and I couldn’t make it work, and then when I finally gave up thinking that maybe I could start over and be happy some other way, that was almost worse. I’m pretty sure my father only took me in because it’s election year and he’s campaigning. The house where Lucas and I lived was actually owned by the Church, and Lucas got disowned and left to be with his boyfriend, and it’s not like I had a job besides housewife, so here I am again.”

She takes another long sip, and I study the lines in her neck as she swallows, then puts the glass down with a clonk.

“And I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to do before I wind up married to Kyle,” she mutters. “Maybe I could arrange to be eaten by an alligator or something.”

“A sexy cartoon alligator?”

Ruby snorts, then looks up at me.

“You knew that, but not why I got divorced?”

“Your sister said something about it on the bus, so I got curious,” I admit. “Prostitutes are old hat, but the cartoon characters fucking were a new one to me. You’d think they’d run into licensing issues.”

“I don’t think those likenesses were exactly above board,” Ruby says dryly.

“You’re telling me Disney didn’t grant permission for that stuff?”

“Maybe that’s part of the thrill,” she says. “Cartoons violating each other and copyright law.”

I laugh again, and then Ruby starts laughing, too.

We stay at the pub for a while. She goes a little deeper into the details of her divorce — she got left with nothing, surprise — and though I don’t exactly tell her why I left D.C., I talk about my time in the military and then working for the Secret Service.

“Do you know any good state secrets?” she asks.

“I only know where the Vice President’s wife hides the Oreos she doesn’t want the Vice President to eat,” I say. “They’re in a cabinet behind a toaster oven they’ve never taken out of the box.”

“Sneaky,” she says, playing with her empty glass.

I nod at it.

“Another one?”

Ruby shakes her head.

“You’d have to carry me home and pour me into bed,” she says.

Sounds fine to me. Fuck, her parents aside, it sounds more than fine.

“I should get going, anyway. I’m always afraid someone will figure out that I’m missing,” she goes on.

“I’ll walk you if you show me how to sneak back in,” I say.

“Deal,” Ruby says, smiling.