i’m just here for Pedro Pascal.

the conversation he had with robby before he left echoes in his head, the sustained vibration of a drum. three months on that fucking dumb fucking motorcycle. can't imagine the impulse to willingly climb aboard something that makes paralytics and amputees and brain-dead cracked-skull broken-neck patients out of regular people. not even soldiers or firefighters or anybody dying for a reason, a cause, however ignoble, however stupid. told him make sure you come back, not bothering to hide the desperate crack in his voice. told him if it gets dark, you call me.

his car is parked outside his garage and the car's interior is warm now, hot leather through his cargos, the brief searing burn of the seatbelt metal on his skin as he buckles it. it's mid-august and he hasn't seen robby in six weeks.

jack pulls over on the interstate somewhere in central minnesota to throw up. it's dark now and he leans over the concrete barrier on the shoulder to spit into dry grass. he's been driving for nearly twelve hours, speeding, trying to distract himself with the radio turned up loud. robby sent him an address in north dakota, just shy of the canadian border, a motel that jack looked up pictures of at a stoplight on the way out of pittsburgh. two floors, neon sign out front. roadside place, motorcyclists and parked cars.

his entire body is flooded with so much cortisol that he's felt it for miles tingling in his fingertips, souring in his mouth. can't remember the last time he felt this way, so scared he was sick with it. maybe the night before he shipped out the first time. maybe the night he and robby don't talk about anymore, sweat and ache on a dark new orleans street, the last time he saw the man for five years. his leg fucking hurts, prosthetic pinching and digging into the skin of his residual limb.

jack opens the car door and roots around in his bag for mouthwash, which he swigs and spits. burn in the back of his throat, the headlights of passing cars. sticky faded humidity of night in summer. back in the drivers seat, he curses himself not for the first time for not installing a left-sided accelerator pedal. thinks about taking off his leg for a minute, checking for sores, and decides against it. instead, he dials robby again, watches the phone ring, stares at his contact photo. robby with light in his eyes, back when that was something he had. blue flannel shirt, the hair in his beard still all dark brown. no answer. fuck.

the call came three hours after jack got off his shift. seven p.m. to seven a.m., the usual hustle and drag of a night in the ED, periods of lull punctuated by intensity. that night was worse than usual, busier. heavy rain meant more car accidents, experienced drunk drivers no longer so confident behind the wheel. a psych patient waiting for a bed screamed and paced for hours, a woman who insisted no one laid a hand on her came in with bruises fingerprinted into her neck and a boyfriend who wouldn't meet his eyes. afterwards, jack could do nothing but shower and fall into bed immediately.

when he woke, it was around ten and he was twisted in the sheets, insistent tone of his cell phone on the bedside table, and he almost ignored it until he realized it was robby.

they hadn't spoken since he left. jack's texts gone unanswered, green bubbles that he wasn't even sure were delivering. wasn't entirely confident Robby was alive. turned the possibility over in his mind again and again when he couldn't sleep. the likelihood of him being the one to get the call. if he crashed his bike somewhere, nowhere, off-the-map, would jack even find out? would he know? would he get that feeling he sometimes hears the family of patients describe, that feeling of sudden dawning, intuition, creeping unavoidable dread? he certainly didn't get it with his wife. was waiting in line at the supermarket, debating if she'd be able to keep down a kit-kat, if he bought one. they were her favorite.

it took several seconds for robby to say anything after jack picked up the phone, and jack briefly thought the call was an accident, a pocket dial. and then he spoke, and his voice was rough through the line. "jack." Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. "i don't want to do this."

"do what?" jack asked, already sitting up, already reaching for his prosthetic. "the trip?"

"yeah," robby said, and then immediately, "no. i don't want to do this," and jack saw it then, what he meant. whatever he was planning, however he was planning to not come back. whatever it was that he held in his hand then, the difference between robby safe and alive and something else. knife, gun, pills, the turn of his motorcycle wheels, the slightest tilt into oncoming traffic.

the last hour of the drive is the hardest. making his way across north dakota in the middle of the night, wide open blackness of the pavement in front of him, so dark and inky it looks wet. jack eats two protein bars from his bag. he picks up a disgusting coffee from a gas station even as everything in him screams to keep moving, to not waste time. styrofoam cup and grinds lingering in boiling, tasteless liquid. he doesn't want to be incapacitated with exhaustion when he gets there. wants to be able to meet whatever comes.

robby could be gone by now, he knows. he could be gone gone, dead on the thin fucking carpet of the motel room floor, or he could be gone, fled to somewhere jack won't be able to find him. he could be drunk or high or irreparably hurt. he could be fine, and he could laugh at jack's haggard exhaustion, at his frantic sixteen-hour drive, and jack wouldn't even be angry, he wouldn't, he would fall to his knees in gratitude instead. he would cry.

jack tries mostly to prepare himself for the other possibilities. resuscitating robby, calling some bum-fuck EMS that'll take forever to show, bringing him to a level iii trauma center where jack won't be able to do shit but watch. driving him to the hospital himself, unharmed but dead-eyed and incoherent, filling out the paperwork as his eyes blur. finding robby passed out drunk, throwing him into a freezing shower, washing vomit off his shirt in the bathroom sink. doing nothing, because there's no life left in him anymore, because he's empty and pulseless and white, and jack will never get to say any of the things that have been clawing their way out of his chest, because he won't be around to hear them.

the motel is nicer than it looked online, which is a weird kind of comfort. dark brick, flowers in bloom against the walls and tucked underneath the outdoor stairwell, name displayed in a sickly yellow-green. jack parks at the far end, near the line of motorcycles. spots robby's bike among them, scuffed and slightly worse for wear but still intact. black leather seat and silver on the handlebars. when he steps out of the car, he's enveloped by clammy damp air and the sky above him is so empty and unclouded he can see dozens of stars.

robby's room is on the second floor and jack takes the stairs two at a time. ignores the squeeze and bruise of his leg, the tingling of nerves, the nausea turning again in his stomach. his mouth tastes like coffee and he breathes through his nose until his lungs are full and then lets it all go at once. moths hum and buzz as they collide with the yellow glow of the ceiling lights, and jack knocks on robby's door. quiet first, then louder, insistent raps of his knuckles. a few moments later robby opens the door and jack's knees almost give out.

he's there in the motel room doorway, the room golden and behind him, and jack is relieved down to the tips of his fingers, numbing him below the wrists. "you're here," he says, words leaving his mouth without meaning anything, really. "jesus, brother, you're here, i'm so happy you're here," and then he's dropping his bags and pulling robby into his chest with enough force to hurt. the reality of him, solid and breathing and standing. alive, waiting for him.

robby's hands come up to jack's back, hesitant brush of them against his T-shirt, nervous sweat pasting it to his skin, and one moment his fingertips are barely touching jack and then the next moment they are, definitive long fingers gripping at his shirt, hands spread wide. robby bends his head, presses his face into jack's trapezius, forehead to muscle, and jack feels shaky breath against his skin. his own heart is beating like it's about to leap out of his chest and pummel robby in the face and he's certain his knees are going to collapse out from under him and then they do, and jack falls, sort of, stumbles, ends up down on the ground, on the scratchy disgusting floor, and robby's still there, still holding him, still breathing.

jack isn't sure who starts it. he isn't sure who starts it but he knows that robby is the one that continues it, the one that opens jack's mouth with his and presses himself hard against jack's body and twists his hand in his hair and pulls. and jack is hopeless against that, absolutely hopeless. so happy at the pure fact of robby in front of him unharmed that he doesn't think, that his body doesn't think, that he forgets why he's there at all.

years, since they first did this, and it feels different. they're different now, their bodies are different now. jack's residual limb throbs like a heartbeat. robby's bigger, softer. no longer the scrawny boy he'd push down onto a twin bed, thin and pale enough for his ribs to be visible through his skin, prominent collarbone jack would suck and bite and bruise. his beard scrapes at jack's skin and jack has not kissed or been kissed in two years. not since emma, her lips only just gone cold, before they pulled the sheet over her face and she became something else, a body. robby is warm. he's warm and he's alive.

they kiss like they're grappling with each other, neither willing to lead or to follow. jack's head swims. his eyes are open but everything in the room blurs together into a soupy shade of orange and so he closes them. robby makes a soft, desperate sound and jack realizes half a second later that he's unbelievably hard, harder than he's been in years, the kind of hard he thought he left behind somewhere in the middle east along with the rest of his leg, and he can feel robby's erection too, pressing up against his hip. jack's stomach swoops, dips. like standing at a great height. sudden reminder of where he is and why.

"fuck," jack says. "robby. robby, we gotta stop."

robby groans against his mouth. "don't," he says, muffled, and he gets an arm around jack's back, strong and unyielding. jack thinks for a second that robby may pick him up, throw him onto the bed, but instead he extends a hand, pulls him to his feet and kisses him again. "don't want to," he says, and jack's not sure if he's talking about himself or trying to convince jack of something. the effect is the same either way. jack fantasizes about this, sometimes. still. feels shaky about it afterwards, and guilty. robby with all that bare naked want on his face, holding him. he never thought. he.

"okay," jack says. "okay, let me get my leg off." sits on the edge of the bed to remove it, but robby does it before he can, rolls up the leg of his pants and eases it off, wincing softly at the small fresh bruises, the blistered skin. he runs his fingers over it and it stings, hurts, but jack feels it go right to his dick anyway, robby kneeling in front of him, hands on bare skin.

"sorry," robby says, still looking at jack's leg, and jack snorts a quiet laugh that comes out breathless.

"not your fault," he says and robby shakes his head.

"you drove all this way for me," he says. "i shouldn't— i didn't—"

"i did," jack says, and he kisses robby again, messy, with tongue. His skin is buzzing. logic gone almost entirely. "robby, we have to talk after this, okay? promise me."

robby just smiles, the corner of his mouth tilting up, teeth worrying at his lower lip. "tomorrow," he says, and jack shakes his head. there's heat blooming and pulling inside him, expanding outward, growing fast like a weed.

"not good enough," he says. "i'm done with your shit, mike, i'm serious."

robby laughs then, low and sarcastic, and jack sort of wants to kill him. he grips him by the collar of his t-shirt and pulls him up in a fist, shoving him onto the bed hard enough that the mattress makes a noise when robby hits it, the sound of springs creaking. for a moment, the man is blinking at him, stunned, then his hand reaches to the front of his jeans, to the outline of his cock in them, thick and hard, and he's touching himself through his pants, neck straining as he looks up at jack, whose mouth is so full of saliva he thinks he's about to start drooling.

"you want me to be mean to you? is that it?" jack's on his hands and knees on the bed then and robby's breathing is speeding up, his face reddening. he nods, tilting his head back. there's a tightening in the muscles of his throat as he swallows, and jack grips robby's wrist, taking his hand off of himself and pinning his arms to the bed. “too bad,” he says. robby makes a noise from deep in his chest that sounds like something dying.

jack straddles him and takes his face in both hands. rough scrape of his beard against jack's palms, messy and untrimmed. flush of his sunburnt face, freckles scattered across his sharp nose. he tilts robby's face up towards his and kisses him deep and long and it's tender in a way they've never really been with each other. reminds jack a bit of being married, which makes him want to cry. it's been so long since he's been like this with anyone. feels a sob welling in his throat, choking.

"how do you want it, huh?" jack asks when he feels capable of speaking again. he leans over robby, the breadth of his body, long under him, and hard, says it again into the crook of his neck, sweat and soap and beer, and robby mumbles something unintelligible. "speak up, brother. come on." he pulls back slightly, drags robby up by the collar of his shirt, and robby's eyes are wet and black.

"i don't know," he says. "like you used to. whatever you want." he leans back on his palms, looks a bit wild. hair sticking up in every direction.

"i'm asking you what you want," jack says, and robby just groans, flops back down onto the bed and thumps his head against the mattress. once, twice.

"i want to die, jack, so i don't think we should do what i want right now."

it's hardly standard of care, robby bent in half on the bed. couldn't be farther from it. sounds he's making, rough, deep breaths from his chest. curve of his stomach and the hair on the backs of his thighs. suicidal ideation how to know. involuntary commitment long term effects. initiate 302 hold number of signatures. he's impossibly tight around jack's fingers, winces and exhales and shakes as he works him open.

"hurts?" jack asks, mouth bone-dry. guilt he feels, compounded by something else, sensation of neglect. moral conflict underneath every movement like the steady buzz of television static. they're both naked now, and robby wants to die. last day before he left, the way he said it then, the way jack heard it. shouldn't have let him leave. trauma room just empty, sterile draping and gloves on the ground, lingering smell of blood and betadine. last procedure they'd done together. might ever do. and instead of doing something, jack's fingering him. his ears are ringing. he stops moving and robby pushes himself back into his hands.

"no," he says thickly. "hurry up."

jack removes his fingers, squeezes more of robby's lube out of the bottle and works a third in alongside the other two. robby makes a soft sound, falls further forward onto his forearms.

"you're tight," jack says. hates how it sounds, like something said by a stranger. hates that he wants this so fucking bad, that he feels his cock pulse every time robby breathes, despite everything.

robby scoffs. "you have huge fucking fingers," he snaps in response, and jack responds by teasing at his prostate. all the air leaves robby's lungs in a punch. "abbot," he says, a plea, and jack groans, leans forward to press his dick against robby's ass. ruts there for a second, breathes.

"ah," he says. "shit, robby, you sure?"

robby nods and jack watches the back of his head move. has the sudden need to see his face, now, can't move forward without it.

"turn over," he says. he taps at robby's hip, and robby shakes his head. movement, again, brown hair just starting to streak through with gray. flushed all down the back of his neck. "you don't get to fuckin' dissociate on me." there's a long, impossibly weighty pause before robby groans, moving to lie on his back. he's just as red in the face as everywhere else and his pupils are huge.

"is this not already a bad enough idea as it is?" he says, and jack just nods. he gets his hands on the backs of robby's thighs, pushes them to fold in towards his body. robby winces at the stretch, as inflexible literally as he is in every other way. familiar sound, that. last time he heard it. just after emma got sick. drunk and quick against robby's front door. nauseated then relieved feeling like purging something. jack notches his cock against robby's hole, presses in just slightly and then more than slightly. "oh," robby says. "fuck."

hardly the first time between them but feels like it. blood pooling in jack's dick, hands numb again, foot numb. brain fizzing like fireworks. he enters robby then, slow like wading into hot water, and the sensation is so intense that he has to close his eyes.

"fucking shit," jack says, and it comes out on a wheeze. wonders briefly if he's dreaming. vivid dream like he had when he was discharged, will wake up soon screaming, clutching at the pillows. when he opens his eyes, robby is there in front of him, real. fifty-four and twenty-three and forty-eight and thirty-seven all at once, chest heaving.

"you feel so—" robby's voice is wet, clinging to his throat. "jack, I can't—"

"yeah, you can," he says, starting to move his hips. "i know what you can take." growling sound from his chest. practically unbearable. not going to be long before he comes. nothing else has. nobody else. second nature almost to do it the way robby likes. riding a bike, or whatever. "touch yourself for me, yeah? i miss watching you do that."

"you do?" robby's reaching for his dick between them right away, big hand fast and rough on it. easier for him to listen, here, always has been. makes jack feel heat gathering in his belly, pulling everything taut. "you think about me still?"

jack laughs, rough and surprised. "fucking— always, mike, jesus. never stopped." he's sweating now, feeling it dampen the curls at his temples. "think about you like that." his next thrust shoves robby's pillow into the headboard. squeak of the mattress under them, the rumpled sheets. "like this. on your back. on your knees, too. inside me." he takes another desperate breath. "fuck, you have no idea. no—oh, fuck—idea."

"yeah?" robby's the one that's got his eyes closed now, head back, that practiced steady grip gone clumsy. teenage abandon on his face almost, chasing it. "you jerk off?" the air leaves his lungs in a desperate huff. "you touch that dick and think about me, abbot? huh?"

fuck. jack stills his hips for half a second, clenches his jaw tight enough to break a tooth. could come. might, immediately, barely inside him thirty seconds. "yeah," he says, all he can manage. might cry too. come and cry.

"me too," robby says, and his free hand grabs at jack's hip, his lower back, presses him in harder, deeper. they move together, tension coiling up, electric.

"you know what i like most though?" jack braces his arms, brackets robby's body, closes him in. the wet harsh slide of their bodies together. "you can't—" he bites back a moan, and robby grips his hip, fingertips digging in hard enough to bruise. "you can't hide from me like this," he says. the words feel like something that should be a joke, light, teasing, and jack tries, but it comes out as serious as he means it. robby makes a noise halfway between a grunt and a sob, turning his head away.

"fuck off," he says, voice shaking, but when he looks back at jack his eyes are glassy like they get right when he's about to come and his breath hitches. jack feels his own orgasm building too, barrelling towards him, a trainwreck of a thing. robby made him come so hard he blacked out, once. he said he was dehydrated but he wasn't really. he wasn't at all.

"i wish you'd let me see you like this all the time," jack says. the words catch in his diaphragm, come out strangled. "i like it, robby."

"you do not like it." that same screwed-up face he always makes when he's trying to be avoidant. blinking fast, wetness darkening his eyelashes. "no one likes it."

"i like it." he does. every time, now and before and before and before. fumbling in dorm beds and then less fumbling in hotel rooms at medical conferences and then the pattern of it, lasting long after he got married, lasting until the guilt turned too much, made it all sour. "you ask for things. you let me take care of you."

robby at a loss for words. just stares at him, wide-eyed, and jack can't take it, starts fucking him harder, faster, punching ragged breaths out of both of them. it's too good, too much. he doesn't want it to end ever, not ever.

"can't lose you," jack says, voice pulled hoarse and raw. "can't. want you like this every day." he rubs his thumb over robby's cheek, up to pull at his hair, and robby's hips buck towards him.

"i'm close," he says instead of a reciprocation, turning his face to the side. "i'm gonna come, i'm—" he's blushing hot and red across his cheeks and neck. jack grabs robby's chin, turns it back.

"look at me," jack says, practically rasps it, a sound he doesn't recognize that feels like it comes from the hot core of him. "c'mon, baby, don't look away."

robby's looking right into jack's eyes when he comes in his hand, mouth wet and open. the sight of it sends a shiver through jack's whole body, and then he's joining him, pulling out to spill on robby's chest, groaning.

he's lightheaded, everything swimming in color and shadow. doesn't remember the last time he came like that. his own hand or anybody else's. takes the breath out of him like a punctured lung.

from his position on top of robby, jack can see the exact moment that his shoulders fall and his face crumbles, creasing in on itself. he lies down next to him and pulls him in. nose to his neck, gripping him across his back, fingers pressed into his ribcage. cool metal of his magen david chain against jack's cheek. rough polyester of the motel room duvet. somewhere in the distance, a car alarm. in his arms, robby cries.

robby's not sure how long it's been. time feels stretchy and pliable as taffy. the tears come in nauseous waves, sweeping him under and spitting him out, gasping. jack hasn't moved, just breathes into the crook of robby's neck, rubs soothing circles into his side. he's warm, always, like a fucking heated blanket. comfort of it digs further into robby's chest, scraping out the bottom of whatever he has left to give.

he can't remember the last time he was held while he cried. doesn't have memories of it from when he was a kid. his mother fuzzy at the edges of his recollections now, his father never there at all. his grandfather stoic and then dead, his grandmother warm but not like that. he would have never cried in front of her anyway, felt too guilty always. his fault she had someone to take care of at all, his fault that his mother dumped him on his grandparents' doorstep one day when he was eight years old. didn't matter. he'd grown up fine. he had a nice life. he just doesn't want to have it anymore.

he sobs again, like it's been ripped out of him. exhausting. he's so tired. so fucking tired. this, everything. existing inside of his skin. remembers what he always said to his staff. someone shaken at the loss of a patient, something triggering their own bullshit. he knows it well. it's just grief leaving the body. robby's tried to get all his grief out. kept filling with more instead, water line rising.

robby reaches up a hand to wipe at his face and it comes away soaked. dim realization that he's still covered in come, sticky and dried now into the hair of his chest and abdomen and right hand, fucking disgusting. he sniffles. his skull feels like it weighs a hundred pounds, headache throbbing behind his eyes.

"hey," jack says, voice soft and hoarse, not quite a whisper. "how're you doing?"

robby tries to laugh but it doesn't come. opens his mouth then to speak and isn't sure what to say. i'm fine? i'm bad? i am incredibly embarrassed and incredibly lonely and i'm not sure which impulse is going to win out? he just shakes his head. jack moves his hand to robby's shoulder and squeezes it.

"you gonna let me take care of you?" he asks, leaning down to chase robby's gaze with his own, and the idea of any of it makes his skin itch, his chest ache. he deals with things himself. mess only his own, no one else's. but he's so tired, and jack is here, and he doesn't have fight left. and this was supposed to be the last night anyway. anyway. might as well.

"yeah," he says. like their handoff. here's the wreck i'll be leaving you with.

dawn comes, pink streaking the sky outside their windows, birds chirping on the staircase railing. they shower together and it's tender, jack soaping up a washcloth and running it across robby's stomach, the back of his neck. robby faces the shower head, hot water against his closed eyes. too exhausted now to even feel shame at the pathetic state of his body, flabby and wrinkled under jack's hands. it feels so good to be touched. didn't realize how much he's needed it. by himself on the road all this time. nothing more than words in passing and no one's palms like this.

robby realizes he's crying again, but his tears mix with the water. He hears silicone against the tile, the squeaking sound of the cover on jack's waterproof prosthetic as he moves, and then he's reaching up and massaging shampoo into robby's hair. robby tilts his head back, and jack's free hand makes its way to his throat, strokes the vulnerable thin skin there with his thumb. like saying i got you, and he lets him. an animal showing its belly.

when they're dried off and dressed, jack takes him to the diner across the road. they're the first in, bell tolling brightly above the door, floors still smelling vaguely of bleach. they sit in a corner booth and jack orders for both of them, eggs and bacon and chocolate chip pancakes like they're kids. hot coffee with milk. orange juice. a muffin too, why not. robby hasn't looked in the mirror in two days. let jack run a comb through his hair, hand him a t-shirt. he's sure the dark circles under his eyes are red now, dry flaking skin.

they eat, and jack talks, unspooling some long story about an army buddy of his who was a picky eater, looking up the scores for last night's pirates game and putting his phone down flat on the table so they can watch the highlights together. robby's starving all of a sudden, forkfuls of warm eggs in his mouth, sickly sweet syrup over the pancakes. the sun comes hot through the window. jack across from him, his freckled forearms. foot pressed against his under the table. enough, right then. surging feeling in his chest for the first time in a long time. their crooked smiles meeting across the table.

when they get back to his room, robby's headache has taken on an almost rhythmic quality, pounding. black spots in his vision and little shimmering lights. he lies down on the bed, drapes his arms over his face. hears jack shuffling around and then feels the mattress adjust as he sits down. solid, comforting weight of him.

"you still like the tv on?" jack asks, and the softness of it makes his eyes tear. Instead of crying he nods and then jack's up again, retrieving the remote. cable channel playing a sitcom, something with a laugh track. turned down low and quiet, the dialogue just a rumble.

"thank you," he mumbles, turning over to press his face into the pillow. jack rests his hand between robby's shoulder blades, those gentle precise fingers.

"anytime, brother," he says. then, "you want me to— can i—?" his voice rasps a little and robby cracks an eye open to see jack's face. he's looking away like he doesn't want to see robby's indecision. but there isn't any, he wants to say. he wants to say of course, yes, always.

"mm." robby nods, covering his eyes again, room going dark. there's the rustle of sheets and the sound of jack removing his prosthetic and its liner and then he's back, pulling robby close against his front, sliding a hand underneath his t-shirt, across his stomach, his chest. so many years since they slept like this in a tiny dorm room bed, robby's gangly limbs hanging practically over the end, jack's sturdy smallness, his breath, the bite of his teeth on robby's earlobe. he leans back into jack, connecting their bodies at every point. together, like one person.

"no funny business now," jack says, voice low and hoarse against his ear. "we gotta sleep, okay?"

robby groans. "don't call it funny business," he says, and hears jack snort out a laugh. to lay with him like this again. to want again. "in the morning," he says, feeling oddly light, "i'm gonna get my mouth on you."

"it is the morning," jack says into his neck, smirking, but robby's too tired to say anything back, too tired to even move the muscles that would open his mouth, and the tv is droning, quiet, and jack is there, and then he's asleep and it's good, finally. it's so good.

the sky is just starting to darken when robby wakes again, sweating through his shirt from the heat of jack at his back, his arm still flung across robby's body. the tv is still on and jack is snoring, softly, and he sounds exactly the same. same look on his face too, lips slightly parted, wrinkles around his eyes smoothed out with sleep. robby turns carefully to face him, trying not to jostle the bed, and presses his head to jack's chest. gentle thud of his heartbeat there under robby's ear, the smell of his laundry detergent, and it's all there again, not in pieces but in entirety, an impossible, crushing weight.

the plan when he left pittsburgh was to try to tie up as many loose ends as he could. spent a week of nights cleaning his apartment, boxing up everything to make it easier for whoever will have to deal with it later. whitaker, with his house keys, empty hangers in the closet. tried to make amends. langdon, mohan. have two senior residents ever hated their chief attending as much as they hate him? unlikely. standing outside in the ambulance bay with mohan in the dark still-humid air. pure fucking recognition and irritation at the fact of him in front of her. resonant depth to her voice despite it, wishing him well. and then langdon. had been hoping he'd never have to see him again. showing up to his first shift back fresh-faced and quoting self-help mantras, not slinking around enough for robby's liking, not grateful enough at a second chance. you need help. shut the fuck up. robby thought about leaving a note, but he wasn't sure who for. there's something implicit in death, anyway. an implied apology. sorry for leaving early. sorry for being here at all.

he wore his helmet when he left that night. couldn't be rolling back into PTMC via ambulance. humiliation of that. bones of his face all mangled, scalp separated from his head by the drag of the pavement. everyone cutting his clothes off. no, there's no way it's him. oh god. i fucking told you he wasn't wearing his helmet. no, he'd wait until he was further away, and then.

and then, yesterday, he'd meant to. get on his motorcycle and drive himself straight off of the freeway. enough to make it look like an accident, inevitable. wouldn't veer into traffic, doesn't want to take anyone out with him. just a brick wall, just the side of a highway ramp. picked a few spots when he rode in. nice and anonymous. instead, something in him. jack and the way they'd hugged goodbye, the soft familiar tone of his voice saying if it gets dark, you call me, and then robby's fingers were moving independently of his brain somehow, selecting jack's name on his phone.

the hours spent waiting for abbot felt borrowed, like they'd never belonged to him in the first place. wasn't even sure what he did. sat on the floor. smoked in the parking lot until his throat felt raw and disgusting. and then, fuck. jack there in the doorway. jack bending him over on the bed. jack's dick, jack's hands, jack's mouth. crying afterwards and eating pancakes. hope bright and golden.

he feels sapped of it now.

delusional, this entire thing. like some make-a-wish dream. i'm going to kill myself tomorrow; here's what i'd like for my last day on this mortal plane. to be fucked by a man who hasn't seen him that way in years. to stand in the shower and have someone wash his hair. to eat one last breakfast. to be held. and jack, pitying him, always, because robby's always been the one of the two of them who can't handle shit.

jack lost both of his parents before he'd even gotten to med school, survived two tours in afghanistan, had his leg blown to pieces by an IED, married a woman who got cancer that spread to her bones, and still he's the same. stupid, sometimes, an adrenaline junkie who loves putting himself in the line of fire, but relentlessly fucking optimistic. and robby there in front of him, pathetic, undone by nothing but work and loneliness and death. the basic human things. he can't even take those.

robby gets out of bed quietly. grabs his jeans from the chair in the corner and dresses in the bathroom under the yellowish ceiling light. looks at himself in the mirror and there's a hickey jack sucked into his collarbone. something alternately grasps and lets go deep in his chest. this is for the best. always has been. for him but really for everyone else. even jack, he's sure. relief there. if not at first then eventually. definitely.

he doesn't touch jack on his way out the door. wants to, hesitates by the side of the bed. last and final kiss on the curve of his shoulder. instead, he laces his boots. puts his wallet in his pocket for ID but leaves his phone. heaviness in his chest impossible. to step off the edge finally. to do it alone.

"sorry," robby whispers in jack's general direction, and goes.

jack wakes to the sound of footsteps on the stairs out front, the creak and settle of old wood. he's bleary-eyed, limbs heavy with the residual exhaustion of deep sleep, and he reaches his arm across the bed, searching out robby's frame. he'd startled awake a couple times during the night, breathing hard, afraid he'd been dreaming, but robby was always there, still snoring into the pillow, still with his long body stretched out in the sheets.

he doesn't know why he's not scared this time. extends his hand lazily, certain it will meet robby's back, and when it doesn't it takes jack half a second too long to understand what's happening. robby gone, his side of the bed rumpled and empty. the bathroom dark, door open.

"fuck," jack says out loud. "oh, fuck, fuck, fuck."

he's up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, grabbing for his prosthetic and his jeans. doesn't bother with the liner or with his belt and he's sore from the previous days' drive, residual limb stinging, but it registers only as a dim light in the back of his mind as he stands, limps over to the door. he's still buttoning his pants with one hand as he yanks it open, shouting something that he intends to be either mike or robby but comes out more like a strangled combination of the two, a panicked non-word without meaning. motherfucker. feels like a nightmare where his mouth is open to scream and nothing's coming out. robby, robby, robby. michael. mike. mikey. jesus. he can't feel his hands.

jack practically throws himself down the stairs, head swiveling in both directions as he strides towards the parking lot, around the edge of the building, and then he. robby. there, climbing onto his fucking bonneville, no helmet, nothing in his hands or on his back. "robby!" jack shouts again, and it comes out this time, it comes out right.

robby looks up, startled, but jack's next to him too fast for him to do anything but stare.

"what the fuck is wrong with you, man?" he grabs robby by the shoulders, looking him up and down, turning him roughly in his hands, checking for damage. seeing none, he fixes his eyes on him. stare that robby calls brutal. used to say it made him hard, cracked him open. "where are you going, huh?"

"it's fine," robby says, but he's speaking at the top of his breath, shoulders up by his ears, the way he does when he's lying. "just going for a ride, abbot."

"like hell you are. where the fuck are you riding to? no helmet, no jacket, nothing?" jack feels like he might be breathing too fast. "you're gonna go without saying goodbye? you really think i deserve that little respect?"

robby scoffs. "sorry, major abbot," he shoots back. "that better? should I salute, too? i remember you used to really give a shit about that."

jack's hands twitch at his sides, the back of his throat is pulling like it does before tears. "i drove sixteen hours," he says. "i didn't do that to fuck you, i did it because i'm worried, and you made me feel like i should be, alright? so sorry, but you're not going anywhere."

he can't tell if robby is about to laugh or cry. "sure," he says, and turns his keys in the ignition. the bike roars to life, and jack grabs his arm, wrenching them out of the bike and robby's hand in one gesture, like disarming someone. easier, maybe, and worse because it's robby and he's looking up at jack with a face so utterly achingly open that he looks about twenty-four years old again. "give me those back, jack, jesus. i'm not doing this with you."

"too bad," jack says again, same as the night before, and robby reaches for him, swinging his leg off of the bike and standing. rare that he puts the full breadth of his body behind something, the broadness of him, towering. jack steels himself, that old tingle of adrenaline running up from the base of his spine. he doesn't want to have to tackle robby to the fucking ground in a parking lot in north dakota, but he will. feels like nothing in comparison to what jack has to lose if he goes. robby grasps at him again, gets him by the shoulder, a fistful of t-shirt, and jack grabs his arm, twisting it and pinning it behind his back, pressing robby up against the side of his motorcycle. he can hear robby breathing hard and for one impossibly tiny moment jack has him again, can smell him, feel him under his hands, and then he feels a sharp kick to the shin of his good leg and stumbles back, landing on his ass, gravel pressing into his palms, keys still clutched in his fist.

robby's on top of him then, shoving at him, grabbing, fighting like a fucking animal and jack would almost be impressed if he wasn't so mad so he manages to flip robby onto his back, pin him with an arm against his throat, spit out, "you will literally have to beat me unconscious for me to let you leave, and i don't think you have that in you."

robby's voice is strained and hoarse from the pressure of jack's forearm against his throat. "you don't know what I have in me," he says, grabbing jack's hair hard with his hand, pulling it and twisting in his fingers until jack's head is yanked back, neck tight, and then robby's fist connects with his cheekbone. again, again harder, pain blooming bright and hot, and jack's thinking all of a sudden of the night he's made it a rule to absolutely never think about, and its unfolding in front of him with alarming clarity.

note he wrote, it's nobody's fault, left it on his kitchen table next to the medals he hadn't gotten around to hanging or framing. same as his father, and his grandfather before him. service weapon turned back in at landstuhl with his paperwork, but he had his own guns still, back then. knew that was easiest, quickest. not cleanest, but he'd do his best to minimize the damage. everything laid out, and then his phone rang. he thinks sometimes his life didn't start until that day.

another hit to the side of his face then, his jaw, and then jack sobs deep and loud and robby goes abruptly still on top of him. "jack? jesus, jack, fuck, i'm so fucking sorry, oh my god, i'm so sorry," and he's scrambling off of him, jack's face in his hands, cradling it, gentle, and jack's shaking his head but the sound keeps getting caught in his throat and he can't say what he means which is that it barely hurts, it doesn't hurt at all, i just don't want you to die, you're the only reason i'm still here.

robby's head is filled with a low, insistent buzzing. his hand is throbbing, knuckles scraped and reddened, and jack's got a bruise forming purple on his cheekbone and a rip in the collar of his shirt and he's crying and it's horrifying, the way his face is all screwed up and mouth downturned, the way he's gasping for air. robby staggers to his feet. he'll go. he'll go now, and he knows the right punishment, the only punishment fitting for making jack hurt like that. that's it, the final piece of evidence. he is irredeemably broken. nothing could fix it, not even jack. and then he realizes that jack is still holding onto his keys, and he can't leave, he can't go anywhere, and the knowledge hits him with such force that he sinks to the ground.

they're both there then, on the cooling pavement, and robby tastes the salt of a tear in his mouth before he realizes he's crying too. they sit, distant whooshing sound of cars on the highway an exit road away, and after a while jack's sobs quiet to a sniffle.

"holy shit," he wheezes eventually, sitting up and wiping the back of his hand across his face, robby's keys still clutched in his palm. "you ever think about trying MMA? or you only fight like that when you're mad at me?"

the joke surprises him. robby laughs weakly. "i don't know," he admits.

"i know a good coach," jack says. "i can get you into a gym in pittsburgh, just say the word."

"jesus, jack." robby's heart is thudding in his ears. he inhales deeply, exhales slow through his mouth. jack pulls up the hem of his shirt to swipe at his eyes and it comes off damp.

"i was going to kill myself," he says. "when i got back. after— my leg, and… i wanted to stay. i'm glad now, that i didn't, but when it happened, i'd wanted to stay in the middle east so fuckin' bad. i couldn't stand it. i felt like— it's stupid, but i felt like people were dying just because i wasn't there. like my friends would die, more of them, and i could have stopped it if i was there, but i wasn't able to. i don't know what i thought would happen over there, but i think i didn't realize i would ever come back." jack exhales hard. "and then i did, and i wasn't anywhere close to a whole person anymore. i didn't even feel like a man. i couldn't sleep, and i was in pain all the time, and i was alone."

"jack." robby feels like his stomach has dropped into the soles of his feet. foundation of everything shaken. thinks for the first time, if jack can. maybe i, too. "i'm so sorry."

jack shakes his head. "i had a plan, and a day. i wrote—" he laughs softly. "there was a note. and then when the moment came, guess what happened?"

it's robby's turn to shake his head, then, helpless. "what?"

"you called me."

jack remembers it like it hasn't been fifteen years. his phone ringing, the fucking landline, and his shaking hands. doesn't know who he even thought it was, just picked it up on autopilot. no one called him those days, really. sometimes the VA. would you like to. counseling services available. PTSD group meeting every. no. the rest of the time, families of guys he served with. just wanted to let you know that. services will be held on. was bracing himself for that, and then instead there was robby's voice, low and warm and familiar.

"hey," he'd said. "i heard you landed back in pittsburgh. if you're still in the old spot, i've actually got a place a couple blocks away now if you want to get a beer sometime."

in the present, robby's staring at him from the parking lot ground, eyes wide. "i barely even remember that," he says, voice streaked with guilt, and jack laughs.

"it's okay," he says. "you don't have to. that's my point. all it took for things to change was an outstretched hand at the right moment. to be reminded that i existed, and i'd be missed."

"you would have been," robby says, jaw tightening. "i mean, fuck. i already did miss you."

"i know," jack says easily. "i know that now." he runs a palm over his face. "that's what i want to be for you, man. the hand."

robby swallows, and jack watches the movement of his throat. he's beautiful in the warm fading sunlight, the outdoor bulbs turning on above each motel room door. he can see every year they've known each other in the hollows and lines of robby's face, the sunburned skin of his neck. "i don't know," he says. "aren't you not supposed to stay alive for other people?"

"i'm not asking you to," jack says easily. "what i want is for you to decide to stick around for a day, because i did it for you once. and i'm so glad i did. and then tomorrow, i'm gonna ask you to do the same thing. every single day until it sticks." he feels tears hot and stinging welling in his eyes again, and lets them come. "and because i think more than you want to die, you want to know that at least one person would not be alive without you." robby opens his mouth, and jack stops him with a stare. "not because you were their doctor. because you were their friend. you were more than that. you are."

robby hangs his head. "fuck," he says, half-muffled, and then his shoulders start to shake. jack pushes himself to his feet, shoving the keys to robby's motorcycle deep into his pocket. he steps towards him, bloody nose and aching cheek and fifty years of baggage, and holds out his hand.

"what do you say?" he says, palm open, and robby looks at him for a long moment. those big sad eyes through tears. jack feels like he's stared into them more often than he's stared into the mirror. that face. that slightly ragged, untrimmed beard. robby. jack wants to reach out and grab his chin, kiss him so deep and long that it's enough to keep him. when he stands, if he stands, he will. jack is shaking a little, and he isn't sure if it's fear or anticipation.

it feels like forever passes in the humid air between them, wide dark sky gaping open above their heads, and then robby grabs jack's hand and lets him pull him to his feet.

Ruby slipped on the dress and stared at herself in her floor-length mirror, scrutinizing her form and scrunching up her face as she envisioned trying to sit at the bar comfortably in so much stuffy, scratchy material. She glanced at where the extra fabric pooled at her feet, and was suddenly reminded of the large tear along the hem, where she’d accidentally stabbed the material with her heel in her rush to get to the stage and accept her honor. Ruby sighed through pouted lips, throwing up her hands in a defeated gesture that wordlessly said, who do you think you’re fooling here? Any bouncer worth his salt would be able to take one look at her and see her for who she really was; not Ruby Carpenter, woman of definitely legal drinking age who’d like to sit at the bar and sip on something classy, please. But instead Ruby Carpenter, girl with a fake ID that she traded some free tutoring sessions to get, who showed up to a bar in her prom dress because it’s just about the only thing in her closet that her mother didn’t pick out for her. She hiked up the skirt of the garment, turning this way and that as she tried to imagine what it would look like several inches shorter, more like a proper cocktail dress and less like something that had ever seen the inside of a sweaty high school gymnasium.

Ruby chewed on the inside of her cheek while she thought for a moment, then flicked her eyes to her white wooden writing desk, the surface scarred with stray pencil marks and a few circular stains from where hot mugs had accidentally scalded the paint during countless late night study sessions. Her wandering eyes dropped even lower, then, to the drawer that contained a hoard of writing utensils and crafting supplies, including a pair of sharp scissors.

Her gaze volleyed back and forth between her reflection in the mirror and that drawer, where she knew the perfect tool lay in wait. But… she couldn’t, could she? She couldn’t mutilate the most gorgeous thing she’d ever owned, a thing that her parents had spent good money on, that she’d shamelessly pleaded with them right there in the store to let her have. They would never forgive her for it if they found out what she’d done.

But… they wouldn’t ever find out, would they? Ruby certainly wasn’t planning on telling them about the rebellious night out she was about to have herself, and it’s not like she foresaw having any use for a floor-length red sequin gown in college, so…

Screw it.

In practically one swift movement, Ruby closed the short distance between herself and her writing desk, swiped the scissors from the drawer, and began to cut. Half moons of shiny red sequins fluttered to the carpet beneath her as she snipped, performing an amateur act of contortion as she bent her spine at odd angles in order to complete the full circle around her mid-thigh. When she was done, she kicked the excess fabric underneath her bed, and stared at herself in the mirror one last time. Ruby smiled a shy, satisfied little smirk, as for the first time in her life, she felt like she finally saw a woman staring back at her. 

She stuffed a handful of babysitting-earned cash and her fake ID underneath one of the dress’ structured cups, slipped on the matching pair of red heels, and climbed out her bedroom window, quietly tiptoeing across the Carpenters’ neatly manicured lawn until she made it to the sidewalk. 

Ruby still had a good distance to walk before she’d make it to the bar, but as her heels clicked on the pavement and the night breeze tousled her heavily hair-sprayed updo, it was already the most intoxicated she’d ever felt in her life. 

—

Unlike what she had seen in the movies, there was no intimidating, burly bouncer posted outside the bar, ready to size her up and make her turn her ass back around if he thought she seemed too young to be there. Instead, Ruby was able to slink inside without a second glance from anyone, and perched herself on an unoccupied leather barstool that had certainly seen some better days. 

She hadn’t really thought any further than getting past the front door, Ruby realized, when her hands were splayed out on the sticky-shiny bartop and it occurred to her that she had no goddamn clue what bar etiquette was. There was no menu to read over, and presumably no waiter whose job it was to take her order whether she flagged him down or not, so… What was she supposed to do? Just raise her hand like she had a question about the test next week? No, stupid. You’re Definitely Legal Drinking Age Ruby, remember? What would she do?

To Ruby’s relief, the bartender was a well-groomed young man who honestly didn’t look to be much older than she was, and came to her aid just as a mild panic began to bubble in her stomach. He asked what he could get for her, and she answered with the name of the only cocktail she knew.

“A cosmopolitan, please?” Ruby requested politely.

“A cosmo? You got it. What kind of vodka do you want in it?” The bartender asked, a question that she was not prepared to answer.

Ruby blinked a few times, failing to come up with a brand name. “Um… Any kind is good,” she shrugged. 

The young man chuckled. “Alright. Can I see some ID?”

Ruby dug the plastic card out of her dress and presented it to him, cursing herself for the way her hands shook just a little bit as she held it out. She was thankful that the bar was somewhat poorly lit, and that the bartender hadn’t examined the fake license for more than a second before handing it back to her, apparently deciding that it either looked legitimate enough to him, or that he didn’t really care either way.

“You wanna start a tab?” He asked as Ruby returned the card to its place among the crumpled bills nestled against her warming skin.

What the hell is a tab? She would’ve studied for this if she knew she was going to be asked so many questions.

“A… tab?” Ruby asked in as casual of a tone as she could muster, as if to imply I just want to make sure I heard you correctly, it’s loud in here.

“Yeah. You wanna pay for your drinks as you go, or start a tab and pay for ‘em all at once before you leave?”

The concept still didn’t make much sense to her. Ruby conceded, “Oh, right… I have cash. I’ll just… Pay as I go, I guess.” 

“Alright, sounds good. One cosmo’ll be six dollars, then.” The bartender laughed again as he spoke, and gave Ruby a onceover that answered the question on her mind—he just didn’t really care that her license definitely came from the stoner kid in her study hall instead of from the DMV. She was grateful for his indifference, and the way that he pretended to be occupied with picking at a chip in the bartop’s lacquer while Ruby awkwardly fished a few bills out of her dress. The bartender took her cash with a humored, lopsided smile, and then flitted down to the other end of the bar to gather a few more orders. Ruby waited patiently for her own drink to be concocted, admiring the casual-cool way the young man grabbed various bottles off the shelf and splashed their contents together, like it hardly took any effort at all. When he did finally present her with a rosy-colored drink in a triangle-shaped glass, she accepted it sweetly.

Ruby made a face as she took her first sip, surprised by a flavor that was much more tart and strong than she was expecting. But she grew to like the taste the more of it she drank, her head feeling lighter and the room getting blurrier as she said “yes, please” to a second, and then a third.

Before she knew it, she was giggling at herself as she stepped down from the stool onto two unsteady feet, talking herself through a very newborn foal-like walk over to the dance floor. A song that she loved was blaring over the sound system, one that she couldn’t resist slur-singing along to at a volume that would surely embarrass her parents if they were to witness it. 

They would hate everything that she was doing tonight, and Ruby reveled in the thought of it. Her mother would’ve said that she looked cheap, slutty, easy, in such a short dress and teased hairstyle and attention-seeking shade of red lipstick, and maybe it was just the influence of three vodka-heavy cosmopolitans, but Ruby didn’t care. She felt beautiful, perfect, free, like she could spread her wings and take flight and leave this entire town behind, exactly like she’d planned on doing later that month. 

Ruby let the alcohol float through her bloodstream and saturate her senses, replacing any inhibitions her sober self might have had with a confidence that didn’t quite match her clumsy dancing. Ruby shook and shimmied and writhed and wriggled, trailing her hands up and down her body and twirling them in the air as she moved however the music compelled her to, feeling like there was nobody else in the whole bar, in the whole world, except for her. 

Ruby had her eyes closed for the entire length of the song, only opening them again once it had begun to fade into the next one, and the euphoric feeling she’d been chasing had started to dissipate. It took a moment for her eyes to readjust to the bar’s poor lighting, and she startled upon realizing that she’d accidentally made direct eye contact with an older man sitting alone at a corner table. She turned away from him quickly, her cheeks burning with mild embarrassment. Ruby didn’t recognize the new song that had started to play over the speakers, but she side-stepped and swirled her arms around in the damp air of the dancefloor anyway, looking anywhere but back at him as she tried to play off the awkward moment. 

The man had been awfully handsome, though, just from the brief glimpse she’d gotten of him. And he was smiling at her, wasn’t he? And did she know him from somewhere, or did he only remind her of someone else? Surely if she took a second glance at him, he wouldn’t be looking at her anymore…

But God, was he still looking at her. With one ankle resting atop the opposite knee, the man sipped from his glass and stared at her from underneath his dark lashes, drinking her in the way he was his brown liquor. Heat rose to Ruby’s cheeks again, no doubt making them match the color of her dress, but she didn’t look away this time. She let the vodka wash away her mother’s voice in the back of her head, all the times she’d been warned to save herself and to focus on her studies and to not let boys be a distraction. Ruby ignored what she’d been taught, because the person watching her move her hips and shimmy her shoulders wasn’t a boy, he was a man. A very good looking, much older man, who seemed to enjoy watching her little show as much as she was enjoying putting it on for him.

Just as the man looked like he might’ve been about to stand up and go to her, a chorus of voices erupted near the bar, interrupting their not-so-private moment. Ruby’s alcohol-laden eyes were delayed in locating the cause for the ruckus, but eventually landed on a very drunk-sounding man standing on the bartop, who had just announced that he’d bought a round of shots for everyone inside. Little glass cups of a strong-smelling clear liquid were distributed among the patrons shortly thereafterwards, with one eventually making its way into Ruby’s hand. She could hardly stand still without swaying on her feet as it was, and she knew that she should probably put the shot down in favor of a glass of water, but practically everything she’d done so far tonight had been against her better judgement, so why stop now? After studying how a few other women drank their shots, Ruby tossed her own back into her mouth, immediately coughing at how it burned the back of her throat. Definitely tastes better when it’s mixed with some juice, Ruby thought, inhaling raggedly as she tried to catch her breath. 

When her eyes returned yet again to the older man in the corner, his lips were pulled into a smirk. Not like he was laughing at her obvious inexperience, but more like he was taking pleasure in it. He just shook his head as his shoulders shuddered from a chuckle that Ruby couldn’t hear, and took another sip of his own drink. “I can tell that this is your first rodeo, but it’s cute to watch you try to pretend that it isn’t,” the knowing look on his face seemed to say.

Ruby discarded her empty shotglass onto the nearest available ledge and resumed her dancing, nearly twisting her ankle as she attempted to execute a teasing little spin. She regained her balance after a few staggering steps and tried to find the man’s gaze again, fluttering her lashes at him in a way that probably looked more like a poorly coordinated blink than anything else. 

Although Ruby had been holding her liquor well thus far (for a girl who’s never had a sip of alcohol in her life before now, anyway), that shot of tepid vodka must have pushed her over the edge. Ruby suddenly felt like she was on a boat caught in a storm, violent tides making the floor tilt and the room spin and the several ounces of alcohol slosh around in her stomach in a way that made her feel sick. A wave of dizzying nausea very quickly began to crawl its way up her spine, and she knew that she needed to make her way outside, fast. 

She spun quickly on her heel, and used what little strength she could muster to shove her way through the crowd of thronging, sweaty bodies. Ruby muttered incoherent apologies to the few bargoers she’d accidentally elbowed in her struggle to escape, or tried to, at least. Her words were spilling out of her mouth in a way they never had before, coming out as a tangled mess of sounds and syllables that even she couldn’t make sense of. She hoped that the man at the corner table had just lost interest in her the second she began to stumble away, so that she might be spared any further embarrassment. His smirk had probably morphed into a sneer by now, disgusted at the sight of this stupid little girl attempting to belligerently seduce him in her cutoff prom dress, pretending to be something that she was obviously not.

Ruby never should have come here tonight. She needed to go home. Shamble her way down the street with her tail tucked between her legs, climb back in through her window and admit that this whole thing was a horrible idea. That she was not this kind of girl and never would be. That she wasn’t fooling anybody.

Ruby had pushed through most of the crowd, the front door just barely within her reach, when she slipped in a puddle of spilled drink and began to fall. She could hardly tell which direction to put out her hands in order to catch herself, and she shut her eyes tightly as she braced for the impact of the hard, sticky floor. Ruby did collide against something, but she didn’t feel the sharp pain radiating from the back of her skull that she’d been anticipating. She wasn’t hurt at all, because something—or someone—had caught her. Someone big, soft, warm, with calloused fingers clasped around her upper arm and a wide palm splayed against her back.

“Woah, woah… Easy there, sweetheart, I gotcha,” a low, gravelly voice soothed from somewhere above her. Ruby blinked several times in the direction it had come from, and her heart plummeted into her stomach when her eyes finally focused on a pair of mossy ones, set into sockets surrounded by wrinkled, suntanned skin. “You okay? You need some air?”

All Ruby could bring herself to do was nod, sour bile already rising in the back of her throat. She let the man quickly usher her out of the bar, and he held her hair out of her face as she threw up the liquidy contents of her stomach into the bushes outside. He rubbed her back in slow circles as she heaved, and cooed comforting words at her that she couldn’t fully hear over the sounds of her retching. 

“That’s it, get it all out. You’re okay, honey…” The man soothed. One little butterfly seemed to have survived the upheaval, and it fluttered around in Ruby’s stomach at how the man spoke to her with so much care in his voice. She felt like shit and probably looked even worse, and yet he touched her so softly, held her hair so gently, even while she was spitting pink-tinted saliva onto the mulch. “There you go… That feel better? You think you can stand up, walk a little bit?”

Ruby whimpered a half-hearted agreement, and used the support of one of the man’s large hands to straighten out her spine. She should have taken more care to stand herself up, but she’d wanted her humiliation to end so badly, she’d done it all in too abrupt of a movement. She stumbled backwards as her vision began to darken, and collapsed into his arms once again, her weak and dehydrated body betraying her as payback for how poorly she’d treated it all night. Ruby’s head lolled limply against the man’s flannel-clad bicep, her eyelids fluttering shut as she slumped into him. “Nuh uh. Wake up, sweetheart, c’mon,” the man encouraged, a panicked edge to his voice. He roughly shook her shoulders and tapped her cheeks, but she didn’t come to. “Can I take you somewhere? Can you tell me where you live, baby? I can’t just leave ya here, you gotta give me somethin’... Shit.”

Ruby felt halfway between sleep and wake, aware enough to register some of what was happening to her, but not enough to be able to do anything about it. She thought she might have been free falling again, loosely understanding that she was no longer supporting her own weight, but unsure of why she hadn’t hit the ground yet. When she felt her feet begin to bob in the air in time to some unheard rhythm, she realized that her legs had been swung over the crooks of the man’s elbows, and that he was carrying her somewhere. In her near-unconscious state, she couldn’t tell which direction he was taking her in, and couldn’t force the muscles around her lips to move in order to protest her own abduction. 

She must have been carried for several blocks before Ruby felt the man maneuver her body into a sitting position, the backs of her thighs sticking against a leathery material as he adjusted her legs. He strapped something tightly across her body, her arms resting limply at her sides while he threaded the belt underneath them. She felt the man’s head accidentally bump into her own leaden one in his haste, and he might have kissed her on the temple afterwards where their skulls had collided, but she couldn’t be sure. When Ruby heard the telltale click of metal into plastic and the rumble of an engine, she understood that the man had put her into his car, had begun to steer it out of town toward an unknown destination. Her dulled senses couldn’t register anything else after that, no matter how loud the voice in her head was screaming at her to say something, open your eyes, don’t let him take you.

“You’ll be okay, sweetheart. You’re with me, you’re mine now,” was the last thing she remembered hearing before the rest of her consciousness slipped away, plunging her into darkness.

—

When Ruby woke the next morning, it took some effort for her to pry her eyelids apart from each other, a mixture of dried mascara and sleep having cemented them shut during the night. The room she found herself in was mostly dark, save for a few stripes of warm morning light streaming in through the blinds. It smelled like moth balls and old wood, had a few faded paintings hanging crookedly on the walls, and was very much not her bedroom.

She sat bolt upright in bed with a startled noise that was half-gasp, half-scream, immediately followed by a pained whine as she grasped at her skull, now pulsing in pain. Ruby quickly surveyed the room through squinted eyes, and startled again when they landed on a man sitting in the armchair in the corner of the room, already staring back at her.  

“Hey, hey, it’s alright. You’re safe, I promise,” he said, holding his hands out in front of him as if he were going to approach a spooked animal.

“Who are you? Where am I?” Ruby demanded, surprised at how grating her frightened voice sounded as it vibrated through dry vocal chords. Her first spoken words of the morning threw her into a coughing fit, which only served to exacerbate the pain radiating from inside her head. The man stood up from his chair and slowly approached her, handing her the glass of water that had been sitting on the bedside table for her already. Ruby held it up to her lips with shaking hands, and took a few cold swallows that she could feel pooling in her empty stomach.

“I’m Joel. We met last night, remember? At the bar?” 

Ruby just stared at him blankly, unsure if she should bother trying to cower at the edge of the bed, or if she should just make a break for the door now. She thought she remembered someone watching her last night, making eyes at her from across the bar while she danced drunkenly. This man could’ve been him, she supposed, but had he told her his name? She had no way of knowing if he was the same man she’d met last night, the one who’d taken care of her when she’d gotten so drunk that she’d completely humiliated herself in front of him, spilling sick all over herself and the bar’s outdoor landscaping. 

Ruby looked down at herself instinctually at the memory, and again let out another horrified noise upon realizing that she wasn’t wearing her prom dress anymore. She was wearing clothes she’d never seen before in her life, that certainly didn’t belong to her—a navy blue sweatshirt about two sizes too big for her, and a pair of cotton shorts that hugged her bottom so tightly, her father would probably drop dead at the sight of her in them.

“Where’s my—”

“Your dress? Got it hangin’ up in the bathroom. You, uh… you got a lil’ bit o’ vomit on it last night. I tried to wash it out in the bathtub. Not sure how good of a job I did, but figured I’d try. Looked like it was mighty expensive.”

Ruby leaned over so that she could peer into the small, dingy bathroom, and found that Joel was telling the truth. Her dress was hanging from the shower curtain rod on a wire hanger, the material a slightly darker shade of red now that it was damp. 

“And these clothes? They—”

Joel interrupted her once again, working quickly to calm her racing thoughts, as if he knew exactly what questions she’d be asking before she could even get the first syllable out. “Belong to my niece. I keep some changes of clothes in the truck for when I got her with me, in case she gets herself messy. She’s a good bit younger than you, but… Seem to fit you just fine.” 

The thin hairs on the back of Ruby’s neck stood up at the way Joel’s eyes raked over her form, and she pulled the covers up higher over her legs self-consciously. Ruby nodded to herself, chewing the inside of her cheek while she worked to put the pieces of last night’s events together in her mind. Using what little information she had, she needed to decide quickly if Joel was trustworthy, or if he had more sinister intentions.

Or worse, if he’d acted on them already.

But she felt perfectly fine down there, not sore or damp or any other feeling that would indicate Joel had done anything more to her than just clean her up and change her clothes. The prospect of this much older man seeing her completely naked while she was blacked out had felt extremely violating, but if he had a young niece who he was trusted to look after sometimes, maybe he didn’t see her in that way. He seemed kind, caring, and although the Southern twang in his voice indicated that he wasn’t from around here, that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe he was just a wholesome farmer or something, visiting some family from out of town. She shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Joel could just as easily have left her alone in her vulnerable state, he didn’t have to take care of her the way he did. And then who knows what would’ve happened to her?

“Listen, Ruby. I’d take you back to the bar myself this mornin’, but I reckon they’re probably still closed for a few more hours. My hand to God, anybody’d be able to tell you that they saw you pass out in my arms. You weren’t even coherent enough to tell me where you lived, I didn’t have any choice but to—”

“How do you know my name?”

Just as Ruby had begun to calm herself down, her heart had started up its panicked pounding again at the sound of those four letters coming from Joel’s whiskery mouth. She hadn’t told him her name in the short time she’d known him, had she? If she was really as delirious last night as he claimed that she was, surely she wouldn’t have had enough wherewithal to introduce herself to him, at least not in a way that he could understand.

Joel blinked at her once, his lips still forming the shape of the next word he was about to utter. “Uh… Your ID. Fell outta your dress when I was takin’ it off of you. The thing looked fake as shit, but I figured your name might’ve been real, even if your age wasn’t. Speakin’ of which…” Joel sat down on the mattress next to her, the aged springs creaking under his weight. He lowered his voice as he asked her, “How old are you really, sweetheart? Jus’ be honest with me. Better not be a number that’s gonna get either of us into any trouble.”

Ruby’s stomach flipped at the insinuation of that last part, but she figured that she had no reason to lie to him. She owed him her honesty, at this point.

She inhaled, then let out the breath shakily. “Eighteen,” Ruby half-whispered. She fidgeted with a loose thread on the bed’s garishly-patterned quilt, intentionally avoiding Joel’s scrutinizing gaze.

Joel sighed. “Jesus Christ… You still in fuckin’ high school or somethin’? The hell were you doin’ there last night?”

Tears began to prick at Ruby’s waterlines, Joel’s scolding tone cutting through her like a knife. She’d heard his not mad, just disappointed inflection far too many times before, especially from her own parents. Like when she’d brought home a B on a chemistry test that her father had been helping her study all week for, or when she’d participated in Senior Skip Day and ruined her perfect attendance record, or when she’d only managed to land the title of Salutatorian instead of Valedictorian at graduation, once again proving that no matter how hard she tried, she’d never be perfect. She’d never be good enough. Ruby hardly knew Joel at all, but she couldn’t bear the feeling of him being so disappointed in her. She felt the need to apologize, to offer to mow his lawn or bake him cookies or tutor his niece for a month or something, just so that he might not look at her with that stern expression ever again.

“No, I’m not in high school anymore. I just graduated, I start college in a couple of weeks,” Ruby started, trying her best to subdue the waver in her voice. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, I just… I just wanted to… Shit, I’m sorry—” Her tears began to fall, then, as she buried her face in her trembling hands, the remainder of her mascara getting smudged around her cheeks as she cried.

“Oh… It’s alright, darlin’, I’m sorry. You’re okay, c’mere,” Joel cooed. He backed down quickly upon realizing that he’d upset her, and pulled her into his side. Rubbing his calloused hand along her upper arm, he soothed her once again through another embarrassing display of her adolescence. 

He let her sob into his shoulder, petting at her and whispering quiet little affirmations into her hair until her hiccuping had begun to subside, and when he asked her if she wanted to talk to him about it—“any of it, anythin’ you wanna talk about”—he’d clarified, she opened up to him without a second thought.

Ruby told Joel everything—about her overbearing parents, the picture-perfect daughter they’d been trying to mold her into all these years, the friends and the relationships and the life experiences she’d missed out on by spending every waking moment trying to squeeze herself into that rigid mold. About the one night she was trying to have for herself, that she’d completely ruined by acting so irresponsibly. She’d told him that the dress he’d scrubbed her throw-up out of was really her prom dress, that the friends she’d gone to the dance with had intentionally not invited her to the afterparty because they figured she’d have to adhere to her strict curfew, anyway (they were right, but their exclusion had still hurt), and that after all the time she’d spent collecting as many extracurricular and academic achievements as she could, she still felt as hollow and plastic as that tiara dangling from her vanity. That she’d be entering college without ever having kissed a boy or snuck out of the house or tasted a drop of alcohol or acted otherwise irresponsibly, without ever having done something just for herself, without her image or her reputation or her future hanging over her head. That, once again, she’d never meant for any of this to happen, and that she was very sorry she’d made a fool of herself and inconvenienced him like this. That if he could just take her back home and pretend like none of this had ever happened, that she’d be very appreciative. 

Even as the words came tumbling out of Ruby’s mouth, she worried that she probably shouldn’t be telling Joel her entire life story, that he was likely just being polite and didn’t really care to hear about all of her childish struggles. But something about his presence, his soothing gestures and his gravelly voice and his flannel shirt that smelled like coffee and earth, were so inviting, so familiar, somehow, that it felt easy to confide in him. And when she finally raised her head off of his now-damp shoulder, that one little butterfly in her stomach took flight again when she saw the expression he wore—sympathy, but without any pity. Compassion, empathy, more like. Joel’s charcoal eyebrows were peaked, the corners of his lips slightly downturned as he looked at Ruby like she was the most precious object in the world. Like her story had struck him right in the heart, like he was upset at the notion that something as beautiful as her had ever suffered at all. 

Ruby had never been looked at like that before. She’d been ogled and stared at by plenty of boys who knew she’d never accept their advances even if they were brave enough to try, but the way Joel was looking at her now was different. Like he was looking past her blonde hair and her blue eyes and her pretty face and straight into her soul, where no one else had ever bothered to look. Is this what it feels like to be seen? Ruby wondered.

Ruby liked the way that Joel looked at her. The way that he listened to her, really listened. 

But she knew that it was time for her to go.

She pushed herself off the mattress, and gathered up her butchered dress and now-scuffed pair of heels as she made her way towards the door. She’d expected Joel to be eager to swipe his keys off the dresser and follow suit behind her, but he stayed put, an inscrutable look on his face as he stared at nothing in particular. 

“Thank you, for everything,” Ruby said. She didn’t want to sound like she was too eager to leave, but she was getting a little anxious that as the sun climbed higher into the sky, the chances of her parents discovering her empty bedroom were increasing. When Joel still remained in his spot on the bed, she grasped the door handle and began to turn it herself, attempting to indicate to him a little less subtly that she’d like to be taken home, now. The clicking sound of the deadbolt must have finally woken him from his trance, and he stood up quickly, closing the short distance between him and Ruby in practically one long stride.

“Who says you gotta go back there?” Joel asked her, his previously steady voice now laced with a breathless desperation.

Ruby scoffed. “Well, my parents, for one. I can’t just disappear. I have to pack up my stuff in a couple weeks, move into my dorm.”

Joel thought on her answer for a moment, then decided—“I can have ya back by then.”

Ruby’s grip on the door handle became white knuckled, and she was now suddenly very aware of just how much bigger Joel was than her, how closely he was standing to her in this very small room, and how he’d never answered the second of the first two questions she’d asked him—“Where am I?”

“...What are you talking about?” she asked him tentatively. Ruby knew that she should just fling the door open and make a run for it, but she didn’t want to anger him, and she knew that he could overpower her in less than a second if she tried anything. She remained firm in her stance, knowing that her best way out of this would be to just hear him out, talk him down, dredge every debate club tactic back to the forefront of her mind as she prepared herself for what Joel might say next.

“I mean… you’re a grown-up, ain’t you? You can do whatever you want. That’s what last night was all about, wasn’t it? Doin’ somethin’ that you wanted to do, that your folks didn’t know about and wouldn’t approve of?”

Ruby looked at him incredulously. “...Well, yeah, but—”

“You said you only got a couple’a weeks left, right? You don’t wanna spend ‘em cooped up in your parents’ house ‘til they finally kick you out, do ya?”

She released her grip on the door handle, now using both of her hands to hold her meager belongings more tightly against her abdomen. Ruby felt more confused than threatened, unsure of the meaning behind all of Joel’s sudden questioning. She answered him somewhat defensively—“Well, they’re not really kicking me out, I’m just—”

“Come with me, Ruby.”

Silence hung heavy in the air between the two of them as Ruby processed his request. She had no reason to believe that Joel was anything other than kind, but what was he trying to ask of her? This man was a stranger to her. A stranger who’d taken care of her, who had given her a place to rest and recover where other men surely would’ve taken advantage of her, but a stranger nonetheless. Joel hadn’t stepped any closer to her, hadn’t reached into his back pocket or put his hands on her since he walked over to the door. This wasn’t the behavior of someone who meant her harm, but still—come with him where?

Ruby asked him as much.

Joel switched his weight to the other hip, gesturing with his hands as if to say, let me start over. “Here, tell me this… You ever even been outta the state before? Is that fancy college you’re gonna go to even two hours away from this place?”

Ruby made an offended sort of face. “...No,” she admitted.

“Well, I’m offerin’ you a chance to finally get outta here, then, just for a lil’ bit. I’ll take you anywhere you wanna go. We’ll drive around, see some sights, have some fun… And I’ll have ya back here in time for move-in weekend. How’s that sound?”

It sounded amazing. Thrilling, actually, if Ruby was being honest with herself. She felt an anxious heat begin to swirl in her belly, but was it excitement, or fear? You have no reason to be afraid of him, Ruby reminded herself. And Joel was right—she was an adult, and the whole reason she’d ended up here in the first place was because she just wanted to have some goddamn fun for once in her life. And it was fun, minus the whole getting sick and passing out and waking up with a throbbing headache thing. Why should it have to stop there? This—what Joel was offering her—was one of those experiences she’d cried to him about missing out on, wasn’t it?

Ruby swallowed down the excitement-fear-adenaline that had perched itself in the back of her throat, along with everything every school assembly had ever warned her not to do when a stranger invited her into their vehicle and offered to take her someplace she’d never been before. She’d already been through that once with Joel, and it had turned out fine.

“Okay,” Ruby agreed, every inch of her skin igniting as she said the word. “Okay, I’ll go with you.”

But there was still one question that needed answering—what would she tell her parents?

So it was formed right there, the lie. In that musty little room at the end of the row, in a roadside motel Ruby never did catch the name of, she and Joel concocted the story that she would tell her parents in order to keep them in the dark about who she would really be spending her last few weeks of summer with.

And she didn’t feel quite as guilty about it as she normally would have, because it wasn’t a complete lie. Janie, Holly, and Willa were going on a roadtrip together before they each started their respective first semesters, they just hadn’t invited Ruby along to join them. She’d overheard the three of them discussing their plans on the last day of school, and when Janie had asked, “Do you think we should invite Ruby?” she’d heard Holly snicker, and reply, “Are you kidding? No, she doesn’t know how to have any fun. And it’s not like Mommy and Daddy would ever let her go, anyway.” Willa had practically fallen out of her chair at that, she was laughing so hard. Janie was at least a little more considerate of the purpose of a study hall, clapping her hand over her mouth in a poor attempt to muffle her giggling.

Ruby knew that Holly’s words were true, but they had still stung.

By lunchtime that day, Ruby and Joel had set off on their roadtrip to nowhere together. He’d brought Ruby back to her house just as her mother was putting on a fresh pot of coffee and her father was unfolding the morning paper, giving her just enough time to pack a duffle bag full of clothes and tell her parents the story. Joel had asked her to meet him in the parking lot of the small Baptist church down the block when she was ready to go—“It’ll be empty on a Saturday mornin’ like this, nobody around to catch you in your lie,” he had reasoned. And that had seemed perfectly logical to Ruby.

Joel had dropped her off around the corner from the Carpenters’, granting her the opportunity to sneak back in through her window without running the risk of either of her parents seeing her in the state she was in, exiting a rusted pickup truck that they didn’t recognize. She’d given Joel the number to the landline phone she kept in her bedroom before she got out of the truck, and told him to call it from the payphone across the street from the church. By that time, she’d have changed into the pajamas she should have been wearing to sleep last night, and could bound into the kitchen, anxious to tell her parents about the exciting phone call she’d just gotten—“Janie, Holly, and Willa invited me to join them for the next couple of weeks, and they’re leaving today! Can I please go with them?” It had taken a fair bit of convincing and a promise to call every so often to update them on her travels, but in the end, they agreed. Ruby had hugged both of her parents very tightly, thanked them profusely for letting her go, and told them that she loved them, before setting off in the direction of the church. (Or, Janie’s house, as Ruby had told them.)

In that empty church parking lot, with no signs of life except for the little white and yellow flowery weeds sprouting up from cracks in the sun-bleached concrete, Joel had handed Ruby a folded-up map of the country that he kept in his glove box, and asked her to pick where they would go first. Having never traveled anywhere outside of state lines before, she hardly had any idea what the rest of the country was like, aside from the few natural wonders she’d learned about in her environmental science class. She thought it best to just close her eyes, swirl her finger around in the air above the map a few times, and let fate decide where it would touch down.

“Savannah,” Ruby had declared, reading aloud the city’s name printed in bold capital letters above the little black dot her fingertip had landed on. “That’s where I wanna go.”

“Georgia, huh? Wouldn’t be my first choice of a Southern state, but you got it, sweetheart,” Joel had agreed, and then they left Ruby’s little midwestern town behind, driving until it was nothing more than a cloud of dust in the rearview mirror. It hadn’t taken much time at all before Ruby was officially able to say, “This is the furthest I’ve ever been from home.” She resisted the urge to make the same joke every time they passed another mile marker, opting to giggle quietly to herself every time she thought it, instead.

—

Joel had split up the drive into two days, apologetic for the fact that he couldn’t make very long trips anymore, claiming that his back was acting up on him more as he got older. Ruby had wanted to ask exactly how old Joel was, but she hadn’t. Part of her was a little afraid that the number would turn out to be higher than that of her father, and she wasn’t sure how comfortable she would be with that, especially with the fluttery feeling Joel had given her a few times already, when he looked at her a certain way. 

Instead, Ruby had picked a different question to ask in order to get to know him some more—which state his Southern drawl had come from, and if that was the one that would be his first choice over Georgia. She’d listened to him gush about his home state of Texas for the better part of that afternoon, and she’d hung onto every word, eager to learn about a lived experience so much different from her own. Joel had only made fun of her a little bit when she’d very earnestly asked him questions like “Have you ever seen a tumbleweed?” and “Have you been to a lot of rodeos?”, but he seemed happy to answer them anyway, promising that he’d take her to his beloved state during the time they’d be spending together so that she could see it for herself. “We’ll make sure to get some good Texas barbecue in ya while we’re there, try to put some meat on these bones,” Joel had joked, freeing one hand from the steering wheel in order to playfully squeeze at the plush of one of her thighs. Ruby was embarrassed at the little involuntary noise she’d made upon feeling Joel’s large hand and rough fingertips on her bare skin, but hoped that his hearty laughter had been loud enough to cover it up.

The two of them had spent the rest of that first day in the truck like that—Joel very patiently answering every one of Ruby’s neverending Texas-related queries, and Ruby sharing some comparatively boring facts about herself, when she could tell that Joel was getting tired of doing all the talking. By the time Joel’s back had decided it was time for them to stop somewhere along the southern border of Virginia, the sun had nearly disappeared behind the treeline completely. Ruby hadn’t wanted the day to end, but felt her heart flutter excitedly when she remembered that she still had a whole two weeks with Joel in front of her, with probably 40-something more years’ worth of things to learn about him. She had noticed that his answers were a little more vague when her questions were more oriented toward what he’d been up to more recently, and how he’d ended up in Ruby’s unassuming little town in the first place, and what his family was like. But everyone deserved to have a few secrets, she supposed. She felt like she knew the most important things about him for now, at least—that he was kind, that he made her feel safe, and that he was interested in who she really was instead of who she’d been trying so hard to be—and that was good enough for her. 

—

Ruby and Joel hadn’t bothered to set an alarm for the next morning, instead getting awoken by the sound of a motel employee banging on their door, scolding them to either pay for another night, or get the hell out of there.

When they’d first checked in the night before, Ruby was nervous about the prospect of having to share a room with Joel. What if they were out of rooms with two beds? Would he be offended if she locked the door while she was in the shower? What if he snored too loudly and kept her up all night?

She’d had the answers to her questions shortly after they’d found their way to their room—there were accommodations available for the two of them to have their own space to sleep, Joel had offered to leave the room and get them something from the vending machine outside while she freshened up before bed, and he snored like a goddamn bear. But Ruby had found it kind of endearing, the way that Joel would snore raggedly for several minutes at a time, before waking himself up with a snort that got caught in his throat, and then readjusting his position in order to start the cycle all over again. But between the rhythmic rattling of the air conditioning unit in the room and the low thrum of cars rolling by outside, Joel’s snoring had nestled itself among the rest of the white noise, and had eventually lulled her to sleep. 

After she’d settled back down from her abrupt awakening, Ruby couldn’t help but smile to herself as she watched Joel lumber out of bed, making tired grunts and groans that only served to heighten the similarities between him and the grizzly creature his sleeping habits had reminded her of. Even though Joel was reluctant to reveal some things about himself the night before, Ruby enjoyed the ways in which she was getting to know him without him having to say anything at all—she knew now that he was a deep sleeper, a sluggish riser, and that he slept on his left side, judging from the abstract lines that the sheets had imprinted into his rosy, age-mottled cheek. And, he seemed to care about few things as much as he did his morning coffee. Before he’d even put proper clothes on or brushed his teeth, Joel was on a mission to hunt down a cup of the stuff, and Ruby was surprised he could even navigate his way down to the motel’s modest free breakfast offering with his eyes only half-open. Again, he’d offered her some privacy while she got herself ready that morning, and returned once she was ready to get back on the road with a plastic-wrapped muffin and a small bottle of juice for her, and an armful of unnaturally flavored and artificially sweetened baked goods for himself. He even eats like a bear, Ruby thought to herself, stifling a giggle while she accepted her breakfast gratefully.

The rest of the drive to Savannah was made up of roadtrip games soundtracked by Joel’s extensive collection of country cassette tapes, none of the artists of which Ruby had ever heard of. Joel had seemed almost offended when she proclaimed this to him, but settled into more of a reluctant understanding once she’d examined the backs of some of the tapes, and had to break the news to him that most of Joel’s favorite albums had come out before she was even born. 

“Jesus… I keep forgettin’ just how young you are,” Joel had muttered, wiping a hand down his greying beard, as if he could feel new white hairs sprouting out of his skin at the realization of just how wide the rift between their ages was. “Just seem so… mature for your age. Well, y’know… Except for your taste in music.”

Ruby had laughed at his jest, and then asked him to explain what he’d meant by his comment. She sat up a little straighter, rolling her shoulders back as she felt a bit of pride soar in her chest. As much as she loathed the “goody two shoes” label that had often been applied to her, she couldn’t deny the warmth that would swirl in her belly upon receiving a compliment like that from a teacher or mentor, affirming her work ethic or intellect or achievements. 

“Well… Certainly look plenty grown, for one thing. I mean, watchin’ you dance the other night, would never have guessed that you weren’t even old enough to be in there. Just seemed so… confident. Like you knew exactly who you were,” Joel had explained, keeping his eyes on the road while stealing occasional glances at her on the opposite side of the bench seat, like he couldn’t help but be distracted by her.

“I’m glad it seemed that way,” Ruby had replied, smiling warmly at him. Joel had returned the expression the next time he looked over at her, and there it was again—the sensation of a pair of fragile wings flapping excitedly just behind her belly button, brought on by the sight of Joel’s jadeite eyes reflecting the warm afternoon light, each framed by spidering sets of crow’s feet at the corners. Something about him looked so boyish, somehow, even though his gray hair and age spots and wrinkles proved that he was anything but. The more Ruby looked at him, the more she felt like she could see past all that, use her imagination to wipe away all of the obvious markers of Joel’s age and see the 20-something year old version of him, the one she would’ve seen from afar in the stands of a college football game and developed a crush on. 

Ruby scrunched up her face to rid it of the wistful expression she’d been wearing, and hoped that Joel hadn’t noticed her staring at him, lost in thought. She turned to face the passenger side window, and convinced herself that the feeling of spasming wings in her belly was actually just hunger, instead. She expressed as much to Joel upon the truck whizzing by a blue, rectangular sign perched along the treeline, promising several restaurants’ worth of fast food offerings just a few miles up ahead. Joel certainly didn’t complain about her request to pull over for some lunch, and again, Ruby fought to tamp down her girlish excitement when Joel had opened her door for her, gripping her much smaller hand in his larger one as he helped her down onto the pavement. Ruby wondered if Joel could feel the little pulse of electricity that sparked where their skin had touched, in spite of herself.

The pair of them hadn’t even arrived at their first destination yet, and already Ruby knew that she would be in for a very long, very tiring, very thrilling two weeks.

—

Ruby let out a private gasp when the city of Savannah had finally come into view, the little puff of breath creating a foggy spot on the window, her face as close to the glass as she could get it without just going ahead and squishing her cheek against it. After driving through what had seemed like an endless stretch of rural lowlands, the cobblestone and brick and ironwork that now surrounded her were a complete wonder. Ruby peered around at the city, curious and wide-eyed, both the architecture and flora like nothing she had ever seen before. Everything was beautiful, lush and charming and seemingly plucked from a period of time several decades gone now. Ruby could only bring herself to peel her eyes away from the city that awaited her when she felt the truck finally come to a stop, her peripheral vision registering a bright flash of color that stuck out against the rest of Savannah’s earthy, muted tones.

Joel was already looking at her when she turned to face him, his mouth pulled into that signature bemused smirk of his. She gaped at him for a moment, her own open-mouthed grin spreading wide across her face. “Are we staying here?!” she asked, hurriedly unbuckling her seatbelt and swinging the passenger side door open into the humidity. 

“Why, d’you hate it or somethin’?” Joel replied, deadpan, leaning across the bench seat so he could catch her eye again. He stared at Ruby with his brows raised, his features arranged to play up his faux concern. Joel only let his expression linger for a second or two longer before he flashed his bright teeth at her again, shutting off the truck’s engine and exiting out his own side with a grunt. “Jesus, back’s fuckin’ killin’ me…” Joel groaned under his breath, wincing as he took a few stiff steps toward the back of the truck to retrieve their bags.

“I can get my own this time, if you need me to—”

All Joel had to do was give Ruby a good-natured glare, and it was enough to stop her sentence in its tracks.

“Yeah, right. Good one, sweetheart.” Ruby watched Joel wince as he hauled her duffel bag over his shoulder, and she did a sympathetic little grimace to mirror him.

“Are you sure? It’s really not a problem, I can—”

“Nuh uh, no. I don’t care if my fuckin’ spine splits in half, I ain’t ever gonna let you carry your own bag. Let’s get one thing straight right now.” Joel’s tone was firm, but Ruby knew that he meant well. He must have noticed the little pout she wore at his words, and ambled over to where she was still standing beside the truck, her arms folded in front of her stomach. He dropped his own worn, canvas backpack onto the pavement, but didn’t dare let Ruby’s paisley print bag touch the ground. A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth at how juxtaposed the two things were—Joel’s tanned, sun-spotted skin and earth-toned flannel, fighting a losing battle for masculinity against the pink and yellow swirling pattern of her bag strapped across his chest. Joel reached out and swiped a calloused thumb across her cheekbone once, twice, and craned his neck downwards to force eye contact. “Hey. These next couple’a weeks are all about you. Ain’t gonna let you lift a finger if I can help it. I know you ain’t fragile, but neither am I. Okay?”

Ruby let her smile spread wide across her cheeks, and Joel reflected it. “Okay.”

Joel had kept his word for every moment of the two days they’d spent in the historic city, even hauling their bags without complaint up a flight of stairs to their room on the second floor. The place was still a motel, by all accounts, but it was certainly nicer than the place she’d woken up in that sickly morning after. This motel—the Fairlane Inn, it was called—seemed like it had been recently renovated, with its crisp white sheets and primary-colored furniture, the design evoking a bygone era totally separate from the one the rest of Savannah seemed to be stuck in. The whole city was like one big Mystery Spot, unable to be placed in any one time in particular while having a spirit all its own. 

The two of them—Joel especially—hardly had enough energy to do anything other than walk a few blocks to a diner and back the first night they’d arrived, but Ruby didn’t mind. Joel had explained on the drive that they’d aim to spend about two days in each city he wanted to take her to, and when she really broke that down—48 hours, 2,880 minutes, 172,800 seconds—it felt like a lifetime.

There wasn’t anything exceptionally exciting to do in Savannah, other than walk through its multitude of parks and squares, and occasionally try to tag onto the back of a group of tourists getting told ghost stories by a historic reenactor. Every so often, they’d have to take some kind of detour around a broken-up length of sidewalk outside of a building that was being restored, large swaths of plastic stretched along metal fencing obscuring any view of the work being done. Ruby tried her best to peer over the temporary walls and into the construction sites, but even standing all the way on the tips of her toes like a ballerina, she still wasn’t tall enough to see the work in progress. Joel just laughed at her when she even resorted to doing a few little bunny hops in an effort to get a better view, her short stature preventing her curiosity from being satisfied.

“What’re you so desperate to see in there for, huh? ‘M sure it ain’t anythin’ more than a bunch of dust flyin’ around,” Joel explained, only having to do so much as lift up his chin in order to get a full view of the men at work. “Hey! What’re you gentlemen workin’ on here? Anything interestin’?” Joel shouted over the fence, and it gave Ruby a fuzzy feeling—both the confident boom in his voice, and the idea of him speaking for her, asking a question he knew she wanted the answer to, without her even having to say anything. 

“Renovating this hotel, turning it into a dorm building,” a man replied from somewhere beyond the plastic. “They’re starting an art school. The buildings are gonna be spread all throughout the city.”

Joel nodded, the corners of his mouth turning downward into an impressed pout. “I’d call that interestin’, yeah. Thank you, sir. Take care,” Joel replied, then turned back to Ruby as they continued walking. “Well, there you have it. Turnin’ that buildin’ into a dorm room for an art school. You happy now?”

“Yes, I am. Thanks for asking him for me.” Even as Ruby’s feet continued carrying her down the sidewalk, her head stayed turned in the direction of the would-be dorm building, only looking back down at where she was going once her neck had reached its limit on how far backwards it could turn. She stared down at her shoes, taking one carefully placed step after another so as not to trip on any of the city’s crooked cobblestones or cracked concrete, and thought about how magical of a life those art students would lead down here, where beauty and inspiration could be found all around. She thought about one of her classmates from back home, a quiet girl with whom she had only ever exchanged a few words, but who had natural artistic talent unlike anyone else she had ever met. Ruby had always struggled through her required art classes, continually frustrated and dissatisfied with her subpar final products, no matter the medium. Whether watercolor, pastels, colored pencils, or clay, she fumbled through every assignment on the syllabus, always volunteering to present her project first so that she could just get it over with and not have to suffer through the embarrassment that would come with following up her classmate’s beautiful pieces. Ruby knew little about the girl, other than that her dad had passed away sometime in the last few years, and that she didn’t seem to have many friends, but her art projects always seemed to speak volumes. Ruby smiled fondly to herself as she and Joel walked in the dappled light streaming through coily clumps of Spanish moss, and wondered if her friend might ever find herself down here, if at least one of them would ever be able to make something of themselves, find a more meaningful existence than the one provided by their suffocating small town.

—

Somewhere in between the first and second days in Savannah, Ruby had started to feel things toward Joel that she couldn’t explain. It was like there were thin, invisible strings wound tightly around the chambers of her heart, each pump of her blood causing the muscle to be tugged closer and closer to him. There was a moment when, walking through the biggest, most beautiful park in the city, Joel had insisted on lingering in the vicinity of some kind of historic guided tour. He had stood close enough to the leader of the group to be able to catch most of what was being said—some kind of boring and ignoble biography of whoever’s tarnished statue the group was gathered in front of—but not close enough to be told off for trying to join the tour without paying. Ruby had always been relatively disinterested in history, only succeeding in her classes because she was good enough at writing and memorization to be able to bring home A’s on her tests and essays. So, she let her eyes wander while Joel had intently studied the plaque at the base of the statue, her gaze eventually landing on a vendor selling what appeared to be roses made out of long, flaxen-colored blades of grass. In her avidity to cross the park and see the vendor’s work up close, she had reached for Joel’s hand, intending to clasp it in her own and pull him along. It was completely subconscious, instinctual, the way that she had extended her arm out behind her, her fingers searching for the spaces between Joel’s own where they would fit so perfectly, but she’d stopped herself just before their skin had touched. 

Instead, Ruby just called out his name—once to get his attention, and again a little louder, when he’d only responded to the first one with a distracted “huh?”—and beckoned to him as she scampered over to the older woman with sun-weathered skin and her basket of palm roses. By the time Joel had caught up to her, the woman had already placed one of her delicately-woven roses into Ruby’s hands, and she was looking at him now with an apologetic smile, hoping he would read in her expression, “She wouldn’t let me say no. But it’s pretty, right?”

Joel had just shaken his head and chuckled as he placed a few bills into the woman’s hand, earnestly complimenting her work as he and Ruby departed.

“I’m sorry, Joel, I didn’t mean to make you buy it for me, she just—” Ruby had started, twirling the rose between her fingers as they walked.

“Nothin’ to apologize for, darlin’, ‘s alright. Just stole my thunder a lil’ bit, is all. Was gonna buy you one’a them as we were leavin’, anyway,” Joel shrugged, feigning a mild hit to his ego before good-naturedly bumping Ruby’s arm with his elbow.

She’d looked up at him with her big, sparkling eyes, playfully jabbing him back as a wide smile overtook her features. “You were…? That’s so sweet, Joel. Thank you.”

“Yeah, ‘s nothin’. Just thought, y’know… pretty rose for a pretty girl. Matches the color of your hair, almost, don’tcha think?” Joel asked, gently taking a lock of Ruby’s light blonde hair between his thumb and forefinger, tenderly inspecting the golden strands before letting them fall back down to her shoulder. 

There it was again—tug, tug. It only felt natural, in Ruby’s mind, that she should place a kiss on Joel’s spidering crow’s feet and grab hold of his hand as they strolled, just like any other couple in their vicinity. Her fingertips twitched, longing to feel Joel’s warm, calloused fingers threaded through her own, protesting that she wouldn’t let them embrace. It would be so easy to reach for him, Joel’s hand swinging loosely at his side, with its ruddy knuckles and scattering of pale scars and freckles. He would probably accept her advance, Ruby knew, if all the other ways he’d touched her so far had been any indication. But that was just it, she supposed—those gestures were all on his terms, not hers. And until Joel decided on his own that he wanted to make a bolder move, Ruby’s hands would remain exactly as they were—one of them wrapped loosely around the papery petals of her souvenir, and the other hanging empty, Savannah’s humid breeze weaving in and out of the empty spaces between her fingers.

Later, once Ruby’s palm rose was deposited safely on the dresser in their motel room, the delicate shell of a waffle cone took its place in that hand, softening by the minute as melted strawberry ice cream threatened to turn the whole thing to mush. Ruby giggled to herself as her tongue raced to keep up with the pink rivulets spilling over the sides of the cone, finding it difficult to coordinate walking and keeping the structural integrity of her dessert intact at the same time. Joel had gotten a scoop of butter pecan, a flavor that Ruby had made fun of him for as soon as they left the ice cream shop. “Butter pecan? Seriously? You are such an old man,” Ruby had teased, to which Joel was quick to respond with, “Yeah? Well, this old man just shelled out damn near eight fuckin’ dollars for two ice cream cones, so I’d like to hear a ‘thank you’ before any more smartass comments from you.” The pair just laughed as they continued down the block, enjoying the evening breeze and the last bits of late summer sun before it would disappear beyond the mossy oaks in a few minutes’ time. Joel had begun to lay out the next few days’ schedule as they prepared to cross the street—what time they’d have to check out of their room the following day, how long they’d be on the road for, where they might stop for the night—and Ruby was mostly listening, but didn’t quite want to believe that her time in this beautiful, magical city was already coming to an end. It felt like she could spend years of her life here, and still not have discovered every hidden gem that Savannah had to offer. She was glad, at least, that she’d have her palm rose to remember it by. She’d have to make sure to pack it delicately among the rest of her things at the end of the month, when she and her parents—

Oh, shit. Her parents. 

Ruby had promised that she’d call them every so often to update them on her trip. It had been nearly four days now since she’d climbed into Joel’s truck in the parking lot of that little baptist church, and they hadn’t heard a single word from her yet. They must be worried sick. Oh, God, she was a horrible daughter. Not only had she lied to them, but now she’d completely neglected to keep her word on the one thing she’d promised them in order for them to even let her leave in the first place. If they were concerned enough, would they call Janie’s parents? Ask them if they’d heard from their daughter, supposedly on a roadtrip with Ruby and two other girls, which they would obviously know nothing about her participation in because it was a complete lie? Ruby had to call home, right now, before her parents went to bed, getting one last night of restless sleep before they would no doubt report their daughter missing the next morning. There was a phone on the nightstand in their motel room, wasn’t there? It was a good twenty minute walk from downtown back to the Fairlane, but if they walked fast, maybe they could—

“Ruby!” Joel called out, breaking the catastrophizing spiral she’d begun to lose herself in. “Walk sign’s on, sweetheart. C’mon,” he beckoned, using his unoccupied hand to wave her towards him from the middle of the crosswalk.

“I… I can’t. We have to go back, my parents—” Ruby stuttered, the ice cream that remained in her cone now completely covering her hand in pale, sticky sweetness. She turned her back to Joel and started walking, taking her best guess as to the direction the motel was in. Ruby’d always had a poor sense of direction, one she’d inherited from her mother, but it didn’t really matter whether or not she knew exactly which side street would get her back to the Fairlane the quickest. She just needed to not be here anymore, now, before it was too late. 

Using her small size to her benefit, she weaved in and out of other pedestrians on the sidewalk, a wild and faraway look in her eye as she shoved her way past tourists spilling out of bars and restaurants. Joel, with his much larger form, stiffer joints, and the disadvantage of having accidentally given Ruby a ten second head start, struggled to keep pace. Through the noise of her own cacophonous thoughts and the boisterous conversations had over night caps, she could hear Joel’s gruff voice calling after her, muffled. “‘Scuse me, sorry, let me just, thank you—” she heard as his heavy footfalls raced to catch up. Ruby knew that she should stop, actually talk to Joel about her sudden realization instead of just taking off running, but she couldn’t help it. Once she started to panic, realizing whatever grave mistake she’d made of sleeping through her alarm or missing a deadline or forgetting to show up for her honor-society mandated volunteering, there was no stopping her until she made things right. 

“Woah, Jesus, sweetheart,” Joel exclaimed, grabbing Ruby by the back of her collar and yanking her backwards, narrowly missing being taken out at the knees by a rusted-out Blazer. The wind of the SUV whizzing by fluttered the hem of her skirt as the driver flashed her the finger, which Joel enthusiastically returned before grabbing Ruby’s shoulder and whipping her around to face him. He bent down to her height with his hands firmly planted on her shoulders, searching her face for whatever could’ve possibly possessed her to walk straight into traffic without a second thought. “Ruby, baby, the hell were you thinkin’? What’s wrong?” Joel asked, moving locks of windblown hair out of her face as Ruby’s eyes struggled to focus on his.

“It’s… M-my parents, I…” Ruby sniffled and stuttered, trying to keep her composure as she attempted to explain her racing thoughts through hiccuping breaths. “I told them I w-would call them, update them on my roadtrip, y’know? B-but, it’s been a couple days now and they haven't heard from me and if we don’t get back to the motel right now then they’ll—”

“Hey, hey,” Joel soothed, both of his large paws cupping Ruby’s flushed cheeks now. “I understand you’re upset, sweetheart, but… You can’t call them. Shit, I wish you hadn’t told ‘em that.”

Ruby inhaled shakily, a tear escaping her waterline that Joel was quick to wipe away with his thumb. She felt so immature, so dumb, like he was pointing out something completely obvious to her that she was too naïve to pick up on. Bargoers and tourists were looking at the two of them now, at the scene she was causing. Her face felt hot. “I can’t? W-why not? I told them I would—”

“I know what you told ‘em, honey. I heard you. But what’re you gonna do once you’ve got ‘em on the phone and they ask to speak with one’a your lil’ friends, hm? Can’t very well put Stacy on the phone with ‘em, now can you?” Joel explained, so plainly that it made Ruby’s stomach drop a little bit, incensed with herself that she hadn’t been smart enough to think of the hole a phone call home would put in her story sooner. Why had she made that promise to her parents? Stupid. 

“Janie,” Ruby corrected, quietly. More towards the pavement than to Joel.

He sighed. “Yeah, alright. Janie, sure. You see what I’m sayin’ though, right? If you wanna keep up your lil’ fib, you can’t call ‘em. I’m sorry, Ruby.”

The finality in Joel’s tone told Ruby that there was no room for rebuttal, only obedience. But he seemed to take pity on her watery eyes and worry-bitten bottom lip, and offered her an alternative solution—“Alright, how ‘bout this, hm? Pretty sure there were some postcards for sale in the lobby o’ the motel, why don’t we pick one’a them for you tonight, and we can send it off before we leave tomorrow? How’s that?”

Ruby thought on his proposition for a moment, then nodded her agreement. It wasn’t as immediate of a solve as Ruby would’ve liked, but it was better than nothing. Hopefully, her mother could keep a level head for another couple of days until Ruby’s postcard arrived in the mail, with lines upon lines of her loopy handwriting etched onto the back apologizing profusely for not calling like she’d promised she would, and telling yet another lie about how ‘there aren’t very many payphones along the way’ or ‘we have to save up our change for food and gas’ or something else only moderately believable. 

Joel smiled to himself, seeming satisfied that he was able to prevent another one of Ruby’s little meltdowns, and stood back up to his full height. “You ‘bout finished with this, I reckon?” He asked, gesturing to the pink and beige mess in Ruby’s hand that used to be her ice cream cone. She let him toss it into the trash for her, then wipe her hands clean with a few napkins he snatched off a nearby table, dampened with a few swipes of his tongue. Ruby didn’t speak as she let Joel take care of her, feeling guilty for causing a scene over something so juvenile and leaving him to pick up the pieces once again. But she was starting to get the impression that Joel liked doing these things for her, being someone she could depend on. And if it made both of them happy, why fight it? Wasn’t it nice to have somebody else there to lift the weight off of her shoulders for a change?

The pair of them returned to the edge of the sidewalk once Ruby’s eyes had dried and her hands had been wiped of their sticky residue, standing at a considerable and safe distance from the intersection this time, until the lights had switched and indicated a safe crossing. This time, Joel did take Ruby’s hand in his own, his long fingers wrapping almost entirely around the back of her hand as he clasped it tightly, leading her across the street and through the late evening crowd. She had practically tripped over herself in the crosswalk, hardly able to see straight as Joel’s touch covered her whole body in a fuzzy static electricity. Ruby was vibrating from the inside out, her skin aflame from head to toe, trying desperately to memorize the unique print of each one of Joel’s fingertips where they settled in between the canals created by her knuckles and tendons. His hand felt exactly how she thought it would—warm, soft in some places but rough in most, and heavy, his fingers so thick that she could feel a dull pain beginning to throb where they pushed her own delicate digits to the side in order to make way for their girth. Maybe if they left their fingers intertwined for long enough, Ruby’s would begin to mold themselves to the shape of Joel’s, forgetting that there was ever a time where they didn’t fit perfectly together.

When they arrived back at the Fairlane, Ruby picked out a postcard from the revolving rack near the front desk, and stood slightly behind Joel as he handed over a few coins for it. The postcard was relatively plain, a symmetrical and professional shot on the front of the large fountain in the park where Joel had bought Ruby her palm rose, and Savannah, Georgia in a neat cursive font positioned toward the bottom. She and Joel had sat at the small breakfast table in their room while they brainstormed what she would write, making sure it all sounded believable without being a complete lie, and certainly omitting any mention of Joel. The final script they’d landed on was simple, but reassuring, and was signed off with a cheery promise to tell her parents all about her travels as soon as she was back home. 

Home.

The more time Ruby had spent with Joel, the more he started to feel like home. Somewhere you felt safe, understood, cared for, without any judgement or pressure or expectations—that was what a home was supposed to be, wasn’t it? Not necessarily a place, but a feeling. A person, maybe. And who would she have once she went away to college? No one. Not even far enough away from “home” to actually feel like she had any sort of freedom, like she could behave as something any less than what her parents expected her to be—perfect. With Joel, Ruby didn’t have to be perfect. He’d proven to her time and time again that she could be messy and careless and flawed and he would still be there, every time, to clean her up and set her right and not have a disappointed look in his eye every time like she was existing wrong for just making a goddamn mistake.

Maybe Ruby didn’t want to go home. Maybe Joel was beginning to feel more like home than that stifling house in that decaying town ever did. 

Or, maybe she was eighteen and feeling something that she didn’t know how to name and she didn’t know what the hell she was doing or what she was thinking, only that it felt good and that it was scaring her that it felt good. Maybe she was just a stupid goddamn kid. “You’re smarter than this, Ruby,” she could hear her father’s voice scolding. “You’re better than this.”

Maybe she should go to sleep.

Ruby and Joel’s bags were packed and ready to be carried back down the stairs the next morning, her postcard written out and stamped and still sitting on the shiny white Formica table where she’d left it, making sure it was in a spot where she’d see it so that she wouldn’t forget it. She could sort of make it all out in the dark, a fuzzy collection of shapes just beyond Joel’s sleeping form, his chest rising and falling with each of his slow, crackling breaths. Ruby studied him for a moment, glanced down at where one of his hands was dangling off the bed, the same one she’d held just earlier that evening. She stretched out her own fingers a bit, wiggled them around in the air to see if she could conjure the feeling of Joel’s calloused fingers against her skin once more. 

“Stupid,” Ruby muttered quietly into the dark. Joel didn’t stir.

She turned onto her side, facing away from him, and closed her eyes. She hoped, for her sake, that she wouldn’t dream of him.

—

The drive from Savannah to Austin took three full days to complete. The routine each day was fairly simple, nearly automatic by now—sleep late, grab some coffee and something that resembled a breakfast food from the nearest convenience store to their motel, drive for five or six hours until Joel’s lumbar told him to stop, and then find a place with “VACANCY” flashing in neon on a sign outside that had a room with two beds available. Simple, maybe a little boring. But comfortable. 

Most of the sights outside Ruby’s window looked practically the same from state to state, all lowlands and swamps and Spanish moss that made it difficult to distinguish when Georgia became Alabama became Mississippi became Louisiana. If she had dozed off and missed passing the sign that welcomed her to each state, she could only figure out where she was by trying to determine which state’s license plate made up the majority of those she saw on the road. Otherwise, all the billboards shouting at her to REPENT for the last 16 hours or so made it hard to tell.

“Did you go to church growing up, Joel?” She’d asked somewhere along the way, having exhausted Joel’s extensive catalog of country crooner cassette tapes by this point in the trip, and hoping now that they’ve spent several days together, Joel would be open to talking about himself more than he was when they’d first left Ruby’s hometown.

“Huh?” Joel startled, like Ruby’s question had broken the hypnosis that several hundred miles of double yellow lines had begun to impose on him. “I mean, I guess so, yeah. Why d’you ask?”

Ruby shrugged. “Just… seems like a big thing down here. All the billboards, y’know?” She giggled, gesturing to another one that they were passing, big bold letters asking her if she died tonight, where would she go?

“Oh… Yeah, exactly. Kinda had to.” Joel cleared his throat, then wriggled around in his seat, more so just to fidget a little bit than to give his back any kind of real reprieve. Ruby could tell that answering any kind of question about himself made Joel painfully uncomfortable, but she wasn’t letting up.

“And you grew up in Austin you said, right?”

“Mhm.”

Ruby nodded, picking at the fraying embroidery on the sleeve of the sweatshirt she wore—the same navy blue one she had woken up in, the morning after she’d met Joel. She liked how oversized and comfortable it was, and had worn it on a few chilly mornings since then. 

“Do you still have family there?”

“Nope.”

Shot down again. Ruby was beginning to feel a little deflated, but she was determined to get some personal history out of him somehow. After all she’d confessed to Joel, wasn’t it only fair that she knew more about him than his first name and where he was from?

More about Cricket?

The word—the name of Joel’s niece, she assumed—was hand-stitched just above the cuff of the sweatshirt’s left sleeve, in a thread color only a few shades lighter than the dark cotton it was embroidered on. It was a strange placement for such a thing, sitting on the underside of her wrist and covered up by the folds of the excess material most of the time. Ruby had only spotted it this morning, and it’s what spurred her questioning in the first place. If she was going to be wearing somebody else’s clothes, she felt like she shouldn’t be such a stranger to her anymore.

“What about your niece? Is she—”

“Enough, Ruby, okay? Jesus…” Joel snapped, his grip on the wheel becoming tighter, along with the knot in between his brows.

At this, Ruby did finally sink into her seat, pulling her knees up to her chest and scooting the inch or two further away from him that the confined space of the truck’s cabin would allow. Her eyes began to water, but she wouldn’t cry, not at something as inane as this. She blinked away any moisture that did pool along her lower lashline, refusing to let it spill, and tried to time her sniffles with the sounds of the truck’s tires rolling over a rough patch of asphalt. 

“I just wanna get to know you,” Ruby mumbled quietly toward the window, her head still turned away from Joel so that he wouldn’t see her pinkened eyes and flushed cheeks. “Why won’t you tell me anything?”

“‘Cause there’s nothin’ worth tellin’. Family’s a… complicated thing, okay? Is it such a crime that I don’t wanna ruin our good time by tellin’ you about every single fuckin’ thing that’s ever happened to me?” Joel spat. He wasn’t quite yelling at Ruby, but his tone was still exasperated and pointed, scolding her like she was a dog who found herself in a room of the house she didn’t know she wasn’t allowed in.

“...You don’t have to be so mean,” Ruby whispered. The passenger door’s handle was digging into her upper arm now as she pressed herself into it, the hard plastic against the bone causing a dull ache to throb there, but she didn’t mind the sensation. It felt appropriately punishing. Ruby crossed her arms, drew her knees up even closer, tried to make herself impossibly smaller as she cowered from this Joel that was foreign to her, who she didn’t like at all, who she wanted to shove back inside whatever dusty old box he’d come from and pretend like he didn’t exist. 

“I’m not—” Joel sighed, uncurling the fingers of his right hand from around the steering wheel, and reaching them toward Ruby’s shrunken form. She flinched at his sudden movement, and he retreated for a moment, before settling his grip on the back of her head. Joel’s hand followed the current of her hair, down the slope of her neck and sliding off her shoulder, returning to the wheel a second later. An awkward gesture that intended to be soothing, maybe even apologetic, but executed more like a strange little caress. “I’m not tryin’ to be mean, darlin’. Some things are just off limits, okay? Is that fair?”

“Then you could’ve just said that.” Joel puffed out a few stuttering, breathy noises, like he wanted to be sure of the words that would come out of his mouth next before releasing them. “You’re right, I could have. I’m sorry, lil’ gem.”

Ruby couldn’t help the smile that tugged on her lips. She turned to face Joel now, and found that a shy grin was playing on his mouth, too.

“Little gem?” Ruby asked, a lilt in her voice that conveyed just how sweet she thought the nickname was. It was enough to make her forgive the little spat they’d had just moments ago, move on with nothing more than a mental note to herself not to tread in that area with Joel again, unless he was the one to invite her there first.

“Yeah, y’know… Just thought of it, ‘cause Ruby, ‘n all—”

“No, I get it. I like it,” she assured, unable to relax the bunching of her cheeks as she turned the pet name over in her mind. Little gem, little gem, little gem…

So, Ruby was something precious to him, then. 

—

The odd couple had spent the better part of their first day in Austin lounging by the pool at their home base for the next few nights—the Lone Star Inn. A painfully gimmicky, kitschy tourist trap of a motel, but one that Joel knew Ruby would get a kick out of. “Just don’t go thinkin’ the whole rest of the state is exactly like this, okay? Promise you there’s more to it than cowboys and cactuses everywhere you fuckin’ look. I’ll show ya at some point, just… not today,” Joel had promised, settling down with a groan into a plasticky pool chair that probably used to be red at some point, but had now faded into more of a sunburnt pink. 

Neither of them had a swimsuit packed in their bags full of their meager belongings, but they weren’t really out there to swim, anyway. It was more about the principle of the activity—this was what people did on vacation, wasn’t it? Swipe a thick white streak of sunscreen across the bridge of their noses, hold out one of those things that looked like a magazine made out of aluminum and tan their sunglass-clad faces with the reflected rays. It didn’t matter if you actually swam or not, it just mattered that you looked like you could, if you wanted to. Like having a heated pool full of glistening, turquoise water right in front of you wasn’t the least bit tempting, because you had one in the backyard of the big white mansion you traveled here from, anyway, so this one wasn’t even all that special. Pretending, that’s what Ruby and Joel were doing. Pretending that they had this endless, scorching summer still ahead of them, like there wasn’t only a week left on their time together. Like they could just be these versions of themselves forever.

If they wanted to.

But Ruby didn’t have any sunscreen or a pair of sunglasses or one of those reflective whatever-they-ares, or even a pair of flip flops. She was dressed in yet another set of clothes borrowed from the stash in Joel’s truck—a tank top so form-fitting that the dusty pink cups of her bra poked out the top, and a looser pair of linen shorts that fluttered in the occasional warm breeze. Ruby had brought a dog-eared and weathered Penguin Classic out to the pool with her, but had hardly made any progress. A loud splash from a small child leaping off the diving board startled her out of her little daydream, a few chlorinated drops landing on the paragraph that she’d been reading over and over again, without actually absorbing any of it. Not that it mattered anyway, she’d read the story so many times from cover-to-cover that she could probably just close the book and recite the rest of it from memory. A wholly boring and predictable exercise that was not on the list of things her endless summer-self wanted to be doing. Ruby understood that, at Joel’s age, he needed a day of recovery before putting his achy bones to work again trekking around the city of Austin, but the two of them were wasting precious time. She had decidedly not traveled hundreds of miles from a house with a pristinely white picket fence enclosing a perfectly manicured lawn and a pool that gets cleaned twice a week by someone her parents have on payroll, so this whole thing was special to her. Ruby wanted to be exploring, trying some of that Texas barbecue that Joel had promised her, learning new things and reinventing herself every day until she returned home a version of Ruby that was completely unrecognizable, at least on the inside. A version of herself that could walk onto campus that Fall feeling like she deserved to be there. Totally not a sheltered little girl anymore. Experienced. 

It was a lot of pressure to put on Joel, to completely transform her and help her hatch out of her chrysalis in just a mere fourteen days. But he seemed like he could handle it. Ruby knew that he could help break apart her shell, bit by bit, until she returned home ready to fly.

Maybe she just needed to be brave enough to put the first crack in it, and then Joel would follow with the rest. 

Ruby’s limbs seemed to be moving before her brain had given them permission to, slamming shut her wrinkled and fraying book and tossing it onto the faded slats of the pool chair behind her. Her bare feet carried her along the side of the pool, padding delicately across the pavement that burned her skin with each step, until she reached the diving board. The platform wasn’t a high-dive by any means, not even an entire twelve inches off the ground, but it was enough to drive home its trite symbolism as she took a leap. The pool was bath water-warm as it enveloped her. Ruby let the momentum of her dive propel her most of the way to the shallow end, gliding through the water until her lungs began to burn.

She tried to breach the surface as gracefully as possible, hoping her wet hair would settle on her head in a somewhat delicate way as she wiped the chlorine from her eyes, blinking hard against the sun. Her arms sliced through the water as she made her way back over to Joel, then folded over each other to rest on the edge of the pool, her breasts pushing against her forearms purposefully. Ruby batted her lashes up at him, treading the water beneath her as she waited for him to be ensnared in her trap.

“Whatcha doin’?” Ruby asked, pressing herself even further into the edge of the pool, craning her neck to see what Joel had been hunched over all day. Not only had the melting heat and cannonball splashes and her own runaway thoughts distracted Ruby from her reading all afternoon, but also the steady shick, shick, shick that had been coming from her chaperone ever since he’d sat down in his chair.

Joel flicked his eyes up from his project, but didn’t actually move his head. His gaze darted rapidly from Ruby’s face, down to her exposed chest, back up to her face, and then down to the little object in his hand, but it had landed exactly where she had wanted it to nonetheless. Ruby didn’t miss the way the corner of his whiskery mouth quirked upward or the tomato-red color that flooded his cheeks after he took her in, and it made a heat settle in her stomach to rival the one beating down from the sky.

“It’s, uh… Just somethin’ I’ve been workin’ on. To keep my hands busy, y’know,” Joel replied, returning to his previous position of hunching over his hands, his brows furrowed in concentration.

“What is it? Can I see?”

“Sure, if you can get yourself up outta that pool. I ain’t helpin’ you.”

Ruby and Joel each exchanged a teasing smirk, and then she pushed herself up out of the water, again catching the way Joel was drinking her in just the same as he did that first night at the bar. His tongue wet his bottom lip as he struggled to keep his eyes on his work in progress, raking them across Ruby’s figure as she wrung out her hair, at the way her clothes were now partially translucent and clinging to her curves in a way that they weren’t before.

Joel cleared his throat when Ruby approached, turning the object over in his hands and pretending to examine some imaginary flaw. She stood behind him with her hands on her hips, peering over his broad shoulders to see at last what he’d been working on.

“It’s, um… What is it? A bird, or something?” Ruby asked, tilting her head this way and that as she tried to make sense out of the little wooden shape that Joel was cradling in his palms.

“It’ll be a bird, once I’m done with it. Hopefully. A, uh… A Ruby-Throated Hummingbird, more specifically. It’s just, y’know… They’re tiny things. Hard to get all the details right.” Joel brought the wooden bird closer to his face, squinting as he rubbed the pad of his thumb over an area it looked like he was in the middle of adding a feathery texture to.

Ruby could’ve melted into a puddle right there on the pavement. She felt her heart split in two, the halves dancing and thrumming around each other and swirling around in her chest before coming back together again, with only a few beats having been skipped in between. This. This was the reveal she had been waiting for, something personal and intimate that she could add to her list of things that she knew about Joel—he snores like a goddamn bear, he’s from Austin, he has a niece named Cricket, and he carves little wooden animals for fun.

“Ruby-Throated Hummingbird? Is that… because—”

“Mhm, sure is… ‘S for you. Or, it will be. Unless you hate it.”

Ruby nudged him playfully. “Joel, oh my God… I had no idea you could do something like this. You just started this today? Do you, like… make a lot of these?”

He scoffed humbly. “Oh, please… Like you couldn’t pull out somethin’ like this with your eyes closed, lil’ miss perfect. Ain’t nothin’ special.”

“No, no way. Art was the one class I could never pull an A in, no matter how hard I tried. Everything I turned in looked like total junk. I could never make something like that, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

Joel looked back at Ruby with a warm smile on his face, considering her words. 

“I could teach you a lil’ bit, if you’d like. Here, c’mere, lil’ gem.” Joel spread apart his thick legs as he extended his invitation, patting the now-vacant spot on the pool chair between his thighs. 

Ruby swallowed, and it rang loudly in her ears. She surveyed the pool area for any potential onlookers, but the mother and young child must have gone back inside when Ruby wasn’t paying attention. Their flip flops and tote bags were missing, too, meaning they likely weren’t going to come back out. It was just Ruby and Joel, now, and the lapping of the water filling the silence that lingered.

“O-okay, sure, yeah,” Ruby agreed, her heart hammering against her ribcage as she situated herself on the pool chair. Her body had never been this close to Joel’s before, at least not while she was sober, and it had her feeling… strange. Electrified. There was a fluttering heat beginning to bloom in the seat of her soaked underwear, and her skin felt like a live wire everywhere that it touched Joel’s, sparks flying off of their flesh and sizzling out on the damp cement at every point of contact. Ruby wasn’t totally sure of the intent behind Joel’s gesture, so she tried to put a respectable distance between her back and Joel’s chest, but it hardly mattered at all once he put his hands on her hips and pulled her back towards him. He was wearing one of his signature button-up plaid shirts that had seen some better days, but with the day being so scorching, he had the sleeves rolled up and the buttons undone to expose a ribbed tank top that probably didn’t start out as its current dingy, off-white color. The neckline was low enough that a thicket of salt-and-pepper chest hair was visible over the hem, and Ruby could swear she could feel each and every one of them tickling the base of her neck, along with the puffs of Joel’s warm breath.

Joel hooked his scruffy chin over one of Ruby’s shoulders and wrapped his arms around her, holding the half-formed wooden bird in one hand, and a sharp carving tool in the other. 

“Here, you take these,” Joel instructed, transferring each of the items into Ruby’s much smaller hands. “I’ll put my hands over top of yours, and guide ‘em where they need to go. Sound good, sweetheart?”

All that Ruby could bring herself to do was nod. With the view that Joel had over her shoulder, she was painfully aware that he was more than likely staring at her breasts, at the way her still-wet top clung tightly to the curves of them. She tried to adjust her seat in an attempt to relieve some of the ache between her thighs, but only ended up exacerbating the feeling when she brushed up against the bulge in Joel’s shorts, instead. He released a soft little groan at the contact.

“Now… Hold ‘im in your palm, just like this. And use your thumb, make sure you’ve got a good grip on ‘im, so he won’t go anywhere once we start carvin’.” Joel maneuvered Ruby’s digits for her, arranging them just-so. The poor thing’s neck was nestled in the dip between her thumb and forefinger, her other fingers wrapping around the far wing and coming to rest on top of its chest. If the animal were alive, she would surely be suffocating it. Joel continued, “This tool I got here is real sharp, okay? So we’re gonna be gentle, not cut too deep.”

“But… What if I make a mistake? I don’t wanna mess up all your work,” Ruby worried aloud, tentatively accepting the wood carving tool as Joel placed it into her unoccupied hand. She let out a shuddering breath as she watched the way that Joel’s fingers engulfed her own, his thumb nearly double the size of hers. Ruby was beginning to feel a little lightheaded, the close proximity of Joel’s body that she had been longing for now suddenly feeling overwhelming. Every ounce of strength in her body was put to use keeping her voice steady and her limbs stable, so as not to give herself away. But something told her that Joel knew exactly the effect he was having on her, and that he was enjoying it. 

Joel huffed a confident chuckle. “Ain’t gonna mess it up, lil’ gem. ‘S real easy, you’ll see.”

With shallow, sure strokes, Joel guided the metal end of the tool along the lightly visible lines he had marked out earlier, drawing a map of where each feather of the hummingbird’s wings would be formed. Together, Ruby and Joel worked to carve narrow canals out of the wood, flicking away each shaving as they went and adding it to the small pile already formed on the ground beside the pool chair. Ruby’s movements were unsure and wavering, and she held her breath as Joel took the lead, afraid that even one hiccuping breath would slice the whole wing clean off.

“Breathe, sweetheart, it’s okay. You’re doin’ so good, see? Nothin’ to it, is there?” Joel praised, and his words traveled straight to Ruby’s core, adding to the size of the tight ball of warmth already forming there. She let out a giggle, and it sounded more like a whimper than she would’ve liked. Of all the teacher’s-pet-gifted-child stereotypes that she fell into, responding well to praise might have been the most glaring one. It was becoming painful, how badly Ruby wanted Joel to touch her in her most sensitive places, grumbling out a string of “so good”s and “attagirl”s and—

“Ow! Shit—” Ruby shrieked, hissing as she snapped her hummingbird-holding hand towards her face to inspect the damage. She must have let her mind wander so far away, not paying attention to how much pressure she was putting on the sharp end of the tool, that it slipped right out from between two wooden feathers and took a chunk of skin from the side of her thumb. A dark crimson pearl immediately began to form over top of the raw skin, and started dripping down the meat of Ruby’s hand before she’d even gotten a chance to fully process what had happened. The stinging pain of the injury had taken a few moments to register, but once it did, she couldn’t stop her tears as they swelled over her waterlines and streamed down her cheeks. 

Joel had tossed his project onto the pavement without a second thought, taking Ruby’s fragile wrist in both of his hands and surveying the cut himself. “Oh, Jesus… You’re okay, sweet girl. Ain’t too bad, here—” Ruby watched over her shoulder in stunned stillness as Joel brought her hand to his mouth, soothing the cut with his tongue as he licked the blood away. He let her skin go with a wet sucking sound, like he had just finished cleaning all the meat and viscera off of a pork rib. “There. Just hold your hand up while I go ‘n get you a bandaid, okay? Stay right there,” Joel instructed, peeling himself off of the pool chair with some effort before marching back inside the motel. 

Ruby’s lips remained parted, her eyes unblinking and fixed on the wet ring of Joel’s saliva that remained on her hand. What the hell? Sure, she’d kitten-licked a papercut before to tide her over until she could fish out a bandaid from her medicine cabinet, but… That was a lot of blood. A viscous, bright red dribble that Joel had sucked into his mouth like it was honey. 

Joel had returned quickly with a dampened rag, a tube of Neosporin, and a sizable bandage, breaking Ruby out of her stupor as he knelt in front of her. Her cut had bled halfway down her forearm in the short time it had taken Joel to retrieve his supplies, but he’d used the cloth to wipe it up this time, and tenderly dressed her wound as if he’d done so a hundred times before. He must have gotten practice taking care of Cricket’s scraped knees and bloody noses, Ruby presumed. 

“S-should we go to the hospital? Do you think I need stitches?” she asked, surprised at how frightened and juvenile her voice sounded.

“No, no. I don’t think so. We’ll just keep an eye on it, keep it clean. You’ll be fine, darlin’. Here—” Joel placed a soft, scruffy kiss over top of the bandage, and looked up at Ruby with his mossy eyes. “How’s that? Feel better?”

Ruby couldn’t help but smile, and the icy, off-put twinge in her stomach had begun to melt away as quickly as it had formed. 

—

“Absolutely not. No way am I gettin’ on that fuckin’ thing,” Joel said, eyeing up the hundred foot tall steel death trap that stood before them. Ruby hadn’t even really wanted to ride it either, she just wanted to know what Joel’s reaction would be if she suggested it. He didn’t disappoint. 

“What?! Come on… I’m sure it would only make you throw up, like, a little bit.”

Joel chuckled at that. “Would throw up one’a my fuckin’ kidneys, that’s what I’d do. You are outta your mind, girl.” 

Ruby and Joel continued their stroll down the grassy aisle once she had recovered from her fit of laughter. On either side of them were endless rows of rigged carnival games, all competing for their attention with their rapidly blinking neon signs—PRIZE EVERY TIME! STEP RIGHT UP! TRY YOUR LUCK! Joel didn’t have quite enough money on him for all the tries it would take to win Ruby one of those cheaply made, life-sized teddy bears, having nearly depleted what he did have in his wallet to get each of them some ridiculously priced deep-fried delicacies and deli containers full of prickly pear lemonade. But she was okay with living vicariously through the lucky few couples she saw carting one around. 

The truth was, Ruby felt lucky that Joel had even agreed to take her here in the first place. He was tired and achy and a hundred other things that made taking her to the county fair sound like a nightmarish experience, but when Ruby had shoved the brightly-colored pamphlet from the motel lobby in his face and pleaded with her big, sparkling blue eyes if they could please, please go, just for a little bit, Joel had given in rather quickly. He’d probably agreed mostly out of pity, anyway, seeing the way that Ruby had been nursing her hand ever since his tool had put a slice in it. With a few promises made not to leave his side, not to stay any later than ten o’clock, and not to get on any of those “rickety fuckin’ rides”, as Joel had put it, the two had made the short drive to the fairgrounds together, and enjoyed each other’s company as the sun went down. They would be getting back on the road again the next morning, and Ruby wanted to make sure that she made the most of her last moments in the Lone Star State. And splitting a few paper plates with Joel, each piled high with saucy barbecue and sugary confections, seemed as good a way to spend what was left of their second night as any.

Although the days in Austin had been meltingly hot, the evening brought a chill that raised goosebumps along Ruby’s arms. She hugged them close to her body, shivering as she rubbed her hands all along the lengths of her upper arms, but the friction created little heat. Joel seemed to be doing just fine in the plain t-shirt he was wearing, but he offered up an extra layer of Ruby’s choosing from the stash in his truck. He only teased her a little bit for having left her favorite sweatshirt back at the motel, even though he warned her that she might end up needing it. It was getting late, and the two of them really should’ve been making their way back out to the parking lot, anyway.

While Ruby rooted around in the back seat for another sweatshirt or flannel or something that would fit her better than some of the other items from the pile that Joel had provided her with, Joel had put down the truck’s tailgate, and hoisted himself into the bed with a strained noise. He was lighting a cigarette, protecting the flame of his lighter from the nighttime breeze with a cupped hand when Ruby approached him, still wriggling her arms through the sleeves of the tattered brick-colored flannel she had chosen. This one must have belonged to Joel, not Cricket, based on how it practically fit like a dress on her, the sleeves so long that they brushed against her fingertips. Ruby lifted herself onto the platform and settled herself beside Joel, feeling warmed by both the extra layer of clothing and the excitement of his close proximity, far away from the cacophonous noise of the fair. She could finally hear herself think out here under the stars. And what she was thinking, was that there was something about Joel smoking that was really attractive. Ruby’s mother would’ve throttled her with her bare hands if she was ever caught doing such a thing, but the casual ease with which Joel put the cigarette between his lips and held it there before blowing a puff of smoke into the air, made that fluttery feeling return to the apex of her thighs.

“I thought you wanted to go back,” Ruby said, eyeing the practiced way that Joel tapped a few ashes over the side of the truck, into the grass. “Get some sleep before we head out again tomorrow.”

“What, you that eager to get outta here?” Joel had teased, taking another puff of his cigarette. Ruby liked the way that it smelled, liked the idea of her hair and her clothes smelling like it long after it would be put out. “We will. After the fireworks.”

Ruby thought for a second, making sure she remembered what time of year it was. “Fireworks? But… it’s not a holiday or anything, is it?”

Joel had laughed at that. “They don’t need a reason to shoot ‘em off out here, sweetheart. Just bein’ alive in the great state of Texas is reason enough.” He glanced at his watch. “Should start in a few minutes here.”

The first of the fireworks was launched into the sky a moment later, remaining suspended in mid air for just a moment before exploding. The boom of it was slightly delayed in reaching Joel and Ruby’s ears, but they both watched in awe as vibrant blue sparks shot out in all directions, glittering among the stars before sizzling out as they made their way back down towards the Earth. More fireworks were shot off in quick succession after the first one had made its debut, bright greens and reds and golds of all sizes bursting one right after the other. Ruby’s favorites were the smaller gold ones that looked like fairydust, their sparks staying illuminated for a bit longer than the others, and sounding like a frying egg as their brightness dissipated. 

The dazzling display must have gone on for fifteen minutes at least, during which time Ruby slowly edged herself closer and closer to Joel, until their upper arms were pressed against one another and her head was resting on his shoulder. She could practically feel her pulse all the way up in her throat, her palms dampening with every inch that the distance between them grew smaller, but she was tired of waiting. Ruby hadn’t been able to get Joel’s woodcarving lesson from the day before out of her mind since it had happened, despite the wound she’d acquired because of it. She had ashamedly even reached a hand underneath her underwear that night where she slept just feet away from Joel, touching herself as she tried to conjure up the feeling of his clothed bulge nestled against her lower back again. His tobacco-tinted breath, his gentle guidance, his praising words, Ruby thought about them over and over and over again as her fingers rubbed circles around her swollen bud. She’d buried her face into her pillow to muffle her labored and frustrated breathing when she had gotten herself so close, but couldn’t quite finish the job. She knew that Joel’s much larger, more confident, more experienced fingers could get her there, if she could just muster up the goddamn courage to ask him for what she wanted.

Ruby could tell that this must be the finale now, the way that dozens of fireworks were exploding so rapidly, they sounded like automatic gunfire. If she didn’t do something about her feelings now, tonight, when the darkness made her feel a little brave and the explosions in the sky were covering up the sound of her jackhammering heart, then she probably never would. Her roadtrip of a lifetime would come to an end and she would step onto her college campus next month the exact same girl she was the night she met Joel, the girl who was only pretending to be everything she really wanted to be. 

She lifted her head off of Joel’s broad shoulder, which prompted him to look away from the colorful display over the fairgrounds, and turn towards Ruby instead. It nearly took her breath away, how beautiful he looked like this, with a gradient of colors reflecting off of his delicately lined skin and a whole galaxy twinkling in his eyes. Ruby looked from his mouth, to his searching eyes, and back down to his parted lips. She took a deep breath and leaned in before she could think twice about it, and pressed her lips against Joel’s. 

His lips were warm, soft, and he tasted mostly like his recently finished cigarette, with traces of powdered sugar and fried dough still lingering. The wiry whiskers of his beard tickled the skin around Ruby’s mouth, and they held the kiss until the sounds of the fireworks had faded, their loud booms being replaced by quiet, melodic insect chirps. She kept her lips perfectly still, too nervous and inexperienced to do anything more than just leave their mouths pressed together for as long as Joel would allow. He didn’t touch her, didn’t move a muscle, but when Ruby had finally pulled away, she could see that he’d had his eyes closed, just like she had. He opened them again slowly, his gaze finding Ruby’s just as the burning heat of complete and utter embarrassment began to claw its way up the back of her neck.

“I… I’m so sorry, Joel. I didn’t—” she started.

But then Joel’s mouth was on hers again, his large paws on either side of Ruby’s head as he licked into her mouth, devouring her. She struggled to keep up with his ferity, both of them clashing tongues and teeth and breathing heavily into each other’s mouths. 

Joel had finally pulled away after a couple of very heated, very wet minutes, his hands remaining firmly planted on the sides of Ruby’s face as he forced their eyes to meet. “Wait, wait, hold on… Are you sure about this?” he panted, his brows knotted intently. 

“Yes, I’m sure,” Ruby consented desperately. “Of course I’m sure. Why wouldn’t I be sure?” Her eyes fluttered closed as she leaned in again, but Joel stopped her.

“Just… Jesus. So fucking young, Ruby girl. I want you to be sure about this.” Joel seemed so earnest in his plea, and it only made Ruby want him more. No high school or college boy could ever make her feel cared for like this, she knew. She’d heard stories from other girls at school, about boys who took what they wanted, even if it made them uncomfortable, even if they said no. Or, without even asking at all. Ruby felt lucky that her first hand hold, first kiss, first everything, would be with a man as kind and caring as Joel. “Tell me you want this,” he rasped.

“I want this, Joel. Please—” 

Ruby leaned towards Joel again, and he didn’t resist this time, allowing her to crash her lips into his once more. His hands traveled from her warmed cheeks down to her slender hips, grabbing hold of them and pulling her onto his lap, their lips remaining locked the entire time. Ruby could feel his arousal through the thin cotton of her shorts, and it felt even larger and more solid than it had the afternoon before. She clumsily began to rock herself on it, struggling to settle into a rhythm as she released pathetic-sounding whimpers against his spit-slick skin.

Suddenly, the impassioned sounds of their kissing were interrupted by Joel’s chuckling, muffled against Ruby’s lips. She ceased her movements in Joel’s lap, pulling away to look at him with a pouty look on her face.

“What? What is it?” Ruby looked down at where their hips were connected, then back up to Joel’s face, the crinkles around his eyes becoming more prominent as he laughed. “Does it… tickle, or something?”

“I guess it does, sweet girl, in a sense.” Joel tucked a few wild locks of Ruby’s hair behind her ears as he looked at her, and used the pad of his thumb to wipe a thick smear of saliva off of her bottom lip. “But it ain’t that, it’s just… You really don’t have a clue in the world what you’re doin’, do ya?” 

“Well… no. I told you that I’ve never… y’know,” Ruby squeaked out, embarrassed that her lack of experience had been so obvious. She lifted up one of her legs and moved to swing herself out of Joel’s lap, but he held her in place.

“I know, sweet girl. And that ain’t gonna change in the back o’ this truck. We’ll do it right, I promise,” Joel reassured. “We can just keep doin’ this, for now. I’ll show you how to move them beautiful hips you were blessed with. C’mere…”

Joel cradled Ruby’s jaw, and brought her in for another deep kiss. He snaked his tongue into her mouth as he replaced his hands on her waist, his thumbs nearly meeting each other at her navel. Joel used a firm grip to move her hips back and forth, slowly at first, creating a beautiful friction over top of his clothed cock that made him groan into her mouth. Ruby giggled at the sound he made, impressed with herself that she was able to draw such a pleasured noise from him. 

“What’s so funny, huh?” Joel teased, smiling against Ruby’s lips. 

Ruby shook her head, diving back in for more fry-oil flavored kisses. “Nothin’. Just… easier than I thought.”

Joel jerked his head back, smirking as he examined the satisfied look on Ruby’s face. “Oh yeah? To do what?”

“To make you feel good.”

Joel scoffed. “Baby, I was ‘bout halfway there when you were layin’ your head on my shoulder. Seems easy ‘cause you’re makin’ me feel like a goddamn teenager. So fuckin’ gorgeous—”

Ruby’s confidence was fueled by Joel’s words, and she felt sexy for the first time in her life. Desired. Certainly no longer that foolish little girl at the bar in her hacked-up prom dress. She planted her hands on Joel’s expansive shoulders, losing herself in his whiskery kisses as he guided her movements. Every once in a while, the front seam of his jeans would catch on her covered clit in just the right way to send a little jolt of electricity through her nervous system, and she jumped in his hold a little bit every time it happened. 

Eventually, Ruby began to pick up the pace, replacing Joel’s efforts with more of her own as she started to feel more sure in her movements. Once she had settled into something steady, Joel’s hands migrated to her backside, sliding underneath her shorts and underwear to clutch at the plush skin there. She bucked into his lap desperately, Joel doing some of his own work to nudge his cock against her core, both of them heaving damp breaths against each other’s skin. Ruby screwed her eyes shut tightly, the rhythm of her kissing beginning to falter as she found that just right spot, both of their efforts creating the perfect amount of pressure to send her careening towards the edge. Ruby knew what was supposed to happen if she could only just push herself off of that cliff, had an idea of what it was supposed to feel like, but had never quite been able to get herself there on her own. But in the bed of Joel’s truck, under the endless Texas sky and hundreds of miles away from any shame she might have been made to feel about any of this, she felt closer than she’d ever been to finding out if the real thing was just as good as her imagination.

“Attagirl… ‘S that feel good, sweetheart? Can hear all those lil’ sounds you’re makin’... You gonna come for me, huh? You gonna come for me just like this?” Joel taunted through gritted teeth, his grip on Ruby’s skin becoming bruising as he seemed to near his own climax.

“I… I don’t know. I think so. Oh, God,” Ruby cried, surprised at how wanton she’d sounded. She didn’t even register that she was making any sounds at all, but she could hear them now—little uh, uh, uhs that left her lips without her even meaning for them to, pushing their way through her vocal chords of their own volition with every shallow rut of her hips. 

“Yeah, I think y’are… And I’m gonna be right behind you, lil’ gem, you know that? Makin’ me feel so fuckin’ good, this tight lil’ ass you got… So good for me, Ruby,” Joel growled.

Ruby released an even more debauched noise at Joel’s praise, giving up on kissing him entirely, and burying her face into his neck as she continued to chase her high. She mindlessly licked at the salty skin there, feeling too blissed out to do anything more than that while Joel helped her hips to maintain their rhythm. Any second now she would come undone, and it would only take a couple more gravelly praises from Joel for her to do so. Her head was too cloudy to ask him to keep going, but he seemed to understand the effect that his words were having on her, anyway.

“You can do it, sweetheart, I know you can. Gonna come right here in my lap, ain’t you? Such a good girl…”

“Ah! Oh my God, Joel, oh my God…” Ruby whined, convulsing on top of him as her orgasm tore through her body. And it did feel like she was falling, her stomach floating and fluttering like she had gotten onto one of those three-hundred foot tall drop rides, after all. All she could do was surrender herself to the feeling, all of her muscles contracting and convulsing at once as she whimpered into Joel’s neck. It was goddamn euphoric, and Joel’s voice was in her ear the entire time, shushing her and muttering more gentle praises between his own pleasured groans. He rubbed his huge hands across her back as she rode it out, telling her how good and beautiful and perfect she was, the whole thing playing out exactly as it did in her fantasies. The two of them stayed there for a long time, intertwined, sweating and catching their breath as they came down from their respective highs. 

“Thank you,” Ruby whispered, once she had finally come back into herself, able to find words again.

“You’re welcome, honey,” Joel replied. He gently guided her face away from his neck, and she blinked at him through heavy, lidded eyes. “Whaddyou say we head on back now, hm? Had just about enough excitement for one night, I reckon.”

Ruby nodded at him, all syrupy and slow, and Joel hummed an amused little noise. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the passenger side of the truck, tugging open the door with some carefully choreographed movements, before setting her delicately onto the seat. Ruby remembered the fear and confusion she had felt the first time Joel had buckled her into his truck, and couldn’t believe how different her life was now. In such a short amount of time, that stranger at the bar had become just about one of the most important people in the world to her, showing her all of what life had to offer outside of her little town, everything she was missing out on by conforming to a mold that just didn’t fit her anymore. She would be forever grateful for Joel, would keep this experience close to her for the rest of her life. Maybe someday she would have a daughter, and she would be the same age that Ruby is now, and she would tell her all about that magical man who whisked her away and taught her what it felt like to truly be free. 

Ruby and Joel had shared a bed for the first time that night, seeing no point in continuing to keep themselves separated from each other anymore, after what had happened at the fair. It was probably the deepest that Ruby had slept so far on their trip, snuggling up close to Joel’s big, warm body, and wrapping both of her arms around one of his muscled ones as she breathed in his scent. She wanted to bottle it up and take it home with her, keep it on her bedside table next to her palm rose, a little collection of keepsakes to keep this trip— to keep Joel—with her forever.

Ruby wished she didn’t have to say goodbye to him.

The thought had reared its head a few times now, and Ruby would slam the door in its face each time, not ready to think about what that day would be like just yet. But no matter how much she tried to keep it out, it would gnaw and scratch at the recesses of her mind, like a stray cat that she’d fed once and now wouldn’t leave her alone. The thought was especially present that night, in the wake of something so intimate. Ruby squeezed Joel’s arm a little tighter, tried to burrow into his warmth as she willed her tears not to spill. They still had a handful of days left to spend together, there was no use in mourning the ending when there were still a few chapters yet to go.

—

Ruby was pleasantly surprised when, the morning that the two of them were set to take off from Austin, Joel had insisted on breaking their typical breakfast routine. Instead of their usual assortment of pre-packaged muffins or danishes (usually of some kind of fruit variety, for good measure), Joel had wanted to treat Ruby to one last sampling of Texan cuisine before they left the state behind.

The two of them arrived at the Jackrabbit Diner at a time that was probably still considered to be “dawn”, but there were already a few tables taken up by who Ruby assumed to be regulars, reading that day’s paper while enjoying hot cups of coffee and steaming plates of delicious-looking food. The hostess greeted them with a warm smile despite the early hour, and showed them to a booth next to a window, the table already set with ceramic mugs and linen napkins in mismatched, vibrant colors. Ruby wasn’t really sure what kind of thing she would like from an offering so different from the plain, midwestern dishes she was used to, and was more than happy to allow Joel to order something for her.

While they waited for their breakfasts, Ruby filled out the back of her second postcard, “Greetings from AUSTIN” illustrated on the front. Little vignettes of the city were drawn inside each of the bold letters, and the head of a longhorn with lengthy, curving horns sat presiding over it all. Just as she’d done in Savannah, Ruby scrawled something on the back that lay somewhere between the truth and a lie—enough specifics to uphold the realism of the girls’ trip she was supposed to be on, but not too detailed as to raise any red flags should her parents ever compare notes with those of the girls she was claiming to be with. She slid the card across the table to Joel when she was done, and he slipped it into his coat pocket, promising that they’d find a mailbox on their way out of town to put it in. Ruby just nodded, unable to see the entire morning as anything other than a reminder of the inevitable. She propped her face up on one of her hands, exhaling wearily as she stared out the window beside their table. A row of vibrant green bushes lined the sidewalk outside, peppered with little pink-red flowers. Ruby studied the shape of them, how they almost looked like little dresses, their skirts fluttering in the breeze.

Ruby blinked once, and then suddenly there was a little winged creature paying special attention to one of the blooms, its wings flapping so rapidly that they were just a greenish blur around its body. The bird flitted from flower to flower, taking samples of nectar from each of their centers with its long beak. It was impossibly tiny, the bright red patch of feathers under its neck no larger than the size of Ruby’s thumb nail. 

“Joel… Joel, look!” Ruby exclaimed. She kept her voice to an excited whisper, conscious of the room full of people trying to enjoy their breakfasts, and afraid that if she spoke any louder, the sound would penetrate the glass of the window and scare the little thing away.

Joel leaned forward in his seat, craning his neck to see what she was looking at. His face softened when he saw it, a warm smile overtaking his weathered features. “Yep… Beautiful, ain’t they? Reminds me…” Joel pulled his backpack closer to him from the far end of the booth, and rooted around inside of it until he found what he was looking for. It didn’t come to Ruby’s mind right away, realizing at the same time that he pulled it out of his bag what Joel was trying to find—the hummingbird carving from two days earlier, now completed. He cradled it in the palm of one of his large, roughened hands as he presented it to her, a bashful blush rising to his cheeks.

“Oh my God, Joel…” Ruby remarked breathily as she took the carving from him, her brows peaked in amazement. The wooden bird was extraordinarily detailed, with dozens of individually formed feathers, and round little eyes resting in carefully carved-out sockets. It was practically life-sized, she knew now, an achievement she found impressive, considering the size of Joel’s hands and fingers. Ruby held the gift like it was the most fragile, most precious thing in the world, because it was. “It’s so beautiful, thank you. When did you have time to finish this?”

He shrugged. “Oh, y’know, chipped at it here ‘n there. Some of it while you were sleepin’. Most of it while you were primpin’ in the bathroom, though.” Joel flashed a teasing smirk at her, and Ruby kicked him under the table playfully. 

She continued to admire the hummingbird in her hands, tracing the pad of her finger along its primary feathers, and giving it an affectionate stroke on top of its smooth head. Ruby imagined it almost as a little pet, a companion who could be by her side forever, one that she’d never have to say goodbye to. Moisture collected on her waterlines at the sentiment, and a drop of it spilled over her lashes before she could blink it away. She tried to swipe it off of her cheek quickly, but Joel had seen it, anyway.

“Hey, hey… What’s the matter, lil’ gem?” he asked, reaching across the table to hold her unoccupied hand. He rubbed his calloused thumb across her skin comfortingly.

“Nothing, it’s just… Even after all this is over—” Ruby’s voice broke on the last word, and she could almost feel the temperature in the room drop at the same time. Joel’s grip on her hand weakened, and when she looked up at him, the expression on his face was unreadable. She continued, anyway—“I’m… I’m so glad I’ll have this. To remember you by.”

Joel pulled his hand away, then, opting to rest them both on top of the table, formed into fists. He seemed offended, almost. Hurt by what Ruby had said.

He turned his head to the leaves and blooms outside, but the carving's real-life counterpart was gone, now. “...Over?” he prodded.

“Yeah, you know… At the end of this week, when you take me back home.” Joel just looked at her, wearing the same stony look. “I don’t want it to end, obviously. I’ve been… so grateful for all this, for you,” Ruby added, hoping to soften whatever blow she’d accidentally inflicted. 

This wasn’t a surprise to Joel, was it? The fact that their time together had an expiration date on it. Ruby thought back to that hazy morning in the motel room back home, when she’d first agreed to embark on this trip with him. “I can have ya back by then,” she remembered Joel saying to her, remembered feeling confident that they were both on the same page—they’d have a few weeks of fun together, he’d show her everything she was missing out on by staying cooped up in those hundred or so square miles she’d grown up in, and then she’d be dropped off in the same place he’d picked her up from. Why was he acting like she was completely blindsiding him with this? As much as Ruby was dreading the end of the week, and as painful as she knew it would be to leave Joel behind, there was never a scenario she imagined where she abandoned college, abandoned her parents, to stay with him. It just wasn’t realistic, and she was smart enough to know that, despite all of her girlish fantasies.

“You really still wanna go back there?” Joel asked, an icy edge to his voice.

“Joel… I told you I have to. That’s what we agreed on, remember? I mean… That’s still okay, right?” Ruby searched his eyes for any sign that she was getting through to him, but didn’t find one. Surely he would shake himself out of his surly temperament, realize that whatever alternative future he was imagining didn’t make any sense, just like Ruby had. But he only chewed on his bottom lip, shaking his head as he thought on her words.

Ruby started to say something else, but she was saved by their waitress returning to their table, serving them their breakfasts with a cheery smile on her face that did not match the mood of her customers. Both Ruby and Joel muttered a quiet “thank you” to her before she left, and then they were alone again, a palpable discomfort lingering between them. As delicious as Ruby’s breakfast burrito looked, she didn’t have much of an appetite anymore. She wished she hadn’t said anything at all, just gratefully accepted Joel’s gift and left it at that. Instead, she’d created a rift between them that she wasn’t sure how to fix.

“Eat your breakfast. We’ll talk about this later, don’t have to figure it all out right now,” Joel grumbled, then got to work stabbing at his migas with his fork. 

The two of them ate mostly in silence, save for Joel’s gentle encouragement of Ruby to try and make a bigger dent in her meal. She’d take a few bites whenever he’d ask her to, but otherwise couldn’t really stomach much of it. The eggs were too rubbery, the tomatoes too watery, and she’d just learned that morning that she didn’t really like the texture of avocado very much. But she’d eaten half of it anyway, now feeling the need to tiptoe around Joel, wary of doing anything else to widen the rift in fear of what might be lurking there in the darkness. It wasn’t so much about what he’d said, but rather the look on his face, the way his jaw shifted, the way his knee started to bounce under the table irritably. It all raised the hairs on the back of Ruby’s neck, letting her know that there was something to be careful of here, and making it clear that she’d found another area of conversation not to tread upon, albeit a pretty important one.

But Joel was right, she supposed. There was still time, they could figure it out later. Maybe she’d just brought it up too soon, and hadn’t considered that Joel was going to miss her just as much as she would miss him. It was selfish, Ruby realized now, to think that she would be the only one to feel that way.

She would give it a few more days, and then broach the subject again, once the dust had settled and the ending would be too close for either of them to deny anymore.

—

It was quiet in the truck the rest of the day.

As promised, Joel had found a mailbox on a nearby main street for Ruby to deposit her postcard into on their way out of town, but all he’d done was pull up next to it wordlessly. He didn’t even bother to actually park the truck, he’d just kept his foot on the brake and let it idle, leaving it up to Ruby to both crank the window down and lean her body out of it precariously. She’d gotten the job done, but it would’ve been a lot easier if Joel had been in his usual, chivalrous mood.

The only sounds that filled the cabin for the next several hours were those of Joel’s country cassette tapes, and the truck’s tires rumbling over the pavement as they drove. Joel would clear his throat every once in a while, hum along to one of the songs or shift himself in his seat in a way that made Ruby think maybe he was finally going to apologize for his attitude earlier that morning, but he never did. Men of his age were just too proud to admit when they were wrong, Ruby supposed.

But with Joel’s personal history and the timeline for the rest of the week off the table, what were the two of them supposed to talk about? He already knew everything about her, from the time she flew off the handlebars of her bike and broke her arm when she was six, to when she was put in charge of watching the neighbors’ dog just a few weekends ago, and had to spend an entire afternoon chasing it around the neighborhood after it had snuck its way out of the backyard, Ruby having not latched the gate securely enough. She had already started to plan the tearful speech she would give to its owners when they returned, sure that she was going to find it in the woods getting ripped apart by a hawk or some other predator. But when Ruby had finally resigned herself to going back to the neighbors’ house that evening, the streetlights just about to come on for the night, there the stupid thing was—sitting on the front steps with its tongue lolling out of its mouth, looking proud that it had found its way back home after its little adventure. 

Joel had found much more humor in the story than Ruby did.

But now that she thought about it again, maybe she should see it as some kind of metaphor for all this—that things would be alright in the end, even if she felt a little lost right now. She would find her way back home after her romp in the big wide open world, just the same as that little dog did. 

Although, unlike the neighbors’ dog, Ruby couldn’t just wander back home of her own free will. She was at the mercy of somebody else, someone who was driving her halfway across the country, in a direction she could only surmise to be west. Wherever they were going next, Joel didn’t seem to need a map. She wasn’t even sure if he was headed for any particular destination, or if the goal for that day was just to get out of Austin. 

Fine. Ruby would just have to be the bigger person (if only figuratively) and be the first one to break the silence, since Joel didn’t seem to be up for the challenge.

“So… Where are we going next?” Ruby asked quietly. “And can we stop for lunch soon? Please?” 

“California. And it ain’t even noon yet. Should’a eaten more of your breakfast like I told you to.”

Ruby just nodded, unwilling to participate in whatever spat would ensue if she pushed the lunch topic any further. She wasn’t exactly sure how long it would take to get from Austin to… wherever, California. But if the strict six-hour limit that Joel had put on their stretches of driving so far were to give her any clue, she would say that it would take them a few days to get there, at least. And then what? They’d spend no more than a day splashing around in the ocean and soaking up the sun, then have to high tail it back to the Midwest to get Ruby home in time for move-in weekend? It wasn’t adding up. 

But their next destination had already been decided, so Ruby didn’t protest. She had always wanted to see a palm tree in real life, anyway.

“How long is it gonna take to get there, do you think?”

Joel shrugged, curled his lip casually. “Few days.”

Ruby wasn’t sure what kind of answer she was expecting. Something more practical, she supposed, more along the lines of, “If we bust our asses, could probably do it in a day and a half.” Anything even remotely similar to that would’ve made her feel better than Joel’s unconcerned “few days”.

Just calm down, Ruby scolded herself. It’ll work itself out. Just appreciate the time you have left with him. 

She inhaled a deep, steadying breath, desperate to slow her racing thoughts. Ruby was willing to risk one more moderately probing question, and then she’d be done, perfectly content to just watch the western half of Texas go by as the truck continued down the highway.

“What are we gonna do until we get there?”

Joel blew a breath through the corner of his mouth, tapped his fingers on the wheel while he thought. “Well… I reckon I got enough cash left on me to get us to New Mexico, at least. Then I think you oughta start earnin’ your keep around here, huh?” He gave Ruby’s thigh a few playful smacks to go along with his jest, but she didn’t quite know what to make of his suggestion. 

“What’s that mean?” she asked, in the least incendiary tone she could manage.

Joel gave her a look. “Sweetheart, how do you think I’ve been affordin’ to treat you all this time? A man my age and… set of skills. Or lack thereof, I guess.”

Ruby thought on her answer, and then quickly realized that she didn’t really have one. When they first met, she remembered assuming that he might have been a farmer, or maybe a truck driver. Retired, of course, but she thought Joel could’ve been one of the two, her conclusion not really based on anything other than his accent and choice of clothing. The callouses across the surface of his palms also could’ve suggested that he used to spend a lot of time gripping either a backhoe or a steering wheel, and the sun spots on his cheeks could’ve come from either long, unforgiving days spent working in a field, or driving along a barren stretch of highway, the windows of an eighteen-wheeler not enough protection from the sun’s rays. 

She expressed her hypothesis to Joel, and he let out a hearty laugh. Good-natured, but still prickly. “And just how much do you think each o’ those jobs pay, huh? You think I’ve been livin’ off’a savin’s from shuckin’ corn all this time?”

Ruby sank into her seat, crossed her arms. “Well, I don’t know. I never really thought about it that hard. You don’t have to laugh.”

“No, I know, darlin’. I’m sorry.” Joel’s hand returned to her thigh once more, rubbing placating circles into the flesh. “You’ll see, though. I got a few different ways of linin’ my pockets these days. You’ll be a natural, I bet.” He gave Ruby a once-over as he finished his sentence, and it made an uneasy feeling settle in her stomach. She decided not to push for more details, and tried not to let her thoughts run wild concocting elaborate, unsavory scenarios to fill in the blanks for the remainder of the morning.

Between Joel’s behavior at breakfast and the strange insinuation behind how he was able to afford it in the first place, Ruby was content to let the rest of the day pass in relative silence. She didn’t protest when Joel popped the same Hank Williams tape into the player that she’d already heard a dozen times, didn’t complain when he finally did deem it lunchtime and wanted to stop at yet another hole-in-the-wall with a certainly fraudulent A+ health rating plastered to the front window, and remained gracious when the front desk worker at the motel they’d stopped at for the night informed them that the A/C unit was broken in their room, and that there weren’t any other vacancies. Joel had given Ruby a sympathetic look, tried to make her understand with a “I would keep drivin’, but what with my back, ‘n all… We can make do for one night, can’t we, sweetheart?” She was able to feign her tolerant smile all the way from the front office and into the double bed she and Joel shared that night, only letting it drop once he reached over her head to flick the light off. Their room being the only one left available, they didn’t have the luxury of asking for their preference of a room with a queen. Instead, they checked into a room containing two beds of less than ideal size, and although they probably would’ve been much more comfortable having their own space, Joel insisted that they share one of the doubles. Ruby supposed he just wanted to prove that the way they’d slept the previous night wasn’t just a one-time occurrence, that he wanted to continue whatever it was they’d started. And Ruby could find some sweetness in that, if she looked hard enough, despite the sweltering night of sleep she knew she was going to be in for. 

—

The first half of the following day passed similarly—quiet, slow, uneventful. Ruby was growing tired of spending countless hours watching the arid, barren landscape of eastern Texas roll by outside the passenger-side window. But if she looked past the large swaths of sandy soil and yellow-beige grass that were indicative of this part of the American southwest, she found that the area they were driving through wasn’t all that dissimilar to her own hometown—they were both relatively flat, with empty sidewalks and most of the homes in various states of disrepair, and the only businesses that didn’t look abandoned were the ones touting either live bait or used auto parts. It was both comforting and discouraging, that a place so far away from where Ruby grew up could still be functionally the same. There were probably versions of her trapped in this little town, too, dreaming of some imaginary place beyond the four walls of their childhood bedroom where they might actually be able to make something of all that potential they supposedly possessed. 

Ruby and Joel were able to fill both their stomachs and the truck’s gas tank one more time before crossing the border into New Mexico, and then Joel’s prediction from the previous day had come to fruition—his wallet was practically coughing up dust when he’d emptied it onto the diner’s table in order to pay for their meals. Joel didn’t seem nearly as shaken by this prospect as Ruby was, apparently confident that whatever plan he’d concocted and teased her with the day before was completely foolproof. And she hoped that it was, otherwise she’d be going to sleep hungry in the hard, metallic bed of Joel’s truck, instead of only a marginally more comfortable one provided by another roadside motel. But at least that bed would have a roof over it.

Joel steered the truck aimlessly for another half hour after lunch, craning his neck as they turned down various streets populated with gas stations and small businesses, and chuffing disappointedly each time the search for whatever he was looking for turned up empty. Ruby didn’t know what exactly it was that he was hoping to find, and she was too afraid of what the answer might be if she asked. The way that he’d looked her over, said she’d be a natural at earning her keep, had her subconscious churning out depraved, outlandish scenarios in which she’d be forced into performing some kind of favor in exchange for cash. Or maybe it wouldn’t get quite that far, maybe she’d just be luring some poor john into an alleyway, where Joel would be waiting in the shadows to shake him down. Either way, Ruby assumed that she’d be used as some kind of bait, and the thought made her lunch begin to unsettle itself. Before their small spat over breakfast the other day, when Joel had seemed almost angry at the idea of Ruby returning home at the end of the week, she never would’ve doubted his intentions. But the way his jaw was set, the way his eyes flashed with hurt and something else darker, had made doubt begin to creep in. If she had so severely misjudged his feelings toward something that she had considered to be mutually agreed upon, that had been cemented into their plans from the very beginning, what else about her understanding of Joel could be wrong?

At last, Joel’s search seemed to have come to an end, when he pulled the truck into the parking lot of a place called the Silver Stirrup. Ruby couldn’t quite tell what made this bar so special, as opposed to the dozens of others they’d passed on the way, but she supposed the place looked a little less authentic, more obviously catering to tourists and young people than the other more divey looking places on the outskirts of town. 

“See that thing in there?” Joel asked, noting the confused expression that Ruby wore, and pointing through one of the bar’s front windows. Ruby had to squint in order to see what he was referring to, but eventually her eyes made out the green felt and wooden legs of a pool table, and a small group of men who looked to be about college-aged stumbling into the sides of it as they played. “That’s what I was lookin’ for. C’mon, now. Let’s go.”

Joel shut off the ignition and reached for the driver’s side door handle, but Ruby tugged on his sleeve to pull him back.

“Wait, can you… What are we doing here?”

“We’re about to make some money, is what we’re doin’.”

“How, though? Are you gonna… Am I gonna have to—” Ruby didn’t want to outright accuse Joel of any of the insidious intentions she’d begun to assign to him in her mind, but she was confused. And afraid. What did a pool table have to do with anything? Was it a sign of a bar with a well-stocked cash register or something? Were they going to rob the place? Did Joel have a gun stashed somewhere in the truck that she didn’t know about? Had she been traveling with a criminal all this time? 

Joel sighed. “Look… You don’t know how to play pool, do ya?”

Joel’s question was so strange, it put a dead stop in her downward spiral. Ruby didn’t know if she should be offended, the way that the inflection of his words made it sound more like an assumption, like a fact, than an earnest question.

Ruby answered him honestly—no, of course she didn’t know how to play pool.

The corner of Joel’s mouth crept up into a sly smile. “Perfect,” he mused. And then he was opening Ruby’s door for her, and she was following after him like a lost puppy. He directed her to sit at a corner booth while he retrieved two drinks from the bar, making sure they would be out of earshot of the small group crowded around the pool table, and mostly out from under the fluorescence of any neon lights that might otherwise draw attention. When he returned, he didn’t slide into the bench opposite her—instead, he sat down in the booth behind her, so that their backs were to each other. If Ruby turned her head to the side and pretended to be interested in observing the bar’s overly-themed decor, she could still hear what Joel was saying to her, but it wouldn’t look like they were together.

Joel laid out the plan as if he’d already done so a dozen times before, like it had been so practiced and perfected and finely tuned, it was basically a science. Ruby bounced her leg under the table while she sipped her (virgin) drink, and tried her best to absorb Joel’s instructions, although she could practically feel them rolling over the bumps and folds of her brain and sliding right off. He made her repeat the steps back to him to be sure that she understood, and then all she had to do was wait for his signal. After the group of men had finished their third round of drinks, apparently having nothing better to do at this hour of a late-August day, Joel reached behind him and tapped his fingers on the lacquered wood that separated their booths, and then Ruby stood up on two wobbly legs. She was initially doubtful of her ability to act as believably drunk as Joel needed her to, but her nerves ended up doing all the work for her, unsteadying her gate and wavering her voice as she approached the pool table. Ruby looked back at Joel one more time, hoping that her silently pleading eyes would inspire enough sympathy in him to call the whole sham off, but all he did was give her a barely imperceptible shake of his head. 

“Hey, what do we have here?” One of the men said—Cap, Ruby dubbed him in her mind, because of the backwards one he wore on his head. 

“Just, um…” Ruby cleared her throat, remembered the way she was supposed to be speaking. “Wondered ‘f I could play with you guys. I’m, like… really good,” she slurred, letting her knees give out a bit and steadying herself on the edge of the pool table. Her hands found difficulty in gripping the wood, clammy as they were.

“Oh, I bet you’re good…” one of the other men commented, less handsome and a little shorter than Cap. She’d name this one Dusty, after the scattering of hair above his lip that resembled little more than dirt. The way he looked at Ruby sent a shiver across her skin, and she took another sip of her drink in an effort to hide her grimace. 

“I could pro’ly win against any one’a you right now. Wouldn’ even have’ta try.” She was laying it on thick, batting her lashes and leaning on the table in such a way that put her chest especially on display, but she needed this to work. Joel needed her to make it work. It helped a little bit to pretend like her performance was for him, instead of the smarmy group of frat guys she was attempting to trick into emptying their wallets.

“Oh, is that a bet, blondie?” Cap asked her, and Ruby responded enthusiastically, nodding her head like it was heavy with drink. He set his own beer down on a nearby table, crossing his arms and sizing her up as he silently deliberated with Dusty and Red. (He had a mop of auburn hair on top of his head, and Ruby was running out of creativity.) They seemed to come to an agreement, because then Cap was striding towards her while Dusty reset the balls in the rack. “How much of daddy’s money did he give you to play with, huh, princess?” he taunted.

Ruby’s whole body flashed hot, but she tried not to let it show. She took a careful step back, wanting to put some space between her and Cap’s beer-laden breath, his hands that looked ready to wander somewhere they weren’t welcome. She took out ten dollars from her back pocket and placed it on the edge of the table—half of what she and Joel had left. Enough for a one-night motel stay and a hot meal for each of them, and not much else.

“Alright, we’ll start at ten,” Cap agreed, fishing a matching bill out of his own wallet and laying it on top of the one Ruby had presented. “All yours, sweetheart.” He shot a reptilian grin at her, and handed her a pool cue that was passed to him by Red. She was lucky that she at least had a vague idea of the game’s starting move, just not any of the ones that followed. But if Joel was right, it wouldn’t really matter whether she actually knew how to play or not. It was going to help their case all the more that she didn’t.

Ruby sidled up to the end of the table opposite from where the balls were placed, feeling the heat of each of the men’s eyes searing her skin. She winced when she had to bend over to line up her cue, painfully aware of the view that they were getting. One of them let out a low whistle as she did so, making Ruby’s stomach lurch, and she wondered whether Joel was silently seething in his seat. She kind of hoped that he was.

In a movement that was both too quick and too hard, Ruby hit the cue ball into the triangle formation of its counterparts, and sent them scattering across the green felted surface. They clattered loudly against each other, some of them bouncing off the raised sides of the table and looking like they were about to fly in the face of the person who disrupted their uniformity, but they all settled, eventually. One of them had even made its way into a corner pocket. Which was a good thing, Ruby thought. 

She stood lazily back up to her modest height, and looked around at the men for any clue of what to do next. Ruby made a scrunched-up, proud sort of face at them, feigning like she just wanted to gloat, rather than waiting for one of them to give her a nod, or for Cap to line up for his turn, or something.

Thankfully, he spoke up, in that condescending way of his. “Okay, not bad… Go for another one, we’ll see if I’ve actually got any competition or not.”

“Yeah, doubt it…” Dusty scoffed. He leaned over to Red and whispered something in his ear that he snickered at, and Ruby was glad that she couldn’t hear what it was. 

She chose another ball at random, and hit it with the tip of her cue before any more demeaning comments could be made towards her.

But in the absence of whistles and jeers, there was laughter. Loud, drunken laughter.

“Jesus Christ, blondie,” said Cap, wiping moisture from underneath his lashline. “Thought you said you knew how to play! Barkeep pour your drink too strong or something?”

Ruby held her pool cue close to her chest, her cheeks flaming with embarrassment. She wanted to shrink herself down to the size of one of those numbered balls, curl up inside one of the table’s deep dark pockets and never come out. She chanced a look back at Joel, but he was feigning ignorance to the entire thing. Ruby was totally alone while this group of men mocked her. 

“Um, what… What did I do wrong?” she asked, voice sounding so small and meek, not bothering to keep up her drunken façade. 

Dusty piped up while Cap continued to recover from his laughing fit. “You’re supposed to hit the cue ball into one of the other ones, not just hit whatever ball you want directly… You know what? Why don’t we just call it early? Pay up, little girl.”

“No! No,” Ruby protested. “I… I knew that. It’s just—” She added a touch of inebriation back into her voice. “The alcohol, y’know? C’mon, lemme keep playin’.” Ruby jutted out her bottom lip, pouty and rosy and glistening, and it seemed enough to convince the boys to continue the game.

With a slightly better handle on the rules, Ruby was able to fumble her way through the rest of the match. She sank a few balls, to her surprise, but missed most of the ones she was aiming for. Even several beers deep, Cap was an intimidating opponent. For every stripe that Ruby pocketed, he’d sunk three of his own solids. With several of Ruby’s balls left on the table, but only two of Cap’s, Ruby knew what her next move had to be in order to win the betting pool. She lined up her cue with that all-important white ball, closing one eye and sticking her tongue out for good measure, and then shot it right towards one of the remaining solids—black, with a number eight inscribed in the white circle painted on the lacquer.

She stood up, her lips quirked into a smug smile, expecting to be met with defeated groans from the group, maybe even the sounds of their hands hitting their thighs after they’d been thrown up in exasperation. Instead, the room filled with another round of laughter, mingling with the hollow claps of the men's hands against each other’s as they celebrated. Red reached for the ten dollar bills that were balanced on the edge of the pool table, but Ruby slammed her hand down on top of his.

“What? No. I got the eight ball, that means I won,” she spit, a fire igniting in her chest as she glared at the group.

Red cackled so loudly in her face, she had physically recoiled from the sound, practically feeling the breath he punched through his lungs hitting her in the face.

“Won? If you sink the eight ball before you pocket all of your own balls, you lose. Dumb bitch.”

His insult tore through Ruby like a buckshot. She felt as though tendrils of ice were fanning out along the lining of her stomach, freezing the organ solid. The frost had infiltrated her bloodstream, spreading a chill throughout her entire body and snuffing out those earlier flames sparked by anger and embarrassment. Ruby could tolerate getting called blondie and princess, the same way she’d been tolerating accusations of being a teacher’s pet and a goody-two-shoes since she learned how to hold a pencil. But words she could not tolerate, were ones that took a dig at her intelligence or work ethic. Stupid, lazy, dumb—these were things that Ruby Carpenter was not.

“I wanna go again,” she declared, stonefaced.

“Hey, you lost. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, sweetheart. Don’t have to throw a little bitch fit about it,” said Cap, his voice drenched in condescension. 

Ruby slid the remaining ten dollar bill from her back pocket, and slammed it down in place of where the previous two had been. “I want to play again,” she repeated, probably too clearly for someone who was supposed to be as under the influence as she was, but she didn’t care anymore. And she had a feeling that she probably hadn’t even needed to put on the act to begin with; these men wouldn’t have taken her seriously even if she approached them sober as a judge. It was her blonde hair, her pretty face, her short stature and her curves, her goddamn chromosomes, that made them see her as something to be conquered. Easy prey.

“What can it hurt, man? She’s just gonna lose again,” Dusty encouraged, and Cap seemed to think he made a good point. He matched Ruby’s bet once again, and then the balls were reset, ready for round two. 

Ruby had played only slightly better the second time, still unable to match Cap’s coordination and skill, no matter how determined she was to win the money without Joel’s eventual intervention. She tried to let the men’s snickers and whispered comments fuel her, but she just couldn’t summon a skill that simply wasn’t there. After Ruby and Cap had each taken several turns, they were right back in the same positions they were in a half hour ago—unless an act of God were to strike him down in the middle of the bar, Cap was going to win, and Ruby was going to lose. Again. Which wouldn’t be a big deal, the outcome was all a part of Joel’s plan, after all. But it certainly wouldn’t feel very good, especially after Red’s venomous insult. 

As if on cue (because it was), Joel strode up to the pool table, and cleared his throat. Joel towered a good six inches above each of the men, making them look like little boys with both his stature and the energy that he radiated. Just as she was instructed, Ruby didn’t look at him when he approached. She stepped away and kept her eyes on the floor, like she was afraid of what this large, intimidating man might do to her.

“Sorry to interrupt your game, boys, but I just can’t watch this go on for much longer,” Joel bellowed.

Ruby did her best to suppress the smile that began to play on her lips, satisfied at the sudden nervous quiver in Cap’s voice when he responded.

“I, uh… I don’t know what you mean, sir. We were just having fun, right, blondie?”

“Jesus… Takin’ this poor girl’s money and you don’t even know her fuckin’ name… C’mon, you’re humiliatin’ her. You know damn well she ain’t gonna win. Here, gimme that, honey—” Joel took the pool cue from Ruby’s hands, and she let him, gladly. “Why don’t just you and I finish the game, and we’ll call it square, huh?”

Ruby could practically hear Cap’s Adam's apple bob in his throat as he swallowed nervously. “I don’t think that’s really necessary, sir. Here, uh…” he snatched Ruby’s second bill from off the table, and hurriedly motioned for Red to hand him the original one. “She can have her money back. Nothing lost, nothing gained, right? We’re even?”

“Oh, come on, son. Got nothin’ to be afraid of. I probably won’t be much more competition than she was, with the shoulder of my shootin’ arm lockin’ up on me half the damn time. But at least it’d be a lil’ bit more of a fair fight, huh? Whaddyou say?”

Joel wasn’t outright threatening them, but he certainly did exude an energy of you don’t wanna say no to me that had Cap retaking his place at the end of the table without any more pushback. If it weren’t so disheartening, Ruby might have been able to find some more humor in how quickly Cap and his friends crumbled in the presence of a more intimidating man, but treated her own display of confidence as if she were a trained animal performing some kind of trick for their amusement.

At the first shot that Cap missed, though, Ruby was unable to hold back a snicker. A throaty noise that escaped through her nose at how the cue was sliding around in his sweaty hands, the white ball flying several inches past the one he was aiming for while he struggled to maintain his grip. Joel, meanwhile, probably could’ve won the game blindfolded. He pocketed every one of Ruby’s remaining stripes that he aimed for, while Cap played so miserably, you’d think that he was aiming with his eyes closed. Ruby took pleasure in watching Dusty and Red squirm, all the color draining from their faces while they watched the leader of their group get completely humiliated, much the same as they’d done to her. Doesn’t feel as good when you’re on the receiving end, does it? 

Cap held his tongue while he watched Joel take his winning shot, and even reached out to shake Joel’s hand after his loss. Ruby could tell that he was seething, and even caught the little grimace that flashed across his face from Joel’s too-firm grasp. Joel held Cap in place while he swiped the forty dollars from the edge of the pool table, and Ruby watched as Cap’s expression changed from a faux display of good sportsmanship, to one of sudden outrage.

“Hey, what the fuck? You can’t take my fucking money, that’s not what you said!” Cap exclaimed. He attempted to step up to Joel, only to be met with a large hand in the center of his chest, pushing him back.

“I said we’d be square. And I beat you, so I’m takin’ the money that I won. Fair and square.” Joel stuffed the cash into his back pocket, and wet his bottom lip as he flicked his eyes over to Ruby. “And why don’t you throw in a lil’ somethin’ extra for this young lady, hm? The least y’all can do, after the way you treated her.”

“Uh… yeah, of course.” It was like Joel cast a spell over him, the way that Cap obeyed without question. He fished another ten out of his wallet and handed it to Joel with a trembling hand. 

“Give it to her, dumbass. Not me,” Joel barked. “And that’s all you got? Really? C’mon, cough it up, boys. ‘Specially you,” Joel pointed a thick finger at Red, who looked like he was about to cry. “What was it I heard you call her, hm?”

“Uh, it was dumb… dumb bitch,” Red repeated his earlier words, much more meekly than he did the first time. He actually seemed a little embarrassed, now that he was getting called out on it by somebody he respected. Somebody he was afraid of.

“Yeah… I think you owe her a lil’ somethin’ too, don’t you?”

Red nodded, and fished another twenty dollars out of his own wallet that he handed to Ruby without making eye contact.

“And you,” Joel continued, turning his focus to Dusty. “Don’t think you’re gettin’ let off the hook here. Can’t buy herself somethin’ pretty with… what? Thirty dollars, can she?”

“N-no… no, sir,” Dusty stuttered. “But I don’t… I don’t have anything.”

Joel shrugged. “Have that watch, don’t you?”

The air around them went still, silent. The only sounds for at least a full five seconds, five seconds that felt like an eternity, were filled by country music crackling through the speakers, and the low-volume commentary of a baseball game coming from a small television mounted in the corner. Even Ruby was stunned at Joel’s ask.

“My… my watch? Come on, man.” Dusty tried to laugh off the absurdity of the situation, but Ruby could tell that it was forced.

Joel took a sudden step towards him, his arm jerking back slightly with his hand balled into a fist, and Dusty flinched so hard it looked like he might’ve pulled a muscle. Ruby didn’t think that Joel was actually going to hit him, just knew the kid would be easy to scare.

“Okay, okay. H-here.” Dusty unbuckled his watchband hastily and handed it to Ruby as if it were red hot in his hands. She examined the shiny gold metal of the band, that linked design that she knew would catch on the fine hairs of her arms if she were to put it on. But it wasn’t really her style, anyway, the thing too heavy and masculine for her taste. She wondered why Joel wanted to steal it in the first place—did he recognize it as having some value that they could pawn it for later, or did he just want to enact some final, humiliating blow against the group? Either way, Ruby wasn’t really sure how to feel about it. They’d demeaned her, treated her like a stupid child, laughed at her and called her names, yes, but… did they deserve this?

Joel looked down his nose at each of the boys one last time, and none of them could bring themselves to meet his eye. It was pathetic, how tough they’d been acting until somebody older and wiser came along and scruffed them like badly behaving dogs.

When he was satisfied, Joel grabbed Ruby’s hand and pulled her towards the door with an unmistakable “C’mon, baby.” She could hear various sounds of shock and confusion coming from behind her as the two of them left the bar, but Ruby was pretty certain that the group wasn’t going to come after them. They’d already lost enough to Joel, she would hope that they knew better than to try to do anything about it. That is, if they were even smart enough to put it together that they’d been hustled.

Ruby decided to follow Joel’s lead, matching his leisurely pace as he made his way back to the truck like he hadn’t done anything wrong at all. And maybe it wasn’t wrong, not to Joel, at least. Maybe he did this all the time, maybe this was his way of making a living, and he didn’t see anything wrong with it as long as he felt that those he was stealing from had deserved it. He opened Ruby’s door for her just like he would on any other day, and then slid himself behind the wheel so casually, her nervous system felt like it had to make up for the anxiety and adrenaline that Joel was clearly lacking. He didn’t even start the truck right away, just sat there while he counted up their winnings before finally slipping the cash into his wallet. 

“Made out pretty good, didn’t we? Did such a good job, sweetheart,” Joel praised, pulling Ruby’s head in his direction and planting a kiss on her temple. “How do you feel, hm?”

“How do I feel?” Ruby repeated his ridiculous question back to him. “We just robbed those guys! I feel… I don’t know, freaked out? How am I supposed to feel? They’re probably calling the police right now. Can you start the truck so we can get out of here, please?”

“Shh, shh. Calm down, baby. They ain’t gonna call the cops. Boys like them would rather die than admit they got one pulled over on ‘em. And I know that gangly one’s just gonna tell his daddy that he lost that watch of his, never gonna tell him what really happened. They got fragile egos, at that age.”

Ruby just stared at him, shaking her head. “How do you know all that for sure?”

Joel matched her question with one of his own. “How do you think I knew that lil’ act of ours would work?”

She spoke her suspicion aloud, already knowing what the answer would be. “...Because you’ve done it before?”

“Smart girl.” Joel looked Ruby up and down, taking in the sight of her. Like she was changed, somehow. Like what had unfolded inside the Silver Stirrup had revealed some quality about her that satisfied him, but that Ruby herself was unaware of. “I’m proud of you, baby. So fuckin’ proud.” 

Right there in the parking lot, probably still in full view of Cap and his friends, Joel placed a wet, whiskery kiss onto Ruby’s mouth. He nipped at her bottom lip to deepen it, breathing deeply as he did so, as if something about what they had just done had excited him in some way. He seemed to like Ruby’s obedience, the way that she followed his orders and was willing to go against everything she’d been taught, because she trusted that he knew best. And it had all gone according to plan, they weren’t going to end up stranded on the side of the road tonight, because she trusted Joel to take care of her, even if his way of doing so was a little unorthodox. Ruby didn’t agree to get in his truck and drive around the country with him because she wanted to sit squarely in the middle of her comfort zone the entire time, did she? She wanted adventure, a few scuffs on that pristine reputation of hers, and that’s what she was getting.

And if she ignored the fact that she’d been coerced into doing something that she wasn’t entirely okay with, that what they’d done was illegal and that she’d gotten objectified and belittled while they did it, Ruby could admit to herself that the whole thing was a little bit exhilarating. She held her head a little higher, felt a little bit prouder, with each experience she had that she would never, ever, tell her parents about, unless she wanted them to drop dead on the spot. 

So, Ruby attempted to swallow down the anxious-guilty-nauseous lump in the back of her throat, and tried to focus only on the plucking of steel strings emanating from the truck’s staticky speakers, and the endless fields of sagebrush whizzing by outside her window as they continued on their journey. She wouldn’t think about where they were headed to next, or how it was almost certainly not in the direction of her hometown, or how she still had no idea as to how the timeline of the next few days might unfold. Ruby would force those thoughts out of her mind, doing so by massaging the still-healing wound on her hand from where Joel’s carving tool had slipped and bit into her flesh earlier in the week. The bandage was in need of another change, all her leaning against the pool table and fumbling with her grip on the cue having encouraged the wound to start weeping. That part of the healing process after the shock and the pain finally fades, and you’re left with something gnarled and itchy and sore and trying to put itself back together but only if you leave it alone, was possibly even worse than the initial thing that made you bleed in the first place, Ruby thought. So she would not scratch at it or tear it open even though she really wanted to, and she wouldn’t investigate the assortment of doubts about Joel that had begun to grow across the surface of her mind like ivy, either. She would leave them alone, not pick at the good thing she had going because it would sort itself out eventually, and it would only prolong the pain and create a deeper scar the more times she tore it open.

The temptation to claw at her irritated wound becoming too great, Ruby reached for Joel’s hand where it was wrapped around the steering wheel, and he seemed glad to give it up. He looked at her with that same expression he’d worn in the parking lot of the Silver Stirrup, the one that looked mostly like pride but a little bit like he wanted to eat her alive, and she chose to believe it was entirely the former. She returned the smile that he’d given her, and tried to resign herself to the idea of trusting Joel completely. It wouldn’t do her any good to keep picking at a scab, she knew. 

—

Ruby wasn’t really sure how to fill the silence that fell between them as the truck carried her further and further west. The sights rolling by outside weren’t really interesting enough to prompt any conversation, and Ruby figured Joel was tired of hearing any small anecdotes she could come up with, probably seeming juvenile and unremarkable compared to the vastness of Joel’s lived experience. But without anything to distract her from all of her racing, invasive thoughts, her fingernails navigated themselves over to that rift in her hand, the skin around it pink and taut and tender. She’d already scratched at it in her sleep the night before, her subconscious having betrayed her, and she couldn’t afford to set the healing process back even further. Ruby needed it to appear as if it were no worse than a papercut by the time she returned home, so that she wouldn’t have to endure any questioning from her mother as to where she’d acquired such a gash on her girls’ trip. Ruby was a bad liar, and it was exhausting enough having to keep track of all the fibs she’d concocted so far. She didn’t need to add another one to the list.

So, she’d taken hold of Joel’s hand again and decided to close her eyes for a bit, focusing on the way his wide, calloused fingers felt in the spaces between her own, and relishing in how easy and casual it felt to have their hands woven together like this. Ruby remembered the longing she’d felt in Savannah, the white hot adrenaline that had shot through her system when Joel finally did take her hand in his to help her across the street, how heightened her emotions were that night and how grounded Joel had made her feel. How cared for.

That’s all she needed to do. Let Joel take care of her.

Their hands had been resting atop one of Ruby’s thighs, their skin slowly warming both from their shared body heat, and the desert sun streaming in through the windows. Joel rubbed his thumb rhythmically across the knuckle of Ruby’s injured one, and it was a welcome redirection of sensation.

Although it was too bright inside the truck for her to actually fall asleep, Ruby was certainly lulled into something close to it. Between the soothing motions of Joel’s hand, the warmth that enveloped them, and the satiety of a stomach filled with some of the heartiest meals she’d eaten during her time with Joel thus far—thanks to what they’d scored at the bar the previous day— she’d finally achieved some of that calm she’d been trying so hard to conjure since they’d left Austin.

It wasn’t until she’d felt the dull edges of Joel’s fingernails squeezing the flesh of her inner thigh that she’d realized he’d let go of her hand. 

When Ruby’s eyes fluttered open, they landed on Joel’s thick, tanned hand gripping her skin, his pinky stretching far away from his other fingers and wandering dangerously close to her core, teasing. Her breath hitched at the contact, and suddenly the rest of the world outside fell away, replaced only with the sight of Joel’s fingertips pressing little divots into her skin. Ruby had never experienced anything like it, the way that this kind of attention from Joel could completely evaporate anything else that might have mattered before.

“Y’know,” Joel started, a suggestive lilt in his voice. “Still got a way’s to go, lotta time to kill… Just can’t stop thinkin’ about what you told me the other night, at the fair.”

Ruby glanced up at him, and found that he was staring back at her now, his tongue darting out to wet his lips and looking like he wanted to swallow her whole. Everything was cloudy, her thoughts struggling to wade through the amber haze that settled over her brain, thick with desire. She just shook her head at him blankly. If she did know what it was he was referencing, it was lost somewhere deep in that fog. 

“You said that you’d never, ‘y’know’... Your words, not mine. And what did I say, sweetheart, hm? You remember?” Joel’s fingers had taken to kneading at her flesh now, as if he was attempting to coax the memory out from wherever it was hiding. Still, Ruby came up blank. “Said that we’d do it right. I figure we can make a whole evenin’ out of it, make it real special for your first time. That sound good to you, baby?”

“Mhm,” Ruby whined, spreading her thighs a little wider to give Joel more access. He chuckled at her eagerness, then replaced his hand on the steering wheel.

“Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, lil’ gem. Got a stop I want us to make first, then we can find someplace to hole up. And I’ll tell you what, I’ll even splurge on one’a those chain places. Get us a nice, comfy bed, a big ol’ bathroom for us to clean up in afterwards… Maybe they’ll even have room service, huh?”

Ruby beamed at him, her cheeks burning with a heat that matched the one radiating from her core. She still trusted Joel, believed in his ability to be patient with her, take care of her, despite the rocky footing they’d found themselves on lately. She could handle taking the rest of their journey one day at a time, because at least she knew for certain that Joel would be by her side, keeping her safe. If there’s one thing Ruby’s mother had been drilling into her head since she was old enough to need a training bra, it was that she should safeguard her innocence, only give it away to someone who she knew would treat it with the fragility it deserved. And who more experienced in cradling fragile things in the palm of his hand than Joel? If the little hummingbird sitting on the dash was any indication.

Without Joel touching her anymore, Ruby’s brain had started to regain some of its function, and she’d managed to articulate a question to him about what “stop” it was that he wanted to make. He’d told her to watch out for any billboards they passed, look out for one that said ‘Adult Videos’, ‘Adults Only’, something like that. “Probably gonna have some kinda nasty name like ‘Bareback Books’, all the way out here,” Joel had suggested. Ruby had asked him very earnestly what was so “nasty” about that name, and he had given her a disbelieving look, until he seemed to remember who he was dealing with. He had started to explain the innuendo to her before a hearty laugh burst through his chest, brought on by whatever he was seeing outside of Ruby’s window.

“Look at that, even better. Desert Dick’s Adult Entertainment, Jesus Christ. That’s pretty good.” Ruby understood the pun a little better on that one, and let out a giggle of her own as Joel pulled off at the next exit. He had to take a few odd turns through the abandoned-looking town before he finally found his way back to where he’d seen the sign, and when he pulled the truck into the gravel parking lot, Ruby wasn’t totally sure that they were meant to be there. The place hardly even looked like a store, much less one that actually wanted people to come inside. It was a drab, cement brick building, the walls stained with rust drippings and a few pieces of lewd graffiti. The neon sign in the window was much more overt than the one they’d seen from the highway, displaying a suspiciously curved green cactus with two smaller, round ones positioned at the base. Ruby grimaced at it from the passenger seat, already feeling completely out of place before she’d even set foot in the building.

“What do we need from in there?” Ruby asked, unable to look away from the neon cactus, blinking at her as the shaft of it wiggled up and down. “Can I just… stay here while you go in?”

“No, baby. This is about you, I want you to be a part of the whole thing. It won’t be so bad inside, I promise.” Joel gave Ruby’s thigh a reassuring pat, but it did little to comfort her. Noting her unease, he leaned in closer to her ear, lowering his voice as he spoke just above a whisper. “I’ll bet you they got some real pretty, lacy things in there. I’ll buy you whichever one you want, sweetheart. Want you to feel as beautiful as you’re gonna look when I fuck you.”

Ruby let out an involuntary little whine at his unfiltered language, her eyelashes fluttering rapidly. Joel placed a gentle hand on the side of her face, and turned it towards him so that he could place a slow, deep kiss onto her lips. Her eyes had trouble focusing on his when he pulled away, but the soothing little strokes Joel rubbed along her cheekbone helped to ground her.

“How ‘bout now, hm? You wanna go inside, sweet girl?” Joel pushed again. Ruby nodded, having gotten all the convincing she needed now to exit the truck and follow him inside the seedy store.

She cringed at how loudly the bell above the door rang, announcing their arrival to the small handful of patrons already browsing the endless aisles of merchandise. Ruby tucked herself in close to Joel’s large frame as they wandered deeper into the store, immediately conscious of how the other customers were looking at them. At her. There were a couple of women older than Ruby perusing the shelves filled with brightly colored, phallic-looking silicone objects, but they didn’t pay the odd-looking couple much mind. Though, one of them looked like she had given Joel a once-over and liked what she saw, before taking a step closer to the XXL sized toys. It made something fire up in Ruby’s belly. Something territorial.

The three or so other people meandering around the store were men, all around Joel’s age. They had the same melanated spots speckling their skin, the same silvery streaks in their hair, but they were portlier than Joel was. More average looking. One of them had a lazy eye, and another had a thicket of nose hair that Ruby could see even from several feet away. If she were being honest with herself, she probably never would have agreed to go with Joel in the first place if he looked like one of these men. 

Joel might as well have not been with her at all, the way that Nose Hair was staring at her. He was standing in front of a wall of shelves stocked with VHS tapes, all of them with sickeningly suggestive titles like Courtney’s Co-Ed XXXtravaganza or Here Cums the Bride 2: Something Blew. The man kept looking from Ruby, to the wall of tapes, and back to Ruby again as he slithered his way down the aisle. After several uncomfortable minutes, the man finally picked up one of the tapes and held it out in front of him in Ruby’s direction, seeming to compare her appearance to the one of the woman on the cover. He nodded, his chapped lips smirking in satisfaction with his selection, and then made his way up to the register. The whole interaction sent a shiver down Ruby’s spine, made her even more grateful for Joel’s care and consideration.

At the very center of Desert Dick’s stood a revolving metal rack, with lacy little suggestions of clothing in all different sizes and colors suspended from plastic hangers. Some looked like night gowns or dresses, and some looked to be matching sets of tops and bottoms, but all of them were so unfamiliar to Ruby, she didn’t even know where to start. It didn’t help that the rack was placed in the middle of the room, far away from any other fixtures or bookshelves that she could hide herself behind while she browsed. She hadn’t even tried on any of the lingerie yet, and already she felt far too exposed. Ruby reached out a hand and gave the rack a spin, tentatively, as if she were afraid that some kind of monster might be lurking behind the satiny garments, ready to jump out and bite her.

“See anythin’ you might like?” came Joel’s voice from next to her ear as he gave one of her hips a squeeze. His gravelly timbre had startled her, the only sound that had pierced through the monotonous rattling of the air-conditioning since they’d arrived, other than the bell at the door. Ruby had felt on edge since they walked in, the flickering overhead fluorescent lighting doing nothing to relieve her disquiet. The whole place was so foreign to her, she might as well have been on a different planet.

Ruby just shrugged in response to his question, continuing to sift through the clothing with mild disinterest.

Joel sidled up behind her, both hands placed firmly on her sides now as he pressed his half-hard bulge into her backside. She let out a quiet gasp, nervously scanning the room for any voyeuring customers, but they all seemed preoccupied.

“You’d look so gorgeous in any one’a these, Ruby girl. You know that? Just imaginin’ you in somethin’ like this…” Joel groaned, giving a shallow buck of his hips. “You feel what it’s doin’ to me?”

Ruby whined in agreement, the confusing combination of desire and disgust making her head spin. “I’ve just… Never worn anything like this before. I have no idea what I’d like, or… what would look good.”

“Yeah, figured as much…” Joel mused, stepping out from behind her and stationing himself on the opposite side of the revolving rack. “Well, your size is over here, baby. That oughta give us a good place to start, huh?”

She breathed out an embarrassed little “Oh…”, and then rounded the rack to join him.

Joel pushed aside the hangers one by one, keeping a deliberately slow pace to allow Ruby to examine each outfit. “Anythin’ catchin’ your eye over here?” Joel asked. He slid a few more items down the rack, the squealing of metal-on-metal making her shrink into him. Somehow, everything seemed intimidating, either a garish color or a wild pattern or covered in straps and laces that she would never be able to maneuver herself into. And then—

“This one,” Ruby proclaimed, extending a pointed finger towards a lacy two-piece set. The material was a robin’s egg blue color, both the top and bottom decorated with a floral trim around the edges, and each with a tiny pink bow in their respective centers. The bottoms looked to be an ordinarily cut pair of panties, the same shape and coverage that she was used to, just made out of a much more revealing material. The top, however, was split down the middle, like a bra with a drooping pair of butterfly wings attached to the bottom of the cups, fluttering outwards to reveal the wearer’s bare stomach. Out of every piece of lingerie in the whole store, this was probably the closest that Ruby would get to finding something that she might feel comfortable in, something that felt the most like her. 

“Yeah? This one?” Joel confirmed. He lifted the hanger off the rack and held it up to Ruby, his mouth stretching into a coyote-like grin. “Yeah… This one’s a winner, alright.” He whistled low, and it made Ruby blush, a burning heat spreading across her skin that made her thankful for the steady blast of frigid air coming from the window unit.

The two of them made their way back to the front of the store together, one of Joel’s hands occupied with holding Ruby’s new outfit, and the other placed possessively on the small of her back. The man at the register was a type similar to the other male customers idling in the aisles of Desert Dick’s, this one with almost no hair on his head, and too much of it on his chest. He’d been perched on a stool and flipping through a wrinkled issue of Playboy when they’d approached, and had been so engrossed in it that he hadn’t even noticed Ruby and Joel standing there, waiting to be helped. Joel finally had to clear his throat to get the man’s attention, and he looked disgruntled at the interruption, irritated at actually having to do his job instead of just taking advantage of his free access to unfathomable numbers of raunchy magazines all day. 

He shuffled his way to the cash register with a slight limp, and grumbled out, “Will this be all for ya today?” as Joel placed the scraps of blue lace onto the counter.

“Mhm, that’ll do it,” Joel replied, pulling out his worn, brown leather wallet from his back pocket. Ruby looked away while he leafed through the bills stored inside, trying to ignore that guilty churn in her stomach again.

“Can I interest you in anythin’ on the wall behind me? Pack o’ rubbers, flavored lube? Maybe one’a these lil’ beauties?” The man gestured behind him to a row of individually packaged large pills, all with visually assaulting text printed on the cardboard that read something like StiffMAX or MegaHard. Ruby stifled a giggle and kept her eyes on the ground, able to deduce what the supplements were for, even with her relative lack of experience. She felt a bit of pride soaring in her chest at the knowledge that Joel was already most of the way there right now, that she hardly had to put in any effort at all in order for him to swell up in his jeans. If just the idea of her in her pretty new outfit was enough for Joel’s bloodflow to start redirecting itself to his… down there, then she could only imagine what the real thing was going to do.

Joel breathed out a laugh, and replied, “Nah, I think we’re all set.” He shot an affectionate glance down at where Ruby stood beside him, shyly curled in on herself as he paid for the merchandise. 

“Y’all have a good rest of your day, now,” the man behind the register called out as the bell above their heads started up its metallic clanging again. 

The late afternoon sun was blinding as they stepped outside, and the blast of hot air that surged through the open door raised goosebumps along Ruby’s skin. As she stepped over the threshold, she couldn’t help but take in the symbolism of it, how she felt that she was about to cross a line that would forever divide her life into “before” and “after”. 

“We will, thank you,” Joel called back, and within a few strides they were each retaking their respective seats in the truck. He brought the ignition to life with a turn of his key, and extended his arm behind Ruby’s headrest as he shifted gears. “You ready, sweetheart?” he asked, looking intently at her with his peridot eyes.

Ruby wasn’t quite sure which event he was referring to—if she was ready to leave the parking lot, or if she was ready to give her innocence to him, all wrapped up in a lacy blue bow. 

She’d said ‘yes’, anyway, and then they were leaving Desert Dick’s behind, Ruby feeling like she’d left some part of herself there, too.

—

Joel had made good on his word, springing for a room at a hotel chain that Ruby had actually heard of before, something with more than one floor and the doors to the rooms on the inside of the building. It wasn’t a Ritz-Carlton by any means, but she still appreciated the gesture.

Ruby had been buzzing with anticipation for the entire drive from the adult store to the hotel, feeling like a wind-up toy whose knob had been over-rotated and now wouldn’t stop its jittery, mechanical marching unless something got in its way and knocked it over. And even then, its legs would still be kicking in the air helplessly, only able to stop once all of its built-up energy had been expelled. 

In other words: Ruby was nervous. Terrified. Every breath she took was shuddering, every movement of one of her limbs was shaky, and once she stood up out of the passenger seat, she was sure there was going to be a damp sheen left behind on the leather, thanks to the thin layer of sweat that had been accumulating on the backs of her thighs. Ruby tried to calm herself down, but it was a futile endeavor. She was sure that Joel could probably smell the anxiety coming off of her, that he would be turned off by how fragile and unsure and scared she was, how she would need her hand held through every step of the process. And men didn’t want to have sex with goddamn newborn fawns, did they? They wanted to have sex with women, who actually knew how to pleasure them and make them feel good. And Ruby didn’t have the faintest idea about how to do any of that. She had just kind of gotten lucky at the fair, and all because Joel had taken it upon himself to show her how to move. God, this was going to be so embarrassing.

As was routine now, Joel had carried both of their bags up to their room, delighted to have the help of an elevator for once. They were let off on the third floor, and found their way to the number corresponding to the tag dangling from the key in Joel’s hand, all the way at the end of the hallway. Between the out-of-the-way location of the room and the sparse number of cars in the parking lot below, Ruby felt it reasonable to assume that the odds of them having any neighbors were fairly low. And she felt somewhat comforted in that, that any mortifying sounds she might make would be just between her and Joel, and not overheard by some innocent family on vacation.

The room itself was fairly nice, more spacious than anywhere they had stayed so far, with a bed that looked to be king-size centered in the layout, and a large TV perched on top of a wooden dresser—the size that Ruby was used to having at home, not one of the smaller motel-preferred models that only got fuzzy, black and white picture. She began to breathe a little easier, and was even further soothed by the sight of the bathroom—well-lit, with a separate tub and shower that actually looked like they had been cleaned sometime in the last decade. The faint smell of bleach still lingered, and it actually brought Ruby some comfort. Other than her own bed back home, this was probably as good a place as any to lose her virginity.

Joel, it seemed, was eager not to waste any more of the precious hours they had until the room had to be turned over to housekeeping. Once he’d dropped their bags in the corner of the room, he appeared behind Ruby where she loitered in the doorway to the bathroom, and placed a wet kiss on the sensitive skin below her ear. Her eyes rolled involuntarily, the lids of them spasming like beetles’ wings. Joel handed her the plain, brown paper bag that her new outfit had been packed in—opaque, nondescript, so as to conceal whatever indecent item a customer had purchased—and gave Ruby’s backside a playful squeeze. “I’ll give you some privacy while you change. Take your time, darlin’, okay? I’ll be waitin’ right out here on the bed for you,” Joel said, and gave her a little push that sent her stumbling onto the tile. He closed the bathroom door behind her, and then she could hear his heavy boots shuffling away.

The bathroom was quiet, so still that Ruby could hear every pound of her pulse in her ears, every one of her trembling breaths, every crinkle of the brown bag, the material impossibly loud as she set it down on the counter. 

Slowly, she undressed herself, slipping off her lace-up shoes and socks, then shimmying out of her cutoff denim shorts and pulling her t-shirt off over her head. Ruby examined the red marks on her skin left behind by the too-tight clothing, an uncomfortable side effect of wearing clothes that weren’t hers. She unhooked her bra and slid her underwear down her legs, stepping out of them gingerly and kicking them into the pile with the rest of what she had on, still warmed from the sun and the nervous heat of her skin.

Ruby reached down into the bag and picked up the pieces of delicate lace with two fingers, as if they were something she’d fished out of the trash. She knew it was stupid, how dramatic she was being about the whole affair, but even as she was dressing herself in a beautiful set of lingerie purchased for her by a man who she was about to give herself over to entirely, she couldn’t help but worry about what she would do with the outfit after the fact. Surely the hotel room had an ice bucket, maybe she could toss the lace into the flimsy plastic bag that usually came with it, and wrap it up in some other clothes so that she could pack it away among the rest of her things without her mother seeing. Or better yet, maybe Joel could just keep it. Make it one less thing that Ruby would have to hide and come up with a “just in case” explanation for once she returned home. 

Some of Ruby’s nerves were dispelled once she’d finally situated herself into the garments, unable to hold back a self-satisfied smile as she admired the way they hugged her figure. Those afternoons spent baking under the Texas sun had tanned her skin, lightened the blonde of her hair, giving her a modest resemblance to a Malibu Barbie doll, if she did say so herself.

It took her a few tries to finally work up the courage to push open the bathroom door, and once she did, she knew that there would be no going back. 

Ruby tiptoed down the stretch of carpet that led to where Joel was laying in wait for her, sitting on the edge of the bed in nothing but his ratty boxer briefs. She had never seen him so bare before. She had never seen any man so bare before, really. It felt a little wrong, at first, like she had accidentally walked in on him in this state, but she couldn’t look away. 

Although the curtains were drawn, there was a little sliver of late afternoon light peeking through the opening where the swaths of fabric didn’t quite meet, and it doused Joel in a soft, cool glow. It danced across his cheekbones, wrapped around the soft but sturdy forms of his arms and legs, and caught the edges of every one of the hairs that covered his chest and stomach. The hair roiled and undulated with every curve and fold of his belly, eventually disappearing underneath the heft of it, where it spilled over the waistband of his underwear and settled just behind his sizable bulge. 

His bulge that seemed to grow and twitch underneath the fabric with every second that Ruby stood before him. Alive, wanting. Hungry.

“Jesus Christ, you’re fuckin’ gorgeous. C’mere—” Joel growled, gently gripping onto Ruby’s hips and pulling her towards him, so that she was standing in the space between his parted thighs. He traced a knuckle down the center of her stomach, dipping it into the shallow divot of her belly button and back out again, seeming to admire the goosebumps that appeared in its wake. When he reached the top of her lacy underwear, he slipped the pad of his finger beneath the elastic, pulled it away from her body slightly before letting it snap back into place. The gestures weren’t intended to make either of them feel any pleasure, Ruby didn’t think. He just wanted to toy with her a little bit, like a bear might bat around a rabbit before sinking its teeth into its fur. “How’re you feelin’, baby, huh? You feel good? Still wanna do this?” Joel asked softly, his eyes not meeting hers, still taking in the sight of her body wrapped up so neatly for him.

Ruby swallowed nervously, then nodded.

Joel made a disapproving noise at her wordless gesture. “Need to hear you say it, lil’ gem, you know that. Tell me you want this,” he encouraged, his hands now taking to sliding themselves underneath her lacy blue butterfly wings, stroking along the slopes of her abdomen. 

“I… I want this, Joel,” she whispered, like a secret. Like a confession. “Please.”

“Good, good girl…” he praised, and his words caused Ruby to choke on a whimper. Joel made a satisfactory little hum at the sound. “You like that, sweetheart, don’t you? When I call you that?”

Ruby could only manage another shy nod, but Joel let it go this time.

“Hm. I’ll keep that in mind, then,” he remarked. Ruby flashed a meek smile towards the floor, understanding the unspoken promise of his comment.

As Ruby stood there, she had no idea of where to put her hands, or where to allow her gaze to rest. She just kept her hands clasped tightly behind her back while Joel touched her, and pretended that the submissive, fluttering movement of her eyelashes was on purpose, rather than the result of her being too terrified to look him in the eye. Whatever streak of bravery that had possessed her in the bed of Joel’s truck at the fair was long gone now, replaced with a paralyzing timidity. Something about the night sky lingering overhead had acted like one big, dark safety blanket, making her feel both covered and concealed somehow, even way out in the open like that. But here, underneath the too-low, water-stained ceiling of their hotel room, she’d never felt more exposed. 

“Tell me somethin’ else, baby. You ever seen a man’s cock before?”

At this, Ruby’s eyes finally did lock onto Joel’s, and an instinctual, embarrassed heat spread across her cheeks at his use of such a vulgar word.

“No… I haven’t,” she admitted. “Never.”

Joel let out a shuddering, aroused breath, and began to palm at the hard shape in his underwear. “Had you feelin’ all up on it the other night, I think you oughta see what it looks like, don’t you?”

Ruby agreed, supposing that that made sense.

“Go ‘head, then. Take him out.”

Ruby knew that Joel would say something like this, eventually. Something to give her one good shove so that she could finally become an active participant in this scenario, instead of just standing there and hoping that maybe Joel could just take her virginity from her instead of actually having to give it to him.

At last, Ruby untangled her fingers from each other, and reached her hands toward the waistband of Joel’s underwear. Slowly, she pulled the elastic down, first uncovering a thatch of dark, wiry curls, and then revealing the thick shaft of him inch by inch. His cock had begun to arch itself away from his body the further she pulled the fabric down, and when she had finally gotten it over the ridge of his ruddy mushroom head, the entire thing sprang upwards into the air. It bobbed there between them for a second or two before finally stilling, full and erect. 

Ruby wasn’t sure how thick or long men’s penises typically were, but if she had to guess, Joel’s would be on the “above average” side on both fronts. She was sure that he caught the way her eyes widened as she took in the full, intimidating size of him.

“It’s… big,” Ruby breathed, and suddenly she was very aware that she was going to have to fit all of it inside of her somehow. She had only just recently gotten brave enough to slide one finger inside of herself, maybe two. How in the hell was Joel going to squeeze himself in there, where not even a tampon had ever been before? “Is it… gonna hurt?” Ruby asked.

Joel sighed through his nose, pursing his lips sympathetically. He took one of her hands in his, and tried to rub some comfort into her skin with his thumb as he spoke. “Yeah, sweetheart. I reckon it will. Only for a lil’ bit, though, just at first. And then it’ll feel good.” 

Ruby worried her lip between her teeth. “Okay,” she whispered. She hadn’t looked away from Joel’s cock since she first laid eyes on it, and despite Joel’s somewhat reassuring words, he could see in her face that she was still nervous.

“Here, why don’t you touch it a lil’ bit, hm? Get used to the feelin’ of it.” With Ruby’s hand already clutched in his, Joel pulled it towards him and placed it onto his cock, wrapping her small fingers around his shaft. The tips of them just barely kissed each other.

Ruby couldn’t help but let out an awkward chuckle. “Um… now what?” 

“Just… feel it. Massage it a lil’ bit. Most anything you do to it’s gonna feel good,” Joel rasped, his breath already escaping him just from the sight of the naïve movements of Ruby’s hand as she fumbled with his length.

She was surprised at how warm the skin was, how solid it felt, like she was squeezing something with real bone and muscle beneath it. She began to do as Joel instructed, applying and releasing pressure with her fingers as if she were trying to work a knot out of her calf, but she still had hardly any idea what she was doing. Joel didn’t say anything, just leaned himself back on his hands and watched her attempt to pleasure him. The organ kicked and spasmed under her touch, and the slit at the very tip of it began to leak some kind of clear fluid, more of it spilling out the harder she worked her fingers.

“Is that… Are you gonna—”

“No, no. Not yet, baby. Why don’t you get some of it on your hand, though? Use it. Like this—” Joel grabbed Ruby’s hand again and puppeted it for her, sliding her palm all over his cockhead to coat it in the slippery substance. “Now… just pump it, up and down. Keep gettin’ some more of that stuff on your hand, use it to kinda… lubricate your movements.” Joel’s hand maintained its place overtop of Ruby’s, helping to guide it for the first couple of strokes, until she seemed to get the hang of it. “Fuck, sweetheart… Yeah, tha’s it,” he groaned, propping himself up on his hands again and throwing his head back in ecstasy. 

With Joel’s neck craned backward, he hadn’t noticed when Ruby had taken it upon herself to sink to her knees, figuring that she could get a more comfortable and effective angle that way. Something spasmed in the pit of her stomach as she dropped down to the carpet, something shouting at her and protesting that this was far too suggestive and pornographic of a position for her to be in, but she’d managed to fight through it. Her brain was buzzing with conflicting voices—that of her mother, chastising her for looking like a slut and giving the boys in her class the wrong idea when she wore clothing that showed off too much of her early-bloomer figure, and that of Joel, who praised her for being so good and so gorgeous as she attempted to step into her sexuality for the first time, who had an endless amount of patience for her and gave her everything he had within his means in order to make this moment special. But with her hand wrapped around Joel’s leaky and solid cock, behaving that way all because of her, she decided that his voice was the only one that mattered.

“Oh, Christ, Ruby,” Joel had cursed when he’d finally dragged his eyes away from the ceiling, touching them down on Ruby’s doe-like, watery ones staring up at him from the floor. “Shit’s gonna be over before we even get started, if you keep goin’ like that.”

Ruby removed her hand quickly, freezing it in the air with her fingers splayed out. She didn’t quite know where to place it, the skin of her palm and the underside of her fingers all sticky and damp. She muttered out a meek little apology.

“Nothin’ to be sorry for, sweet girl. Felt good. Too good.” Joel studied Ruby where she knelt, seemed to note her curiosity with the substance that coated her hand, with the shine of it all over Joel’s sensitive, flushed skin. Her lip had curled up just a little bit, her tongue darting out to moisten her lips, a glistening pink pearl that had made itself hidden again just as quickly as it had emerged. All of the muscles in Ruby’s face were twitching independently of each other in a way that even she didn’t know what they were trying to convey—disgust, or desire?

“You wanna taste it, sweetheart?” Joel asked.

Ruby’s eyes widened, jolted out of her private moment of fascination. “Oh, um… I don’t think I can, like… I don’t think I would be good at it. Even the tongue depressor at the doctor’s office makes me—”

“No, baby, no. Ain’t askin’ you to do all that, not tonight. Why don’t you just… give him a lil’ kiss, hm? Lil’ kitten lick, if you want. Go on…”

Ruby stared at the full, intimidating shape of Joel’s cock, thankful that he didn’t expect her to… blow him? Is that what it was called? Her only real reference for the act was the way that the football players sometimes mimed it to each other when they were trying to be funny, and they didn’t make it seem like something very enjoyable, for either party. They made it look… violent. Degrading.

But a kiss seemed easy enough, she’d done that with Joel before. And the stuff leaking out of him now couldn’t be any grosser than his spit, could it? Ruby carefully wrapped her fingers around the base of him again, leaned her head towards his soft stomach, and placed a delicate kiss on the ridge of his cockhead. Joel shuddered at the contact.

“Lil’ more, sweetheart. The way I was kissin’ you in the truck, kiss him like that.”

Ruby remembered the way Joel had kissed her, the warm slide of his tongue against hers as it had parted her teeth and wrapped around the muscle inside her own mouth like a vice. She placed her lips against the tip of his cock again, a little more purposeful this time, and tried to bestow a suctioning kiss on his skin. She clumsily coordinated the movements of her lips and tongue, and hoped that it at least looked a little bit sexy. 

She pulled away with a slight grimace, using her tongue to clear the remainder of the sticky substance from her lips as she processed its flavor.

Joel laughed at her. “What, don’t I taste good?”

Ruby looked at him sympathetically, her grip around his girth loosening. “It’s salty.”

“Yeah, guess so. Not too bad, though, right? Give him a lil’ more. Not just the tip, go all around it.”

It wasn’t Ruby’s favorite flavor in the world, Joel’s arousal. But she could tolerate it, at least for the next few minutes. She did as Joel asked, placing more wet kisses all around the surface of his cock. He chattered obscenities through his teeth as she went, and it spurred her on, a warmth blooming both in her chest and in the seat of her lacy panties. With each “good fuckin’ girl” and “Jesus Christ”, Ruby became a little more confident, eventually moving to sit on top of her heel in order to relieve some of the ache. She thought about licking a stripe along the bulging vein that ran underneath Joel’s shaft, maybe even slipping the head of him into her mouth just to see how it would feel, but she wasn’t feeling quite that brave. 

“Alright, fuck, fuck… That’s enough, baby,” Joel cursed raggedly. “C’mon up here, lemme return the favor.” Joel slid over and patted the empty space next to him, the thump thump of his hand against the comforter echoing throughout the sparsely furnished hotel room. He looked at Ruby expectantly, and she met his expression with a confused one of her own. 

“Return the favor… Like, it’s time, now?” Ruby asked, a hot seed of anxiety planting itself in her stomach. 

“In a bit, sweetheart. After I getcha all warmed up, have myself a taste of that pretty pussy I know you got.”

“Oh…” Ruby breathed. She had known that that was something some men enjoyed, but certainly not any of the pimply, under-developed ones she’d heard bantering with each other as they all walked the track during gym class. Her confidence had begun to shrivel up as she made her awkward climb onto the mattress, all those debasing comments she’d overheard suddenly replaying themselves in her mind, rapidfire.

Joel switched places with Ruby as she situated herself on the bed, and slowly sunk to his knees with scrunched eyes and a labored grunt. She just sat perfectly still, other than the slight trembling of her legs from how hard she was working to keep them closed, her jittering toes just barely grazing the carpet as she waited for Joel to make himself comfortable. When his limbs finally did come to rest, he placed his hands on Ruby’s knees and looked up at her, his eyes dark and hungry.

“Let’s get these off, hm?” Joel slid his hands along the tops of her thighs, and hooked his forefingers underneath the sides of her underwear. Ruby watched silently as he undressed her, licking his chops as if he were a starved man lifting the cloche off of a decadently prepared cut of meat. He didn’t take his eyes off of her pussy the entire time, tossing the bottom half of her lacy garment into a dark corner of the room without even looking to see where it might land. Joel groaned when Ruby’s center was finally revealed to him, rosy and swollen beneath a scattering of thin, blonde hairs. “Fuck, look at you… Lay back for me, lil’ gem. Open up, lemme see her.”

Ruby leaned back onto her elbows obediently, allowing Joel to part her legs. He stared at his prize, mouth agape, and the puffs of his warm breath against her damp skin sent a shiver radiating throughout her body. He used one roughened thumb to lift up the hood of skin that covered her clit, and put the other to work delicately petting at the petals blooming from her core, tracing around the sensitive skin there and circling her leaking hole. “I knew you were gonna have a beautiful lil’ cunt, but… God damn,” Joel muttered. He leaned in to place a scruffy kiss onto her swollen bud, and sucked it into his mouth before releasing it with a pop. Ruby made a debauched noise, the sound forcing its way through her throat before she could stop it.

Joel knew she was gonna be beautiful. Ruby turned the thought over in her mind as Joel set a steady pace, kissing and licking where no one aside from herself had ever seen, ever touched before. How long had he been wondering what she looked like underneath the little shorts and skirts she’d been strutting around in? Did she only put the thought in his mind when she’d made a show of getting herself soaked in pool water in order to trap his gaze, when he’d pulled her into his lap and she’d felt his half-hard length nestled against her skin for the first time? Or had he been waiting for this moment all along, since he’d set eyes on her in that red sequin dress, since she’d made a clumsy and intoxicated attempt at dancing that led her to stumble right into his waiting arms? When Ruby had first woken up in that motel room on the edge of her hometown, she couldn’t think of anything more horrifying than the idea of Joel having seen her naked skin when he’d changed her out of her dress. Even if he was doing it in the most kind, most innocent way that a man could undress an unconscious young woman, the thought of him maneuvering the limbs of her pliant body like a doll had filled her stomach with dread, ice cold and nauseating. But now… she thought about Joel catching a glimpse of her most sensitive place as he’d tucked her into those sebum-stained sheets, every instinct he possessed telling him to touch, to taste, she won’t ever know, and still holding himself back until Ruby had given herself over to him, first. And it was thrilling. Ruby couldn’t imagine she’d ever wanted anything as badly as Joel must have been wanting her, if the fervor with which he lapped at her folds was any indication.

Joel was eating her ravenously, and his eyes were closed in pleasure, his grip on Ruby’s thighs becoming constricting as he kept them pried open. The feeling of his tongue swirling around her cunt was so overwhelming, so completely unlike anything she’d ever felt before, that she nearly slammed her knees into Joel’s ears every time he would suck on her clit in that just right way to send a pulse of electricity through her nervous system. Joel would just force them apart again every time, shaking his head and growling an mm-mm as he continued to drink from her. 

“You taste so fuckin’ good, baby. Like goddamn honey, I swear. This perfect, untouched lil’ pussy—” Joel groaned through gritted teeth, only pulling away from her for just long enough to grumble out the string of obscenities before diving back in. 

“Does it…” Ruby breathed, finding that the connection between her brain and her mouth was becoming fuzzy, snowy. “Does it… really? Taste like that?”

Joel pulled off of her with another wet suctioning sound, panting as he wiped some of her slick from his beard. “Why don’t you try it? See for yourself.”

Before Ruby could ask what Joel meant, he stood up on his knees and placed his large paws on her cheeks, bringing her face towards his and planting a soaking kiss onto her lips, still parted in curiosity. He shoved his tongue between her teeth and tangled it around her own wet muscle, transferring the sweet tang of Ruby’s own arousal onto her taste buds. Honey may have been a bit of an exaggeration, Ruby thought, but she was surprised to find how little she minded the flavor as Joel licked it into her mouth. 

Joel rose to his full height as he kissed her—slowly, carefully—and encouraged her to lay back on the bed, their lips hardly daring to part until the back of Ruby’s head was settled onto the pillows. Even with two of the things stacked on top of each other, it still felt like her skull was sinking straight through them, the down feather filling threatening to swell up over her face and suffocate her. She almost wished that it would, understanding why Joel had gently guided her into this position, why he was flinging his underwear into the same dark corner that Ruby’s had landed in and climbing on top of her.

“Fuck, I can’t wait any longer, sweetheart. You ready for me? Huh?” Joel asked, breathless as he arranged her legs just so—knees bent, thighs spread, feet planted firmly on the mattress. He took his cock into his hand and lined it up with her opening, not even looking at Ruby for a response to the question he asked, his blown pupils focused solely on her weeping pussy. Although that familiar, icy terror was beginning to wash over her skin again, she mewled out an agreeable noise to the best of her ability, and hoped that it sounded believable. Ruby had been enjoying all of the lewd activities they’d been participating in as they led up to this moment, but now that it was finally upon her, she wished that she could somehow separate herself from her body and only return to it once the deed was done. When it was over, Joel would ask if she liked it, if it felt good, if he was right when he told her that the pain would only last for a little bit, and she would give answers so convincing that he would never know that it wasn’t really her he was having sex with at all. Just her physical form, while her subconscious was cowering somewhere else.

“But… Wait, wait,” Ruby started, snapping her head up. “Should we… do you have, uh… A condom?” She whispered the name of the thing like it was dirty, shameful.

Joel touched his teeth together, sucked a regrettable breath of air through them. “I don’t, baby, no… But we don’t need one. I’ll pull out, okay? Got nothin’ to worry about.”

Ruby thought about it, briefly, and then nodded. She’d paid attention in health class, she knew that no birth control was 100% effective. But she also knew that something was better than nothing. She would just have to trust Joel’s judgment, hope that she wouldn’t get so unlucky on her first ever try.

Ruby lay her head back down on the pillows, and braced herself once more. She tried to steady her breathing, but couldn’t hide the way she was trembling.

“Hey, hey,” Joel whispered, shushing Ruby as he used his thumbs to wipe away droplets of moisture that had escaped from the corners of her eyes. She hadn’t even noticed that she’d started to cry. “It’ll be okay, baby. Probably shootin’ blanks these days, anyway. Ain’t gonna get you knocked up.”

Ruby cringed at the vulgar term, shook her head.

“What’re you afraid of, then, hm? That it’s gonna hurt?”

Ruby didn’t really know what exactly she was afraid of. The whole thing, she supposed. If she would feel any differently afterwards, if she would be able to recognize herself in the mirror, if she would be able to look her mother in the eye when she walked in the front door at the end of the week. But yes, she was afraid of the pain, in addition to all of that.

She nodded again, a small but spastic movement.

“I’ll ease you into it, sweet girl. How ‘bout this—I’ll start with just a lil’ bit, just the tip. And you let me know when you’re ready for more, okay? Does that sound alright?”

“Y-yeah… Yes, okay,” Ruby warbled, her eyes darting frantically between each of Joel’s. 

“Alright.” Again, Joel took himself into his hand, and pressed his broad, leaky tip against Ruby’s hole. He was applying very light pressure, like he just wanted to get her used to the feeling of it, the two of them making contact with each other like this for the first time. He would press himself in, gently, and then retreat again. All the while breathing heavily, raggedly, like a lion at the zoo catching sight of an animal carcass prepared just for him, but not being able to tear it apart until the bars of his cage were lifted.

“You feel that, sweet girl? Feel them lil’ kisses?” Joel asked, his voice sounding far away as he continued to prod at Ruby’s entrance with the head of his cock. Tap tap. Tap tap.

Ruby nodded, hummed once. 

“Gonna push in now, just a lil’ bit. Won’t go all the way in just yet.” True to his word, Joel repeated the same set of motions, with a little more force tacked onto the end, this time. He would kiss her opening with his blushing, angry head, use it to drag their combined wetness through her folds and swirl it around the perimeter of her hole, press himself against it for a second or two, and then back away.

Was all of this really necessary? Ruby wondered. She wasn’t sure whether this elaborate warmup would actually benefit her in any way, or if it might be a better idea for Joel to just push himself inside all in one go, rip the bandaid off. Of all the stories she’d overheard from her classmates about how they’d lost their virginities, under the bleachers or in the back of a car or in the basement of a house party or wherever, none of them included the same kind of drawn out game that Joel seemed to be playing with her. Ruby gathered from the way that girls would whisper salacious details to each other in the back of classrooms that having sex for the first time just kind of… happened. Ruby wished that Joel would just get it over with, because the longer that he played with her and teased her and kept her virginity very much intact, the more she was tempted to just spring up out of bed and call the whole thing a wash. Maybe they could just try again the next day, without so much fanfare. Spend the rest of the night recreating what they had done in the back of Joel’s truck at the fair, just in a more private, comfortable space. Joel would understand if she changed her mind, wouldn’t he?

Joel was looking at her expectantly, then, his eyes dark and lidded while he stroked himself. His eyebrows twitched as he lowered his chin, and Ruby gathered that he was waiting for her response to a question that she didn’t hear, deep in her spiraling thoughts.

“What?” Ruby asked, after a shuddering inhale. She must have been holding her breath.

“I asked if you’re ready now, lil’ gem. Would love to drag this out all night, but…” He looked down at the swollen sack hanging between his legs, and winced. “Just not sure I can wait much longer.”

Ruby had heard of this phenomenon before. How men can sometimes be so pent up that it hurts until they’re finally able to get some relief. Some girls had said that it wasn’t real, just a fictional ailment made to make them feel pressured into saying ‘yes’, but it seemed plausible enough to Ruby. She would feel awful if she were to deny Joel, to leave him aching and in pain after everything he’d done for her. There would be a loss for both of them if she decided that she was too cowardly to go through with this, the very thing she felt was standing in between the life that she had, and the life that she wanted. The girl that she was now, and the woman she wanted to become. 

“Yes,” Ruby breathed, after a beat. “I’m ready.”

The grin that spread across Joel’s face was serpentine. Ruby wasn’t sure if it would be better to look at him while he pierced her, or to just stare up at the ceiling, count the pockmarks in the tiles in an attempt to regulate her nervous system. She opted to just close her eyes, instead, screw them up tight while she clutched at the sheets and braced herself for the pain.

“This ain’t gonna work if you’re all tense like that, lil’ gem. Gotta relax so she can relax, let me inside easier. C’mon, deep breath—”

At Joel’s instruction, Ruby filled her lungs until they ached, only letting out the breath once it was forced out of her by the burning intrusion of Joel’s cock. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish dropped onto the deck of a boat, tiny whimpers and other animal-sounding noises escaping while her body adjusted to the feeling. “Joel… Joel,” Ruby cried, the only coherent word able to break through the mess of the other half-formed syllables tumbling from her lips.

Joel shushed her, both gently and impatiently. “I know, baby, I know. I’m in. Just the tip, just like I said, right? You did it, sweet girl.” He was hovering over her now, smoothing some of Ruby’s hair away from her face and trying to rub the furrow from between her brows. “I’m gonna start movin’ now—”

“No! No,” Ruby pleaded, hoarsely. 

“Yes, baby. I know it hurts, but you’re doin’ so good for me, sweetheart. My good girl, huh? Wanna be good for me, don’t you?” The praise that he’d doled out so sweetly earlier, now used against her, coercing. But even wound as tightly as she was, Ruby couldn’t deny the brief fluttery sensation she’d felt in her core at Joel’s words, the little whimper that had slipped through her lips, sounding only slightly more pleasured than the rest. 

Slowly, Joel rocked himself back and forth, the edge of his cockhead catching on her opening every time it slipped back out. This whole procedure seemed to make him rabid, all gritted teeth and bulging veins, quivering muscles and strained groans as he moved at the slowest pace his amygdala would allow. Ruby just lay there, wondering when the burning friction would dissipate and make way for a more moistened, pleasurable experience. Joel had let a sizable droplet of his saliva drip down from his mouth and pool around where the two of them met, but it didn’t seem to help much. He continued to praise Ruby while he used her to prolong his own pleasure, too focused on the sight of his cock disappearing between her stretched, pink lips to give her any meaningful consideration.

“Ow! Joel, oh my God—” Ruby exclaimed, the dull burn between her legs becoming sharper all at once. She shot upwards, trying to prop herself up on her elbows to see what had happened, but one of Joel’s rough hands landed on her shoulder and pushed her back down before she could get a good look.

“Shh, shh shh, just take it, sweet girl. C’mon, be good,” Joel growled, increasing the speed and strength behind his thrusts. Ruby could suddenly feel him in her stomach, practically underneath her goddamn ribcage, with no warning. Joel didn’t allow her to get a good look at what he was doing, but from what she could feel, she gathered that he’d just decided to go back on his word, shove himself inside all at once, before Ruby was ready. Not that she felt ready for any part of this, she supposed.

“B-but that’s not… You said—” Ruby could barely get the sounds out, her body not belonging to herself anymore as Joel’s forceful movements jostled her on top of the mattress.

“I know what I said, sweetheart. I know. ‘S just… Fuck, you feel so goddamn good. Tight lil’ fuckin’ cunt squeezin’ me so much. Can’t help myself, baby. I know it hurts. Just—shit—just fuckin’ relax and it’ll feel good, okay?”

Where had this version of Joel emerged from, so unlike the gentle and guiding presence she’d gotten to know? Ruby hardly recognized him now, the green of his eyes looking a sickly shade in the room’s dim lighting conditions, his pupils blown to a predatory size. Her hands scrambled for some kind of purchase, clawing at the sheets and her own bare thighs and anywhere on Joel’s broad form that she could get a hold on, before both of her wrists were clutched in one of Joel’s fists and pinned above her head. 

Joel began to take and take and take, caging himself around Ruby’s quivering form and mumbling incoherent profanities that she could hardly make sense of. They sounded half-praising, half-derogatory, spilling out from between Joel’s teeth before he could stop them or string them into any kind of structure that might make sense. All Ruby could do was hang on, squeeze her eyes so tightly that stars burst behind her lids, and bite down on her own bottom lip until she thought she might be tasting blood, just to have somewhere to redirect the pain spreading from her core. She couldn’t even delude herself into thinking that she was feeling any semblance of pleasure. She only felt split open, raw.

Violated.

“O-oh fuck, oh fuck…” Joel spat, his hips beginning to stutter. A heat began to spread in Ruby’s chest, wondering if Joel’s vocalizations meant that her ordeal may be over soon, if he may be about to finish. “Alright, baby. I don’t wantcha to be scared, but—”

“What? But what?” Ruby croaked.

She dared to open her eyes, and caught the corner of Joel’s mouth pulled up in sick satisfaction. The expression dropped quickly as he licked his lips. “You’re, uh… Bleedin’ a lil’ bit. ‘S normal, supposed to happen on your first time. Means you officially ain’t a virgin anymore.” Joel forced the last few words through bared teeth, his movements becoming impossibly harder, faster, as if the sight of what he’d inflicted upon Ruby was spurring him on. 

He adjusted his hold on Ruby’s wrists, his thumb digging into the still-healing gash in her hand that she’d been trying so desperately to leave alone, that she’d once used the comfort of Joel’s touch to prevent her from tearing open. 

She yelped like a wounded animal, pleading with him in vain while she tried desperately to wriggle out of his grasp. “Joel, stop… Stop, Joel!” Ruby cried.

“What? What hurts, baby? Oh, ‘s it your hand?” Joel asked, his voice so overly saturated with sympathy, Ruby could tell it wasn’t genuine. She did her best to nod against the pillows, using her face and her eyes and her words to beg him to let up the pressure on her wound, but his thumb didn’t budge. Ruby could feel the scab cracking, the newly-formed scar tissue tearing at the seam where her skin had been attempting to stitch itself back together. “I’m sorry, baby,” Joel added. But he wasn’t. 

Ruby tried to yell, to kick and thrash and plead with Joel to let her go, to stop, but it was hopeless. She felt like she was sinking to the bottom of the ocean, her voice coming out garbled and her limbs feeling like they were pushing through thousands of pounds of pressure. For every semi-coherent protest that she was able to punch through her lungs, Joel covered it up with one of his own groans, grating and ursine. For every kick Ruby managed to land against Joel’s back, he tightened his grasp on her wrists, pressed down harder on her hand until she saw stars. Ruby had no choice but to succumb to Joel’s ravaging of her body, swallowing her whimpers and whines to the best of her ability, and letting herself fall still and quiet as she waited for the abuse to stop.

She was right. Nothing would ever be the same again. All of this had been a huge mistake, from the very beginning. She had been wrong about Joel, and she had been wrong about herself. Ruby had been clinging so desperately to the idea of Joel that she’d had in her mind, that she’d actively worked to write off all of the red flags that had slowly been popping up all around him, one by one. Because if she had to admit to herself that she’d misjudged him, that she’d made a bad decision, that she’d gotten herself into something that she didn’t know how to get out of, then that would mean that everything she’d worked so hard for her entire life would mean nothing anymore. All that Ruby had was her grades, her smarts, her resumé and her prospects. She didn’t have a social life, she didn’t have any friends, she didn’t have anybody she could tell about what had been done to her when she finally made it back home. And all those achievements and the sacrifices she’d made for them would be for nothing. What did her near-perfect attendance and 95th percentile SAT score matter now that she’d failed herself so severely?

Stupid, stupid little girl. 

She felt flames licking at her from the inside out, her skin searing where it was being torn and stretched. The only thought that managed to force itself through the pain, was how she was going to get herself back home. Everything had come crashing down around her so quickly, there wasn’t any time to waste trying to pick up the pieces, to try to make sense of anything or attempt to put it back together. There wasn’t any denying it anymore, Ruby knew that she had to see Joel’s avoidance of the matter for what it was—that he was never planning on bringing her back. It had all been a lie, concocted to get her into his truck so that he could take her to the other side of the country and keep her for himself. He didn’t admire her intellect or her confidence, he didn’t think she was so mature for her age or that she seemed like she knew exactly who she was, or any of the other bullshit he’d flattered her with. He’d preyed on her, and she’d fallen willingly into his clutches, allowing him to sink his claws deeper and deeper until she was pierced clean through, too late to escape without getting her flesh torn open. 

She couldn’t let him take her to California. She would never make it out. 

After some time, Ruby felt empty. Emotionally, yes, but physically empty, too. She dared to look down at herself, and was relieved to find that Joel had finally unsheathed himself from her. She couldn’t be sure how long the onslaught lasted—five minutes? An hour? It didn’t matter. It was over.

At first, her hands felt like they were still bound together. Ruby rotated her wrists, exhaled gratefully when sensation flooded back to them easily. Nothing felt broken, her fragile bones and tendons feeling bruised, but not seriously damaged.

She couldn’t say the same for the ravine in her flesh, running along the meat of her thumb. It looked fresh, bleeding and oozing like it had when Joel’s carving tool had first sliced it. The wound had started to heal over enough that Ruby hadn’t thought it needed a bandage that morning. Now all that progress was lost. The new tissue would have to grow in twice as thick, leaving a scar that would look even more mangled than if it had just been left alone. All that effort Ruby put in not to pick at it, all the energy her body had spent trying to cover up something painful and ugly, and it had been split open again anyway. Joel’s own fingers had smeared the blood across both of her hands, crimson fingerprints stamped into her palms and the backs of her hands. Her whole body felt stained.

With some effort, Ruby was able to sit herself up again. Her abdominal muscles spasmed and cramped, her hip flexors and pelvic floor screaming at her as she pulled herself upright, especially with only one usable hand to aid her. Ruby swallowed, thick, cottony saliva, and braved a look between her thighs.

What she saw made her stomach lurch.

There was a puddle of dampness underneath her. All that slick she was sitting in couldn’t have been her arousal, so it must have been Joel’s. That, and his spit, probably. And Ruby could feel something oozing out of her. Something warm, but comparatively cool against where she was still burning down there. She was afraid it was going to be blood. A lot of blood, from the way she could feel it dripping. She touched a trembling finger to the substance, and lifted it into her eyeline to see that whatever was coming out of her was opaque, creamy white and tinged pink. Her eyes flicked up to where Joel was tucking himself back into his underwear, and she understood what he had done. 

Everything that came out of his mouth was a lie.

Ruby scrambled out of the bed, ignoring both the protests coming from her muscles and the verbal ones that Joel was hurling at her concernedly. She hobbled her way into the bathroom and flung the door shut behind her, collapsing onto her knees and spilling the contents of her stomach into the toilet. She surrendered herself to the upheaval, her insides contracting and seizing as they forced everything out. She was spitting up nothing more than yellow bile by the time Joel had appeared behind her, wrapping her in his embrace and cooing soothing words at her as she wretched. His touch only exacerbated things, Ruby’s body twisting and contorting in its effort to remove itself from his vicinity. She was making awful noises, coughing and gagging and sobbing and pleading incoherently for him to just let go of her, please let go. 

But Ruby was weak. And tired. And sore and bleeding. Her mouth tasted sour and there was an ache behind her eyes and between her legs, and she just didn’t have enough energy left to keep fighting him. Darkness began to creep in on the edges of her vision and her head felt like it was floating several inches above her neck, and as much as she wanted to burst through the door of their hotel room and run as far away from Joel as her bare feet could carry her, she knew she wouldn’t get very far, not in the state she was in. If she wanted a real chance at escape, she needed rest. And she deserved that, didn’t she? After her ordeal.

Maybe it made her a coward, allowing her violator to clean the sick from her chin and wipe his seed from her folds. Letting him wrap her in the yellowed comforter and feed her bites of too-dry room service steak while they watched a movie on cable—black-and-white despite the color picture that the hotel touted, and the plot revolving around a conflict so trivial, it almost made Ruby sick all over again. She choked down each one of the bites of meat that Joel fed to her, sinewy and tasting like iron. He lifted a glass of water to her lips to help her wash everything down, and she hoped that everything he was putting into her stomach would stay there.

Ruby was hardly paying attention to the movie anyway, and didn’t complain when Joel started talking over it. 

“You’re gonna love it, sweetheart. Gonna love it out there,” Joel said, kind of to Ruby but kind of to himself. To neither of them in particular, he said it. Absently, dreamily.

Ruby didn’t respond. She didn’t need to. He continued, anyway.

“It’s a beautiful house. Beautiful. Once we’re done fixin’ it up, it will be. Big ol’ wraparound porch, stone fireplace… Main bedroom upstairs looks out over the land, you can just see for miles. It’ll be perfect for us.”

Joel had to have been talking about California. It wasn’t just some hazy, half-baked idea he had, he had a plan. There was a house out there, one that he presumably wanted to live in with her. But it just wasn’t possible. It wasn’t realistic. There had been a few points during their time together, Ruby admitted, when she wished that it didn’t have to end, that she could keep Joel with her forever in some form or another. But while Ruby understood those thoughts to be nothing more than fantasy, Joel wanted to make them real. He was deranged, and the fact became clearer and clearer with each detail about the house in California that he described. Joel had split Ruby open, torn her in two, violated both her trust and her body, and all he could talk about was some disrepaired farmhouse that may or may not actually exist. Ruby wanted him to stop. For everything to stop and to go back to the way that it was, to write these past two weeks off as a horrible nightmare.

But she couldn’t, not just yet. She would rest, allow her body to recuperate, wait for the sun to rise again and then begin her journey back home, somehow. 

She would mourn everything she’d lost later, once she was back in the confines of her childhood bedroom that had seemed like prison walls, at the time. But Ruby knew now, there were much, much worse ideas of captivity.

—

Ruby hardly slept at all that night. Maybe an hour, at the most, spread out over fifteen minute intervals. Joel had held her tightly against his chest for the entire ten or so hours that he slept, somehow pulling her closer in his sleep every time she tried to wriggle out of his clutches. By morning, she felt disgusting. Sticky from Joel’s sweat that had seeped through the lacy back of her lingerie top—he was a large man, and he ran hot, despite the subarctic air blasting from the A/C unit by the window—and peeled raw everywhere. Her entire body felt like the skin underneath a blister. Tender, weeping.

It was all she could do to go through the motions with him that morning. Joel seemed to take extra care with her, hovering while she brushed her teeth and insisting on helping her get dressed. She wished that she didn’t have to accept his help, but the mobility in her limbs and her joints was so limited, stiff and sore as they were. Despite his gentle actions, there was no hint of apology in them, only possession. He was treating her like a doll, but in the sense that she was something inanimate, something that he owned. And didn’t a part of her belong to him, now? Something that she could never get back?

Ruby couldn’t bring herself to respond to anything that Joel had said to her throughout the rest of the morning with anything more substantial than a small, forced smile, or a shrug of her shoulders, or a nod of her head. But he didn’t seem to mind. If anything, he seemed satisfied to have finally knocked some submission into her, to have extracted all that uncertainty and questioning from her mind, because it was clear to her now that she was never facing any kind of fate other than the one Joel had been planning for her all along. For the rest of her life, Ruby would never forgive herself for not realizing it sooner. 

But it wasn’t over, not yet. She still had a chance.

She hardly remembered anything that happened in between getting out of bed that morning and being helped into the truck. Ruby had kept her head down, her mouth shut, her hand clamped protectively over her uncovered wound. Joel had told her that he was going to ask the front desk for another bandage while they were checking out, but he didn’t. At least, Ruby didn’t have one when they’d gotten back on the road and her consciousness had resumed some of its normal function, so she assumed that he had forgotten. Or more likely, that he never intended to ask in the first place. That he wanted to be able to look at it and touch it, to study it. Or something. He couldn’t see the damage he had done to her by going back on his word, by being unable or unwilling to control himself while he took what he wanted from her. But he could see that little bit of mutilation he’d done with his carving tool.

That stupid hummingbird was still sitting on the dash, mocking her. Although made of wood, the bird had more of a sure chance at freedom than Ruby did. It at least had wings. It was small, nimble, fast. It only needed the window to be cracked an inch or so, and then it would be able to rocket itself out of the truck and soar for miles, land in the next state over before Joel could even notice it was missing. 

Ruby knew it was the best chance she had, running. She couldn’t concoct any sort of plan more elaborate than that. She tried, but with endless miles of yellow-dotted highway stretched out in front of them, and nothing but vast, empty desert on either side, she had begun to lose hope. Joel would surely catch her if she attempted to sneak out during the night, would never even let her out of his sight long enough for her to call the police or ask some kind-looking bystander for help. He wasn’t even allowing her to be in any real contact with her own parents anymore, preventing her from making any calls to them, and somehow convincing her that the two postcards she’d sent would be enough. She was cut off. Alone. And too stupid to be able to save herself. They would probably cross the border into California in the next day or so, and then it would be too late. Who knew what horrors, what methods of restraint and captivity, were awaiting her in that house? Ruby could only imagine.

Ruby was spiraling down, down. Her breaths became shallow, her heartrate picking up to a jackrabbit speed, her nails digging into her palms so hard, she was about to open up the skin on her other hand, too. She was panicking. Half-formed thoughts and images building on top of one another, flashes of what her life would look like if she was forced to stay with Joel, to give up her future and her education in exchange for being his little pet. What would her parents do, if she never came home again? They would look for her, wouldn’t they? They would know to start in Austin, at least, when her last postcard arrived and another one didn’t follow, when Ruby didn’t show up in its stead. When the night after next she would be due back home, when the girls she was supposedly with would be eating dinner at the table with their own families, when Ruby’s seat at her own kitchen table would be empty because she was never with them to begin with and she would be caught in her lie and the whole thing would fall apart and—

“So, uh… How’re you feelin’, lil’ gem?” Joel asked, putting an abrupt end to the film reel that had been unspooling itself in Ruby’s mind. 

What did he expect her to say?

Ruby said nothing. Shrugged her shoulders, her gaze trained on the endless expanse of beige dirt outside her window.

Joel made a noise, somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. “I know I got a lil’ rough with ya, but—” he went to place his hand on Ruby’s thigh, and she flinched, his touch like the serrated edge of a knife. “C’mon, sweetheart. Don’t be like that.” No ‘I’m sorry’, no ‘That was wrong of me’, just ‘Don’t be like that.’ Cold and dismissive. Ruby pressed herself as close to the passenger's side door as she could, tried to put as much physical distance between herself and Joel as the bench seat would allow. She wished she could just turn all of her senses off, block him out completely, make everything go away.

“Hey, look at me,” he barked. Joel cupped his hand underneath Ruby’s chin, grabbed tightly onto her jaw and turned her face towards him, hard. “I think you owe me a lil’ more goddamn respect, after everything I’ve done.”

“Just stop, Joel, don’t touch me,” Ruby protested. She grabbed hold of his arm, sunk her nails into his skin and used all her strength to tear her face from his grasp. He wasn’t prepared for her show of force, and the altercation caused him to jerk the steering wheel, sending the truck halfway off the road and directly into the path of a telephone pole. The tires quickly lost traction as they spun against the dirt, and Ruby shrieked as she braced herself for the impact. But all she felt was a bump underneath her seat as the tires met asphalt again, Joel apparently able to steer the truck back onto the road just in time.

A few seconds passed in silence as the two of them registered the near-miss.

“The fuck was that? What would you have done, huh? If I’d have fuckin’ crashed us into that pole just now because’a you?”

“I would’ve run,” Ruby grumbled under her breath, the admission leaving her lips before she could stop it.

“What’d you say?”

Ruby repeated herself, surprised at the volume and vitriol she was able to muster. “I said I would have run away!” She faced Joel head on as she yelled, and watched as the shocked expression slowly melted off his face, contorting into rage.

“You lil’ fuckin’ brat… So goddamn ungrateful, all of you. All the fuckin’ same… I should’ve known.” A scarlet blush began to crawl its way up the back of Joel’s neck, a vein in his temple bulging as he clenched the steering wheel tighter, tighter. 

“Well if I’m such a brat, why don’t you just take me back? You’ll never have to see me again. I’ll forget you ever even existed.” Ruby never would have thought she’d be saying these things about him. Joel, Joel, who had made her feel beautiful and carefree and special and seen, who she’d practically cried herself to sleep over, wishing that she could find some way to live in this little make-believe world with him, forever. But she knew that the Joel sitting next to her now wasn’t the same as the one who had given her a palm rose and carved her a hummingbird and kissed her under the starry Texan sky. Because that Joel was never real.

“Oh, I think it’s a lil’ late for that now. California’ll be good for you, baby. Good for us. Brand new start. Gonna forget all about that shithole I picked you up from.”

“It’s not a shithole, Joel. I have family there, I have friends—”

“No, you don’t. You told me you don’t. So don’t try that shit with me,” Joel interrupted. “Those girls didn’t wanna invite you to come along with ‘em because they don’t think you’re any fun to be around, ain’t that what you told me? And you know what? I think they might’ve been onto somethin’.”

Ruby felt a pang in her chest. She never would’ve imagined Joel saying something like that to her. It hurt, and he said it because he knew it would hurt. But she had to remember, this was somebody else speaking to her. A stranger.

She set her jaw, rolled her shoulders back, took a breath. “Joel, take me home,” Ruby said, sure and authoritative. 

Joel’s upper lip twitched. “No.”

“Then pull over, and I’ll find my own way back.”

Silence from her driver, her captor.

“Joel.”

Again, he didn’t respond. His eyes remained on the road ahead, his brows lowered and his jaw clenched.

Ruby didn’t know what else to do. 

She glanced at the wooden hummingbird where it had landed on the floor by her feet, having tumbled off the dash when the truck had swerved off the road. Despite the fall, its wings were still outstretched, taunting. Daring Ruby to take flight.

But if she ran, where would she hide? It was broad daylight. If she tripped and fell, Joel would be on top of her in a second. If she got tired, if the muscles in her legs atrophied and couldn’t carry her any further, there was nothing to obscure her if she needed to stop and wait him out. There were hills about half a mile’s distance from the road, maybe she could make it over the top and hope that Joel’s aged body wouldn’t be able to follow. 

It was a complete gamble. But it was an opportunity. And she didn’t know when the next one would come, if it ever would.

She had to try.

Before she could think twice about it, Ruby flung open the passenger's side door and threw herself out onto the dirt, her body tumbling over rocks and dry, scratchy sagebrush before finally coming to a stop. Joel had screeched the truck to a halt several yards ahead of her, and Ruby forced her bruised and scraped arms to push herself up from the ground, knowing she only had a few seconds to get a head start. She could hear Joel shouting, roaring her name among an assortment of threats and obscenities, his voice sounding louder and harsher and darker than she’d ever heard it before. Ruby was scared and in pain and already wondering if this decision would turn out to be worse than the one she’d made when she initially agreed to go with him, but she couldn’t turn back now.

Ruby took off running, and she heard Joel’s heavy footfalls following behind her shortly thereafter. She channeled the hummingbird, expertly dodging rocks and shrubs and pitfalls in the dirt, not daring to look behind her as she flew herself to safety. Wherever that would be.

She had no plan. Nothing ahead of her except for brown, arid landscape, nothing behind her except for a lifetime of imprisonment, or worse. She had no money, no belongings except for the clothes on her back, the brain inside her skull that had failed her over and over and over again. But Ruby had to focus, now. She couldn’t allow herself to worry about the future until she was sure that she would have one.

Ruby’s legs were getting tired, and her throat tasted like blood. Her lungs were aching, and pain shot up the backs of her legs with every impact that her heels made against the ground. Nothing about what Joel had dressed her in that morning was very suitable for running, and she wondered if maybe that was on purpose.

She could hear Joel closing the distance between them no matter how fast she tried to make her legs move. Ruby was smaller, more nimble than Joel was, but he had height on his side. Each one of his strides were probably twice the length of Ruby’s, and he was catching up to her, quickly. Ruby did some quick calculations, and it didn’t take long for her to realize that Joel would surely be on top of her long before she would make it to the hills. She had to come up with something else. There had to be something else.

Something dark appeared at the edge of her vision, then. Something in the distance, a shape sitting among the landscape too inorganic to be another shrub, too tall and too large. It looked like some kind of structure. A shed, maybe. A barn. It didn’t matter. It was a place to hide. Maybe she could scramble up into the rafters and wait Joel out, his own lumbering form too heavy to be supported by the surely dryrotted beams of the old building. Maybe the place still had some old farming tools left inside that she could use against Joel, a scythe or a pitchfork or a cattle prod or something. 

Ruby made a hard right turn, and she heard Joel stumble behind her, curse at himself. It was all the advantage she needed. Her endurance got a second wind, having some glimmer of hope in her sights, and she ran straight towards the structure as if it might save her. Because maybe it would.

But her spirit started to dim as the barn became larger and larger in her vision, and she saw that the place was entirely boarded up. Every window, every door, every possible entrance had slats of mismatched scrap wood nailed overtop of them, ensuring that she’d never be able to get inside. Not unless some feat of herculean strength came over her that would allow her to rip the boards away with her bare hands.

Joel was closing in on her again, his grunting and panting sounding so close, Ruby could practically feel his hot breath on the back of her neck. His hands would surely come next unless she made a decision—keep going, past the barn and toward the hills, or try to get inside, somehow.

The structure was relatively short, with wings extending out from either side of the main body that she might be able to climb up onto, if she jumped high enough. She barreled toward the edge of the roof and tried to summon what strength she had left into her legs, using it to boost herself up onto the shingles. Ruby miscalculated some of the distance and winced as one of her shins slammed directly into the hard, unforgiving wood, but she didn’t dare look down to inspect the damage. She ran along the steep slope of the roof, trying to find some kind of equilibrium between keeping her balance and getting to the top as quickly as she could. The flimsy canvas shoes Ruby was wearing hardly had any tread on them, making it hard for her to get any traction on the moss-covered tiles. She ended up on all fours, scrambling clumsily to the peak of the roof, where she hoped Joel wouldn’t be able to follow. She could still hear his boots thudding against the ground below, and used the opportunity to catch her breath, allow her muscles to rest.

“Jesus Christ… Faster than you look, I’ll give you that,” Joel panted, having finally reached the barn. He was clutching at his side, his face contorted in pain, and it gave Ruby some satisfaction. “Just… Come on down, Ruby girl, okay? Ain’t gonna hurt ya if you cooperate. C’mon, let’s go.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Ruby spit back, defiant.

Joel nodded, licked his lips. He looked at their surroundings, or lack thereof, and gestured to them vaguely. “Seems like you got nowhere else to go. You won’t be able to fuckin’ survive without me.”

“That’s not true. I don’t need you.” “Yes, you do. You know what would’a happened to you if I wasn’t there at the bar that night, huh? You know what happens to pretty things like you when they’re too dumb not to get themselves fuckin’ plastered without anybody lookin’ out for ‘em? I saved you.”

Ruby didn’t quite know how to respond to that. She could imagine what Joel was insinuating, because he’d done it to her anyway, while she was completely sober.

“You know what, I ain’t arguin’ with you—” Joel began to amble up onto the roof, prompting Ruby to spin around and grab the thing that had made climbing up there look somewhat promising in the first place—an old weathervane, whatever animal that had once been sitting atop it long gone, but a sharp, patinated arrow still remaining. She tore it from the roof with ease, the nails that had secured it to the wood having eroded from decades’ worth of rusting, and wielded it in Joel’s direction. 

He threw his hands up in mock surrender, his mouth widening into a despicable grin.

“Oh, I’m real scared, baby. What’re you gonna do with that, hm?”

Ruby said nothing. Held her ground. 

Joel continued to climb the slope of the roof, still with his hands beside his face, palms forward. He made deliberate, careful strides, stalking towards her like a predator.

And then he pounced.

Ruby took a fateful step backward, her foot cutting through a rotted spot in the roof like butter. She fell several feet down, landing hard on her back. All the air had been punched from her lungs, and she thought she might die just like that, choking on dust and black mold spores. All she could see was splinters of wood and other particles floating around in the shaft of light streaming in from the hole in the roof. The rest of the barn was completely dark, none of the boarded up windows allowing any daylight to come through. Ruby wasn’t sure where the weathervane had ended up, but if it had come down with her, it must’ve skittered across the ground and ended up in some corner of the barn where the light couldn’t reach. She was just glad that when she looked down at herself, she didn't see it protruding from her stomach.

Once Ruby recovered her breathing, her gasping and coughing finally subsiding enough for her to hear Joel’s footsteps high above her, she scrambled into one of the barn’s dark corners. She didn’t know what might be laying in wait for her there, whether an innocuous bale of hay or a pile of rusty equipment, but anything had to be better than the monster still lurking outside. Ruby felt around blindly with her hands until they brushed against something that felt like some kind of knob, and when her vision had adjusted a bit, she could see that it was a storage cabinet. She tugged open one of the doors with some effort and crammed herself inside. 

For a while, Ruby heard nothing aside from her own breathing. She felt tickles on her face and along her arms that she was certain had to be spiders, but she convinced herself that she was just imagining things, the sensory deprivation provided by the cabinet causing her brain to make things up. There’s nothing there, there’s nothing there. You’re safe. He’s gone.

And then, the thudding. Like a battering ram hitting against the barn doors. Ruby flinched, and cupped a hand over her mouth to stifle her startled shriek. The sound had to have been Joel, using the sole of one of his heavy boots to kick through the slats of wood holding the doors shut. His rhythmic kicks echoed throughout the empty barn, sounding more sinister and horrifying as Ruby could hear the wooden barrier becoming weaker and weaker. It would only take a few more tries, and then he’d be inside. She had to stay put. It would be her best chance.

Thud… Thud… Boom!

Ruby heard the barn doors fly open, heard the two-by-fours exploding and their pieces scattering across the space, some of them bouncing off the cabinet door before landing in the dirt. Joel’s heavy footsteps soon followed, as did his voice, gravelly and taunting.

“Come on out, lil’ gem. It don’t have to be this way,” Joel said. He sounded like his back was to her hiding spot, his voice slightly muffled as it traveled towards the opposite side of the barn. Maybe he wouldn’t see the cabinet in the darkness, just give up and assume that she had escaped again in the time it took him to bust the doors open. All that Ruby could do was hope, and wait. “Don’t make this any worse than it has to be. I know you’re in here somewhere, baby.” She heard something like a swath of fabric being whisked into the air, like he had torn a tarp off of something to see if she was cowering underneath.

Joel’s footsteps circled around the barn, and Ruby could hear him swatting at things and knocking things over as he walked, the sounds of destruction becoming more frustrated and closer together as he failed to find her.

For a moment, it sounded like he was giving up. He was walking toward the end of the barn where Ruby’s cupboard was, but it sounded more like he was making his way back towards the door, instead of bothering to explore more places where he knew she wouldn’t be. 

Every bone in Ruby’s body was aching. Her lower spine felt slightly misaligned from where she had landed when she fell through the roof, the bruise on her shin was pulsing and sore, and most concerningly, she was afraid one of her ankles might have been broken. If Joel were to discover her, and she had to run, she wanted to be sure that the bones wouldn’t just snap underneath her. She dared to lift the offending ankle slightly into the air, rolled it around once to see if any pain resulted.

What she felt instead, was her foot making contact with something. Not one of the walls of the cupboard, but something else stored inside. Some kind of pole, slender and wooden, that she’d knocked off balance and caused to fall. Ruby held perfectly still as the metal, toothed end of the rake landed against the panel of wood above her head, and she held her breath while she waited to see if Joel had heard. 

“There you are,” he growled. 

Ruby shoved the cabinet doors open before Joel could do it for her, and darted towards the opening he’d kicked into the side of the barn. 

She didn’t make it very far, Joel sticking one of his boots out into her path and tripping her. She fell, hard, and cried out when she used her wounded hand to break her fall without thinking. She flipped over onto her back and tried to crawl backwards away from him. Joel was looming above her, his eyes dark and faraway, while he herded her further and further into the barn. Not until Ruby was forced to look directly at him like this had she noticed that he was wearing his backpack. She didn’t want to know what was in there that he deemed important enough to grab before he started chasing after her.

“You think you’re so smart… Look at you now, huh?” Joel baited, his lips pulled into a sneer. “It doesn’t have to end this way, y’know. You can get outta this. All you have to do is come with me.”

“Come with you to California? What, so we can play ‘house’ together? You wanna make me your little wife, or something? Is that it?”

Joel scoffed. “Somethin’ like that… Does that sound so awful?”

Ruby shook her head. “You’re sick, Joel.” Her voice wavered, but she meant what she said. She could tell that her words had stung him, but she doubled down, anyway. “You’re a freak.”

Ruby wasn’t sure where this sudden burst of venom came from that she was able to summon. Where she had gotten the strength and determination to throw herself out of a moving vehicle, to run for half a mile or more and fight back harder than she ever had against anything in her whole life.

But that was just it, she supposed.

She’d spent her entire life watching it go by from the sidelines, playing by other people’s rules and trying so hard to conform to the picture-perfect standards that her parents held her to, that Ruby had no idea who she actually was—prom queen, salutatorian, debate team captain, these were all achievements, titles that wouldn’t mean anything outside the walls of her high school. But who was she, really? Fierce sounded nice. Fighter, maybe. It was about time Ruby put up a fight, for once in her life.

Joel continued stalking towards her, and Ruby kept dragging herself away from him, back and back and back, until she finally hit the far wall of the barn. Nowhere else to go, now. Her hands searched the ground on either side of her, hoping to find something she could use to her advantage, to create a distraction that would allow her the breath’s moment she needed to escape. Her fingers brushed up against something hard, rough, no bigger than an 8-track tape. Good enough, Ruby thought. She closed her fingers around it.

Joel’s lip curled at her insults, clearly offended by the words she’d hurled at him. She watched his hand twitch at his side, saw his eyes darken. “You’re gonna regret that,” Joel responded, and then he lunged at her.

Ruby lobbed the rock at him then, and he stumbled back, clutching at his face while blood poured from the newly formed crack across the bridge of his nose. “You little bitch,” he spat, his voice seeping with hatred.

Again, Ruby flew past him, the world outside the barn door just within her reach. She was about to cross the threshold, half a second away from her freedom, when the back of her skull met the hard ground. Joel had grabbed a fistful of her hair, yanked her back so hard it felt like a few locks of it were torn straight out of her scalp, and slammed her into the dirt. He was on top of her now, straddling her, one hand wrapped tightly around her throat while the other one clumsily sloughed his backpack from his shoulders. He dumped the contents out impatiently, and Ruby was confused by what she saw—a polaroid camera and some photos that had presumably come from it, a length of rope and a roll of duct tape, a hunting knife, and something perhaps even more baffling than the rest of the items—a wad of cash, no doubt at least ten times the amount of what they had stolen from Cap and his friends. They had never needed the money, then. Joel had just wanted to puppet her around, test her loyalty, see how willing she’d be to do his dirty work for him. Joel could be offended by her words all he wished, but Ruby knew that they were true—he was sick.

Ruby kicked and trashed, her vision darkening as her limbs flailed weakly, helplessly. This couldn’t be the end, there had to be something else she could try. Some way to break through to him, to see if the Joel she’d come to care for was still in there, somehow.

Her eyes landed on the polaroids again. Although her lids were fluttering, her consciousness threatening to slip away, they seemed like they were all of the same girl. She was pale, made even more so by the camera’s flash, with dark brown hair that probably matched what had been on Joel’s head ten or so years ago. And Ruby wondered if the girl might have been Joel’s niece, what was her name again? It was something strange, that started with a harsh ‘C’ or ‘K’ sound, Ruby remembered. Kristi? Caitlyn? No, it was an animal or something, wasn’t it? Kitty or Collie or—

“Cricket!” Ruby rasped through compressed vocal chords. “Is… Is that her?” She pointed a frail, trembling finger towards the scattered polaroids, desperately searching Joel’s eyes for a sign that the name might have sparked something in him.

He let up the pressure on her throat just a bit, and stared at her as if she’d just spoken another language.

“Is who… Who the fuck’s Cricket?”

“That girl in the pictures… Is that your niece? Cricket? Remember, you told me about her, you let me… you let me wear her sweatshirt, the blue one. Her name was stitched onto the sleeve.”

Joel turned his head toward the polaroids, but he couldn’t seem to make the connection between them, and the questions Ruby was asking him.

“Oh, Cricket, ‘s right… Catherine was her real name. She tried to get me to use that dumbass nickname for her, I couldn’t believe anybody in her life actually called her that. Well… ‘til I saw they had it printed on her missin’ posters. Oughta get rid of that fuckin’ sweatshirt...” The expression on Joel’s face looked like he was reminiscing on a tender, childhood memory, and Ruby was horrified. “But no, that ain’t her in the pictures. Catherine, or my brother’s brat. Don’t even know what that kid looks like now.”

It was only then, when it was much, much too late, that Ruby had realized—Joel had never actually told her the name of his niece, she had just made the assumption on her own. All this time, that cozy blue sweatshirt had belonged to some poor, missing girl. The embroidery was so small, the thread so close in color to that of the jersey knit fabric, that Joel had probably never even noticed it was there. If he had, he would never have let Ruby traipse around wearing a piece of evidence.

“Who… Who is it, then?” Ruby panted. She couldn’t quite tell the age of the girl, from the angle she was looking at the photos from. Maybe she was an old girlfriend, or a sister or something. Someone who was still special to him, who still had enough of a hold on his heart that her evocation could convince Joel to stop this.

Joel tugged his lower lip through his teeth, still wearing that wistful expression. “The one before you. Squeezed her pretty neck, too, when she tried to toss me aside. Goddamn... ungrateful…” Joel trailed off as his hands resumed their constricting pressure around Ruby’s neck, fueled by the rage he felt at the memory of his previous victim.

So, Ruby wasn’t the first, then. Or the second, or likely even the third. And she knew she wouldn’t be the last.

She was out of options.

“Joel, p-please… Please don’t do this. Please let me go home. Please, J-Joel. Please,” Ruby pleaded, sputtering and crying. Her last resort had failed. She knew what was coming. Joel was sicker, more twisted and perverted than she ever could’ve imagined. Just that morning, Ruby thought that Joel had already done the worst thing that he could ever possibly do to her. But as she cried and begged, and his hands continued their assault on her throat despite her garbled, rasping pleas, she realized how horribly, horribly wrong she was. 

“It’s too late, sweetheart. Too fuckin’ late. It could’a been you, baby. You could’a been the one. And now look what’s gotta happen…”

Joel’s hands squeezed tighter, tighter, impossibly tighter. Ruby gagged, choked, spewing out wet, grotesque noises as she felt the cartilage at the front of her throat crunching, deformed by Joel’s fingertips. Her head was still throbbing from the impact it had made against the dirt floor when Joel had slammed her down, and her eyes felt like they were going to squeeze out of their sockets, the pressure building up behind her frontal bone becoming unbearable. She tried to scream, to cry out for her mother or for God or for anybody, but no sounds would come out. She couldn’t even get air into her lungs anymore. Everything was going dark, slipping away.

In her last moments, Ruby saw her time with Joel as a series of slides, flicking across her vision like she was looking through a View-Master. She remembered what it had felt like when she first noticed his eyes on her at the bar, the way he looked at her like she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She remembered the way he’d taken care of her that night after she’d made a mess of herself, the way he’d listened to her the next morning as she unspooled all of her trivial, juvenile problems, and he’d treated them with more gravity than they probably deserved. She remembered how invigorated she’d felt when she’d agreed to let him show her what the rest of the world was like outside her hometown. She remembered their first kiss, how it felt to sleep next to him for the first time, how badly she wished she could bottle the feeling and take it home with her.

And now she could never go back home. Not unless somebody were to find her body and take it back there to be buried. She hoped that she would be granted the dignity of a funeral, at least. Someday.

Ruby hoped for a lot of things.

She hoped that her mother knew she was sorry. She hoped that the truth would come out, eventually. That she didn’t run away. That she had always planned on coming back. That she never would’ve gotten into that stranger’s truck if she knew what would become of her. That there were others before her. She hoped that they would be found, too.

She hoped that she would be forgiven.

With her lungs emptied of air and her eyes blurred with tears and the threat of the great dark unknown closing in, Ruby stared up at the shaft of daylight pouring in from the hole in the barn roof and imagined that an angel might descend from it, lift her gently off the ground and take her to the place that her mother seemed to believe in so much. She hoped that it would be as beautiful as the paintings decorating the walls of her church made it seem.

She expelled one final, gurgled breath, and then there was a brief flash of light, preceded by a plasticky click. And then Ruby Carpenter was gone. 

The same as candle wax when it burns, the same as the end of a rainbow. 

Disappeared.