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“Are you honestly telling me this seems safe to you?”
She looks around, taking in all the same landmarks I just did. Biting her lip, she seems like she’s debating making a run for it. I’m prepared to chase her.
Instead, she nods. “Okay, keep driving.”
Now I’m confused. “Driving where?”
Gesturing with a nod, she indicates that I should turn up Channing Avenue, so I do. She directs me to turn a few more times, eventually landing us in front of a high-rise collection of buildings that I recognize as university dorms. It’s decidedly safer looking, well-lit, and located in an area where students walk up and down the street carrying backpacks.
“How about here? Better?”
“Are we just playing a game here? You’re trying to placate me with a nicer drop-off spot so you can walk three blocks back to the other area by yourself?”
She looks at the ceiling of the car and huffs out a long exhale. “You’re infuriating.”
“I’minfuriating? I’m not the one who’s rolling the dice with safety. I’ll drive you back to the other spot, but I’ll be parking and walking you to the door to make sure you get in, and I won’t leave until I hear the deadbolt lock.”
She turns to me, eyes challenging. “I really hope you don’t plan on being this overprotective with Fiona.”
“You’d better believe I’m going to be even more overprotective. That is, if I even let her leave the house at all.” I’m only partly kidding. It isn’t lost on me that Fiona is on track to grow up to be the exact brand of independent, infuriating woman that I’m looking at right now. I both love it and hate it.
Ruby rubs a hand down her cheek like I’m working her last nerve, but I don’t care. When it comes to my daughter, I don’t compromise. “Okay, you may be the very best dad in the history of dads,” she admits. I’m not expecting this about-face, which makes my heart squeeze unexpectedly in my chest. This woman both confounds me and comforts me in equal measure.
I lean as far away from her as I can within the car and open my window because I’ve broken out into a sweat.
“Thank you,” I manage.
“You’re welcome.” She flicks a hand toward the building to our right. “This is where I live. You might as well know.” I’ve parked under the wide canopy of a flowering cherry tree that still has some blooms left, and I realize exactly why I insisted on driving her tonight. I’m not ready to be free of her, and the ride was just an excuse.
She’s humoring me the same way Fiona does when I tell her to do something she deems unnecessary, like wearing slippers when her feet aren’t cold. To her, I’m an old, grumpy dude who works too hard and comes up with random rules.
I look at the signage on the front of the place, just to be certain my initial assessment was correct. “This is a dorm. Don’t tell me that in addition to working two jobs, you’re also a fulltime student?”
“No, but my sister is. I live with her.”
“In a dorm?”
She shrugs. “Technically, she lives in a single, but no one ever checks, and I’m only here to sleep. And honestly, she’s barely here because she stays with her boyfriend a lot. It works.”
There’s so much I want to unpack here. She’s twenty-seven years old and just signed up to work two jobs, and she lives in her sister’s dorm. It screams financial insecurity, but it’s not obvious why.
It’s also none of my business, yet I’m too fucking stubborn to leave it at that.
I can leave it at that for now until she’s ready to tell me more. I do know that much about Ruby—she only talks when she’s ready, but then she doesn’t hold back.
A kid with dreadlocks and a beanie rides by on a skateboard, and a pair of girls in sorority sweatshirts stand on the sidewalk just outside my car, oblivious to us. Ruby watches them with vague interest.
She lives here. She sees this every day, but to me, this is a world long gone by. I haven’t been on a campus in years, let alone lived in a dorm.
Still, there’s not an iota of self-consciousness about her living situation or a sense that she feels sorry for herself. It makes me check my privilege yet again because I want to raise my daughter to be more like the woman in my front seat, and I don’t know how to do it.
Ruby has been watching me for my reaction to her confession, and I make sure to school my expression. The last thing I want her to see is judgment. She starts to squint at me, and after a moment, her hand reaches out, and she rests two fingers against my cheek. I immediately flinch at the contact, which shoots a current down my neck, slices through my chest, and dead-ends at my dick.
She has got to stop touching me. I won’t survive it.
“Oh, good. I was afraid for a second that you’d stopped breathing.”
One hundred percent correct. I had, but not for the reasons she thinks. “I was just listening.”
