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Ruby nodded. ‘Okay, I’m glad.’ She didn’t look convinced by his denial.
‘I’ll see you Monday,’ he said, then realized he was repeating himself.
She smiled, the sweet sunny expression making the damn vice squeeze his ribcage again. What was with that?
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ she said. ‘Let me know if there’s anything you need me to do beforehand.’
He nodded, and tipped his hat, then walked away.
He didn’t look back once. Although he found himself listening for the sound of the heavy exit door slamming shut as she went back inside.
But the sound never came.
PART THREE
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Ruby Graham’s verdict: I can’t imagine anything more painful than loving someone so passionately your whole life and yet never being able to say it out loud. Not even to them. Jack and Ennis are like a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, and the poison that destroyed them was the secret they were forced to keep.
Luke Devlin’s verdict: No one should have to hide who they really are. Or who they want to be with. That sucks. But I wonder if Jack and Ennis would have been better without Brokeback Mountain, because all it did in the end was screw up both their lives.
Chapter 8
‘Bollocks!’ Ruby shrieked as she shot out of the shower, the water turning from warmish to freezing the second after she’d dumped a ton of shampoo on her hair. Naturally.
She grabbed a towel from the pile on the vanity, and folded it around her body, then wrapped a hand towel around her head to keep her soapy hair out of her eyes.
She did not have time for this today, The Royale’s LGBTQIA+ weekender was kicking off in approximately eight hours and she had about a million and one things to do – not the least of which was checking the print that had finally arrived for the Matty’s Classics screening of Brokeback Mountain, due to finish the weekender tomorrow.
Luke would be arriving in half an hour and she wanted to present him with Professional and Efficient Ruby not Wet and Wild Ruby – she’d even ironed the pencil skirt and blouse she usually wore to see the bank manager, especially for the occasion.
He’d started the repairs in the auditorium four days ago now, arriving each morning at seven on the dot, and then packing up and cleaning everything away in time for the first screening each day. She and Jacie and Gerry and the rest of the theatre’s staff had been tasked with being as friendly as possible and making sure he had everything he needed – including coffee and food – but he had declined all offers. To the point where she’d been forced to tell everyone to back off.
The schmooze offensive wasn’t working, all it was doing was making her feel more guilty about it. She hadn’t managed to even talk to him properly since the disastrous screening of About a Boy – when she’d managed to traumatise him by mistake.
She stomped out of the bathroom, opened the door to the stairs down to the foyer and shouted: ‘Gerry, call Mehmed, and tell him the boiler’s on the fritz again.’ She scowled, wiping the soap out of her stinging eyes. Mehmed was a retired plumber who lived round the corner, he didn’t charge an exorbitant call-out fee and would accept free cinema tickets in exchange for his efforts to keep the aging boiler in Matty’s flat functioning. Only problem was, she wasn’t sure he’d come this time as he’d been adamant a month and a half ago when he’d called round just before Matty’s funeral that the flat needed a new boiler – even though she’d been adamant they couldn’t afford one.
‘Tell him I think it’s a different problem,’ she lied smoothly. If she could just get him here, he would surely find a way to work his plumber magic one last time.
Gerry’s reply was muffled, but sounded like. ‘I’ll try.’
Shivering, she walked into the flat’s tiny galley kitchen and switched on the kettle. She could wait for ten minutes for Mehmed to get here. If he didn’t turn up in that time – which was highly likely – she’d just have to rinse her hair in the sink again. But she was having a cup of tea first to gird her loins.
‘Bloody boiler.’
She was still swearing furiously and shivering in her towel two minutes later between sips of her fortifying cuppa when she heard footsteps on the stairs.
She dropped her tea on the counter and dashed into the flat’s living room. ‘Mehmed, that was quick! Thanks so much for—’
Her greeting cut off. Because it wasn’t the seventy-something retired plumber who stepped into her living room.
‘Luke!’ Fire blazed from the top of her towel-clad head to the tips of her scarlet-painted toenails. ‘You’re early?’ she croaked, so mortified she was surprised she hadn’t incinerated on the spot.
‘Gerry said you had a heating emergency,’ he murmured.
Not anymore, she thought, as his gaze snagged on her bare legs, and the whole body blush hit fifty thousand degrees centigrade.
Crapola! She was completely naked under her towel, which felt like the size of a napkin under that hot blue gaze. Did it even adequately cover her bum? Which, let’s face it, needed more coverage than usual after the binge-eating she had been doing for six weeks to stave off her grief.
