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It’s the annoying uncertainties—or even the things youarecertain about, but don’t particularly like—that Patty has always told Ruby are the “annoying creases of life.” Kind of like a brand new shirt taken out of a package that still has the folds in it, they’re the parts you just want to shake out and smooth over. They’re the uncomfortable seams in the toes of your socks; the place you folded the paper and then realized too late that it wouldn’t fit into an envelope that way; the spot where the wallpaper doesn’t quite line up.
Getting a phone call from a police officer in Manhattan telling her that she needed to get up there as soon as possible to be with her younger daughter is more than an annoying crease; this is the stuff that real, horrifying, unfiltered life is made of. Once Ruby had pulled enough information from the police officer to know that Harlow was alive and safe, she'd calmed down. Ursula, her virtual assistant, had booked her a flight and made her arrangements to get from Shipwreck Key to Destin, and Vanessa and Tilly, her employees at the bookstore, had agreed to run the shop in her absence.
Her hand shakes now, rattling the ice cubes in her plastic cup as she sips a vodka and orange juice in First Class and hides behind her sunglasses. This isn't the time to have people asking her questions about Jack, her appearance on Leeza's show, the bookstore, or anything else, really. All she wants to do is sit quietly and let the pilots fly her to Harlow.
Ruby drains her mixed drink and sets the empty cup on the folding tray table in front of her, looking out the window at the earth far below. She needs to think about something other than Harlow because imagining her baby in a bar where there is gunfire makes her feel like she's having a panic attack, and shecannothave a panic attack while trapped in a flying metal tube with two hundred strangers. She racks her brains for another topic--any topic--that will distract her from the horrors of what she's already seen on the news.
Jack. She'll think about Jack and let her anger and emotions about him take over in the interim here as she's winging her way to Harlow. That should keep her distracted.
Jack’s affair with Etienne is another one of Ruby’s annoying creases. She can shift it around, mentally take an iron to it to smooth it out, and close her eyes to try and ignore it, but it’s still there. A crease in their marriage. A mar on the perfect wallpaper that was their life together.
And why had he done it? Why does any man do it? When he’s married to a woman who is everything a life partner should be, why does he stray? There was no question in anybody’s mind that Ruby was the ideal First Lady, even when talk of them landing in the White House was still just hushed discussion behind closed doors. They powers that be had done their due diligence, searching through her history, turning over every rock, trying to find something that might cause a scandal and drag down Jack’s bid for the presidency.
But they’d found nothing. No illicit drug use beyond a little pot in the 80s, and who hadn’t gone to the sand dunes with friends and smoked a little weed while listening to Duran Duran on a boombox? No domestic violence with ex-boyfriends. No secret babies put up for adoption. Truly nothing. In fact, Ruby had been willing to spill all of her own tea: she’d lost her virginity to a guy named Ted at the age of seventeen. There was no real story there; he was her first boyfriend, and her first real love. It had ended when they both went to college. During her college years, she’d had a few lovers, none noteworthy in any way. She did not experiment with girls in college, though many of her friends had and she’d just smiled and carried on. Not for her, but not a problem if it was for others.
As for the rest of it, Ruby had been hyper-vigilant about taking her birth control pills. She’d eschewed smoking cigarettes but didn’t mind a little beer or marijuana at a party in her teens and early twenties. And thanks to the fact that this all happened before the advent of cell phones, there were no photos or videos, and none of her high school or college friends cared enough about their shared youthful indiscretions to share them with anyone in the press. The guys Ruby had dated up until she met Jack were all bland and cut from the same cloth: college athletes with good families and high GPAs, they’d gone on to careers in medicine, finance, and business. None had sparked any particular passion in her, and when she’d parted with them, it had been amicable and without incident.
Until Jack. He was anything but bland. The night they met was at a political fundraiser in Los Angeles held by a friend of Ruby’s who owned an art gallery. Jack was a young senator from California with a record for being socially liberal and fiscally conservative. And he cut an impressive figure both on screen and in person, with his wavy, dark blonde hair cut into a perfectly casual swoop that he pushed back from his high, tanned forehead. Jack’s eyes were the clearest, most bottomless eyes Ruby had ever seen. When he walked up to her and asked if she wanted a glass of champagne, she’d instantly gone into a daze.
“DoIwant a glass?” she’d asked, holding a silver tray in one hand. The friend who owned the gallery had hired Ruby and several other twenty-something friends who needed the cash to act as servers for the event. Ruby stood there before him in a short, black skirt and a sleeveless white dress shirt with a black bowtie. On her feet were pointy black oxford shoes with shiny silver buckles, and her hair was scraped back from her forehead with a black velvet headband. This was the late 90s, and though her skin was clear and luminous and youthful, Ruby felt exhausted. She was already tired of living the life of a starving young woman. She was over fighting L.A. traffic as she scampered from commercial audition to commercial audition, and even with her English degree in hand from UCLA, she knew that the best money she could hope to make was if she landed another national commercial. Worst case scenario, she'd get acting out of her system, get certified to teach, and end up in some high school in the suburbs, teaching English to a bunch of fifteen-year-olds, though the very thought sent waves of panic through her.
In short, she would have killed to set down the tray and have a glass of champagne with the handsome senator.
As if he could read her mind, Jack took the tray out of her hands and handed it to the next waiter who walked by, but he never took his eyes off of Ruby. She was stunned.
“Hey,” Jack said, suddenly turning to the waiter who was retreating with Ruby’s tray of champagne flutes. “We’ll need two of those.”
The waiter—a guy named Rob who Ruby had encountered at several commercial auditions—shook his head as he watched Ruby take her first sip of champagne.
“Let’s go out to the balcony,” Jack said, putting one hand on the small of her back and leading the way.
Outside, the early evening was swallowing the hot afternoon sun, and three stories below them the traffic crawled along the maze of roads and streets, glass and metal glinting as people went to and fro. But all Jack and Ruby had to do was sip bubbles and stare at one another as they leaned on a railing and watched the world below.
Jack broke the silence first. “You know. We’d have beautiful children,” he said confidently.
Ruby nearly choked on her champagne. “Excuse me?” The California sun had left her arms and legs with a warm tan, and she smoothed one hand over her forehead, touching the velvet headband self-consciously. Had she heard him correctly?
“Our kids. They would be stunning.” Jack tipped back his champagne and the bubbles sparkled in the light of the golden hour. “I remember you from that Levi’s commercial,” he said, letting his eyes skim her bare arms. “That black-and-white one, shot on the beach. Very Herb Ritts.”
Ruby blinked; she was surprised that a senator knew anything at all about a famous fashion photographer known for his work in black-and-white.
“I wanted to buy stock in Levi’s after watching that commercial.” He laughed at his own joke.
Ruby looked down at the toes of her oxfords and then back up at him, feeling light years younger than she was. For all the life experience she’d had up to that point, she was still nothing but a naive, fresh-faced innocent next to a suave politician like Jack—at least in her own mind.
“Then you should have,” she said, bucking up her own courage with a swig of champagne. “And here’s an insider tip for you: I have a Chapstick commercial coming out next month, so you might want to grab stock in that one while it’s low.” Ruby reached for his empty champagne glass. “I should really get back to work,” she said. “I could get fired just for being out here with you.”
“Don’t,” Jack said, reaching for her arm as she walked away. “Please stay.” Ruby paused, looking back at him. “How old are you?”
Ruby groaned inwardly. Of course it had come to this. But she wouldn’t lie, and she wouldn’t even pretend. “Twenty-five. You?”
“Thirty-six,” Jack said, lifting his chin defiantly. “That’s a true May-December romance right there.”
“Who says there’s any romance between us?”
“It’s my prediction that there will be.”
They stood there, eyeing one another, each waiting for the other to back down first. He had nerve. Ruby had to give him that.
