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“It’s just Alex. He’s checking in on me—asking what I’m going to do about the door and stuff. He said he got it to close.”
“What is this guy’s deal?” he asks, visibly frustrated.
“What do you mean?”
“The dude is clearly obsessed with you or something. I mean, are you sure he isn’t the one who broke into your apartment in the first place?”
“Alex has a key. If he wanted to rob me, he wouldn’t have to break down the door. Not that he would anyway, he’s one of the nicest guys I know.” I’m not even sure if I mean that anymore, so I don’t know why I say it. Sticking up for him is a habit, I guess. I regret it as soon as it comes out.
“See? What is that about? Why the hell does this guy have a key to your apartment? And what is it exactly that makes him‘one of the nicest guys you know?'What I walked up on yesterday didn’t look like someone just being a nice fucking dude. I thought you said you weren’t even friends anymore.”
I sit there for a moment. I’m stuck on where to go next, and I’m talking full-on deer-in-the-headlights, mouth gaping, whatever. It’s discernable shock and internal struggle. He sees it, and instead of giving an easy account of the truth, I dump our entire two-year history on him. I tell him about how I’d liked him ever since I’d moved in and how I’d thought I was in love with him, but he was always very clear about how we were just friends, and that he was always dating other women. I told him how he’d always gone out of his way for me, and had made me feel special and loved, and how he was someone I had come to rely on.
Then, I tell him about how I had gone out with him, innocently, while he was in San Diego, and how he had told me that he loved me and was ready to be with me now, and we had kissed. I told him how terrible I had felt, how I didn’t want there to be any secrets between us, and that I was sorry. I tell him that when he got back, I was so sure about him that I had completely shut it down, even though it had meant discontinuing the friendship.
I wait for him to reply, but he doesn’t. He just stares at me. I don’t know what to do with that so, despite the fact that I’m screaming at myself in my head to just shut the fuck up, I keep going.
“Look. I know I lied by omission. But I’m telling you now, right? I don’t want to downplay it, because I know there’s a lot to unpack there with what I now realize was a really fucked up friendship dynamic, but it was just a kiss. It wasn’t one that I had initiated, and then I got the fuck out of there. It’s not like I slept with him or something. Anyway, now you know everything. I had a friendship that had a lot of boundary issues with my neighbor that doesn’t exist anymore. To be honest, it hasn’t really existed since I met you. When I get a new door, he won’t have a key.”
Still nothing. He isn't staring at me now. He turns back towards the wall. I wonder what's going through his head.
“Do you want me to go?” I ask, and wait. I wait a little while longer, and when I still hear nothing in reply, I take it as my cue to leave. I wonder if he’s really going to break up with me over a kiss. I wonder if really, it’s because I’ve just exposed how I’d been so desperate for love that I’d been okay with surviving on scraps from my neighbor, who was also my friend’s boyfriend. I grab my small bag of next to nothing and head toward the door.
“Ruby,” he says, getting up from the couch and crossing the room towards me, and stopping about ten feet away, “I really wish you hadn’t told me all of that. Fuck. I really, really wish I wouldn’t have asked.”
“I’m sor—”
“No, it’s not that,” he says. He’s nervous; I can tell. His face drops into his palms. “I slept with that girl, Ruby.”
“…What girl, Jake?” I ask, my heart in my fucking throat.
“Brianna. That girl in the Facebook photo. The one that I told you nothing happened with.I lied.”
“Oh…”
Oh, shit. Suddenly, it’s 100 fucking degrees in here, and if there was any of that peace and normalcy I had felt earlier left, it’s completely eroded now. My eyes are burning. My tattoo is burning. I feel like I might throw up pitaya all over his pristine marble floors.
“I have to go,” I manage to choke out. I adjust my useless bag of crap on my shoulder and turn back towards the door. I open it, and he grabs my arm and turns me around so that now, he is between me and the threshold, looking like he’d been punched in the stomach.
“Ruby, please,” he says. “I’m not going to tell you that you can’t leave. You can go, you can be pissed, you can feel however you want about it. But please—please understand that I felt like absolute dogshit afterward. I hated myself for it. And I love you—I do. I love you so fucking much. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to hurt you, and because I know I won’t do anything like that again. I just wanted you to be happy, Ruby.”
“Why did you have to tell me now?” I ask through tears. Now I’m fucking crying, and vulnerable, and I hate it. I’m embarrassed for myself.
“Because you told me all that stuff about you and Alex, about how you kissed him, and about how sad you were and that you didn’t want there to be any secrets between us. How could I not say anything after that?”
“And because your friends know, and your family knows, and you’re in the same social circle, and she or someone else might tell me eventually, right?” I say, remembering the reference to Brianna left hanging in the air at the party by his friends.
“No…that’s not—”
“I have to go,” I say, pushing past him.
“Ruby, please. Tell me you’ll call me later, at least.”
“I want to,” I tell him, “but I know myself. I know I can’t get over this. I don’t trust people—ever. EVER. Jake, you called me specifically to assert that nothing happened with that girl. And you did it so effortlessly and convincingly when you didn't even have to. I believed it. I felt so stupid.”
“I know, I—”
“You said you were very clear with her that you were with someone else. What am I supposed to do with that?”
