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“I am happy for you. I am super happy for you. I’m sorry if it seemed otherwise.”
“It’s okay. I know I just kind of threw it at you, and I know I’m generally the planner, sometimes to a fault, and this must all sound crazy. It sounds crazy to me, too. I would have thought it would have been you, you know,” she tells Evie.
“What do you mean?” Evie asks.
“Just that you’d be the one to fall fast and dive in headfirst, let the cards fall where they may. You surprised me with Garrett, too, just saying. Anyway, I’ve got to go,” she tells us, motioning towards the door, where I see Michael waiting for her.
“Please let us know how it goes with your mom,” I say.
“Yeah. She’s going to flip her shit,” she laughs. She starts to leave and then turns back and says, “Oh, and Ruby? Jake asks about you sometimes, you know, when I see him in the building. Maybe you should call him.”
“I can’t do that.”
“I know. But maybe you should,” she says and makes her way towards Michael and the door. They walk out hand in hand. They look good together. He’s smiling. He looks happy. So does she.
“We really turned her out,” I tell Evie, jokingly, but she isn’t laughing. She looks like she’s going to be sick.
“Am I doing the right thing? Marrying Garrett? I mean, he just proposed out of nowhere, in front of everyone. We hadn’t even talked about it seriously. Aren’t there rules about that kind of thing now? Aren’t you not supposed to ask that question until you already know what the answer is going to be?”
“I don’t know the rules about anything, Evie. I’m the wrong person to ask.”
The server walks up and takes our order. Silence lingers heavy for a few minutes, but it’s okay, I’ll wait. When you’re close to someone, you can do that—wait out the silence without the need to fill it.
“I mean, Ijustmoved in that week. I feel like I relinquished enough of my freedom for at least a couple of months.”
“Evie, not that I’m an expert by any means, but I don’t think it’s supposed to feel like that.”
“I love him, Ruby. I do. I don’t want to break up. And I think I want all that stuff, you know. Marriage, kids, whatever. I think I want it with him, but it’s been three years, Ruby. Isn’t that enough time for me to know for sure?”
“I don’t know, Evie. I mean, maybe not. Maybe you’re just freaked out because it was so much at once. You gave up your apartment that you loved, and I know that was hard on you. You guys are competing at work. Your sister is getting divorced. That could be part of it, too, right?”
“Yeah, I don’t know, maybe.”
“Well, he’s not asking you to get married today, right?”
“No, we haven’t really talked about it much yet. He suggested the fall of this year.”
“Okay, well—talk to him about it. Suggest a very long engagement. Emphasize that you aren’t ready to make any wedding plans yet. I think that’s totally reasonable. You can give the dust time to settle and then you’ll either feel better about it and you’ll know what do to, or you won’t—”
“—and I’ll know,” she finishes.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Hand me that envelope.”
I do as she asks, and she reads through my story while we eat. I try not to feel like I’m sitting in the middle of this restaurant completely naked, because in a few weeks, I’ll be completely naked in front of the entire city. I wonder how that will feel.
After a while, she racks the pages and sets them to the side. “Ruby, this is beautiful. I mean, it’s dark and terrible, but it’s beautiful.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m sorry that I didn’t know more about what was going on with you.”
“It’s okay. It’s not your fault. I mean, you always saw through Alex. I knew that, and I didn’t want to, so how could I tell you more?”
“Where’s the tattoo?” she asks.
“Oh…it’s um…here.” She joins me on my side of the booth and stretches the neck of my shirt to get a better look.
