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Vander and I kept in touch daily. He worked on his campaign to keep us together by applying for several summer internships in Milltown and the GTA, but luck was not on our side. We were holding out hope for the last one.
He called Spuds shortly after the lunch rush. I left my yiayia at the front of the store while I moved to the back room to answer my phone.
“Ruby-mine,” he greeted me softly.
“Hi moro mou,” I answered sadly. I could tell by the tone of his voice that he didn’t have good news.
He sighed heavily. “I didn’t get it.”
I swallowed hard and leaned against the back counter, my hand wrapped like a vice around its edge. “I know.”
Silence weighed heavily on the line between us.
I heard him take a breath. “I can’t keep going on like this, Ruby-mine.” His voice broke along with my heart.
My grip on my phone tightened.
This.
This is what I’d been trying to avoid months ago when I said goodbye to him at the train station.
I worked to keep my voice even. “I understand,” I said, even though I didn’t. Why wouldn’t he transfer schools? Why wouldn’t he wait if he truly loved me?
“I can’t ask you to wait for me,” he explained.
“I think, what you’re saying, is that you don’t want to wait for me.” Suddenly light-headed, my voice sounded far away to my own ears.
I wasn’t being completely fair to him. I knew it. Still, I needed it to be his choice, free from guilt or obligation.
Neither of us said anything for the longest time, his silence an admission, the connection over the phone the closest thing we had to being together. The only sound from my side came from the ticking of the clock and Cat Stevens singing ‘Ruby my love’ over the store speaker.
“You’ve got our song on, Ruby-mine,” he murmured.
My tears welled up and overflowed.
Our song.
Back when our friendship first showed signs of turning into something more, we went out for karaoke for a laugh with our friends. For his turn, he picked that song and sang it to me.
Badly.
I laughed until my sides hurt. He often said my laugh won him over completely. It is neither genteel nor ladylike. His terrible singing cemented his place in my heart. I became ‘Ruby-mine’ for him from that night onward.
I pressed the phone closer to my ear to get closer to his voice.
He sighed. Goodbye was all we had left.
The hope I couldn’t resist harbouring deep in my heart turned to acid despair and detonated, sending bitter shrapnel slicing through my chest. The pain stunned me. My heart bled from the lacerations, the outer layer peeling off in bloody strips, leaving the entire organ a weeping, swollen, quivering mass of anguished flesh.
I sobbed aloud, and he cursed angrily, “Fuck!”
“Not yours. Not anymore,” I choked out. “And you’re not mine anymore, either.”
“Fuck, Ruby!” He exclaimed exasperatedly. “I don’t know what else to do! I’ve tried everything I can think of. Can’t you come here?”
I could see him in my mind, his hand impatiently pushing his dark waves off his forehead as he stomped around the way he did when frustrated or angry. I paced back and forth in front of the prep counter, spinning on my heel to turn, as his words pinged around in my brain.
Moths took up residence where my heart used to be, their wings beating frantically as they ricocheted off my ribcage. I placed my palm over Vander’s cross, the cross I wore every day in place of my own. I took a deep breath to steady my racing pulse.
