Except, he didn’t.
A little over six months from now, he will be a married man. The colour scheme has been decided, the tableware ordered. RSVPs are coming in, and Emma, his fiancée, has had two of her four dress fittings （she cried at the first one）。
‘Did you—want to come?’
Ruby could never decide whether Ash’s halting question was na?ve or cruel. Delivered as it was with his chest against her naked back, his left hand resting against the curve of her stomach. Now, alone in a different bed, across an ocean, she understands it was both, and something begins to stir in Ruby Jones. A small heat, as if someone is blowing on a fire deep inside her, willing it to burn. And just like that, oxygen applied, the first explosion occurs. One big enough to propel her out of bed and into her running shoes. Fully upright for the first time in seven days—if you don’t count the small circuit she has made of finding takeaway food and vodka to bring back to her room—she feels wobbly, uncertain. But as she ties her laces in double knots, Ruby feels anger coursing through her like fuel. Ash inviting her to his wedding—while she could still taste herself on his mouth—was a deliberate severing, a way to turn their connection to string. To reach for her body while pushing away her thoughts, her feelings, her heart, was cold and calculated. It hadn’t shocked her at the time because, in truth, that is how it always was with him.
No wonder she’s gotten used to pushing her feelings way down.
Outside it is pouring, but Ruby barely notices the heavy fall. She heads east toward Central Park, splashing through dark, oily puddles, wiping rivulets of rain from her eyes. When her muscles start to protest, she relishes the pain, pushes herself to go faster. If she’s going to outrun anything, she reasons, it will be that terrible numbness keeping her in bed all these days. Better to feel the ache of tight quads, taste the metal of her heart at work, than to let another day pass her by. Entering the park, feet crunching wet gravel, she heads for the nearest reservoir, the memory of a map in her mind, a look of determination on her face.
Upon reaching the lake, Ruby inadvertently starts running the wrong way. Keeps to the left, runs clockwise as she would back home, and she is soon made aware of her mistake. Joggers coming toward her frown or sigh, a few shake their heads as they pass, and one or two make a show of having to step around her. She starts to say sorry and then changes her mind. Stubbornness prevents her from turning around, running the wrong-right way with the crowd, and something else, too. After years of making herself small, it is exhilarating to take up space for once, to force people out of her way.
Ruby is still on that runner’s high when she returns to her apartment building an hour later. Saturated through, she is so wet she has to stand on the street and twist the rain from her T-shirt before she can go inside. The guy at the front desk shoots her a rueful smile as she passes by him, but she grins and tells him she likes this kind of weather.
‘It’s so refreshing!’
And now the desk guy looks concerned, as if Ruby’s sudden display of positivity has thrown him off （yes, he’s noticed the takeaways and vodka, formed an opinion of this new lodger from her infrequent appearances these past few days, and privately concluded she’d be gone within a week）。
‘We’ve got umbrellas to borrow. If … if you want,’ Ruby hears him say unsurely to her back as she steps into the small elevator at the end of the entrance hall, before the doors close between them.
When she steps under the shower a few minutes later, Ruby remembers the alarmed look on the young man’s face and starts to laugh. To be found odd in New York feels like a triumph, the opposite of disappearing. There, under the hot shower water she closes her eyes and laughs so hard she cries, emotions mixing like wet paint, dripping from her skin. This will be the real beginning, she decides. A kind of baptism, from which she will emerge renewed. Getting out of the shower, towel wrapped tight around her tingling body, she pads to her small closet, finds her prettiest dress. Fingering the soft cotton of the skirt, she imagines herself flowing through the streets of New York in the summer, leaving a bright, happy trail of colours behind her.
There is a whole world outside these brick walls, and she’s finally ready to crash her way through it.
This is the thought she is turning over, smiling at, when her phone buzzes from the nightstand. Turning from the closet, Ruby reaches for the phone, checks the glowing screen.
Hi.
Images of pretty dresses, of warm summer days and bright colours disappear. The anchor tugs, and a second text message arrives.