‘Well, I don’t meet a beautiful Aussie woman every day, do I,’ he adds with a wink.
He is definitely flirting with her this time around, and Ruby is tempted to rally, but she finds herself unable to speak. It feels too light, in this place of heaviness, to flirt back. There is also Ash to consider. And Josh, the memory of his kiss and his betrayal still smarting.
Oh, go away! she says to these other men in her life, the ones who crowd her thoughts and don’t show up when she needs them. Their absence prompts her to say something—anything!—to this man who clearly likes her, a man now looking at her so intently. She is about to respond to his overture when a gull squawks above them, and a runner, breathing hard, thuds past on the pathway, almost brushing up against her.
‘Hey, watch it!’ Tom yells toward the man’s retreating back, putting his hand on Ruby’s arm to pull her close. ‘A whole park and that idiot has to run right up on us. Fuck you! Fuck! You!’
Swearing loudly at the runner, Tom’s fingers squeeze around Ruby’s forearm, turn white against her skin. It is only a brief pressure before he lets go, but the sensation lingers. Even as Tom runs that hand through his hair, shakes his head, Ruby can feel each finger coming down, the compression of her flesh. She watches as the runner moves further away, becomes less distinct, taking Tom’s sudden display of anger with him. Such a small moment, surely more imagined than real, given how finely attuned to danger she is these days. There is no reason for her heart to start thudding like this. She cannot let her paranoia ruin every moment, every encounter, she tries to tell herself. Not when Tom is only trying to look out for her.
Isn’t he?
Ruby tries to relax. People lose their temper every day. Tom was probably just trying to impress her, play the hero, based on what he said about being careful the other day. She has just forgotten what it is for a man to treat her nicely.
For his part, Tom does not seem to have noticed the shift in her demeanour after he touched her so forcefully, the way she leaned out from his closeness, rubbed her fingers at the spot where his had landed. Instead, the offending runner off in the distance now, Tom is smiling again, his face turned toward the sun.
‘Another beautiful day,’ he says, eyes closed. ‘Such a relief after all that rain.’
Rain coming down like a sheet. Her breath a ghost. Yellow reeds undulating on the water. Ruby physically shakes these intrusive memories away.
‘It certainly does change things,’ she says, turning her own face skyward, so they are standing the same way now, side by side, pulling the sun toward their skin.
After a time, Tom puts his hand on her back.
‘I’ll admit I was surprised to find you back in this part of the park, Ruby. After I told you what happened here.’
She could make a joke. She could tell Tom she came back to this particular spot because that’s where they first met. Finally play the game he seems to be wanting her to play. Ruby decides, instead, to tell him the truth.
‘I found the body, Tom. I found Alice Lee.’
‘What?’ Tom looks startled, then confused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Sorry. I know it’s so weird, right. I mean, I’m the jogger who found her body. That’s me.’
Tom’s mouth falls open for a second, and then a strange look crosses his face. His features seem to sharpen as he stares at Ruby, his expression suddenly eager.
‘What did she look like?’
‘Huh?’
Ruby blinks at Tom’s strange question, the barely concealed hunger of it.
‘Alice Lee. What did she look like? When you found her.’
Ruby shakes her head at Tom and backs away, moving into the middle of the path. Away from the metal rails and the water and the way he is looking at her. This is not the response she had expected at all. It is too close to his overreaction when that runner brushed past them, too far from his ready smile and mindless chatter. She feels, suddenly, as if she has made a mistake. No matter the width of his smile.
She would remember, if she wasn’t so shocked, that she’s felt this way with him before. This, if nothing else, should give her permission to shut the conversation down, but before she can respond, Tom is reaching for her arm again.
‘Forgive me Ruby. That is such a clumsy question. What I meant to say is, are you all right? I heard she was in quite the state when they—when you—found her.’
How many times does politeness keep us rooted to the spot? We stand on the brink, making a choice whether to tip over into trust or disgust, and we remember all our training, the lifetime of it. The doctrine of nice, the fear of hurting someone’s feelings. In this moment, Ruby wants to back away from Tom’s prurient interest, wants to ask this pushy man to leave her alone for good—but she doesn’t know how. Like so many of us, she has never learned the right words, and so she smiles small, accepts his apology, lets his hand continue to rest on her arm.