“Come live with me and be my love,” she said, quoting “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” hoping that Gabe would get the reference from the literature class that they’d both taken, even though she suspected she’d paid more attention than he had.
Frowning, he’d asked, “Are there sheep involved?”
“Definitely,” said Ruby. “Also little kids. But we’d have our own bathroom.”
She’d expected delight, immediate excitement. Instead, Gabe had frowned, his dark eyebrows drawing down. “It sounds amazing. But are you sure it’s okay?”
“I’m sure,” Ruby had said, looking around, letting her face crinkle in distaste. “And you can’t stay here.”
Gabe’s apartment was even worse than hers: a five-bedroom home in Bed-Stuy, shared with seven roommates who always smelled like weed and feet.
“You’re positive your dad and your stepmom don’t mind?” he’d asked.
She’d assured him that they were fine with it… but, it seemed, Gabe was struggling to believe her. “Are you sure?” he’d asked her, over and over, while he packed. “Are you sure it’s okay?” She’d promised him; she’d helped him carry his bags downstairs, where they waited for the Uber that Sarah had insisted they take. When the car turned the corner onto the block where she’d grown up, Gabe had gone very still.
“Jeez, it’s a mansion,” he’d said when they were both out of the car. Ruby felt her face get hot with one of her betraying blushes. “It’s not that big,” she’d mumbled. “And this neighborhood wasn’t so expensive when they bought it.” Both of those statements were lies, and Gabe probably knew it.
Ruby had told Gabe that her stepmother was a music-school administrator, and her dad was a periodontist. As they walked up the sidewalk, she could see him trying to figure it out, trying to do the math that would add up to this house in this neighborhood.
Ruby decided to explain. “It’s my step-grandmother,” she said. “Sarah’s mom. She was an author, and one of her books was turned into a movie a long time ago. She helped my stepmother buy this place.” Sarah’s mother, Ronnie Levy, Ruby’s safta, had also paid for Ruby’s college education, the same way she would take care of tuition for Miles and Dexter, and her cousin Connor, Ruby’s uncle’s stepson, when Connor was old enough; but Ruby felt shy about mentioning it. Gabe’s mother was a nurse now, but she’d worked as a waitress when Gabe had been little. Savings and scholarships had paid for most of Gabe’s tuition, but he’d had to take out loans his senior year. No wealthy grandmother had covered his bills or would buy him a brownstone once he had his degree.
Ruby unlocked the door and led Gabe inside, through the foyer and the parlor and the living room and the dining room, up the stairs, past her dad and stepmom’s bedroom and her dad’s office on the second floor, past her brothers’ rooms on the third floor, all the way to the fourth floor, the playroom and the suite that had been Ruby’s when she’d lived at home.
Gabe set his duffel bag down. Ruby followed his gaze, trying to see the room the way that it would look to him: the stained oak floors, the bookcases that stretched from floor to ceiling along the north wall, the cushioned, curtained window seat, where a kid could curl up with a book, or perform a play or a puppet show. She saw Gabe take in her old, kid-sized drum kit, the bins of blocks and Legos, the baskets full of stuffed animals, the painted wooden rocking horse, and the three-story dollhouse that had once been her very favorite thing. He looked at the cubbies full of art supplies; the full-length mirror, the chest full of princess gowns and fairy wings, wooden swords and magic wands, and the little refrigerator stocked with bottles of water and apple juice.
“Is this where you sleep?” Gabe’s voice was a little faint.
“No, that’s in here.” She showed him the bedroom, the queen-sized bed with its white-painted wrought-iron frame and the padded bench, upholstered in apple-green linen, at its foot. “And there’s a bathroom over there.”
Gabe sat on the bed, his expression uncharacteristically serious, his brows drawn together, his lips in a straight line, a little white at the edges. “I don’t get it,” he finally said. “If you could have just been living here, why were you in that crap apartment?”
“Um, because I don’t want to live with my family? Because I’m an independent woman?”