I looked back to this woman I’d mistreated, been mistreated by. “I’m sorry, Portia.”
She gave a wan little smile. “Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Are you good, though?” I asked quietly.
“In general I am,” she said. “It’s been up and down. For the first few months after the divorce I was a bit on the wild side. Spending money frivolously, seeing men left and right.”
Nothing. I felt nothing when she said this.
“Recently I was seeing someone more seriously.” She toyed with the small charm on her napkin ring. “I suppose that’s what had me panicking these past few days. It’s hard to be with someone different, the fear of repeating past mistakes. We were together so long, Niall, that it felt wrong in a way to go off with someone else, like I was betraying you.”
I looked up at her. I’d personally never felt the sense of betrayal, but I understood what she’d said about it being hard to be with someone new. To be afraid. To figure out their rhythms and needs. To worry constantly about failure.
“He’s someone I knew from before.” She hesitated. “From work.”
Something clicked in my thoughts. “Stephen?” I guessed.
Portia sounded guilty when she admitted, “That’s him. Stephen.”
I caught the way he would watch her. It struck me only then how apathetic I’d been at the work functions, business dinners, and in the office when I’d stop by to drop off lunch or something she’d forgotten at home. Stephen couldn’t help but glance at Portia every few seconds, at least when I was near.
If someone regarded Ruby the way Stephen had looked at Portia, I would turn homicidal.
My thoughts tripped, blood running hot: Tony looked at her that way.
“Nothing happened before,” she said. “I promise, Niall.”
“I believe you. And I’m not surprised, Porsh. I saw the way he looked at you.”
She laughed. “Yes. Like that one girl at your office, when I dropped off the papers to sign. She had hearts in her eyes, watching you.”
I felt something inside me squeeze tightly. Christ. Even Portia had seen it.
“Ruby?” I asked, and saying her name sent a heated spike through my chest.
“She’s tall, beautiful. American?”
I needed a drink. Nodding, I lifted my wineglass to my lips and said, “That’s her.”
Portia’s eyes widened in comprehension. “She’s the one you’ve been with?” She paused. “The one you love?”
Again, I nodded, not even a hint of doubt lingering.
“She’s wanted you for ages and you were finally together?” Portia sounded like a schoolgirl. And it was a testament to our distance that she’d invited me here to discuss taking her back and had so easily let the idea fall away. “Niall, it’s so romantic.”
“Like you and Stephen?”
“Well, I’m not sure if we’re a thing anymore, but it is what it is.” She leaned forward, tilting her head as she asked, “Tell me what happened?”
And like this, with my head in my hands and pulse thudding anxiously in my throat, I confessed the entire affair to Portia.
I told her about New York, Tony’s not being able to come and Ruby coming in his place. I told her about Ruby’s feelings for months before I was aware, her beauty, her humor, and how she put me at ease so immediately. I told her about my fears, my longing, my hesitation. And, although I likely didn’t need to, I told her how I knew she needed more from me—more communication, more intimacy—and I sincerely tried to do it right.
“And then I came here for dinner,” I admitted. “I couldn’t tell her it was nothing without feeling like I was lying—because I did intend to hear you out, Portia—but I didn’t want her to think that I was coming back to you, either. She looked shattered.” I groaned, remembering her vacant expression, the way she’d absently wandered from the room and out of the building entirely. “I’ve made a terrible mess of this.”
“Niall,” she said, voice soothing. “You know you’ve got to fix it.”
I nodded, feeling sick. I didn’t know if it was that easy. I’d messed up, enormously.
She paused. “I love you, you know?”
Her voice held a rare poignancy. She’d said this only a handful of times during our marriage and here, the words spilled out so much more readily.
Smiling up at her, I said, “Love you, too, Porsh.”
And then, the familiar command returned: “Fix it.”
* * *
I jogged down the steps to the street, already dialing Ruby’s number.
It rang, and rang.
I’d never heard her voice mail recording before, and hearing her voice while my heart was clutched with an uneasy panic only made me feel more urgent.
“Hi, this is Ruby! Leave me a message and I’ll probably just text you back because I’m terrible about calling but if you’re calling this number you probably already know that about me and I’m already forgiven.” Beep.
“Ruby,” I began, “it’s me, Niall. I’ve . . .” I trailed off, pulling at my hair. “I’ve just left Portia’s. Ruby, I don’t know why I went there. I shouldn’t have gone. Please, just call me. I want to see you tonight. This was all absurd. I need to see you.”
But hour after hour, she didn’t call, and she didn’t text.
* * *
Admittedly I arrived at work early the next morning but I was still surprised that Ruby wasn’t yet at her desk.
Her friend Pippa was there, though, and when I approached—knowing full well Pippa was aware of our relationship—she blinked away from me in a scowl.
“Pippa?”
She looked up at me again, eyes level and assessing. “Yeah?”
“Have you heard from Ruby or know when she’s expected in?”
Her expression shifted from annoyed to baffled. “ ‘Expected in’?”
“In to work,” I clarified, a bit unnecessarily I felt.
“Are you daft?”
I stuttered out a few syllables, finally settling on “I don’t believe so?”
She looked at me silently for a couple of beats. “You really don’t know, do you?” she asked, standing up to face me. “Ruby was sacked, you dolt.”
I blinked. “I’m sorry. Sacked?”
“Sacked.”
“She was sacked?”
Pippa laughed humorlessly, and shook her head. “She was made to choose between her internship and a relationship with you. She meant to tell you yesterday afternoon that she was done here, but I think you had other plans?”
Oh.
Oh.
Bloody . . . fucking . . . hell.
Panic tore through me, causing my heart to squeeze tightly before it exploded into a rapid swing.
“She . . .” I gasped, looking around as if she might actually be there. As if this might be some sort of game.
Tony made her choose between her job and me.
She chose me.
And as far as she was concerned, I chose Portia.
“I’m fucked,” I whispered to myself.
Pippa snorted. “Too right.”
* * *
I stormed into Tony’s office, eyes on fire. “You have got to be bloody kidding me.”
He startled, standing abruptly. “Niall.”
An intern I hadn’t even noticed stood up from the chair across from him, smoothing her skirt and excusing herself with a quiet, “Pardon.”
We both watched her leave; her beauty and youth triggered another explosion in my chest. I barely waited for her to close the office door before I turned to him, voice low with fury, “Give me a reason I shouldn’t slam your head into that desk right now.”
Tony held up his hands. “It’s my group policy, Niall. Per the rules I set forth verbally when Ruby started in my group, I can’t allow fraternization.”
“Since when?” I nodded to the door. “Was this rule set forth before or after you hired that one there?” I took a step closer. “Was this
before or after you suggested I pull Ruby? Was this before or after you admired her tits, her legs?”
He blinked, swallowing nervously. “I’m not sure what conversation you’re referring to, but if you’ve been able to find it in writing, I’m happy to discuss it with you.”
I laughed dryly. “So you’ve been to HR, then.”
Tony closed his eyes, repeating, “Per the rules I set forth verbally when Ruby started in my group, I can’t allow fraternization.”
Seething, I told him, “You are a bloody joke. I hope Ruby sues your pockets inside out.”
* * *
If someone had told me only a month ago that I would meet a woman from the office, fall in love, and lose her all before spring truly arrived in London, I would consider the prospect ludicrous.
Ruby didn’t return to the office that morning, not even to clean out her desk. Her absence was a blaring void: no hint of her silly laugh, no flash of her playful green eyes. Even the interns’ office seemed subdued when I walked past. So as late as half past nine—after my blowup with Tony, and as my blood pressure seemed unwilling to return to normal—I could barely focus on a single task in front of me.
Will you not call me back? I asked her via text message. I’ve made a mess of this. I’m desperate to speak to you.
Productivity at work remained impossible after I hit SEND. I glanced to my mobile nearly every ten seconds, turning the volume up on the ringer as high as it would go. Normally one to leave the device in my desk drawer when I went to meetings, I carried it with me, leaving it just at my elbow on the table. Short of showing up unannounced at her doorstep, it was my only connection to her.
Just after lunch, I heard my text alert, and startled like a madman, toppling a cup of pens on my desk. Hope bloomed, immediate and heavy, making it nearly impossible to breathe. It took no time at all to read it; my heart felt neatly punctured. Her message said, simply, Job hunting.
Typing furiously, I asked her, Darling, please call. Why didn’t you tell me what happened with Tony?
An hour passed. Two, three, five. She didn’t reply.
I interpreted it as the dismissal I knew she’d intended and turned off my phone to avoid the temptation to plead with her in an unending string of messages. Unable to work, I paced the hall like a lunatic, ignoring Tony’s furtive, guilty glances in my direction and Richard’s lingering, uncertain ones.
Almost as soon as I set foot in the door of my flat, I moved to the office, dialing her number. It rang once—my heart was lodged in my windpipe—and again, and finally a third time before she answered.
“Hi,” she said, her voice small and thin.
Nearly choking on my breath, I managed, “Ruby, dove.”
I could immediately picture her wince when she replied, “Please, don’t call me that.”
I sucked in a breath, pain radiating through my chest. “Of course, I’m sorry.”
She didn’t say anything in response.
“I wish you’d told me about your conversation with Tony,” I told her, absently folding a small piece of paper on my desk. “Darling, I had no idea it had gone that way.”
“I was going to tell you away from the office. I didn’t want to cry there.” She sniffed, cleared her throat, and then fell silent again. Her chatty disposition was notably absent, and the loss of it ached as if a branch of my lungs had been dissected away, leaving me slightly breathless. Indeed, other than the occasional sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line, she was oddly silent; a part of me wondered if she was crying.
“All right, Ruby?” I asked quietly.
“I’m fine,” she murmured, “just going through some application forms.”
“Ah.” So my options were to talk to her while she was distracted, or lose this one connection I had to the woman I loved.
I told her about the fruitless dinner with Portia, and how in the end there wasn’t anything to discuss. I knew it as soon as I walked into the old flat. “I’m sure it felt awful for you.” I pressed my palm to my forehead, murmuring, “I can’t talk through all of this on the phone. I have so much to say.” I love you. I’ve been a fool. “Ruby, please just come to dinner.”
“I can’t,” she said, simply.
So, to keep her on the line, I spoke to her until I ran out of subjects, feeling bumbling and lost for the first time with her. I described my day of distraction, the walk home, the bland dinner I planned to prepare. I told her about my conversation with Max earlier in the day, that Sara was expecting a second baby already. I kept talking until I ran out of the normal subjects and babbled on about nothing: stocks, the new construction down on Euston Road, my relief at the lessening rain.
I wanted her to blame me, to rail. I wanted her to tell me all the ways in which I’d disappointed her. Her silence was terrifying because it was so unlike her. I would rather have a million angry words than a single moment of her reserve.
Her opinion and esteem were already fundamental for me, even after only a month. The simple truth was that I’d never felt both so known with her, and so wandering even a day without. She was unlike anyone.
But eventually, under the weight of her continued silence, I let her go, begging her to call me when she felt ready.
Two more days passed without word from her, and I was unable to get out of the house, craved nothing to eat, and imagined nothing could be better than sleeping for hours on end. I knew I was facing the type of blood-draining sadness I’d previously—or, rather, blissfully ignorantly—only imagined could be avoided by stoicism itself.
Ruby was the only woman I would ever want, and the prospect of having her in my life for only these past four weeks was so depressing it turned something sour inside me.
* * *
The first weekend after I took a hammer to her trust and forced Ruby to silently end our relationship, I managed to make it to the office to gather some reports and designs. I wanted to at least present a semblance of getting work done at home. I was long unshaven, wearing the same worn jeans and T-shirt I’d had on for the previous thirty-six hours, and I’m not sure I’d even looked at myself in the mirror before leaving the flat.
It was still dark out, so early in the morning that the streets were wonderfully still, providing a sort of external calm I was desperate to steal and pull inside me. Cars remained parked at the curb; shops wouldn’t open for hours yet. The lobby of the building was silent as a vault.
I pulled my keys from my pocket outside the glass doors, curiously peering in at the single light turned on inside the firm.
It was in the far right corner. Near Ruby’s old office.
I found my hand moving forward and the door opened under my robotic push. In the back corner, I could make out the sounds of papers being tapped into order on a surface, of picture frames being set down. Of books being dropped into a box.
“Hello?” I called out, rounding the corner and freezing as I caught sight of her inside the interns’ office, hand suspended in midair as she met my gaze.
She’d had the same idea: come in early on a weekend, avoid everyone. But instead of picking up work to numbly sort through in the privacy of a living room, Ruby was packing up her desk.
My stomach crawled up into my chest, clogging my windpipe with emotion.
“Ruby? You’re here.”
She closed her eyes, and turned back to her packing. “I’m almost done.”
“I wish you wouldn’t rush off. I’ve . . . I’ve wanted to speak to you. To really speak to you, not like that rambling on the phone the other night.”
She nodded but didn’t say anything. I stood lamely, staring at her and completely at a loss over what to do.
Her cheeks were pink, bottom lip wet and thin beneath the pressure of her teeth biting down upon it.
“Ruby,” I started.
“Please,” she croaked, holding up a hand. “Don’t, okay?”
She’d phrased it as a question, almost as if she wasn’t sure continuing this horrible silenc
e was even the right decision. I’d never been heartbroken before, ever, a stark realization for someone who’d spent the majority of his adult life in a single relationship, and the weight of it pressed down on every vital part of my body.
I wanted to walk to her, pull her to face me, and bend to kiss her. Simply kiss her, tell her she was the only woman I think I’d ever want again. If she’d let me, maybe I’d be able to offer up some begging. I might, in fact, be able to put a name to these things I felt.
Devotion and apology. Adoration, desperation, and fear.
Above it all: love.
Instinct, however, told me to give her space.
I turned, walking to my office. Behind me, her packing sounds seemed to pick up speed and force and I winced, wishing it was easier than all this. Was I wrong? Was my instinct a constant red herring? I clutched my forehead in both hands, wishing I knew what the hell to do.
Absently, I grabbed a file off my desk, collecting a few more from my cabinet. I was barely focusing on the task in front of me, knowing Ruby was only a few feet away.
Stepping out of my office, I exhaled a long-held breath at the sight of her still in the building, taping up her small box of belongings. Her hair was messier than usual, as if she’d scarcely paid it any attention. Her clothes were loose and drab: a beige skirt, a mud-colored sweater. She looked as if she’d been dragged through a rain cloud.
I missed her. I missed her with a kind of clawing ache that seemed to dig deep scars inside my chest, in a place I couldn’t reach, pushing aside things I required for breathing, heart beating, for moving about the world in a way that had once been reflexive. I’d never had the tendency toward melodrama, but in this case my self-pity was crippling. I’d never had to win over anyone before in my life, at least not consciously, and felt utterly unprepared for what was required of me in this instance.