“Why did you two spend all those years playing tag?” I asked. “You know me and Mom wouldn’t have cared.”
Ruby sat down on her chaise longue with her feet up and her back to me as though it was easier to say the words if she didn’t have to make eye contact at the same time. “I was twenty-three and she was twenty-one the first time we kissed. She was delusional enough to think that we could work. That people wouldn’t blacklist us. But I knew better. I knew no one would put me on camera again if I let it go on. She never would have made it as far as she did with me by her side.”
“Rubes,” I said, “you can’t know that for sure.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?” she snapped back. She took a moment, and then inhaled deeply. “What’s done is done. I can’t sit around living in a moment that’s passed me by. I tried to make it right. To give her the future she’d always wanted us to have, but it’s too late.”
I wanted to tell her it wasn’t too late and that there was still time, but I was half Ruby’s age, and even I felt like it was already too late. But maybe Ruby was right. Maybe she couldn’t have at eighty-two the life she’d missed out on when she was twenty-three. Even if all the puzzle pieces were there, they’d never fit back together in the same way.
“I was foolish for wanting more,” she said so softly that I didn’t think I was meant to hear her.
“I’m sorry,” I said simply, because what else could I say? How could Ipossibly express how much it sucked that she’d never been with the love of her life even though she’d been standing right in front of her all along? It was the kind of heartbreak that could fill a book’s worth of pages. “Let’s order some takeout,” I said. “And we can watch whatever you want.”
“Cats,” she said with a sniff. “I’d like to watch the 2019 feature filmCats.”
“I thought you said that movie was an atrocity and an insult to artists everywhere.”
She nodded, blowing a sigh through her nose. “Yes, but I’d like to watch someone else’s train wreck right now. I find the thought deeply comforting. Besides, a hostess once gave my reservation away to Dame Judi Dench and I’ll never forgive the dame or the hostess.”
I smiled at that as I began to scroll through delivery options. Beneath the heartbreak, Ruby was still there.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Last night, I walked Marlon home and then returned to Ruby’s, where we went through two and a half bottles of wine, and by the time I stumbled back to Eli’s, the apartment was dark and quiet.
“Marlon,” I whispered, searching for my favorite old man.
I checked under the bed and even in my closet, but I couldn’t find him. A heavy dread settled in my chest as I continued to look. It was the same feeling I got any time I couldn’t find him and my brain began turning to worst-case dead-dog scenarios because he is old and fragile.
“Marlon,” I whispered again, but this time it came out more desperate.
Eli’s door was cracked open. Slowly, I tiptoed down the hallway until I stood just at the edge of the doorframe.
It took my eyes a second to adjust, but there, curled on his side, with his bare back to me, was Eli, a sheet shucked around his waist, and nestled right behind his knees was a shameless Marlon.
I let out a shaky breath. My aging Pomeranian would live to see another day!
Marlon lifted his head, looking very smug about being alive, and I silently begged him not to bark. I really did not need Eli to wake up to find me lurking in his doorway like some kind of specter. Thankfully, Marlon plopped his head back down and his eyes immediately began to drift shut.
A very foolish part of me wondered what it might feel like to slip underthe covers. Would the other side of the bed be cool? Or was Eli the type to travel across the mattress throughout the night? Would his body heat linger on the sheets as I curled beneath them?
Between Marlon and me, only one of us would ever know.
That night I slept with my door cracked just in case Marlon came to my room, but by the time I woke up, my bed was still dog-free.
It was early yet, but soon he would be barking to go outside, and I definitely did not expect Eli to take on dog dad duties. I was perfectly capable of being a strong single dog mother, thank you very much.
Walking light-footed through the apartment, I searched for Marlon in the kitchen and living room. I noticed Eli’s coffee cup in the sink and his keys were gone from the usual place where he kept them on the breakfast bar. It must have been an early morning.
With no sign of Marlon, I circled back to my room, where I found the little perv tearing through my dirty laundry, likely searching out the stinkiest garment in the pile.
“Marlon!” I said. “No!”
He emerged from the heap with my oldest, granniest underwear, complete with ripped elastic.
“Drop it,” I threatened through gritted teeth as I marched over to yank it out of his mouth.
But with the spryness of a puppy—or at the very least a thirteen-year-old food-motivated dog—he dodged past me and down the hallway into Eli’s room, squirming through the cracked door.