AHall80: It’s going to suck, but it’ll be worth it.
RubyMars: Is Ax travelling back with you guys?
AHall80: Yeah, my CO… commanding officer… is taking her home.
RubyMars: I’m so happy.
RubyMars: Really, have a safe flight, and just in case I don’t talk to you again, I really enjoyed getting to know you. Give Aries a big hug from me and enjoy your trip to Scotland and Florida. If you ever decide to open a Facebook account, post pictures on it some day, and if I send you a request, accept it. Or don’t. :) AHall80: I’ll e-mail you soon.
RubyMars: Good luck :) Have a safe flight.
AHall80: Thanks, Rubes.
AHall80: Hold up a sec
AHall80: I hope you know you’re the best person I’ve ever been paired with. This tour would’ve been a whole lot shittier without you.
AHall80: I’m sorry for what happened at the beginning…
RubyMars: Don’t worry about it. It’s in the past and I understand.
AHall80: Still feel like shit about it.
RubyMars: You made up for it already. Don’t think twice about it. I get it.
RubyMars: We worked it out.
RubyMars: For whatever it matters, I’m glad you ended up writing me back in the end. These last few months would’ve sucked without you too. Thanks for being there for me with everything.
RubyMars: You really did become my favorite friend.
RubyMars: I’ll always remember you.
AHall80: Don’t think twice about it.
RubyMars: I won’t.
AHall80: I will write you when I get back to base in Kentucky. I’m not going to fall off the face of the planet.
AHall80: Promise RubyMars: If you say so, but don’t feel obligated if you don’t want to. You don’t owe me anything.
AHall80: I owe you a lot more than you think.
AHall80: Not just going to forget you, come on.
AHall80: Hey, what happened with that guy you went on a date with? Your brother’s friend? Not the one I don’t like.
RubyMars: Nothing. We went to the movies. Then he invited me over to his house another day for a barbecue. He’s been out of town for about two weeks now. He’s supposed to get back in a few days, but we’ve only texted.
AHall80: I see
RubyMars: :) I like him, but it isn’t love at first sight or anything.
RubyMars: I know you need to go but have a good flight and enjoy your plumbing.
RubyMars: One last thing AHall80: Okay
RubyMars: Make sure to eat plenty of fiber so you can finally poop
Ahall80: BYE RUBY
RubyMars: Xoxo
May
“You did what?”
I hung my head in shame and—for one more freaking time—let the humiliation roll over my face, neck, chest, and my entire soul.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.
I was so stupid.
“Squirt,” my sister cackled, her shoulders shaking as she sank deep into the cushioned seat of the booth the hostess of the diner had led us to fifteen minutes ago. The clinging and clacking of plates and silverware swallowed most of her laughs, but I’d heard her crack up enough over the course of my life to know exactly what it sounded like from memory. Except usually she laughed at Jonathan or Sebastian, not me.
The problem was, there was laughing your butt off so much you made a spectacle of yourself, and then there was laughing so hard no sound came out of your mouth.
And Anatalia, or Ana or Tali as we all called her, was exactly right smack in the middle of both. It was like her body couldn’t decide what it wanted to do. Laugh or not laugh.
“You didn’t,” she basically gasped.
I stared at her as I dragged the glass of iced water toward me by the coaster. My face went red, red, red as I remembered for about the hundredth time the unforgiveable, unforgettable crap I’d typed as my last message to Aaron.
Xoxo.
X-freaking-oxo.
Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
For the rest of my life. For the rest of the universe’s existence. Forever.
Tali’s eyes bulged and her face turned a shade of red that bordered on maroon. Her hands went up to her chest and the entire upper half of her body molded to the booth’s back cushion like she was attempting to melt into it. Like she was reliving what I’d done in her head and wanted to disappear. I knew that expression. I’d tried to do the same thing after I’d hit Enter on the keyboard. I’d wanted a black hole to suck me in and make me disappear.
“Ruby,” she inhaled my name, wildly.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to pull a Back to the Future. My random black hole hadn’t appeared either. I’d shut the screen of my laptop as if that would magically make the letters disappear.
But I knew the truth.
And Aaron knew the truth.
I’d sent him that xoxo.
Closing the screen hadn’t done a single freaking thing.
When I’d opened my laptop again, those letters had still been there on the screen, mocking me.
“Why would you do that?” Tali busted out, her hands still going up to cup her nearly maroon cheeks. Her dark blue eyes, which were the only thing we had in common, were glassy like she wasn’t pulling enough oxygen into her brain from how hard she’d been, and still was, cracking up.
She was going to make me relive it even more than I already had. Why was I surprised? “I didn’t do it on purpose. One second, we were messaging each other, joking around, then the next thing he types ‘bye,’ and before I realized what I was doing, I wrote that.” I thought about raising my hands directly in front of me where we could both see them, so I could shake them and shame them for what they’d done. They’d betrayed me. They’d gone rogue on me.
After all we’d been through….
My sister threw her head back and laughed, loud, finally, her entire body vibrating. Even while she was cracking up, she was one of the most beautiful people I’d ever seen. I didn’t miss her fingers wiping at the tears I was sure pooled at her eyes. I’d known that was going to be her exact reaction. I’d known it. I’d expected it. That was why it had taken me days to fess up. Because if it had been the other way around and she’d been the idiot who wrote a friend “xoxo,” I would have been the same way.
“And he didn’t say anything afterward?” she somehow managed to ask even as she cracked up.
I shook my head as I watched her pinched face, scowling. “I closed my computer screen and he’d logged off.”
I shrugged and let them drop in defeat, in total freaking failure. At this point, half my life seemed like a failure. What was one more?
I was starting to sound like Jasmine with her “the world is working against me” crap.
“Oh, Ruby,” Tali half sighed and half choked like she could feel my pain but also thought it was hilarious. “Did you e-mail him after?”
I waited until after I took another sip of water before telling her the truth. “No, I thought it would make it worse.” What I didn’t tell her was that I’d stayed in bed for two hours going over that sequence of two letters like a broken record, wishing I could go back in time and relive those three seconds again so I could stop myself from possibly ruining a friendship that I’d really started to care about for over the last nine months.
That was an understatement I was still lying to myself over, and probably would keep lying to myself over for the rest of my life.
Friendship.
Like that was all I felt for this man whose face I had never seen. That’s how I knew I had it bad. I didn’t even know what he looked like and I had such a huge attraction to him it didn’t matter.
He was nice, but not too nice. Funny. Honest. Spiteful enough to be real. And he wasn’t a creep. He understood me and still liked me.
So it wasn’t a surprise that I liked Aaron Hall. I liked him a lot. A lot, a lot. More than a lot. If I really let myself think about it, I wouldn’t even call what I felt for him being along the lines of “like.”