"Hey Emily, how's it going? We have managed to bring Joseph like anyhow. I just want this plan to work out. Or else my mind will not allow me to pass a morsel of food down my throat. I love meat," Sarah recited her lines like well-practiced dialogue lines, a sudden outcry left her lips as she shut her eyes and gulped her saliva.

"You don't love me?" Anshuman poked his finger in her forearm, in a beat, causing her to cringe under his slaughtering gaze.

"Of course, I do love you─"

"But you just said you love meat. You heard it right?" He peered at Emily for a second and continued to slaughter Emily's feeble congregated courage. Displeasure hung in the drawled notes of his voice, his hands fixed on either side of his waist. Big Asian eyes demanding an answer.

"C'mon! Ansh. You'll ─ you'll make me cry─"

Emily felt awkward and wanted to disappear from playing the third wheel, without their knowledge. But her goody-two-shoes character pushed her to pull Sarah in a side hug. "He's joking, Sarah." Then she forced a laugh, swatting Anshuman's abdomen with the back of her hand. "Hey, that was not funny at all."

She snapped shut her mouth as nobody said anything, and it didn't seem like they even wanted to postpone the tiff until they were closeted in their room. But a moment later, Anshuman spoke, devoid of any humor, once again acquainting them with his multi-faced personality, "Well, that's true. Sarah literally looks like a fish out of the pond over a couple of days. I'm worried for her as much as I'm for Joseph."

"No worries." An assured smile lit Emily's face. "I just saw them together a few moments ago. And I guess there is a little conversation happening between them. But, do you think this will work? Drawing two utterly headstrong people together?"

"This should work because they are talking to each other. Work in progress implies some hope," Sarah asserted positively, hovering on her side to glance at her man with unraveling love as he pulled her close.

"Yes, as long as their talk doesn't transcend into an explosive fight," Anshuman joked, rubbing his nose as he shielded Sarah from the vision of a stranger who went past wolf-whistling while gaping at his girlfriend.

***

"Hey, stop it."

"Leave me alone."

"No, no, no. I'm proud to be single."

He was weaving onto the sidewalk and babbling to himself.

"Just go away . . ." and the repetitive string of other repudiative eloquent stutters coming from his mouth caused Ruby to flinch every time. Joseph Holden was giving her a tough time.

"Holden, I'm tryna help you." Ruby hooked their arms, the whole weight molded on her like a big sheet of fondant covering a soft creamy cake. But the only difference was that this fondant was made of hardcore steel. Jingling on her feet, she angled her face to meet his sleepy lids.

"Where are your car keys? And your weight is so fucking unbearable . . . did you take a bath in the alcohol tub or what? Tell me where the hell is your car keys?!" Ruby yelled at him, rolling her eyes for almost the millionth time. She was surprised at her own voice.

"Why . . . are you asking me? When I didn't even come here on my wish . . . they kinda abducted me!" he barked just like how an overworked and underpaid husband would at his wife, failing to stand properly as he held the street light pole gingerly with his other hand.

"Stop talking to me in that tone. You are not a kid and I'm not your mother here. Better feed it!"

He threw up his hands aloft and flailed his hands as he was bout to fall back. But instantly got stable before Ruby attempted to hold him in place.

"Will you stop . . . taunting me about my age? Why? coz you think of me as Santa Claus. I can't do things that young boys do these days. I can bloody . . . show you how exciting I can get your fucking ass right here. And right now!"

Ruby's mouth parted and her cheeks flamed. Her eyes lowered down to search for something valuable which was not there in the first place. As his face blocked her vision, she was left with no option but to look directly into his pink eyes.

"I . . . mean I will never do it with y-you, coz you don't maintain-" He slumped down so his face was parallel to her billowy chest. "Intimate hygiene, I know." He made an effort to strike his hands together but the sound was inaudible to touch her ears.

She immediately covered her ears with her hands to refrain from hearing any unfiltered remark popping out of his mouth. Ruby gawked at his actions in a mute mode, removing his hands only when his mouth was closed shut and his energy appeared to have gone.

"Your stubborn ass will surely move mountains today," Ruby commented through her teeth and trod halfway to hail a cab. Thankfully, she did not have to wait for long as she saw a yellow cab zooming in and coming to a stop at a distance from her.

Running back to him, she clutched his arm between the hollow space of her arm and dragged him to the cab's door. Forefending, he shook his head. "No, no, no . . ."

"All ears Pig Muscle! I've got to get back inside. Emily and the rest of the band members might be expecting me to be hanging around the drinks corner── instead, never close to their thinking, I'm here handling a middle-aged drunk idiot. Now get inside!"

It was already registered in her mind that he had a heart of stone, but his body could be a stone, too; it was an add-on feature.

"Nah . . . nah . . . I'm not getting inside and don't try to discover ways of touching me anywhere. Don't get physical with me. I'm warning you." Having given the word a sardonic swirl, he jerked her hand away and caged his hands around his chest feebly.

"I'm just trying to help you, Mr Holden, you don't need to be aggressive to show your intentions." Ruby forced out while dousing her hand in his arm again. "Your best friends seem to have left you. Look! how precious you were to them."

Ignoring her trenchant remark, he was disgusted, "You are a tacky plastic bag who's trying to cling to my body and transfer all the smallest germs your body is carrying." His facial features contracted. Taking his sweet time to denote every word with loathful intent, he undertoned something.

"And credits to your behavior that doesn't fail to give some brain rot at the moment. Whatever, don't put a fight now." She beseeched in his ear, resorting to another way to get things moving, "Please oblige. We've luckily got a cab at this time. Don't get the driver agitated. I can walk a thousand miles but I know who would be the only one complaining about wobbly knees tomorrow mornin'."

Ruby bent down a little to open the door and in doing so, she glanced at the driver, who looked young and a tad bit puzzled at the same time. The night was quiet and lacking life-lesson with no cars or people wandering around. A little less safe for a girl to be out of her home and for wearing a short dress that exposed her legs.

Ruby settled in the back seat whereas he didn't budge an inch. Rotating her head to the right, she saw a gaggle of boys donned in gangster-look and one of them was holding a bottle of beer in his gloved hand, but the main problem was that they were striding in their direction and suddenly the boy with a face mask on started hauling and running toward the taxi with a baseball bat in his hand.

"Joseph . . . shift! Where will I sit?"

"I'm not taking diz gr-r-r-ll." He pointed a shaky finger at her, informing the driver.

"Fuck you." Ruby quickly got down and pushed Joseph inside the taxi and hopped in, closing the door and commanding the driver to leave this place at the earliest. The driver turned on the engine and pushed the accelerator paddle vigorously. "Okay, M-Miss."

"22-D, Arthur Colony," she blurted out his address.

A sudden sound of the stone clanking against the tail light of the cab made her bounce in her place. It felt like she perched on two hard wooden logs. Her breathing stopped for a moment and her face scooted closer to him, to the point that his stubble began to poke against her cheekbones. Ruby yelped, as if why her heart was about to come out of her chest.

Scared to death, she scarcely noticed that she'd been hugging him tightly with both of her arms around his neck while she was sitting on his lap, in a way. Oddly, everything seemed so quiet that she came back to her senses readily. Ruby found her face buried in the moist skin of his neck, she fought the urge to change the position. Ruby would have hardly closed her eyes for a few seconds when she fluttered them open, her lashes brushed against his skin lightly while her lips voyaged the expanse.

Undoubtedly, she hated this man from top to bottom, but he had cast some sort of magic over her. Every time he happened to be around her, she would want him to look at her and protect her like the way he did before when Madame Tào was suspecting her of talking to a man.

Boldness blotted her actions as she brushed her lips against his earlobe. Joseph groaned; chinning her up by pulling her braid slightly downward. "Work under my wing and seek your fortune."

Has he gotten sober this early? She thought, looking at his charcoal black eyes and her lower stomach started to heat up into a ball of warm, squirmy mushiness; her heart stalled just like a car's engine stuttering out of gasoline.

"Ma'am, your destination has arrived." The driver turned off the engine and that was when she shifted from his lap to the vacant seat beside her slowly. And also, that was the time she had to answer him in either- yes or no, but definitely maybe- would not be enough.

Therefore she was riddled with self-doubt and fear.

Word count - 1420

a/n; The time has come when Ruby has to take his side or permanently leave his sight.

>_<

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