Losing Ruby

Copyright © 2020 Kelsa Dixon

All rights reserved

— • —

[Brody]

A cold wind whipped through the lot. Huddled against the side of her car, Ella pulled me closer. She wrapped her arms under my jacket, hugging me flush to her. I only wished we didn't have the clothes between us, then I could think of a way we'd warm up real fast.

I stroked my thumb over her trembling lip and she shivered. From my touch or the weather I couldn't be sure. Maybe from both. "I love you, Ella Rose."

She nudged her chin into my hand and smiled at me. "I love you more."

Abruptly, the door to the gymnasium behind us opened and banged shut. "Let's go, Brody," Ruby called out. "Noah's waiting."

The hand I had pressed above Ella slipped to her hip, and my head hit her shoulder with a groan.

She laughed at my dismay—and it was dismay, because if it weren't for Noah, I could've had her at home while her parents were still at work making sure her lip quivered from something other than the cold.

"What'd he do this time?" She nuzzled closer.

"Who knows. For being a smart ass?" Why did he ever get detention? I moved a hand into her hair and kissed her neck, her jaw, her cheek.

"Goodbye, Ella!" Ruby called again. I could see through Ella's window that she was standing impatiently at our car on the other side. A hand glued to her hip, her eyes dipped to meet mine with command.

Ella grabbed my face and kissed me quickly. I deepened it a moment longer. "I'll see you later, Ro," I murmured. When I'd sneak out of my house and in her window.

She leaned in, her breath hot against my neck. "I'm counting on it." Then she turned and pulled open her door, a beaming smile in place as she waved to Ruby. "Bye, best friend." The melodramatic use of endearment added ostentatiously for good measure.

"Oh, you remembered." Ruby placed a hand delicately to her chest, and it reeked of ridicule. "At least one of you remembers where I stand in all this."

Wedged between us. The best friend first. I technically stood in line behind her. Ella practiced a delicate dance to appease their friendship, in return Ruby allowed me Ella's undivided attention generally whenever I wanted it.

"I'll call you later," Ella assured her.

"I can hold a grudge if you don't."

No she couldn't. Ruby was incapable of any emotion that revolved around anger. Hence why I was in fact effectively dating—or more specifically, in a very intense, very committed relationship—her best friend.

I fished the keys from my pocket as Ruby stood by the driver side door with her palm outstretched. I pretended to ignore her as I watched Ella pull away from the school and disappear out of sight. "It's my turn—I'm driving," she finally said.

"You drove yesterday."

"You drove this morning."

"Can one of you just unlock the car?" Luca flipped his hood up and bounced a basketball between his legs as he leaned against the back side of our old 4-Runner.

I ignored Luca. "And once a week is more than enough. You're a terrible driver."

"Noah hates when you drive," Luca chimed in.

She drove a hard glare at him, then flipped it on me. She crossed her arms and spun on her heel. "I'm driving tomorrow."

Luca and I shared a look. This was how it always went: we'd suffer through a single, one-way trip each week, then spend the next six days biting our tongues at the mild-mannered tantrums she went through every time we wouldn't let her back behind the wheel so quickly. Especially when we reminded her of the nine times out of ten Noah got sick when she took her foot on and off the gas like we were in stop and go traffic on a nearly vacant back road. We'd find a convincing way to talk her out of it, and we'd get another several days free of her swerving to stay between the lines.

I wasn't sure how she had her license.

The second the engine started she was picking the radio station. We were lucky it was cold and the parking lot had long since emptied or she'd have the windows down and everyone gawking at us.

"Come on, B, you know you love this song." And just like that any bad blood over who drove evaporated. Her threatening grudge against Ella, already long forgotten.

She sang the notes of the song; her voice melodious and her pitch perfect. She threw her head back, her long blonde hair swayed with the song. She knew each word as if it were her own. Even with her eyes closed I could tell they were sparkling. She was easily the happiest person I knew.

A hand snuck in from the back seat, turning the dial.

"Don't you dare." Ruby smacked Luca's hand away. I reached for the volume and turned it up.

"You're such a suck up, B." He punched my arm as he leaned his elbows down on the console between us.

Something had to keep her sitting content in the passenger seat—I'd wanted to say.

"He just loves me more." Ruby winked at him before she was carrying out the chorus to a song I only recognized because of the number of times it played on the radio and we'd be in this exact situation.

As I pulled up to the stop sign at the edge of campus, the song changed and an old 50 Cent song began to blare through the speakers.

"Now this is music," Luca reached forward, cranking on the volume. The car vibrated with the beat.

Ruby gagged. "His lyrics are disgusting, Lu." She gave me a hard look. "You shouldn't let him listen to this."

It wasn't me, I nearly defended myself. I preferred old school rock, but I would admit this was better party music. And it was what blared through the locker room and every one of our practices. I changed the subject. "You have your seat belt on, Luca?" He didn't, and our eyes connected in the rear view mirror.

He rolled his eyes and sat back with a huff. "You're worse than mom." But still, he pulled it across his chest.

Then my foot let off the brake.

I should've seen it coming; the truck was a silver sliver that flashed in my peripheral. My foot felt like lead as I tried to lift it, slamming on the brakes again. But I wasn't fast enough. I should've waited until the car was stopped before I pulled out. I knew better. He was coming around the bend one hundred yards away, and I hadn't paid attention to how fast he was moving.

Her scream was the last thing I heard. It was deafening and crystal clear. In the last second, as I watched the car's headlights grow closer, she turned to me and her face filled the window. Her hand flew to the center console. Her fingers brushed my arm, the other braced her door.

The car was moving too fast; she knew. The look on her face—a last pleading attempt to go back and make a different choice. But it'd been too late to go back.

The beat up utility van with a dent in its hood smashed into her, and then all I could hear was glass shattering and metal crunching before the ringing in my ears led me into the darkness.

It was a warm stream of blood splashing over my eyelashes that brought me back to the inside of our car. My heart pounded through my temples and the ringing in my ears intensified. I couldn't hear my own voice.

Ruby was closer to me now, but it was only half of her, the other half was somewhere under her door. There was blood and hair matted in the shattered window. Her arm was bent in a way that didn't look natural. Panic coursed through me and I glanced behind me. Luca was slumped forward, his seat belt the only thing holding him up.

"Ruby." I shook her shoulder, but the searing pain that shot up my arm made me cry out. I was pinned to my seat. "Ruby, wake up." But she didn't move. Her eyes didn't flutter open. Her jaw was slack and her skin was pale. "Ruby!" My seat belt was jammed and I couldn't reach my phone, I didn't even know where it was. I kept calling her name over and over, but she wouldn't respond.

And then someone was shaking me. They were calling my name.

There were hands on my shoulders, they were behind me. "She's not waking up, Luca. She won't wake up!" I couldn't get the words out fast enough. But the shaking didn't stop, nor my name being called.

"Brody—wake up! Wake up!" The voice came into focus and my mind started to clear. It was a dream—a nightmare. An all too vivid one; one I never truly arose from. "B, please—wake up," she cried again.

My bed was damp and I was slick with sweat. I rolled onto my back and found myself staring at a face all too similar to Ruby's. One that was sometimes too painful to look at. But I would never tell anyone that, it would only break us more than we already were.

The tears poured down her face and I sat up, pulling her to me in an instant. Her arms clung to me with desperation. "Chloe, I'm sorry."

"You just kept screaming her name. Over and over."

"I know."

"You kept telling her to wake up."

I held her closer as the tears that had been mine in the dark depth of my mind became hers. I stroked my hand through her hair and hugged her against my chest until my arms went numb and she started to calm down. Finally, I felt her shoulders ease and her grip loosen.

"I'm sorry, C," I whispered again. Because, really, what else was there to say?

"It's the third time this week." Her hands dropped to her lap where she knelt in the middle of my bed.

It was also the third time this week I had gone to bed without a bottle of whiskey, knowing she would be waiting for me on the other side of my subconscious. It's how it always happened when she was forced to the forefront of my mind. I slid a hand through my hair and looked away.

"Have you had them since...?" Her question trailed off.

"I'll be okay." I couldn't admit that our sister's death stole my subconscious for years and still found ways to haunt me nearly seven years later. On birthdays and anniversaries. Holidays and around certain memories. I didn't need someone to note that our parents' death was now a cause for them to resurface. The only reprieve I'd ever found was at the bottom of a bottle, when I'd stumble to bed not knowing the foot of it from the top.

I flipped the covers back and rose, stepping into a pair of sweatpants piled on the floor at my feet.

"I'm not asking if you're fine, B." Her tone was sharp, and the sadness was now suddenly gone from her eyes.

Unnoticeably, I winced at the pain she was masking with anger. Anger for me shutting her out. But I couldn't let her in, I couldn't drag her down with me. "It won't happen again," I assured her.

She scoffed and disappointment settled in the subtle shake of her head. Her hair rippled in soft waves, and her eyes traveled to the red ruby tattooed in the center of my chest. Her brows furrowed in more of that pain she was attempting to tuck under the flare in her resentment. Easing down onto the edge of my bed, I reached for her hand.

She jerked away from me. "Don't."

"Chloe," I sighed.

"No. You don't want to talk about it." She slammed her fists into the mattress, standing.

"Because it'll only upset us both. And we don't need that; not today."

"You've never wanted to talk about it. Today you just have a better excuse." She wobbled to the end of my bed, and her feet hit the floor with a thud.

"Chloe, please." I grabbed her arm and she spun around. Luca, who'd been hovering in the doorway, stepped into the room.

"It's fine. I get it, really. You'd rather do it alone." The challenge came at me with a chilling sense of calm. She didn't move, she'd erased any emotion from the lines on her face and now my fingers felt aggressive wrapped around her wrist.

I dropped it in defeat. "I said I'm sorry."

She held my gaze a moment longer, then gave me a single curt nod and stiffly turned. She brushed past Luca on her way out, and he easily let her pass.

When I heard her door slam down the hall, I finally dragged my gaze to meet my brothers'. His wide shoulders were pulled back stiffly, his arms crossed roughly over his chest. It was a brief moment that we exchanged a look, but it was clear as day the disapproval on his face. You'd think that after six and a half years of tension between us I'd be used to it.

I wasn't. It still broke me. Every damn time.

He didn't say anything before he turned and stalked down the hall.

— • —

I stepped into the shower and the memories came flooding back, rushing over me just as the water did. They were as vivid as if the accident were yesterday; the pain in my chest, as sharp as the moment Luca told me Ruby hadn't made it.

I hadn't remembered the accident. I wished it had stayed that way, completely forgetting I'd ever had a family. People I loved, and then lost. I had to imagine loneliness was better company than agony.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, quietly.

Luca's normally light blue eyes were dark, and that should have been my first clue. "You don't remember?"

I racked my brain trying to come up with something, some reason that I would be here—in the hospital—with Luca and Ella desperately waiting at my bedside. I looked down at Ella who was starting to stir. When I glanced back at Luca, it was as if the weight of the world had been placed on his shoulders. He gripped the railing of my bed, and refused to look at me. I didn't know why, but panic started to course through me, and my mind started to race. The harder I fought to track down the memories the more piercing the pain throbbed in my temples.

Then I caught sight of the bruise across his neck. It was a deep shade of purple, the yellow edges only starting to show signs of aging, and reality snapped into place. I watched as the accident replayed all too vividly in front of me.

I squeezed my eyes shut now, focusing on the steady hum of the water above me, trying to shake the memories from my thoughts. Memories I couldn't bear to relive, but hounded in relentlessly, regardless.

The monitor next to me had started to beep faster. Outside the room, voices grew louder, drawing closer. Luca's grip on my bed tightened, his knuckles already white started to drain of any color at all. He looked toward the noise on the other side of the door.

"Luca." I pleaded with him, because the truth was buried deep in my stomach and I didn't want it there. I wanted him to tell me she was okay. That she was sleeping in the room next to mine; it was all just a bad dream.

The tear-filled look in his eyes in that moment would haunt me almost as horridly as the accident did. "She didn't make it, B." He repeated himself, wrenching on my insides. "She's gone."

I shook my head, and the harder I did the faster the images came raging in. "No."

I could feel my heart clench now, just as it did that day. I couldn't breathe. As if I was reliving the news all over again, my lungs compressed and I gasped for air.

"No! No, she's here. She was right next to me." I'd only just promised her she could drive tomorrow. She could have her choice of radio stations and songs for however long she wanted. I would be more careful—I'd wait at the stop sign. We still had tomorrow—I would do it right tomorrow.

I could remember screaming at my brother, but the words hadn't match the ones rumbling inside my head.

The hand holding mine squeezed tight, interlocking our fingers. I turned to meet Ella's watery hazel eyes. "Baby." Her voice trembled, but all I could see was her heart breaking through her shaky breaths.

I cut off the water and stepped out of the shower. A towel knotted low around my hips exposed trails of ink covering my torso and I stared back at the mirror in front of me. The reflection was one that at times looked familiar and other times I didn't recognize. Who was I anymore, I'd wonder.

But then I would look at the trail of tattoos across my chest as they climbed over my shoulders and down my back. As they twisted around my arms, and I saw all the memories I never wanted to forget. All of the memories of her, and of an old girlfriend I couldn't seem to fall out of love with no matter the amount of years that dropped away between us. A baby we'd lost. Now I'd have parents to add to the mural of sadness that'd become my life.

My hand instinctively rose to the red ruby right over my heart. The only colored tattoo I had. The one that stood out like a beacon of hope and inspiration at times, and like a painful stab into my ribs at others.

I brushed my teeth, shaved the five o'clock shadow from around my jaw, then I pulled out the only pair of dress pants I owned. I found an old gray button up in the back of my closet from high school that barely fit across my chest. Slipping on a belt and my feet into worn leather loafers I made my way downstairs.

In the kitchen, the conversation between Noah and Luca stopped abruptly. I stood at the threshold awkwardly, debating whether or not to back track. But as Noah glanced in my direction, Luca did too. He wore a similar glare to the one he'd had standing in my doorway earlier. I'd guess they were talking about me, because the air was thick and rigid, and from Noah's stance, he was doing his best not to get involved.

Against my better judgment, I moved towards the coffee pot.

"Well you look like shit," Noah commented.

I held in a breath and lowered my lashes. "Thank you, Noah," I grumbled. Grabbing a mug from the cabinet above, nostalgia slapped me in the face again. The words 'World's Best Dad' with a picture of the five of us as kids all hanging off our dad stared back at me. I poured the hot liquid to the brim and without waiting for it to cool, I took a long sip, enjoying the heated burn it offered on its way down.

"What the hell is your problem, Brody?" Luca finally snapped when I refused to pay him the attention he was silently demanding. "How the hell have you not gotten your shit together? You've had years of nothing but time to yourself to figure it out."

Noah huffed, "Here we go." Pulling out a chair at the kitchen table, he collapsed into it. With his blue collared shirt untucked and the top half of his buttons undone, I would've guessed he'd either just gotten home from the seedy strip club he smelled of, or he'd picked it up off the floor where he'd left days ago. The bags under his eye with the stench of stale alcohol and cigarettes on his breath led me to believe it was the former.

But even with his shaggy blonde hair going in all directions and a few days' worth of stubble on his face, he could've passed for our father better than Luca or me. Yet another subtle reminder as I glanced between him and my mug.

I set my cup aside and leaned against the counter. Studying the old wooden planks beneath my feet, it was an attempt to ignore Luca. It wouldn't work, it never did.

When I wasn't quick to defend myself, Luca moved closer. "This is the third time Chloe's gone running into your room."

Did he think I was unaware? It was miserable for the both of us. "You think I don't know that?"

"I think if you considered the effect they have on her, you'd relieve her of having to relive it all again, too. All of this is already hard enough on her. She doesn't need the added stress; none of us do."

I bit my tongue and refused to acknowledge the way the harsh accusations stung my eyes. I'd have to be absent—physically or mentally—to avoid them. But he knew that, that was the insult. Yet another roundabout way of reminding me my time was up. I'd played my part and it was time for me to move on again.

He drove the issue home. "You know, just because you have her name inked across your knuckles doesn't mean it didn't happen to the rest of us. It doesn't mean the rest of us have forgotten her. But we've faced it, and we've learned to move on."

I grit my teeth and found the window to place my focus. It was easier to look at than the brother I once had in the man standing before me. What we'd once shared in dreams of playing on an NFL field; passion and dedication for a game we honored like a religion; secrets we'd carried from boyhood, now presented themselves only in the simple color of our eyes. Our resemblance faded past the shade of brown hair we shared; the broad shoulders and tall frames we'd inherited from our father were the only talent I had left in a game Luca still worshiped.

"It's not like I want to remember her that way," I said.

"Then get some fucking help, Bro."

Bro. A term I despised and he knew it. It was insensitive and a play on my name that always got under my skin. I shuffled my feet at the discomfort it awakened.

"She's worried about you, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. You do this to yourself, and I won't watch you drag her back under."

The nausea from earlier started to resurface at the constant badgering. The incessant reminders of the agonizing imagery that continued to plague me. They led to all the other memories that morphed from a spiral I still wasn't sure I was out of six years later. My mind flooded with images of how the last several years had played out and the heartache that had mounted to this moment. "Don't act like you know anything about me, Luca. You don't have any idea, the shit I've been through."

He seemed satisfied with my answer. "And whose fault is that?"

My shoulders sagged to their breaking point. My arms went limp against my legs. Our relationship was on a long list of things I'd ruined over the years, and it ate at my gut nearly as much as the accident did.

Pleased, he scoffed at my lack of defense and it was only when he'd turned his back on me that I realized his fingers had been clenched in fists since I stood in the doorway. I watched the way he worked them open and closed as though they ached to dish out the same blow I craved to receive.

"Hey, Luca," I called after him. Maybe this would do the trick; we'd both get what we wanted. He barely turned to stare blankly back at me. "You sure you've moved on? Resentment isn't usually a result of healing."

I held my breath, thinking any moment he'd spin on his heel and there would be an iron fist clashing against my weak stomach. A steely hit to my ribs.

"And what would you know about it?"

I sagged further into the counter as he left, the fire between us smothered.

Noah clicked his tongue, a look of disgust and disapproval smeared through his features. "You two and your damn jabs." He jerked his chair back and left, too.

— • —

• losing ruby •

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