picnic baskets lined with gingham fabric. Something like that would have really pulled the whole thing together. But maybe it was better this way. With the cooler I’d look like I was carrying a couple of basic peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but when I opened it, and she saw instead an elegant, grown-up feast, Ruby would have no choice but to immediately ask me to homecoming. Or something like that.
* * *
—
Twenty years later, I sat in my truck in Ruby’s driveway, opening and closing and reopening the cooler to check to make sure its contents were still cold. I’d pulled up at three on the dot, and decided I’d give her until 3:06 before I texted her to let her know I was there. It was breezy out, so I’d dressed in a jean jacket over a flannel, and I could feel sweat prickling my lower back. I opened the window a crack and flapped the hems of all my shirts up and down until it dried. And then it was 3:06, so I gave her another minute. I was deciding whether or not to give her another minute after that when the front door opened and Ruby emerged. I inhaled sharply. She wore her hair up, with a bandanna tied into a headband, and a very cool oversized fleece jacket that looked legitimately vintage and not fake Urban Outfitters vintage. Bright blue tights covered the skin the tears in her black jeans exposed, and on her feet were floral combat boots.
Again, I thought, That is not the outfit of a strict heterosexual.
We waved at each other through the glass, and smiled at each other when Ruby opened the side door.
“Hi,” she said, climbing into the passenger seat.
“Hi,” I said. “You look great.”
We both blushed, and I turned quickly to look over my shoulder so I could begin the long, backward journey down Ruby’s driveway.
“Thanks,” said Ruby. With her boot she prodded the cooler at her feet. “Is this for us?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Can I look?”
“No.”
Ruby laughed. “Fine. Then I get to choose the beach.”
I panicked a little. This had not been part of the plan. We were supposed to go to my beach, the one with the overlook parking lot, so we could sit in the back of my truck and look at the ocean without getting sand in our food. I wanted us to be safe and at least semi-secluded so we could kiss. Et cetera.
“Which one?”
Ruby smiled. “Just take a right at the stop.”
Three turns later, I pulled into the parking lot of one of La Jolla’s nicest private beaches, famous for allowing—pause for internal screaming—nudity. I’d never been. I wouldn’t say I was afraid of it, exactly; having spent so much of my life in a rowdy girls’ locker room, I’d gotten comfortable enough being naked and seeing naked people. But that was a sports thing, and you were only naked briefly in order to get into different clothes. This was just…voluntary. And Ruby was not my teammate.
“Don’t you have to be eighteen to go here?” I asked, still clutching my steering wheel.
Ruby gave me such a withering look that I half expected to shrink to the size of an ant. “It’s a clothing-optional beach, not a strip club.”
Even the mention of strip club made my face hot. A flashing pink neon sign reading SEX lit up my brain. I was worried if I opened my mouth, it would fall out.
“Are you coming?” said Ruby. Her door was open, and she had one foot on the ground and her beach bag in her lap.
“Yes. Sorry.”
“It’s mostly going to be old-man dicks.”
She was trying to reassure me, but it didn’t work. I took a deep breath, grabbed the cooler and my bag, and got out of the car anyway. We stripped off our outer layers and tied them around our waists. Underneath her jacket, Ruby was wearing the red cropped T-shirt she’d worn onstage at Triple Moon, and I wondered if that was on