good. Even if it was just my body pressed into hers. Even if she just held me.
* * *
—
We said six-thirty, but my doorbell rang a few minutes after seven, which meant I ate half a bag of chips sitting at the kitchen table, creepily peering through the blinds for Ruby’s car, which I’d learned she wasn’t allowed to drive to school ever since she rear-ended someone in the parking lot junior year, causing fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of damage to the bumper. This regulation didn’t make a lot of sense to me, or to Ruby, who pointed out to her father that she was probably much likelier to get in a car accident outside the school parking lot, where people drove faster than ten miles an hour, but Mr. Ocampo had told her that at least those people weren’t all “sixteen and hormonal.” She had hoped to win her dad over by this point in the year, but so far he’d held steady, leaving her to rely on rides from bandmates or “friends” like me. Not that Ruby had a very difficult time finding someone willing to drive her wherever she wanted.
When Ruby pulled into the driveway I leapt to action, dusting chip crumbs off my pants and sucking salt off my fingers as I rolled up the bag and threw it into the cupboard. I dashed up the stairs, so that when she rang the doorbell, I’d take at least as long to answer the door as it took me to descend them. I checked my teeth and my hair in my bathroom mirror and then waited. And waited. Just as I was starting to worry, because it didn’t seem possible anyone could take that long to get from the car to the front door, the doorbell rang. I casually walked down, made myself count to three, and opened the door.
“Hi,” said Ruby.
“Hi,” I breathed. “Sorry. I was just doing push-ups upstairs.”
Ruby smirked. “Cool.”
“Come in,” I said, and when she stepped through the door I leaned in for a kiss. I felt like a fifties housewife, home all day, and here, at last, was my husband, the rock star. I took her jean jacket and draped it over the banister. “How was your day, sweetheart?”
There was the smirk again.
“I’m kidding. In my head it was like you were coming home after work, and I’ve been here waiting,” I explained.
“Yeah, sorry I’m late,” said Ruby.
“Oh—that’s not what I meant! You’re fine.” I was flailing. I could feel it on my face, which meant she could see it. Why did I have to make everything so awkward? Why had I just told Ruby I was fantasizing about us living together?
Ruby looked around. “Do I get to see upstairs this time?”
“Oh, uh.” I blushed. “Yeah, if you want.”
She looked at me expectantly.
“…Now?” I asked. She laughed and took my hand, and I led her upstairs, naming each room as I went as if it weren’t obvious what each one was for.
“That’s my mom’s room and bathroom. It’s a mess. That’s her office, which is also a mess. This is my bathroom, and this is…my room,” I finished. I flicked on the light, and watched her scan the dresser, the desk, and finally the bed. Her face broke into a grin when she noticed the poster affixed to the ceiling above it, its corners reinforced with layer upon layer of graying tape.
“Is that Justin Bieber?”
“It sure is,” I said. “I was so in love with him.”
Ruby raised an eyebrow. “You were.”
“That, or I wanted to be him,” I said. “Both things, I think.”
Ruby crossed the room to my bed and sat down, looking up. My stomach flipped. “You guys have kind of the same hair,” she said, looking back and forth between us.
“Not a coincidence,” I said, and she laughed.
I joined her on the bed, both of us facing the rest of my room, studying my things.
“So many trophies,” said Ruby.
I beamed.
“There’s