and pent up frustrations between them seemed dangerously close to coming loose. Ruth had no idea what it would mean, if that did happen; she understood very little about the distance between she and Hannah.
She only knew that she disliked it and was too cowardly to face it.
But then Hannah sighed. “Just put on your big girl knickers and tell this friend that you’re sorry. I can’t stand it when you’re distracted. You’re like a robot.”
And everything was okay. For now.
Ruth snorted. “You do realise that you’re just as rude as me?”
“I’m your elder, and I keep it in the family.” Hannah slid another plate into the sink with a wicked smile. “Maybe if you did the same, you wouldn’t have to apologise so often.”
“Bugger off.”
“I love you, too.”
16
Ruth had been carrying a certain amount of guilt for quite some time, and she’d become used to it. Too used to it, clearly, because the extra guilt created by the way she’d treated Evan was unbalancing her quite horribly. She felt too big for her own skin.
She had come home from her mother’s yesterday determined to knock at 1B and apologise profusely. She’d managed step one just fine: knocking. Step two had been thwarted by the fact that Evan had not answered, because he was not in.
The man was bloody inconvenient sometimes.
But she found herself grateful for his absence. If he’d been there, what would she have said?
Sometimes my mind gets overwhelmed and all I can do to cut through the confusion is lash out.
Sometimes I think about one thing and remember another and see another and hear another, and that’s just too many things, and I don’t handle it well.
You shouldn’t want to kiss me, because I clearly don’t deserve you.
There. That one worked. That one worked just fine.
Her determination faded overnight, and so did the bravery it had provided. Ruth wasted most of Monday trying to work, failing utterly, and talking to herself about why she should or should not apologise.
When she heard Evan unlock his front door that evening, she abandoned the pretence of work completely and lay down on the floor in her hallway, staring up at the ceiling.
The carpet was thin and scratchy. The floorboards beneath it were hard. She didn’t mind, because the blankness of it all helped her to think, and she wasn’t fit to do anything else.
It wasn’t even that bad. You tell him to fuck off all the time.
But you never meant it, and it never hurt him, so it didn’t matter. This is different.
The worst part was that he hadn’t seemed upset at all. He’d remained composed, had barely even flinched, while she pushed him away with careless, reckless words.
So why was she so sure that he’d actually been devastated?
“I just am,” she mumbled.
And what if she went over there, and apologised—and therefore admitted that she actually gave a shit about what he thought—and it turned out that he wasn’t even bothered?
“Of course he’s bothered,” Ruth sighed. “He wanted to kiss me. He… he caught me off-guard.”
No; the flowers had caught her off-guard. And she’d taken it out on Evan.
You crazy bitch.
“Fuck off,” she muttered. Sometimes her mind spit out recycled epithets instead of actual thoughts. Sometimes her mind was someone else’s weapon.
And sometimes Ruth reacted badly under pressure and made very poor decisions and pushed away people she kind of sort of needed desperately.
Things happened, sometimes.
“So fix it.” She let those words dissolve into the air. Usually, telling herself what to do elicited more efficient results.
It didn’t work. She remained on the floor for at least another hour, or possibly ten minutes. She wasn’t sure. Her phone was in her room. Evan had her number, but she hadn’t heard it beep. She had heard him shower, which meant he should be coming over soon, except he wouldn’t because she’d effectively told him to fuck off.
Actually, you literally told him to fuck off.
Oh, yes.
She got up off the floor.
But wait—she couldn’t go over there. If he was avoiding her, she had to give him… space. Right? That was what you did, after a fight. Was it a fight? That word seemed to belong exclusively to couples, to people with actual relationships.
Well, whatever. They weren’t a couple, but they’d had a fight anyway. And in Ruth’s experience, trying to make up after a fight was… horrible. It involved many cruel words and lots of grovelling and, eventually, mildly painful sex.