Page 57 of I Hate You More

“Not really. Little Girl Glam, 2004.”

Her mom didn’t miss a beat. “No prize money for that one. But it did get you entry into Glitz and Rainbows that same year.”

“Which…?”

Her mother sighed. “I don’t know what good this is doing either of us. You only took second, so it was five hundred dollars. That one hurt. You missed three notes of ‘Amazing Grace.’”

Ruby had only vague recollections of those pageants, but she accepted her mother’s valuation as truth. When it came to remembering pageant details, Laurel Taylor was as sharp as they came.

“Where did the scholarships go?” Ruby asked again. “And why did we never make a push to use them?”

“Use them for what?” Her mother released a brittle laugh. It was nothing like the spark of sunshine that usually came out of her when she laughed. “Ruby, honey, take a look at that piece of paper in your hand and ask me that question again.”

Rubydidlook at the paper, but she didn’t bother to repeat her question. There was no need to remind her mom that there were dozens of community colleges and trade schools in the Seattle area or that some admissions departments looked beyond academics. Her mother could no more envision a life of academia than she could a colony on the moon.

“Youwere the one who wanted to quit the pageants,” her mom reminded her. “Youwere the one who insisted on getting a job and making your own way in this world. It’s not fair to be mad at me because you don’t like the way it turned out.”

Ruby closed the drawer, careful to fold and tuck the transcript in her back pocket. As much as she’d have liked to be angry at her mom, she was right. Ruby hadn’t made the least push to tally up her scholarship winnings once she’d graduated from high school. She’d wanted to get as far away from pageantry as possible, up to and including the renunciation of everything she’d ever won.

And then…nada. When she’d stopped competing on the stage, she’d stopped trying at everything, allowing herself instead to be carried on a comfortable wave of crappy jobs and even crappier boyfriends.

“This is about that man, isn’t it?” Her mom followed her to the kitchen, where Ruby had every intention of eating her feelings in the form of that entire tub of hummus. “The handsome one who’s good in bed?”

Ruby wasn’t sure if her mom’s astuteness or her assumptions startled her more, but she gave a small jump. “I never said he was good in bed.”

“Bed, the back seat of your car, a convenient wall—what you do with your gentleman friends is no business of mine.” Her mom paused before opening the fridge and pulling out the promised dinner. Much to Ruby’s surprise, she didn’t just have celery and hummus; there was a whole platter of vegetables and even some pita bread to go along with it.

“They’re the low-carb kind, so don’t look at me like that.” Her mom unwrapped the platter and placed it on the table. “I also picked up a bag of diet dog food in case you brought that animal with you again. Well?”

“Well, what? Why didn’t I bring Wheezy? I told you already, he’s not my dog. I’m only—”

Her mother waved her off with an impatient hand. “No, not the dog. The man.”

Ruby had been afraid of that. She fell to the nearest chair with a thump. “Yes and no,” she said before picking up a carrot. Sinceshewasn’t required to weigh in for the West Coast Canine Classic, she swirled it generously through the hummus before taking a bite. “It is about him, but it’s also not.”

When her mom didn’t do anything more than twist the top on a bottle of cheap white wine, Ruby forced herself to keep going.

“There’s an eensy-weensy chance he thinks I’m a doctor, not a nursing assistant. And an even eensier-weensier one he thinks that because I let him.”

Her mother cracked a laugh and began pouring with a generous hand. She plunked several ice cubes in the glass before pushing it across the table at Ruby. “I think you’re going to need this. So that’s your plan? Go to medical school and become a doctor before he finds out the truth?”

Ruby wasn’t going to lie… It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. Except for the part where she didn’twantto be a doctor.

“I don’t plan to take it that far,” she admitted. “I’m having a personal crisis, that’s all. I thought I was doing fine before Spencer and Wheezy and all this dog-training nonsense, but…”

“But?” her mom prompted.

Ruby shook her head, unsure how to answer. The answer—that she wasn’t fine and hadn’t been for years—would only hurt her mom’s feelings, mostly because the things she wanted out of life weren’t even close to the things her mother had settled for.

And there it was in plain truth. Ruby wanted more out of her life than to grow old in a job that didn’t satisfy her. She didn’t want to live in a rented house that left much to the imagination. She didn’t want the best parts of her life to exist in a storage pod in the backyard.

“I miss having something to work toward,” she admitted, since it was close to the same thing. “Goals and dreams and visions of bright lights. Someone to beat. Something to win.”

Her mom nodded as though this made perfect sense. She also ate a pita triangle, which was a thing Ruby had never seen her do before. “When you set your heart on a thing, you’re unstoppable. You always have been.”

“Unstoppable?” she echoed. “Me?”

The look her mom leveled on her was the most maternal one she’d ever seen that woman wear. “Ruby, you won more pageants than most of the other girls your age combined. Oh, you whined and moaned and acted as though I was single-handedly ruining your life the whole time, but the moment you set foot on that stage, the entire world fell away. It was like watching a magician pull a dove out of thin air. One moment, there was nothing there and then—BAM!—Ruby Taylor appeared, and nothing else seemed to matter. The other momshatedme. The second they saw us drive up, they knew their own little darlings didn’t stand a chance.”