Page 147 of Almost Ours
“No. Sorry.” I wince. I really am a useless prat. “I should’ve answered you. Even if all I said was that I was having a shit couple of days and didn’t feel like talking.” I rub my palms over my thighs, annoyed that something so basic only becomes obvious after I’ve fucked it up. “Instead, I ignored you until you were worried enough to drive here on Christmas Eve.”
“Yeah, well… I was really worried about you.”
I look at her. “I’m sorry.”
“I mean really worried, Josh.” She fiddles with a loose bit of paper on her present. “We slept together, you met my mum on the way home, and then you gave me the silent treatment and now I’ve shown up here, unannounced, trying to force a Christmas you don’t want on you.” Her face drops into her hands. “This is humiliating.”
“I do want it.” I wrap my hands around her wrists and tug them gently until she looks at me. “I want the little Christmas with you. I won’t be getting one otherwise.”
She frowns. “What do you mean?”
I might as well give her some of the truth. “My parents haven’t coped with James dying. None of us have, really. I think I look too much like him. They can barely be in the same room as me half the time. They’re not here tomorrow either. They’ve booked some couples Christmas retreat thing, so they leave in the morning and come back in the New Year.”
Ruby is stricken. “You’re spending Christmas alone? In that big house?”
I shrug. “It’s not a big deal.”
“How can they just leave you like that?”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind it.” Another lie, but I’m not quite ready to admit that one out loud.
“No way.” She slams her seatbelt back on and shoves her key into the ignition.
A nervous flutter runs through me. “What are you doing?”
“You’re coming back with me.”
“What? No way. You can’t kidnap me, and I’m not imposing on your poor mum.”
“Oh, please.” Ruby rolls her eyes, checking her wing mirrors. “The woman lives for this shit. She’ll be ecstatic there’s someone else to gush over. Oscar can’t complain because Emma showed up last year unannounced.” She gives a firm nod, wrapping her hands around the steering wheel. “You’re spending the holidays with us.”
I stare at her. “Ruby, you can’t just decide to throw me at your family.”
“I bloody can.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Fine,” she growls, taking the key out of the ignition and turning the full force of her glare on me. “Either I spend it here with you, or you spend it at mine with me. What would you prefer?”
I look through the windscreen at the house again, then back at her. She’s serious, and she’s stubborn, and I know when she’s set her mind to something there is no reasoning with her. “You’d stay here?”
“If you won’t come with me, yeah.”
“Ruby, your mum would kill me.”
“My mum would kill me if I left you alone.”
“She doesn’t have to know I’m alone.”
“Joshua Hardy,” she snaps, finally losing her cool with me. “You have two options and only two. You either come and spend Christmas with us or I spend it with you. That’s it. Pick one.”
I grapple with it, half tempted to point out that neither option involves her going home and having the Christmas she planned with her family, which feels massively fucking unfair, but I also know what she’ll say. She’ll tell me it’s her choice. Then she’ll probably start the car and drag me back to hers by force if I argue much longer.
Selfishly, a week alone in the house with her sounds like a dream. No parents, no Oscar hovering, no Ewan taking the piss, no lectures or football or anyone else pulling at either of us. Just Ruby here with me, sleeping in my bed, wandering around the kitchen in one of my hoodies, filling every room with noise until this place feels less like a museum I happen to have grown up in.
But she has a family waiting for her. A mum who probably has half of tomorrow planned down to the minute, Oscar being annoying, Emma there, presents, food, all of it. She has people who actually want her there, and the thought of her missing any of that because I’m selfish would make me hate myself more than I do.
I’ve taken up enough space in people’s lives by being difficult.
