Page 159 of Almost Ours

“Ruby, please.” He is literally begging.

“Who is upstairs?” I hotly demand, but he doesn’t reply so I head for the stairs, moving faster when he reaches out an arm to stop me. “What room is yours?”

“Please stop.”

“Which one?”

“Ruby, listen to me, okay? Nothing happened.”

I reach the landing and start opening doors, fighting off Josh as he tries to stop me. I’m a woman possessed, knowing what I know and needing to see it for myself. The first is a bathroom, the second a guest room with a bed so perfectly made it looks unused, and the third opens onto another empty room while Josh follows behind me, voice growing more strained every time I reach for another handle.

“Ruby, please. Just wait.”

“No.” I hiss, an unstoppable force making me move. “Tell me which one is yours.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Says every lying, cheating, scumbag of a man.”

“How can I cheat if we’re not even together?”

The urge to slap him hits me so hard I have to grit my teeth. “You did not just say that to me.” I mean, technically he’s right. We haven’t put a label on this. We haven’t stood in front of everyone and announced ourselves. We’ve just kissed and slept wrapped around each other and told each other things we don’t tell anyone else and behaved in every way that matters like this is more than friendship.

“I’m fucked in the head right now, Ruby. I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“Well, you’re doing a brilliant job by accident.” I snap, grabbing another handle and shoving the door open.

The room is darker than the others, curtains still mostly drawn even though it’s the middle of the afternoon, and for one strange second all I register is the mess. Clothes over a chair. A glass of water on the bedside table. A phone charger trailing onto the floor. Then my eyes move to the bed and everything inside me breaks.

Bonnie is asleep beneath Josh’s duvet.

Her hair is spread across his pillow, and she’s turned towards the wall, one arm tucked beneath her head. There is a dress folded over the chair near the window, her shoes kicked off beside it and a little necklace on Josh’s bedside table.

“Oh my God.” It’s so much worse than I could have imagined.

Josh is behind me, breathless from following me through the house, and I can hear the panic in his voice. “I swear nothing happened.”

I can’t listen to whatever comes next. My whole body has gone hot and shaky and there is a horrible pressure building at the back of my throat, so I turn and push past him, heading back down the hall towards the first bathroom I opened.

“Ruby.”

I ignore him and keep moving, one hand pressed over my mouth as the nausea rises so quickly that I barely make it through the door before dropping in front of the toilet and throwing up. My knees hit the tiled floor hard enough to hurt, but I don’t care. I grip the edge of the seat and retch again while tears sting my eyes, half from being sick and half because Bonnie is asleep in Josh’s bed.

In his bed.

After he ignored me for an entire day.

Josh stops in the doorway behind me, breathing like he has run the length of the house even though he has only followed me down a corridor. “Rubes.”

I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and stay crouched there, trying to get my breathing under control while another wave of nausea rolls through me. “Please don’t touch me.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.”

There is silence then, thick and awful, and I can feel him standing there. I know if I turn around and see his face I’m either going to start crying or start screaming, and I don’t want to do either. I want some dignity intact when I leave this house.

“I swear to you nothing happened,” he whispers, voice pleading. “She was upset. She needed somewhere to stay. I slept downstairs.”