Page 96 of Almost Ours

I was expecting more of a fight. “Okay?”

“I hear you. I accept your friendship.” Ruby’s hands loosen around my wrists and fall back to her sides, and when I let go of her face she puts a full step between us, rubbing her lips together and blinking towards the road instead of at me.

“Ruby—” I start, not really sure what I’m even going to say to make this better, because this feels fucking awful.

“Don’t worry about it,” she mutters, pulling her coat closer around herself. “I hear you. You only want to be my friend. It’s okay.”

The words make me want to grab hold of them and take them back, except I shouldn’t. I mean it when I tell her she shouldn’t want more from me, even if every other part of me is screaming that I’m making the wrong call.

She glances towards the pub door. “I should go back in before the others wonder where I am.”

I want to tell her not to go. More than that, I want to tell her that I didn’t mean I don’t want her, because that isn’t the truth. If anything the problem is that I want her so much I’ve started thinking about her when I wake up, when I’m in lectures, when I’m training, when some other geezer stands too close to her in a pub and suddenly I’m twenty times more miserable than I was five minutes earlier.

But I really will just fuck her up with my own shit, and no one deserves that.

So I nod. “Yeah.”

Ruby gives me a small smile that doesn’t look anything like the ones she usually gives me, then starts towards the door, and I stay where I am with my hands shoved into my pockets, telling myself I’m doing the good thing. The honourable thing.

At the entrance, she pauses and glances back at me. “Are you coming back inside?”

“No.” I hitch a thumb over my shoulder, thoroughly fucking disappointed in myself. “I’m gonna go home.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Someone will walk you back, won’t they?”

She rubs her forehead. “Yeah. Course. Oscar’s there, isn’t he?”

“Okay.” I wave towards the path. “Well…Night, Rubes.”

“Night, Josh.” Then she disappears back inside and the door swings shut behind her, cutting off the burst of music and voices that escaped onto the pavement with her, and I’m left standing there.

I should feel relieved.

I’ve drawn the line, kept things where they’re safer, stopped myself from dragging her into the mountain of shit I’m carrying around with me.

Instead, all I can think about is Tom standing inside that pub waiting for her, and the fact I’ve just told the girl I want that she should only ever be my friend.

And the grey wolf of depression pounces.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Friday

November 20th 2015

Ruby:

I’ve been avoiding Josh and it’s starting to grate.

The rejection after we nearly kissed hurt more than I realised it would, and the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Bonnie is the reason. He reacts to her too strongly for there to be nothing there, and maybe that’s why he can’t give me anything more, why he keeps insisting friendship is all he has to offer.

Every day since that night, I’ve been with Brooke and Abi, and it feels awful to admit, but watching Gossip Girl with them doesn’t feel the same as watching Game of Thrones with him.

I like being with them, I do, and they make me laugh and fill the silence and stop me from sitting alone in my room thinking too much, but there’s still this constant awareness that he isn’t there, and I hate how much I feel his absence.

Tonight he’s got training and then he’s off out with the football lot. I know because Cam told me they haven’t seen much of him either, that Josh has been hiding from them too, and they’ve decided the solution is to force him into staying out whether he likes it or not.