Before You Knew My Name (29)

Ash hasn’t mentioned coming to visit.

Not since he told her he might come to New York, and she waited hours before replying—I would love that!—and soon enough they were talking about other things, and she couldn’t, wouldn’t ask him about his plans, until a week had passed, and then another. Until her first month in New York was nearly over. A whole month and, still, Ash remained the lump in her throat, the ache in her bones. That was not supposed to happen.

There are things Ruby has tried to do, remedies she’s sought. Like downloading a dating app and engaging in tentative conversa-tions with a few of the men who responded to her profile. One man, a Financial Manager living in Chelsea, seemed pleasant enough, until he sent explicit pictures of himself in the middle of an afternoon, asking Can you handle this? as if they hadn’t just been talking about getting tickets to a baseball game. Ruby blocked him immediately, before shutting down her new profile completely, her cheeks hot with embarrassment, and not a little alarm. She had been this close to asking him to meet her for a drink. The unwanted pictures felt aggressive, sinister even. Would this Financial Manager have been the same way in person? New to online dating, Ruby had no idea whether this kind of behaviour was the norm these days. Perhaps she was supposed to laugh it off or admire the guy’s misdirected confidence. It didn’t make her feel like laughing, though. The whole episode made her feel queasy, and then sad. Ruby had been looking for a reprieve from Ash, a chance to replace the almost of their relationship with something present, real. Instead, she found herself longing for him more than ever, for an intimacy already mapped out.

That was not supposed to happen.

Scratching the navigation of strangers and dating off her list, Ruby kept on running. She started a daily journal. Wary of the words that tumbled out, embarrassed to see her heartache spread naked across its pages each morning, she discarded the journal five days later. She took herself to a talk on self-actualisation at 92Y, and another on guided meditation at ABC Carpet & Home, and she spent afternoons reading or people-watching from the damp wooden benches of the High Line. No longer a tourist exactly, Ruby spent the last days of my life trying on a different New York, and a different version of herself. Nothing worked, of course; anything she tried felt like a misstep, like she was still running the wrong way. Loneliness is disorienting like that; with Ash as her only lodestar, Ruby continued to feel utterly lost.

(She still has no idea where she is headed, the story that awaits her. But she’s so close now. We’re almost there.)

This morning, this very last morning, she is trying—and failing—not to think about her failures, or about Ash. She thuds past boats bobbing on the water as she follows the Hudson River south, before turning and heading up and out of Riverside Park. She relishes the burn of her calves as she takes the concrete steps to the upper levels, two at a time. Ruby has come to appreciate this park, with its statues and boats and wide ribbon of water. There is space here to stretch out, no need to check your speed against the person in front of you; she decides this will be where she exercises from now on.

(There’s Noah, walking the dogs along the upper levels as she runs. He loves this park, too.)

Back in her room, flush from her run, Ruby grabs her phone and sends an impulsive SOS. Types out the sentence that has been swimming in her head for days.

Am I going to lose you, Ash?

His response comes back almost immediately.

Not at all. It’s just getting harder to respond these days. So busy. See you soon!

Then five minutes later: Maybe.

Something bristles in Ruby. Perhaps it’s the post-run endorphins, her perception of pain reduced. A passive dismissal that might normally hurt her turns her top lip to a snarl instead. Despite her best efforts at distraction, she hasn’t been able to stop herself dreaming about Ash coming to visit in the summer, imagining the dark bars she would take him to, the jazz clubs, the train ride to Rockaway for a day on the beach. The simplest of somethings they could experience together. She has let her mind wander to arms linked, necks kissed and, yes, the nights in bed. Hands over lips, gasps silent against these thin walls. Fingers tracing the bedhead, scratching, the way she would come against his mouth. Perhaps they’d never even make it to the bars and the clubs and the beach.

Maybe.

How stupid can she be? Taking one message and spinning up a biography in this way. She re-reads all of his old texts now. Paces her small room like a lioness, frustration growing. It’s getting harder to respond. No! How pathetic can she be? Feeding on every maybe and not at all, feasting on scraps. He is not too busy to respond. He has no doubt made himself available to other people today, turning this way and that to give them whatever they need of him. Never what she needs of him, ever. In this sudden blistering rage at her lover, Ruby wants to kick something. She hates him in this moment, as a large raindrop splatters against her window. Slap against glass, slap against reality. Blue skies can disappear so fast.

Perhaps, just a little, Ash hates her, too. Despises her for leading him down a path he cannot find his way back from. Cannot make up for. He forgets all this in her arms, of course, or when he is alone in another wide, clean hotel bed after a conference and he’s had one too many wines. In these moments, she is all he can think of. His mistress, the one whose body he has traversed and drowned in and drunk from over and over. Sometimes, the ache for her is no different from thirst or hunger. A primal need for her skin and scent. Other times, like now, when she reveals her neediness, her flare across the ocean, he wishes she would leave him be, thinks of life before her—and after her, too, if he could just say the words. Why doesn’t she understand? Why does she keep coming back for more? She cannot lose him, not when he was never hers to begin with. She’s the one who offered herself up. Agreed to their terms. This is not his fault. What is he supposed to do? Break off an engagement to the best woman he’s ever known, give up the glorious future ahead of him? If he’s honest, that was never going to happen.