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I sat up and stretched, and collapsed again into the comfort of his cloudlike counterpane. He was only a couple years older than me, but he had the most elegant apartment ever, and this comforter… The white cotton softness bunched up around my shoulders like a hug.
Rubio came over and sprawled next to me. There was a faint, shadowed bruise beside his eye. “You owe me a back rub, Sleeping Beauty. I slept on the couch.”
“That was very gentlemanly of you,” I murmured as he turned onto his side. I knew he’d slept on the couch because I’d woken from four or five nightmares of Liam screaming at me. All last night seemed like a nightmare. I barely remembered how I’d ended up at Ruby’s place. I didn’t want to remember any of it, not yet.
Instead I concentrated on Ruby’s muscles as I squeezed and stroked the planes of his back. It didn’t feel sexual to massage him. Last night, at Liam’s house, I hadn’t really been having sex with Ruby. It was Liam I craved, Liam who still had way too much control of my heart. I’d been trying to prove to myself that I could move past him, but all I’d learned was that I still wanted him. I thought maybe he cared for me too, at least until the end, when all hell broke loose.
“Ohhh,” Ruby sighed. “Keep going. My lower back.”
I massaged down to knead the little dimples above his ass. “You have a really nice place,” I said, looking across to his wall-sized window.
“Nah. Is small. I never buyed much furniture.”
“I like it. It’s streamlined and clean-looking. I like the whole loft thing for you, although I pictured you with a bigger place. At first I thought Liam’s house was your house.”
“Hmm.” He shuddered as I dug into the sides of his spine. “I’m not rich like Liam. Not too rich. I send most of my money to my family in Brazil. They need it more than me.”
I knew from bios and clippings that Rubio had grown up poor, in a Rio favela, but it never occurred to me that he supported his family now. “Do you miss them?” I asked.
He turned to me, lying back and resting his head on one arm. “I go there sometimes, when I have the time.” He stroked fingers over my tangled bed-head. “I think you have pretty black hair, like a Brazilian girl. I miss Brazil. Is hot there. Here, it’s so cold.”
“Is that why you have these big, fluffy comforters?” I asked, squirming deeper into his nest of blankets.
“I have them because girls like them,” he said with a grin. “Hey, you okay today? How’s your ass?”
“It’s fine. A little tender, but I’ll live.” I couldn’t hold his gaze beyond a moment or two. “Ruby, about last night… You and me…it’s not… I can’t…”
He made a dismissive sound. “I know. Was just playing, between friends.”
I studied the rigid set of his mouth. “If you want to cast someone else in your ballet, I’ll understand.”
“Why would I do that?” His pout deepened. “Really, you’re best for the part. I think all the money Liam gave me, I’m going to give it back to him. I don’t need it.”
“He doesn’t need it either.”
“A charity then. What charity you want, Ash-lee? You say, and I’ll give the money in your name.”
He waited for my answer, his hand lying beside mine on the comforter. Perhaps The Great Rubio was worth my adoration after all. I thought about it, turning my cheek from his pillow. “Maybe something…some charity to help victims of child sexual abuse.”
I never intended to reveal any of that to him. I probably wouldn’t have, if our gazes hadn’t met across the space between us. He was silent a moment, then he made a soft sound and touched my fingers. “Merda. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said, looking away. “I’m better now. All of that is in the past. Liam helped me move past it for good.”
“Oh. I wondered what was going on with you two. He never told me anything about you, nothing. But last night, I knew something bigger was going on.”
“God, last night.” I sat up with a groan. “Thanks for letting me stay here at your place.”
“It was my fault, last night. I was bad. I push him sometimes. He’ll get over it.”
“He won’t get over it. He was mad at me, not you.”
“No, he was mad at himself. He gets that way. Sometimes, in his head, he is just…” He made some scattered gesture with his fingers.
“How long have you known Liam? How did you meet?”
“He helped me once in a bar fight. Four or five years ago now. Protected my pretty face,” he said, breaking into a grin. “This was before he had his own play room for me to be wild in. After that, he was a friend who put up with me, and so we became closer. With guys, you know, friendship is just knowing each other. Accepting each other’s weirdness.”
“Like last night?”
“Last night was not about me and him.” He turned his dark, piercing gaze on me. “Until now we were always ‘bros before hos,’ but you changed him. Since you met him, he is not the same.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I think he fell in love for you. I don’t think he ever loved anyone before, any woman. I know he didn’t. But now he does. Ash-lee, you know, it is really messing him up.”
I felt a terrible pain in my soul, because I wanted so badly for that to be true. “I don’t think he loves me. I tried to get closer to him, tried to tell him how much I cared for him, but he didn’t want any part of it.”
“But you see
how he acts? Brooding and yelling, and hanging out at the theater all the time? He wants you.”
“Wanting and loving are different things,” I argued. “Just because we want each other doesn’t mean we should be a couple, that we’re ‘in love.’”
“You’re wrong,” he said, wagging a finger at me. “He is in love with you. Sometimes I love you, Ash-lee, and sometimes I want you, but I am not in love with you. He is.”
I collapsed back onto the pillows, unable to deal with his glib confession. What did love mean, anyway? “It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “Liam threw me out of his house. He told me not to come back.”
“I called you a whale once, and an asshole,” he pointed out. “I didn’t mean it. People say things they don’t mean sometimes.” He walked around the bed and pulled me to my feet. “The question is, do you love him? Enough not to listen to his mean stuff?” He patted my face. “Don’t worry about it now, girl. Was a difficult night, yes? It happens. Come have coffee. Eat something.”
After he fed me breakfast, Rubio walked me the two blocks to my place in the late morning sun. We talked about Waking Kiss and some of the other ballets being choreographed for the showcase. Amazing that in a few months’ time Rubio had gone from an untouchable god to this…this friend. He really was my friend. I turned to him at the door to my building.
“You know, Ruby, about last night… It was great up until the end. There was a time I would have given anything for your attention, so it was special to me. I know it was just crazy sex games to you, but I’ll always remember your kindness, and the care you took to make it good for me.”
