Ruby Ortega always got what she wanted.
However, Ruby Ortega also frequently wanted what she couldn’t have—which was precisely how she found herself in her current predicament: engulfed by a flock of rowdy boys lavishing her with the attention and adoration she craved on this tedious evening but still feeling just a little bit bored.
Among this crowd were, of course, the Trujillo brothers; they never passed up a chance to brag and boast in front of an audience. Ruby had once found the name of Alex Trujillo, the youngest of that tall brood, doodled in her sister’s notebook with hearts and swirls, and suspected an unreciprocated crush. Then there were a handful of other boys she’d grown up with—Mike Thomas, Ian Percy, and Daniel de la Cruz—whose parents either worked with her father, attended spin class with her mother, or operated in some capacity in the high-society circle to which the Ortegas belonged. There were a few others who were less familiar, like Sam Gomez, whose parents sent him off to boarding school last year after a drunken, late-night joy ride in their Beemer that had resulted in several thousand dollars of property damage near Balboa Park. All in all, the boys surrounding Ruby were all fine. No one particularly special, but at least they were better than the girls her age.
As they took turns blustering about achievements they seemed to find impressive—high scores on Madden or beer pong tournaments—Ruby feigned interest with a thin smile and a tigerlike scan of the rest of the partygoers clustered around the patio of her family’s bed-and-breakfast.
At least two hundred guests had come to Elena’s quinceañera. Ruby’s father claimed most of them were related to their family, but who could really know with him? He referred to everyone as primo so-and-so or tía what’s-her-name. Ruby’d had her own quince three years ago, and he’d introduced her to about twenty people who were “cousins” she’d never met.
Elena had been babbling incessantly about this party for months, and for the past week, no one in her family had been able to talk about anything else. Her sister had gone to everyone but Ruby as she deliberated
over the color of her dress (mint green, which no one had the courage to tell her brought out the sickliest undertones in her skin), the party favor (key chains with her face on them—who the hell would want that?), or even the centerpiece flowers (it didn’t matter that they were some exotic daisy that her mother had called three different florists to track down—they were still daisies). Daddy got to offer his opinions. Mom was integral to every decision. Even Carla, who was eleven, got to make suggestions. But anytime Ruby was proximal to any party planning, Elena would snap, “Oh, Ruby. I’m sure you’re busy getting ready for college. You don’t need to worry about my birthday.”
It was unrelenting, and Ruby’d had all she could bear.
She let out a bored sigh and locked eyes with Alex across the circle of boys as he shoved a sopaipilla into his face. He glanced around uncertainly before he realized that he was the one who Ruby had zeroed in on. She ran a hand over the shimmery fabric of her dress, acutely aware of the effect that would have on him. The wolfish way he stared at her as he finished off the fried pastry, scattering powdered sugar all over his shirt, was somehow both revolting and satisfying.
Ruby had a slim figure, but it was not offset by the gentle curves most of the other girls had upon exiting puberty. Her skin was fair, but not quite porcelain; it was just light enough for people to comment frequently that she didn’t “look Latina”—whatever that meant. She had thick, dark hair that, on her best days, fell in glamorous waves down her back, but on her worst days drew Medusa-like comparisons. While some girls may have listed these qualities as flaws, Ruby in fact knew them to be traits she could use to her advantage with the right amount of confidence and a good deal of batting her eyelashes. There was absolutely no challenge that Ruby wasn’t prepared to bend to her will.
Alex barreled toward her, earning more than a few irritated scowls as he did so.
“You look amazing,” was all he could muster, a nervous grin playing on his sugarcoated lips.
She smiled back, instantly filled with the familiar satisfaction of having all eyes on her.
He seized her brief silence as his opportunity to interject what he probably thought was his most remarkable trait. “I don’t know if you saw the new truck out there.” Ruby maintained a blank expression, but he was undeterred. “It’s mine. I just bought it. It’s got three hundred horsepower. Which is a lot. Most people don’t know the difference between horsepower and torque.”
How did we go from complimenting me to this so quickly? she wondered.
Somehow he had transitioned to towing capacity, which apparently was also different from horsepower, and Ruby resisted the overwhelming urge to point out that all those things were similar in that she did
not give two shits about any of them.
She eyed Ian Percy, who stood to the right of Alex’s colossal shoulder with a disappointed scowl on his face. She’d always found him kind of skeevy, ever since she heard he had multiple iPhones to text different girlfriends, but perhaps he’d be a more interesting target? “I’m sorry,” she cooed to Alex apologetically. “My champagne seems to have disappeared.” She held up her empty hands and gave him a helpless shrug.
She flicked her eyes up at him and waited five full seconds for him to realize she was waiting for him to make himself useful.
At last, his eyes brightened with understanding. “I’ll go get you one. Bartenders never ask for my ID.” He put his own cup to his lips and drained its contents with one cartoonishly loud slurp. “Because I’m so tall,” he added unnecessarily.
Ruby rewarded him with an affectionate pat on his arm. “Oh, would you? I’ll see you back here in a minute, then.” Before the relief of finally shaking the bumbling buffoon (really, what did Elena see in that guy?) could sink in, Ruby felt a gentle but firm hand pull her by the arm, away from her gaggle of admirers.
“Ruby. Catherine. Ortega.” Instantly, she was spun so her back was to the boys, and she was instead face-to-face with the reproachful glare of her mother—the only person in the world whose whisper could still be heard over the thumping of a DJ. “Are you trying to give your father a heart attack?”
Her father subsisted on a diet that was primarily made of tequila and red meat, so while a heart attack wasn’t completely out of the question, Ruby didn’t really see how it could be blamed on her.
Before she could answer, her mother snapped, “You know he didn’t want you wearing that dress, and I still don’t know how you made it out of the house without me seeing it.” Her mother’s eyes darted furiously over the pale green bodycon dress that clung to her torso, exposing more than a tasteful amount of cleavage. Of course, the dress’s fit was only part of her parents’ disapproval of her choice. The other part had been Elena’s whining that the color was too close to the mint-green gown she’d selected for herself, which Ruby found ludicrous. Everyone knew green was her color.
Though it had required borderline espionage to escape her mother’s authoritarian watch this afternoon, Ruby personally thought the greater accomplishment had been getting into the dress on her own. She’d had to jump up and down and nearly dislocate her shoulder to get it zipped.
“It wouldn’t even have been an issue if Elena had included me in the damas.” She dramatically folded her arms across her chest. However, she realized the effect this action had on her breasts—heaving them upward
from her plunging neckline—and uncrossed them, quickly pinning her arms to her sides in faux innocence. Her sister had selected four of her friends to wear matching evening gowns as part of the ceremony and had been very insistent that Ruby was not among them. Ruby preferred her own dress, obviously—but she hated being excluded. She was not one to take being told no in stride.
It was, of course, beside the point that Ruby hadn’t chosen Elena to be one of her damas for her quinceañera either.
“It is Elena’s birthday, and it was her choice, just like your quinceañera was all your choice.” Her mother grabbed the neckline of Ruby’s dress roughly and jerked it upward, smashing her exposed cleavage underneath the shimmery fabric. “And that’s what this is, Ruby. A quinceañera. A birthday party. Not a nightclub. Now take this sweater and cover yourself up before your grandmother—or worse, your father—sees you. Go.” She’d snatched some hideous gray cardigan off the nearest chair and thrust it into Ruby’s arms before marching off.
Ruby briefly thought of mentioning that her grandmother had seen her dress before they left the house and had rewarded her with a devilish wink, chuckling that girls her age deserved wild adventures, but she didn’t want to get Mama Ortega in trouble, too.
Distracted by her mother’s tirade and the faint mildewy smell of her new accessory, she hadn’t noticed the towering Trujillo troll returning, sloshing the two beers he held with every step.
She’d listened to him drone on and on, and he couldn’t even be bothered to remember that she’d asked for champagne? Typical.
“Hey, do you want to go talk out front for a bit?” he offered with a hopeful smile.
She could not think of anything she wanted to do less than retreat to isolation with this boy—even with the mortifying new addition to her ensemble. But before she could say anything, he added, “My brother said Ashton Willis is back from his semester abroad, and he just got here. He’s out front with a few friends.”
Her words caught in her throat for an instant, in a stunned, ecstatic silence.
This was what she had been waiting for all evening. Maybe even all her life.
She tossed the cardigan back onto the chair where her mother had found it and eagerly
latched on to Alex’s arm so his gigantic figure would hide her from the judgmental eyes of her family. “That sounds wonderful!”
Ruby had to consciously force herself to breathe, her entire body tingling with excitement and exhilaration. She was anxious for so much these days—to leave for college, to have a life outside her insular community, where she knew everyone and everyone knew her—but there really was nothing like a summer night in Southern California, and she was certain this moment was going to be life changing.
Her pulse quickened as they crossed the crowded patio, bedecked with the twinkling string lights they pulled out for weddings and other special events, and weaved their way between bistro tables and waiters toting gleaming silver trays. The music began to fade, and briefly, they ducked into darkness as they traipsed along the side of the B&B. At last, they reemerged into brightness, making their way to the front of the building, where glowing farmhouse sconces illuminated a small seating area.
Unlike the event space in the back, the front patio was much more intimate, adorned with a few blossoming rosebushes and two shabby-chic benches her mother had found at an antique store and had shipped to Vermont to be restored and refinished. The bed-and-breakfast itself was originally a barn and still maintained some of the rustic charm on the outside, with a peaked archway over the converted doors and distressed whitewashed wood panels. It was a pretty place, almost as much a part of Ruby’s family as any person was, and it stirred something in Ruby’s heart to have Ashton back here.
He had been studying abroad in Spain since Christmas, and while he had planned to be back in time for Elena’s party, a series of flight delays had made his highly anticipated arrival a little hard to predict and utterly excruciating for Ruby. But here he was. He was back.
And he was finally going to be hers.
She was still several yards away from him as she stepped onto the cobblestone walkway, his back to her, but the second her eyes fell on his lanky frame, her insides turned molten. Her heart raced with a dizzying mixture of nostalgia and yearning.
The Willises had lived next door to the Ortegas for as long as Ruby could remember. Ashton was two and a half years older, but they’d grown up side by side, their childhoods intertwined. Hell, there was even a picture of Ashton and Ruby as toddlers in the bathtub together—a relic
that used to mortify her, but now one that made her blush excitedly.
Ashton had always been sweet and kind to her, a reliable force of chivalry in a teenage social world that was often dramatic and tumultuous. He’d given her rides in high school so she wouldn’t have to debase herself by waiting for the bus. He’d even listen to her complain about her most recent breakups without ever making the snarky comments the girls in her class were prone to about how maybe the problem wasn’t them, but her. Sure, there were times she had found him a little dorky, like when he’d go on a tangent about comic books or insist on dipping everything he ate in ranch dressing, but she knew those things weren’t a big deal. Ruby saw now that they were meant for each other, that all the time they’d spent growing up alongside each other, they’d also been falling in love without even realizing it. She’d rolled her eyes through way too many romantic comedies for her not to know that the girl next door always got the guy.
It had become clear to her on his first visit home from college almost two years ago. He was tanned from a recent trip to Lake Havasu, which gave his freckled cheeks the most adorable glow, and they’d stayed up all night talking in his backyard, sprawled out on his trampoline underneath the stars like they used to when they were younger. He told her all about college—his dorm, his classes, his fraternity—and she lay beside him in rapture, wondering if his eyelashes had always been so long, if he had always smelled so amazing.
After that, each of his visits was more tantalizing than the last.
He hadn’t quite worked up the nerve to kiss her yet, but Ruby felt it in her bones. This would be the night. In her shimmering green dress and peep-toe heels, with her professionally curled hair and just enough alcohol—hopefully—to give her the final dose of confidence she needed to unveil her true feelings. This would be the night.
She inhaled sharply, readjusted her neckline from her mother’s tampering so her cleavage resembled the gently heaving bosom of a romance-novel heroine, and released her escort’s arm. She couldn’t risk sending any mixed signals now that Ashton was here. She quickly tousled her hair, just in time for him to turn and face them. He grinned, and Ruby melted.
Buzzing with a sense of anticipation he could surely feel vibrating off her, she watched Alex and Ashton shake hands before she pulled him into a hug, pressing every inch of her body against his.
“Hi, Ashton,” she breathed into his shirt as she nuzzled her face against him.
“Whoa, I had no idea you missed me that much!” He laughed, disentangling himself from her embrace, his cheeks a bright pink even in the half darkness. “I should leave the country more often!”
She batted her eyelashes and smiled in a way that she thought was demure, though in actuality, she had never been demure in her entire life. “Well, maybe next time you run off to Europe for six months, you’ll think about taking some of us with you!”
He chuckled, a sweet sparkle in his eyes as his gaze lingered on Ruby. “Believe me, it crossed my mind.”
Ruby spent the next hour making unsuccessful attempts to capture Ashton’s attention and lure him away, before resorting to sultry, sidelong gazes and any opportunity to stroke his arm or bump shoulders with him. Finally, the crowd started to thin. Each person made their way back to the party to dance, to get a drink, to find a missing relative—or, in Alex’s case, to check for the third time if they were serving dessert yet. The night was nearly halfway over, but at long last, it was just Ruby and Ashton nestled on the bench, awash in the gentle patio lighting as if they were in a world all their own. He was talking in a meandering manner about his semester abroad, describing ancient buildings and unfamiliar foods in a dazzling way Ruby had a hard time following. She felt a warm thrill throughout her entire body as he described the meaty prawns in heaping bowls of paella, which he always set aside because their tails freaked him out, or the mind-boggling, colorful architecture of Barcelona. He had decided to enroll in the arts track rather than Spanish-language immersion, he told her, which Ruby found both impractical and charming. After all, they lived in Southern California, where Spanish was spoken almost as much as English. Though Ashton scarcely knew ten words of Spanish, his love for pretty, intellectual things like museums and classical art trumped the practicality of being bilingual. It was that kind of uncompromising idealism that was so endearing to Ruby. Her brilliant, head-in-the-clouds Ashton.
She felt completely scatterbrained as he spoke, partially because she had never left the country and had nothing to compare this sense of wonderment to, but mostly because of how enchanting she found him in this moment.
She had folded her legs so her feet were tucked beneath her, with her hands resting in her lap, close enough that he could easily hold them if he wanted to. The strap of her dress kept slipping down, and she waited longer and longer each time to return it to where it belonged. But now, she let the sparkly strap linger, revealing her bare shoulder.
A beat of silence passed between them as Ashton appeared to notice for the first time that it was just the two of them. She watched his gaze catch on the exposed skin of her shoulder before settling on her face, and Ruby almost admired his ability to restrain himself from taking in the full effect of her body in the shimmering dress.
“Ruby Ortega.” He sighed, his voice warm with adoration. “You look . . . great.” Ruby could’ve lived forever inside the contemplative pause that
followed his words—if she weren’t so eager for him to kiss her already, of course. “Are you excited for college? Can you believe school starts next month?”
She nodded slowly, maintaining eye contact with him. “I can’t wait to get out of here.” She suppressed thoughts of her irritating sister and her demanding mother. She didn’t want to think of them in this moment.
He glanced upward at the stars, strands of his blond hair falling into his eyes that he didn’t bother to sweep away. “It is amazing to see what else is out there, but you’ll be surprised. You’ll miss this place.”
Buena Valley was where she and Ashton had found each other, and she would always love her hometown for that. But lately, she’d been feeling like she’d outgrown it. She knew that for her and Ashton to explore their romance, they needed somewhere new, somewhere that wasn’t so familiar. That was a large part of why she’d applied to college in Arizona in the first place, though she hadn’t actually shared that rationale with anyone. Sure, Arizona State had a robust business program and was far enough from home for her own adventure but close enough to visit often—but it also had Ashton. Her Ashton.
“You promise we’ll see each other? I mean, I know you have your own life over there. I just want to know that I’ll get to see you. I’ve missed you, Ashton. You’ll show me around? Help me out?” Her tone grew softer as she slowly inched her way closer to him, willing him to look at her again. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. He had the faintest golden stubble growing along his chin, and she longed to run her neatly manicured fingertips along it.
“Ruby, you won’t need my help. You never have,” he teased. “But of course I’ll show you around. There’s actually someone I’m really excited for you to meet.” His gaze finally turned away from the sky and fell back on Ruby, glittering eyes and overflowing neckline and all. A brief look of apprehension crossed his face before he added, “My girlfriend, Millie.”
Ruby leaned into the word girlfriend, tilting her head so it would be easier for his lips to find hers. She personally thought it was too soon to call herself his girlfriend, but she wouldn’t protest. Whatever he wanted. She parted her lips just as the word Millie hit her like an ice pick to the nerves. She stiffened.
Who the fuck was Millie?
She sat upright. “What did you say?”
He took a nervous breath, quick and sharp. “Yeah, I’ve uh . . . met someone. Millie. Millie Hamilton. We met a couple of weeks before I left for Spain, but we’ve been kind of seeing each other long-distance, and she actually visited me in Barcelona for a few days, and it was great.” He was rambling. “She’s coming out here this weekend. To meet
my family. She gets in tomorrow. She lives in Arizona, but she’s coming out here to drive to campus with me, too.”
If she hadn’t been sitting down, Ruby was sure she would’ve fallen right over.
Girlfriend? For as long as she had known him, Ashton had never had a girlfriend. She had always thought of him as patiently waiting for her to come around, and now that the stars had finally aligned, he had a girlfriend? They were supposed to be together. She was finally eighteen, so if it had been her age that was holding him back all this time, that didn’t matter anymore. She was heading off to college at the same school he attended, so they’d have space away from their families while they figured things out. They could be together! They were supposed to be together.
Deflated, she slumped against the arm of the bench, and angrily snapped her shoulder strap back into place.
“Girlfriend. Millie. Wow,” she scoffed.
“It was unexpected, of course,” he continued. “These kinds of things always are. But it’s really great. I think you’ll like her.”
These kinds of things? What the hell did Ashton Willis know about “these kinds of things”? The only girl Ruby had ever heard him mention outside of his family and Ruby’s family was Wonder Woman, but now he was such a romance expert he was able to make philosophical generalizations about “these kinds of things”? Please.
She remained unmoving, her breath slow and furious. “You think I’ll like her? Why?”
“Because she’s a beautiful person, inside and out. She’s not like anyone I’ve ever met. When we’re together—”
“She sounds sensational,” Ruby interrupted flatly. She’d heard enough.
“She is. I know you’re going to like her.” He paused, staring at her in his cozy, soulful way. “You know, you’re one of my closest friends. I hope you’ll like her.”
Ruby knew she was going to hate her. She opened her mouth to tell him precisely that, but suddenly the front doors were thrown open and Carla burst through, shouting, “Cake! Hurry. It’s time for cake!”
Ashton smiled a half-hearted, thin smile and patted her hand. She couldn’t tell if he was oblivious to the fact that he’d just broken her heart or if he pitied her; either way, it pissed her off. “I guess we’d better get back over there.”
Ruby nodded. “Yeah. Wouldn’t want to miss cake,” she said testily.
“The Ruby I know and love would never want to miss cake,” he joked over his shoulder
as he stood and made his way to the door.
He didn’t even notice that she wasn’t following him.
She waited until the door shut behind him, until she was sure she was completely alone, to seize the nearest drink—a half-drunk, warm Corona Light—and guzzle it in one enraged swig. She winced at the bitter taste before launching the bottle across the patio. It shattered against the ceramic pot of a bougainvillea.
“Girlfriend?” she muttered to herself. “Closest friends? What the hell is he thinking?”
“I certainly have no idea.”
She sprang to her feet and whirled around to seek out the source of the disembodied voice, teetering precariously in her stilettos. Just as mysteriously as the words had materialized in the dim courtyard, the owner of the voice appeared beside her, a warm hand on her arm to steady her, saving her from topping off her romantic failure with an epic wipeout on the cobblestones.
“Who the hell are you? Where the hell did you come from? And what the hell are you thinking, hiding out in the goddamn shadows like that?” She jerked her arm out of the stranger’s grasp and stumbled backward. She braced herself against the bench, trying desperately to catch her breath as she glowered at the olive-skinned stranger who surveyed her with clear bemusement.
He laughed, holding his hands up innocently. “Whoa, whoa. I wasn’t hiding. I came out here for some peace and quiet, and before I knew it, you and the white boy were having a moment.” She detected the slightest Spanish accent as he spoke, something she might’ve missed in the chaos if it didn’t remind her of the way her grandmother stretched out her vowels and curled her r’s when she was distracted. ...
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