Page 106 of Betting on the Best Friend
“That’s . . .” Ruby’s voice is almost a croak. She licks her lips and tries again. “There’s your evidence. And it was number three.”
I pause where I’m pacing. “What’s number three?”
“The step that worked. Stay safe but become less comfortable.” She slides from the counter to her feet. “I feel safe with you. I always have. For a few days I thought I didn’t, but that was me not trusting my own feelings, being worried about what they meant. But comfortable?” She scoffs. “I thought you were my favorite sweatshirt, but no. You’re . . .”
“I’m what?”
“Silk sheets.”
“Dammit, Ruby.” I turn around so she can’t see how easily she could hook me back in, literally and figuratively. I drop into an armchair where she won’t get any ideas about joining me. “Stay there and let me think.”
“Why is this an issue?” she asks. “We both want the same thing now.”
I don’t answer for several fast heartbeats, then several steady ones. “I’ve been climbing a lot lately out at Reimers Ranch. It’s limestone. Sedimentary rock, the kind made of junk debris settling. It doesn’t do anything. It turns into stone. Sometimes limestone is full of fossils, like coral or shells, but that’s usually from a high-energy environment, like strong currents.”
She nods that she’s following. This is not an odd conversation between librarians, especially when one is a rock nerd.
“We don’t have that kind of sediment in central Texas,” I continue. “Most of the limestone around here is chalk or marl, made up of microorganisms like plankton or ground-up bits of other minerals that stuck in one place and turned into bigger pieces of rock. No fossil record. No interesting backstory.”
She sighs. “I feel an analogy coming.”
“I don’t want to be Travis County limestone. I want to be metamorphic rock. Coal into diamond. It’s a better story.”
“I didn’t come here to apply pressure, but I will if it makes you happy.”
I give her a slight smile. “Thank you for respecting the analogy, but that’s not what I’m getting at. I’m settling. Been settled. Been slowly eroding. We would be more of the same. Or I would be that for you, anyway. Settling.”
“No way,” she protests. “I don’t see this as settling at all.”
“Limestone is useful, I guess. But it’s not pretty. We both deserve igneous rock love, and maybe I won’t get that, but I can’tsettlefor being someone else’s sediment.”
“Charlie.” Ruby’s voice carries a warning. “Did you just make a geology joke?”
“It rocked.”
“You are making it hard to love you right now.”
“Technically, you should be the hard one to love. Rubies are a nine on the Mohs scale. That’s right under diamond.”
“Charlie . . .” The warning is now a threat.
“But maybe you should change your name to talc. That’s a one on the Mohs scale. Easy. And it is easy to love you.”
“I don’t want totalcabout rocks anymore. I want to talk about us.”
My smile fades, because yes. It’s time to deal with the real stuff. “I’m trying to. But that still takes rocks.” I get up and go to the counter where she’d found the list and shuffle the papers around until I produce a slick brochure and hand it to her. “I’m going metamorphic before I can’t escape the sediment.”
She takes it and reads the title aloud. “The Colorado School of Mines?”
“I’ve been restless for a while. Looking for something. I’ve been climbing with a guy who’s a geotechnical engineer. I’ve been looking into it, and it’s what I want to do. That’s the top program in the country.”
She stares from the brochure to me and back, like she can’t make sense of the words. “You’re leaving?”
“In the fall, yes.” I sweep my arm to encompass the insane amount of sneakers looming around us. “Applied right before the deadline. Been doubling the side hustle to save up.”
“But . . . the library.”
“The library can replace me without a problem. I need a change.”
