Page 96 of Ruby Malice

RAYNE

As soon as I walk through my front door, I shuck off Kirill’s sweatpants, kick them angrily across the floor, and then reach for the hem of his shirt to yank it off… but it’s so soft. It feels like it has been worn and washed one thousand times. And it smells like him: woodsy and warm.

“Screw him,” I mumble, dropping the hem and tucking my arms back into the short sleeves.

Wearing his shirt for one night won't change the fact that he's an asshole.

Nor will it change the fact that we slept together.

I can still feel him inside of me. It’s a weirdly satisfying hollowness I’ve never felt before. An ache he created and only he can fill.

“Never again,” I tell myself. “Never, ever again.”

But as I collapse onto my mattress and draw the blankets around me, I don’t really believe what I’m saying. Because Kirill was right. He turned cold and distant, he tried to push me away the moment we parted… but I still let him close again. All it would take is the tiniest push against the walls I’ve built. They’ll come crashing down to let him through.

I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling. “You’d have the right thing to say, Mom.”

I close my eyes and try to hear the sound of her voice. The lilting way she’d say my name, multiple syllables,Ray-ay-nie, both surprised and pleased to see me every time I walked in the room. I’m worried one day I’ll forget it.

“You know a thing or two about men who hit it and quit it.” The moment the words are out of my mouth, I wrinkle my nose. “On second thought, gross. I’m actually glad you aren’t here to hear those words come out of my mouth. But you know what I mean. Lana and Alexis aren’t helpful with this kind of thing. I mean, look at who they’re married to.” I whisper the words not because I’m afraid anyone will hear me but because talking to my mom like this feels embarrassing. Even by myself, I feel stupid.

She can’t hear me, I’m well aware. But part of me can’t accept that. Shehasto be able to hear me. Somewhere.

I throw the blankets down and climb out of bed. When I moved in with Lana, I didn’t bring much with me. But I made sure to pack up my mom’s photo albums. Toward the end, she flipped through them all the time.

“Look at this one,” Mom would say, pointing at a sepia-toned photo with a giant smile on her face. They were stories from her childhood and from when my sisters were little. When she and my dad were still a family.

By the time I came along, the pictures were mostly just of me and Mom. No Lana, no Lexi, definitely no Dad. It was always us against the world.

“You didn’t mean to get pregnant with me,” I said once a couple years ago. “Is that why Dad left? He didn’t want another baby?”

“Raynie, of course it wasn’t because of you!” she said. “Plus, he and Pat had more kids. He was always good with kids. Better than I was, even. He loved being a dad.”

He just didn’t love beingmydad.

I pull out one of the newer-looking albums. The edges aren’t tattered and creased white from use quite yet. But I’m sure one day soon they will be, because I come back to these photos again and again, like I’m going to find something I missed the first thousand times through, something that will put everything into its rightful place and make my life feel like it finally makes sense.

The first picture is Mom kneeling in the garden, a tomato plant cupped in her palms. I can still hear her trilling on and on about how nice the garden will be. “We can make BLTs all summer, Raynie! And then we’ll jar our own marinara sauce and salsa. Have you ever had homemade tomato soup? Not the sludge from the can, but real tomato soup? Oh goodness, girlie, you’re in for a treat. A treaaat.”

Two years later, the garden was overgrown with weeds and Mom was too sick to get outside most days. I have those pictures set aside, too. But they don’t belong in the photo albums. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

For as long as possible, I want to remember my mom like this. Wide smile with hair frizzing around her head in a golden brown halo.

I take the album to bed with me, flipping through still more pictures.

One of Mom next to the teetering three-layer birthday cake I made her the year she turned sixty-five. There’s frosting all over her hand from holding the cake in place. Two seconds after the photo, it crashed to the countertop. We ate straight from the collapse with plastic spoons, cackling like raccoons the whole time.

There’s a selfie I took from a high angle. It was myAmerica’s Next Top Modelphase, back when I lowered my chin and tried to look moody in every photo. But Mom is kissing my cheek, bright-eyed and loving.

I press my hand to my face and hold it there, desperate to feel her again.

“I miss you,” I whisper so softly I can barely hear myself.

But the words reverberate through my chest. The pang of loneliness spreads through me like a virus, doubling and multiplying until it’s everywhere. Before I know it, tears are rolling down my cheeks and splashing across the photos.

I fall back on my bed and yank the blankets over my head. I’m too emotional for even the walls to witness.

Because no one needs to see me crying over Kirill. And at the root of it, he's the real reason I'm crying. After Mom died, I grew used to the loneliness. I'd learned to live with it.

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