Driven by Wright Goldie

Author:Wright, Goldie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-10-20T16:00:00+00:00

6

They had a long drive ahead of them the next morning, but August found himself looking forward to it. Driving meant that he could concentrate on something other than Ruby Phillips. Their longest stop along the way to Oklahoma City was Amarillo, Texas, where they had a lunch that was both endless and awkward for him. Sitting face to face required both eye contact and conversation, and he had grown worse at both in a matter of hours.

Something had shifted in him last night. His love for Ruby had grown, becoming bigger than it had been. He hadn’t thought that possible. What he felt was no longer a mix of infatuation and friendship. Sleeping with her had done it. That was no exaggeration or mistake; sex released a number of chemicals into the bloodstream. Knowing that fact was not the same as experiencing it. What had happened between them was profound, at least for him.

It hadn’t seemed to have bothered her at all, and he couldn’t understand that. He couldn’t understand her, in some ways.

Part of him longed for the relationship he’d had with Stephanie. Although she worked as a dialect coach and not a special effects programmer or artist, she had a personality quite similar to his own: intellectual, strong-minded in work, guarded in romance. They had similar stories, too. Her first love had been etymology, while his had been video games, and those interests had led to their current careers. What he and Stephanie had together had been easy, at least for him.

Perhaps “easy” had been part of the problem. He had never felt the need to go out of his comfort zone with her or to take risks. But Stephanie had left him because she was tired of being the easy option. She had told him that she felt as if he didn’t find her worth any effort. That wasn’t entirely true. He had found her worth effort, just not much of it. And although he longed for what he had lost, his longing was not enough. It would never be enough.

Things would never go back to how they had been. He couldn’t do that to himself or to Stephanie. It wasn’t right to pretend that he wanted her when he didn’t. This road trip was going to end in an apology, not a reunion.

Ruby was little like he or Stephanie was. She had gone to art college, working her way through it instead of getting scholarships like he had or using inherited money like Stephanie had. Ruby’s warmth, humor, and friendliness made her truly different compared to him.

Those differences were not why he failed to understand Ruby today. Her lack of change confused him. For someone who could be so good with people, she often seemed unaffected by them. Worse, perhaps, she was only unaffected by him.

Good Lord, he was a fool to think that she could be. He could never have inspired her to love him, not in the way that a woman loved a man.

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