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built a world without your love
now i’m all out at sea
Belle French accepts quite early on that soulmates aren’t always everything they’re cracked up to be.
Her parents were soulmates. They tell her that her hair is brown and she looks beautiful in blue and yellow, and the shades of gray that Belle sees makes her believe them.
Collette and Moe French were the same side of the same coin. Both strongly opinionated, obstinate, and had the tendency to act before they thought. It made them equals to devastating effect.
It made for intense, terrifying screaming matches over nothing that saw Belle curling up in her bed, tears streaming down her face and her pillow wrapped around her head.
It made for dozens of nights when one of her parents would storm out of the house and drive off. Those nights, Belle always wondered if–dreaded–hoped that they would come back.
When she was young, Belle often wondered if seeing colors made it harder to be with someone. It seemed a lot of work (marriage counselors, long talks in the living room until late in the night, even sleeping in separate rooms for a while) just to see something that made being with each other so hard.
Then it didn’t matter because her mother was dead, the victim of a drunk driver. (Moe was devastated, Belle saw it with her own two eyes. His eyes were darker, and when they lowered her mother’s casket into the ground, she’d never seen him so crushed. The sound of his sobs would haunt her for years to come.)
She knows she doesn’t need a soulmate, so when she falls in love for real, she doesn’t try to stop it. It’s not the stupid crushes and dates she’d had in high school, nor the silly, teenage love she felt for Aurora, then later Gaston.
Robert Gold is something vastly different. She meets him when she’s studying abroad in Scotland. She’s a twenty-two year old literature major from Australia, he’s a thirty-seven year old widower shop owner. Most of her friends simply don’t understand it, why she would be so taken with this supposedly unfriendly, older man.
Belle tells herself that they don’t understand, and continues to insist that she can see the good in him. And she can. He shows her this side of himself that no one else sees, and if only the world could see him as she saw him…
Her semester ends, and she is set to return home after seeing him for three months… but Belle isn’t about to let anyone decide her fate for her.
She manages to transfer most of her credits to the University of Glasgow, and the rest is history.
She’s married to him now. It’s a lot like that special book that only she knows about–the one that she’d love to share with her friends, but it’s just nice to have something that’s just hers for once.
So when he insists they move to the United States, that he has a business opportunity there, she readily agrees. She hasn’t worked since her graduation, and it’d be nice to have something to do, so she sees it as a grand adventure for them.
“Perhaps once I get the business up an running, we can think about starting our family?”
She doesn’t hide her smile. “I’d love that.”
In Glasgow, he ran a rather successful pawn business, so he’d made quite the sum in selling it off. She doesn’t know exactly what it is her husband is going to be doing, but when he smiles at her like she’s the only thing in his world and then squeezes her hand as he points to a crib in the window of a baby store I like that one it just doesn’t even seem like it matters. The only thing that matters is how they feel about each other.
He starts working later hours. Which is fine.
He starts only taking calls from his home office, where she can’t hear him. Strange, but fine.
But then most of their nights are not what she wants. He dresses for bed, shares a vague story from his day as he does it, kisses her cheek and tells her he’s absolutely knackered and perhaps they’ll try some other time and it’s–
She’s trying to be positive about this move. About leaving behind her friends again for him and for them. And she doesn’t have to try to be excited to start their family, because that’s the one thing she knows she wants, and yet they’re not even trying.
She tries to not be frustrated. He’s working hard for their future.
She still loves him. Loves him so much it hurts, so soulmates and seeing something as useless as colors and having anything besides their life is the furthest thing from her mind.
Until she is quite abruptly proven wrong when a pair of turquoise eyes introduce her to the world of color .
Ruby starts this thing with Peter not expecting it to go anywhere.
She knows him through her friend group and he’s kind of funny, and pretty sweet, and he’s the type of guy who helps her home when she’s too drunk to walk rather than trying to take advantage. So yeah, she figures ‘why not?’ He’s a pretty good lay, and his sense of humor and politeness translate well when they’re in bed.
Mary Margaret likes him, but Mary Margaret sees everything in color. She’s optimistic as hell, and Ruby can’t really blame her. She found her soulmate when she was eighteen. First boyfriend, first kiss, first everything was with her soulmate. David gave Mary Margaret the unique advantage of not having an ounce of heartbreak to weigh her down. Ruby has always found a jaded sort of camaraderie with their friend Emma, who understands in a way that Mary Margaret never will.
So the thing with Peter.
It sort of becomes more than just a thing.
She misses him when he’s not around. She finds herself enjoying the moments between the sex, when they talk and joke and tease, just as much as, if not more than, the sex itself.
She thinks that she’s finally found it. The happy ending that you get to have when you don’t find your soulmate.
It’s much later, after she admits that she’s stupidly in love with him, and he with her, that she gets a harsh reminder that she’s not meant for happy endings.
(She sends him out for a pregnancy test. They–)
(It’s not like they planned anything, but she is late and she is never late and she’s paranoid, and part of her doesn’t even want to tell him.)
(But she’d long ago accepted that ‘me’ has become ‘we’ and she can’t–won’t–leave him out of this.)
(And he’s–he’s happy. He doesn’t see it as a burden, doesn’t see her as a burden. He grins, hugs her. “I know it’s fast,” he says, “I know we didn’t–god, but I love you, Rubes, and maybe this is meant to be.”)
(And she doesn’t go with because a new episode of her favorite show is on and she doesn’t want to miss it. He offers, because of course he does, and she accepts, kisses him distractedly before he goes.)
(She hates herself for that, still.)
The police call her to identify the body (victim of a robbery gone sour, they tell her) and god, he’s so bruised and pale and they’ve washed all the blood away, but she can still tell where the gashes bled him out when he died on the street without her and the smell of antiseptic suddenly smells like blood and bile–
She throws up in the sink.
(But she’s not pregnant.)
(When she finds out, she’s numb.)
(When she gets home from the doctor, she punches through her wall, bloodying her knuckles and shattering a metacarpal.)
So she’s a bit more jaded than she was before. And it’s worse than before, because now Emma’s gone and found herself a soulmate in the time since Ruby lost the closest she’d ever come to one.
Emma still understands, in her own way. She went through a lot of shit, and having a soulmate doesn’t fix everything
“It’s not about the soulmate thing,” Emma says to Ruby one night at the bar.
“What, your disgustingly sappy happiness now that you’ve found what 92.3% of the world will likely never have?” She’d looked up the statistics one night in a fit of red wine-fueled pity.
“That’s not–” Emma sighs. “Love is a part of all happiness. You have to be open to that.”
“You sound like Mary Margaret.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. Bring back pessimistic Emma, please. I need to commiserate in misery with her.”
She rolls her eyes. “Pessimistic Emma isn’t gone. She’s just grown.”
“Into optimistic Emma,” Ruby replies without missing a beat.
“Ruby, I’m trying to help.” Her friend sounds frustrated as hell, but Ruby can’t quite bring herself to care right now.
She downs the rest of her gin before she says, “Yeah, but what you’re offering has only served to fuck me over.” She’s drowning in the self-pity that she only lets suffocate her once in a while now, and she doesn’t appreciate the life preserver Emma is throwing to her.
“I’m not asking you to just throw yourself out there bare assed to the breeze.” Ruby chortles, and Emma continues. “If you’re going to stay behind those walls–at least be happy with the person you’re trapping in there, okay?”
When Ruby’s world explodes into color, it’s not exactly joy she feels.
The Boston Public Library is something of an escape for Belle French. Robert is home less and less, and his phone calls are–they don’t sound like the man she married. They sound like someone else entirely; they sound a lot like the man the world expects him to be. Each day, he’s more and more tired. He has a limp from his rugby days that is more pronounced now. His datebook is full of meetings and appointments with people she doesn’t know, addresses she doesn’t recognize.
(She misses the simplicity they had in Glasgow.)
She’s always found peace and happiness amongst books, and this library has no shortage of fascinating material.
She’s always wanted to see their first edition folios from William Shakespeare.
She settles for perusing the classics section for now, and soon she has a stack of books in her arms that nearly reaches her chin.
“Excuse me? Can you tell me where the animal biology section is?” comes a female voice from over her shoulder.
She turns, the answer on her lips–
The first color she ever sees is pale turquoise, set into the face of a beautiful woman. Her jaw is strong and square, prominent cheekbones cutting twin paths across her face. Her prominent lips are obviously painted, and her eyes are ringed with dark liner. Her hair is shot through with bright streaks of something, some color that Belle has no name for yet, but it’s bright and vibrant and makes her think of passion and warmth.
This stranger looks as shocked as Belle feels.
Belle is frozen, remembering. Your hair is brown. You look delightful in blue and yellow. Sometimes your father and I have disagreements. It’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m sorry about the shouting, darling. Mummy and Daddy were just having a discussion.
Every single book falls out of her hands.
The crash of the hard-backed books against the floor startles them out of their reverie.
“Oh god, I’m sorry,” the woman says, immediately dropping to the floor to help her with her books.
“It’s okay,” Belle answers, following her down, “You don’t need to apologize.”
“This can’t be happening,” the strange (beautiful) woman whispers, followed by a disbelieving laugh. She drops the last book on the top of the stack, an edition of Homer’s Iliad that Belle hadn’t seen before.
Despite the job being done, neither of them make a move to stand.
The woman still looks ready to bolt (but she stays.) Belle is wondering if she should let her, but there’s just–Belle might not know who she is anymore, but she does know that there’s something, a pull deep in her gut to not let this woman go. “I’m Belle. You are?”
She swallows. Licks her lips in a way that draws Belle’s eyes downward. “Ruby. Ruby Lucas.”
Even after Belle learns the colors, learns their names and how to recognize them, Belle will never be able to shake the habit of thinking of the pale turquoise of her soulmate’s eyes as Ruby.
Going to vet school had been a combination of the meddling of her dear friends and the realization of a dream she’d had for a while. It’s what she’d gone to college for when she studied biology. It’s what she’d given up on when she’d been so messed up after Peter–
It’s like the end of an era, really, but she tries to see it as a new beginning.
So she goes to the library to brush up on some things. College was a while ago, and while she’d tried to at least somewhat keep up with the latest news and advances, she knew that there was a great deal that she still needed to remind herself of.
What she does not anticipate is the library being so huge. There are signs that mostly only succeed in getting her lost, and she somehow hasn’t found a single employee. She knows she’s not in the right place, because there are really old, fat books that definitely don’t look like science books.
When she sees a woman with a huge stack of books in her arms, she sighs in relief. Finally.
“Excuse me,” she says on approach, “Can you tell me where the animal biology section is?”
The librarian turns, and her world shifts from tonal grays to vibrant color in the span of a heartbeat.
Her eyes are this brilliant, cool color that makes her think of water and the crispness of snowfall, and she’s just–
She’s beautiful. Ruby briefly wonders what she’s ever seen in other people, because in that first moment of full-color vision, none of them stack up to her.
Her hair shines in the dim light of the library, her lips popped open in an expression of shock. The fine column of her neck is corded with lean tendons pressing through pale skin, and her fingers are dusty and white-knuckled around the huge stack of books in her hands.
Then the books fall, the crash yanking Ruby so violently from her fantasy she nearly stumbles backwards.
“Oh god, I’m sorry,” she says automatically, the manners Granny ingrained into her overriding her need to run.
The woman kneels down with her, helping to restack the books. “It’s okay. You don’t need to apologize.” Her voice is kind, gentle.
(A balm on her soul, whether she wants it to be or not.)
The last book is large and thick in her hand as she places it on the top of the stack, and she can’t help the, “This can’t be happening,” that slips from her lips. Then comes the laugh too, and it sounds harsh to her own ears because there was a time when she wanted this. Deep down, she’d always hoped that if she ever found her soulmate, it would make the pain in her heart go away. That it would destroy the guilt that still ate at her.
All it’s making her feel is overwhelmed and scared. (And the hurt and guilt still pulse away, deep gashes in her heart that she should’ve known will never heal, soulmate or not.)
“I’m Belle,” the woman offers. Belle. Ruby wants to smile at that because how fitting. “You are?”
It takes her a second to realize she’s asked her a question. “Ruby,” she tells her faintly. “Ruby Lucas.”
Belle’s smile is something else. Her eyes crinkle at the corners and even though it isn’t, it feels like the first genuine smile that’s been directed at Ruby in a long time.
“I–I don’t really know what we’re supposed to do,” Ruby says. Are they supposed to just start making out in the middle of the library? Is that how this is supposed to go? She wishes she’d asked for more details about what Emma and Mary Margaret had done when they’d met their soulmates. More importantly, does this mean they’re automatically in a relationship now? Does she want that?
“I’m married,” Belle blurts, and for the first time Ruby notices the wedding band on her ring finger.
Ruby swallows.
It’s fine.
It’s not as though her eyes are burning for no reason, doesn’t feel as if the floor has fallen out from beneath her knees. It’s not like she knows this woman, not like she loves her, not like she can already feel her settling into her bones like a warmth she doesn’t want to shake.
It’s fine.
“Oh.”
The regret flickers across Belle’s face so clearly it makes Ruby’s chest burn. “I’m sorry,” she says then, “I’m really sorry. I know when people find their soulmates they think that’s it, but I can’t–I can’t leave my husband.”
“No,” Ruby replies, trying her hardest to be blasé about this. “I’m not–” I’m not one to be tied down. I can’t be exclusive. I’m only attracted to men.Dozens of lies shoot to the edge of her tongue, but instead, it’s the truth that falls from her lips. “I don’t think I can handle being anyone’s soulmate. I don’t think I’m cut out for that.”
The look of sympathy Belle gives her then nearly pulls the tears from her eyes, but she stubbornly holds them in, and leans back on her heels in order to stand.
She doesn’t know this person. (God, but she wants to.)
She can’t–won’t get involved in her life. She’s married. Happy, probably. Ruby won’t take that away from her. “Look,” she tells her, “I’ll just go. You don’t need to see me ever again. Have–” Have a good life? Be happy? She doesn’t even know. “It was nice to meet you,” she finishes quietly, and turns to go.
She can’t take much more of those eyes, those incredible, understanding eyes looking at her as though they can see straight through her skin to the person beneath.
Part of her wants to laugh at the cruel irony. Her soulmate, married. She’s wondered many times if karma, the universe, God, whatever has sought to punish her for what happened with Peter.
She doesn’t even want to fight it at this point. She’s the reason he’s gone. Shouldn’t the punishment fit the crime? Take away the one person she’s supposed to be with?
Isn’t it what she deserves?
Belle hates that she has to do this. She knows enough about soulmates to know that most people have certain expectations when they find theirs, and she can’t give Ruby that. She won’t leave Robert, regardless of their current marital problems.
“I’m not–” Ruby cuts herself off, expression searching and painful. “I don’t think I can handle being anyone’s soulmate. I don’t think I’m cut out for that.”
Belle’s heart twists. What happened to Ruby to make her think so little of herself? Her logic will tell her that she doesn’t know Ruby. Has had not even a complete conversation with her. Belle is the least qualified person to talk about Ruby, but…
All she knows is she wants to make that pained look go away.
(She’d be even more beautiful if she was smiling.)
Then she’s standing up, and saying, “Look, I’ll just go. You don’t need to see me ever again. Have… it was nice to meet you,” she finishes quietly, and then turns to go.
“Wait,” Belle says, and Ruby stops, turning back. “Can we go get some coffee, maybe? If you want.”
Her heart is in her throat until Ruby says, “Yeah. Okay.”
“I thought you said coffee?”
“When I lived in Glasgow, pretty much all I drank was tea. It wasn’t until I came to the States that I had it iced. It’s delicious. Do you want to try some?”
“No, it’s okay. I’ve had iced tea before,” Ruby answers, feeling an unwilling smile pull at the corners of her mouth. She took a sip of her coffee before asking, “So you said you lived in Glasgow? You sure don’t sound like you’re from Scotland.”
She grins, mixing her iced tea with her straw, and why is everything she does so endearing? “I moved there when I met Robert. I’m originally from Australia.”
“Ah. G’day mate.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s still smiling. “Not that part of Australia. What about you? Where are you from?”
“Here,” Ruby answers. “Grew up in Massachusetts. Moved to Boston for college and never left. Never picked up the accent, either, thank goodness.”
“So you’re not–” Belle hesitates, comes to a decision, and continues, “So you don’t have anyone? Like I have Robert?”
Ruby stiffens, and even though this is her soulmate and she can feel the pull and connection between them, she still feels the guilt press at the base of her throat, the memory filling her vision for a brief, terrifying moment.
victim of a robbery gone sour
need you to identify the body
we are so sorry for your loss
Her eyes flash downwards, wrapping her hands around her coffee cup, hoping to absorb some warmth that was sapped from her skin in the last few moments.
Belle’s eyes are still on her, she can feel it, and she’s almost afraid that she’s going to try to reach out, so she answers quickly, “Not anymore,” and then leans back in her seat.
A long silence follows, and Ruby wonders if this was a bad idea.
“I’m sorry,” Belle says. “I don’t know what happened, but I’m really sorry.”
“We need to stop with all of this apologizing,” Ruby says. She finally gains the courage to look up again.
“What happened?”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not talk about it.”
“Oh. Okay.” Ruby can see the apology forming, but Belle closes her lips a few moments later.
“So, colors,” Ruby offers, and she watches as Belle literally lights up (and it doesn’t make her heart speed up for a moment, not in the least.)
“It’s incredible. I’ve read about it, you know. I’m sure you’ve heard of ‘The Soulmate Phenomenon?’”
“Who hasn’t? We had to read excerpts of it all through school. Science, psychology, sociology… You name the subject, and we probably read something from that damn book in it.”
“So you’ve read the part about how the cones in our eyes expand, and certain nerves become unblocked allowing for messages to pass into our brain?”
Ruby feels the smile again. “Yeah. You sound like you’ve read it quite a few times.”
Belle shrugs. “I love books. I don’t know as much as I could, but I… I just wanted to know more about how colors affected people. So much about soulmates is unexplained, and I’ve never been satisfied with vague answers.” Her eyes flick around the coffee shop with delighted wonder. “Do you know any of the names yet?”
Ruby shakes her head.
Belle answers, “We should practice them together.”
This would be so much easier if she wasn’t so kind.
(Ruby feels like she’s being torn in two. Half of her wants to run as far away from Belle as she possibly can. The other wants to be so close to her there’s no space for doubt or guilt or sadness.)
“Are you sure your husband will be okay with that?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“We’re soulmates. Wouldn’t he be… I don’t know, threatened?”
Belle assures, “I’ll talk to him. It’ll be fine.” She runs a hand through her hair, “My hair is apparently brown.”
“Brown?”
“Yours looks brown, too, with some streaks of this very bright color through it. I like it.”
Ruby feels her cheeks warm, so she makes a show of looking down at her own hair. “Brown. I think my friend Emma told me the streaks were red.”
“Did you do them yourself?”
“Yeah. My hair was always dark, so I liked the lighter gray mixed in.”
“Red,” Belle repeats. “I really like red.”
Ruby looks up to see Belle’s smile. Ruby matches it when she realizes Belle is wearing a red shirt. “I think I like red, too.”
So goes the rest of their time in the coffee shop. Belle manages to find a color flashcard app on her phone, and they spend nearly three hours quizzing each other and Ruby hasn’t felt like this since–
She doesn’t name it. Won’t name it. Just because they’re soulmates doesn’t mean they’ll get together.
(Platonic soulmates happen. They talk about it on the news sometimes. Asexual people or aromantic people, someone who is gay finding their soulmate in the opposite sex, two people who are already with committed partners. It happens.)
She can manage a platonic relationship for Belle. (She finds that she can’t think of anything she wouldn’t do for Belle.)
(Which is stupid. Ruby is smart, and logic says she can’t feel this strongly about someone she’s only just met.)
At the end of the day, they exchange phone numbers, and Ruby thinks that maybe this will be it. Maybe they go through the pretense of being friends, but it’s probably just pity.
Belle probably just feels bad. Ruby knows that she doesn’t always make the best of impressions, and she knows she didn’t this morning.
So if she never talks to Belle again, that’ll be okay. She’ll make it.
She tells Robert that night while she’s making them dinner about seeing colors (and the red of the red pepper flakes isn’t the same as Ruby’s hair, but it’s close enough that she feels butterflies in her stomach.) That she went to get coffee with the woman who made her see them.
“But it’s okay,” Belle is quick to assure, aware that she’s babbling at this point to cover up the silence she knows is going to ensue. She knows the look on his face. (Not as well as she used to, but she’s comfortable in her assumption.) “She’s nice, and she’s not expecting anything from me or you–”
“I have cancer,” he interrupts.
Her hands freeze over the pan. She turns swiftly. “What?”
“I was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer five months ago.”
“Five–that’s before we left Glasgow. You’ve been–you’ve been keeping this from me? For five months?”
“Yes.”
Belle’s shock turns like a light switch to anger. “Why? How could you?”
“I didn’t want you to worry,” he explains, as though it’s the most reasonable thing in the world. Belle feels like she could explode.
“You’re dying! Why shouldn’t I be worried?”
“There’s nothing to be done, Belle. I was a dead man walking as soon as I got the diagnosis.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? I’m only your wife, why on earth would I want to know if you were dying? And you–you kept talking about starting a family. Was that all just–was that all lies?” she asks, hating how vulnerable she sounds.
He sighs. “Only some of it. I wanted to give you everything you needed for when I was gone. If a child was a part of that–”
“Then that child would grow up without it’s father,” she replied hotly. “You were ready to get me pregnant just so–what, I’d have some piece that you left behind?”
“No, that wasn’t it at all. I didn’t want to–I wanted to give you what you deserved. That’s why I moved us here, so that I could make enough money–”
“I never wanted the money,” Belle shouts. She takes a deep breath, trying to level her voice. “I just wanted you.”
He tries to step towards her, take her into his arms, but she backs away. “No. No. You don’t get a free pass to treat me however you’d like. As soon as you decided to keep this a secret from me, you decided that you have more say in our marriage than I do. I’m not some frail creature that needs protecting or saving after you leave me. No. I’m your equal. I thought that you saw the same thing.”
“I do–”
“No, it’s my turn to talk. I gave up everything for you. I gave up my life twice because I love you. You. Not the trappings that come along with you. So starting right now, we’re equals. If you’re–” she trips over the words, but manages to get them out, “If you’re going to die, you’re going to do it with me as your wife. How much longer do you have?”
“The doctors in Glasgow gave me four to six months.”
“And you didn’t even want to try,” she says quietly. “You didn’t even want to try chemotherapy or radiation. You just decided to die.”
“To know one’s fate is something of a comfort.”
“But only when your spouse doesn’t know the truth, right?” she bites out.
He doesn’t answer.
“I need to go for a walk,” she says, abandoning dinner on the stove and grabbing her phone.
“Belle, please–”
But she’s already out the door, not looking back, and she begins to cry.
“Hello?”
“Ruby?”
“Belle? Is that you?”
“Ruby, I need…”
“Belle, what’s wrong?”
“I need you to come here.”
“Hey, say that again. I can barely understand you. Just take a deep breath, close your eyes, and listen to my voice, okay?”
“Okay… I need you to come here.”
“Are you at home? Where’s your husband?”
“Robert and I had a fight, and I’m–I’m not at home, and I can’t go home…”
“Did he hurt you?”
“What?”
“Belle, be honest. Did he hurt you?”
“Not like–not like that. I just… I really need someone right now and I can’t go home.”
“Deep breaths, okay? I need to know where you are.”
“I’ve been walking for–I’m… The corner of Mount Vernon and Walnut.”
“In Beacon Hill?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know anyone that you can stay with until I get there?”
“No, I don’t–I don’t really have many friends. I’m sorry. It’s rush hour, I shouldn’t have called you.”
“No, hey, listen to me. I’m coming to get you. Stay right where you are. I’m getting in the car.”
“Please don’t hang up.”
“I won’t.”
When Ruby gets there, she finally hangs up her phone, turns on her emergency flashers and pulls over, leaping out of the car as soon as she puts it in park.
Belle’s much more composed now after their conversation, but as soon as she sees Ruby, she throws herself into her arms.
She’s trembling, but not crying anymore, and it’s all Ruby can do to wrap her arms around Belle, tuck her beneath her chin, and stroke her back.
“I should get back,” Belle says into Ruby’s shirt, making no effort to pull away. “He’ll be worried.”
“Do you want to go back there?” Ruby asks seriously. “Because if you don’t, you can come to my place.”
“I–I can’t. Not right now.”
“Okay. Come on. You can tell me about it, if you want.”
And tell her about it, she does.
Traffic is flowing a bit better now, and as they travel down the highway, Ruby asks, “So he didn’t tell you about it at all?”
“Not one word.”
“But you… you’re married.”
“Yes.”
“I thought marriage is supposed to be about equality and trust and not making decisions alone. Stuff like that.” Ruby has no idea what she is doing. She’s known this woman for less than 24 hours, but here they are, having a heart to heart in Ruby’s car.
“I thought so too.”
“Hey,” Ruby says, abandoning her insecurities about how she was supposed to handle this situation and reaching out to take Belle’s hand across the console. “You’ll be okay. I might not know you that well yet, but I know enough to know that you’ll make it through this.”
“I just… I said so many horrible things to him.”
Ruby bites her lip before she says, “But were you wrong to be angry?”
“No.”
“Exactly.”
“I just don’t know how I can go back. I told him that if he was going to die, then he was going to die with me as his wife. His equal.”
“Do you want that?” Ruby asks.
“I do. I did. I don’t know. I don’t want to forgive him for this, but…” Belle trails off, but Ruby thinks she knows where this is going.
“But you feel like if you don’t, you’re being selfish?”
Belle nods. “Yes. Who am I to not grant a dying man forgiveness?”
“You’re your own person,” Ruby insists. “You don’t have to live your life on his terms.”
“But if I don’t forgive him, it’s going to eat me for the rest of my life. Even if I don’t want to forgive him… it might be my only chance.”
“You have to do what’s right for you. Stop letting other people decide your fate.”
The following weeks are hard. Robert stops keeping up pretenses that everything is fine. He sleeps late, and goes to bed early. He’s using a cane now.
Belle tries to make him comfortable, tries to live up to the promise she made the night of their fight. She will be his wife. She will help him through this.
Until death do us part, indeed.
Ruby helps.
Robert avoids her at all costs, but she comes for Belle. She brings by food (home-baked muffins and lasagna that’s her Grandmother’s special recipe) and books from the library.
She never stays too long. Long enough to make sure Belle is okay, drop off what she brought, and a hug.
Belle looks forward to when Ruby comes more and more with each passing day.
Ruby goes with her to the funeral.
Robert was a man of very few friends, and on the day of the funeral, the only people there to mourn him are his wife and her soulmate.
They are huddled together beneath an umbrella at the cemetery as rain pours down from above and a minister says a few words about the nature of God, heaven, and celebrating life.
After, they sit in Belle’s empty house, each of them with a glass full of Scotch whisky in hand. They’re still in their funeral clothes, but with their shoes abandoned by the door and their bodies curled up on the leather couches in the living room.
“I never said I forgave him,” Belle says into the quiet. “He never asked, so I never said anything. I thought I’d have more time, that I’d have some warning.”
Ruby sighs. “No matter how much warning you have, you’re never ready.”
There’s a pregnant pause, and she knows Belle is waiting for an explanation. She downs the rest of the whisky, even though this is not the type of whisky you shoot back quickly.
“His name was Peter. I was always the type who wasn’t very… I was never very good at commitment, or relationships. I didn’t plan on falling in love with him.”
“Love is like that,” Belle agrees.
Ruby nods. “And he was wonderful. He was a good man, with a good heart and I–”
Belle moves closer and leans her head on Ruby’s shoulder. Her breath catches before she continues, “I thought I was pregnant. I was late, and I could set my watch by how regular I usually am. I remember when I told him, and he… We had barely been official for six months, but he was just so excited. And I asked him to go out and get a pregnancy test. One of my favorite shows was starting, of all the damn things, and so when he offered, I said yes.
“Then he was gone for an hour. I figured maybe he went to some different pharmacy and the trains got held up for some reason. Then one turned into two. I don’t… I can’t remember exactly when it was that the police called me, but they needed me to identify his body.”
She could hear Belle’s sharp intake of breath, could see her fingers tightening on her glass. “And then I wasn’t even pregnant.” She pours herself another glass. “So I wasn’t even waiting for a warning. It just happened.”
"I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“I know.”
“And it’s not your fault, you know.”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said? You know that’s not true.”
Belle pulls off of Ruby quickly, turning so that she’s leaning her hands on Ruby’s thighs and looking her straight in the eye. Ruby’s breath catches, heart stuttering.
“For a woman who keeps telling me to not let other people control my fate, you’re sure not taking your own advice.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Ruby says.
“No,” Belle insists, “It’s not. Something terrible happened to you, yes. You have every right to be angry and sad and to grieve. But this self-flagellation that you insist upon…”
“Self what?”
“Flagellation. It means you’re punishing yourself. You keep telling me to not let other people control my fate? Well, you’re letting your fate control you. And you deserve better.”
In that moment, Ruby wants to kiss her. Wants to kiss her and forget about the world and their problems, and it seems like Belle wants that to, her eyes flickering down to Ruby’s lips, her hands flexing ever so slightly where they rest on Ruby’s thighs.
Is she leaning closer or is that just Ruby’s imagination?
It isn’t, but she’s turning away, settling her chin over Ruby’s shoulder, arms coming around her and one of Belle’s hands stroking over her hair. It feels like home and acceptance and love and everything that Ruby never thought she deserved.
That night, Ruby and Belle cry together. It’s a profound release and a deep abiding intimacy, and underneath all of that is the very real connection between two souls that were meant to be close to each other.
They stumble up Belle’s steps, past tipsy on the aged Scottish liquor, up to the spare room (”I can’t stomach the thought of sleeping in the room, much less in the bed, that Robert died in,” Belle says in way of explanation. Ruby agrees.) and when they fall into bed together, it’s not a sexual expression of love that they are looking for.
In the darkness of that night, with the thunderstorm from earlier that day regaining steam with deep rumbles and bright flashes that barely make it through their curtains, Ruby lies behind Belle, pulling their bodies flush.
If Belle takes her hand and presses a kiss to her knuckles, Ruby certainly won’t respond with a tentative kiss to her shoulder.
If they wake up the next morning with their hands still entwined, neither of them will take that as a sign they are meant for something more.
Belle doesn’t know how to do this. It’s only been three months since she buried her husband. His missing presence in their house still makes her heart ache, but then Ruby’s there to make the ache go away with smiles and kindness.
It seems to early to think that she loves someone again.
And Ruby, bless her heart, doesn’t push, but Belle almost wishes that she would. If her soulmate would just make the first move, she’s sure she could reciprocate–
(But her gut tells her she’s not ready. The comfort she can draw from knowing that Ruby will wait until she is, and not only wait but be her support as much as she needs it, is unbelievable, is everything.)
“We’re going out tonight,” Ruby insists one night after they finish dinner at Ruby’s apartment.
That certainly isn’t what Belle was expecting. “Oh.”
Ruby seems to struggle with her words. “I know–I want you to have friends, you know? My friends, they’re… they’re good people. I just… I don’t want you putting all your eggs in this basket,” she says, gesturing at herself.
Belle wants to tell her that she’s more than enough of a basket to hold her eggs, but she knows that’s not what this is about. It’s nice, to have someone like this. She hasn’t really had it since before Glasgow, and she’s hit with how much she’s missed it.
“Ruby, don’t worry,” she says, soothing her soulmate’s uneasy look. “I’d love to meet your friends.” Then she remembers. “Do they know about us?”
Ruby nods. “They were the first ones I told.”
It almost hurts that Ruby has people besides her, where she has none. It’s not hurt, exactly. It’s a flavor of shame and longing that Belle hasn’t tasted until now.
“Hey,” Ruby prompts, drawing Belle’s eyes. “It’s going to be good. It’s just a few friends out for some drinks. Nothing to be scared of.”
“I’m not scared,” Belle immediately insists to Ruby’s delighted grin.
“Of course, dear.”
“I’m not!”
“They’re meeting us in an hour. Come on, let’s go get ready.”
Their names are Emma Swan and Mary Margaret Nolan. Ruby is right–they are good people.
She’s also surprised to find that they both have soulmates. (She remembers then about the friend Emma who told Ruby her hair was red.)
How they get to talking about it, she can’t quite remember, but either way, she’s rapt listening to these two women.
“It doesn’t fix everything,” Mary Margaret admits.
“It’s different,” Emma says, “It’s different being with your soulmate. I can’t really– It’s kinda like the difference between being slapped and being punched.”
Ruby laughs. “Jesus, Emma, good metaphor. Not all of us are badass bail bondspeople, you know, and we can’t really make that comparison.”
Emma rolls her eyes. “Okay, fine. Being slapped hurts, yeah. It might leave a mark, and you’re sure as hell not going to forget it any time soon. But the pain is shallow. Then you get punched and you’re like, ‘Okay, yeah, that hurts way more.’ It’s deeper pain and most of the time it hurts them just as much as it hurts you, but you compare it to the times you’ve been slapped and you just know that this is something different, and if you hadn’t been slapped you wouldn’t have been in the position to appreciate how much more a punch hurts.”
Mary Margaret’s the first one to speak, “That actually made very weird sense.”
“What can I say, I’m a poetic drunk who likes violent metaphors.”
Belle leaves that night with more than a single mutual friend in common with her new acquaintances. She bonds with Emma over their travels, and with Mary Margaret over their mutual love of tea. They immediately invite Belle to come again to girls’ night, and Belle can tell that Ruby is relieved they all get along.
Emma says goodbye with a surprisingly warm hug, and Mary Margaret sends her off with her cell phone number and the assurance that “If you ever need anything, I’m here for you.”
On the taxi ride home, she only does a halfway decent job of hiding her tears.
When they finally kiss, it’s the culmination of a buildup as well as the conclusion of a demolition.
It’s been six months since Robert died, and a few months since Ruby started vet school.
They’re back where it all started in the Boston Public Library. Their table is tucked away in a corner of the library meant for study, and the lack of prying eyes of librarians or casual browsers allows them a degree of relaxation.
Belle’s feet are propped up on top of the table as she leans back in her chair, perusing the well-loved pages of Pride & Prejudice. The table is almost entirely covered in Ruby’s schoolwork–textbooks, notes, handouts from lectures, as well as handfuls of colored highlighters and post-it tabs. The woman in question has appropriated two chairs, one of her legs propped up next to her.
Ruby’s bent over a biology textbook, muttering molecule names to herself, tapping her fingernails (red, obviously. Belle had done them herself.) against the table in time with counting the numbers of carbon atoms.
It’s incredibly endearing, pulling Belle away from the words of Jane Austen to watch her.
“Want me to quiz you?” she asks.
Ruby looks up. “I’m only halfway through studying this chapter, though.”
“Don’t give me excuses, give me results.”
That pulls a laugh from her soulmate. “You are a monster.”
Belle sets down her book. “Oh, the worst.”
It’s not that she hasn’t thought about it before, but when she finally just abandons her inhibitions to the breeze, she stands and walks around the table.
Ruby’s attention is fully drawn from her textbook now, eyes wide, lips parted. She does the lick lip thing that drives Belle crazy and how on earthcan Ruby not know how much that affects her?
She gently grasps the sides of Ruby’s face, leaning down. She’s stopped a few inches from her lips by Ruby saying, “You’re not about to trick me again and hug me, right?”
They’re both laughing when they finally come together. Laughing while kissing isn’t the most graceful, but it’s perfect. Their teeth kind of click against each other, and Ruby’s hands are in Belle’s hair now, pulling her closer and then they’re definitely not laughing.
Ruby’s lips are just as soft as Belle had always dreamed, but they are also wet with saliva and taste like stale coffee, and then her tongue is plying at Belle’s lips and she opens and their tongues meet somewhere in the middle.
It’s unlike any other kiss she’s ever shared. She remembers Emma’s words, and realizes she’s right. This wouldn’t mean the same if she’d never married Robert. She knows it wouldn’t mean the same thing if Ruby had never met Peter.
It’s a perfect convergence of two paths. The past road may have been thorny, laden with pain and bruises and scars, but it got her to Ruby and she’s not sorry. She wouldn’t change a single thing.
When they pull back, Ruby rests her forehead against Belle’s, and whispers, “I would’ve waited forever for you.”
“Me too.”
And all is well.