“You are, though,” I said. He looked away, shaking his head. “Look, when we first met, you practically made a practice of saving my ass. That night at the fence, coming to pick me up at Jackson—”
“That was different.”
“Why? Because it was me, not you?” I asked. “What, you think just because you help people and make their lives easier that you’re somehow better and don’t need help yourself? ”
“I don’t.”
“So it’s just fine that your dad yells at you and pushes you around.”
“What happens between me and my dad is private,” he said. “It’s a family thing.”
“So was my living alone in that place you called a slum,” I told him. “Are you saying you would have left me there if I had told you to? Or in the clearing that day?”
Nate immediately started to say something in response to this, then let out a breath instead.
Finally, I thought. I’m getting through.
“I don’t understand,” he said, “why these two things always have to be connected.”
“What two things?” I said.
“Me and my dad, and me and everyone else.” He shook his head. “They’re not the same thing. Not even close.”
It was that word—always—that did it, nudging a memory loose in my brain. Me and Heather, that day over the fish. You never know, she’d said, when I’d told her one more friend would hardly make a difference. The sad way he looked at her, all those mornings walking to the green, so many rumors, and maybe none of them true. “So that’s why you and Heather broke up,” I said slowly. “It wasn’t that she couldn’t take what was happening. It was not being able to help you.”
Nate looked down at his hands, not saying anything. Here I’d thought Heather and I were so different. But we, too, had something in common, all along.
“Just tell someone what’s going on,” I said. “Your mom, or—”
“I can’t,” he said. “There’s no point. Don’t you understand that?”
This was the same thing he’d asked me, all those weeks ago, and I’d told him yes. But now, here, we differed. Nate might not have thought that whatever was happening with his dad affected anything else, but I knew, deep in my heart, that this wasn’t true. My mother, wherever she was, still lingered with me: in the way I carried myself, the things that scared me, and the way I’d reacted the last time I’d been faced with this question. Which was why this time, my answer had to be no.
But first, I lifted my hand, putting it on his chest, right over where I’d noticed his skin was flushed earlier. He closed his eyes, leaning into my palm, and I could feel him, warm, as I slowly pushed his shirt aside. Again, call it a bad feeling, a hunch, or whatever—but there, on his shoulder, the skin was not just pink but red and discolored, a broad bruise just beginning to rise. “Oh, Jesus,” I said, my voice catching. “Nate.”
He moved closer, covering my hand with his, squeezing it, and then he was kissing me again, sudden and intense, as if trying to push down these words and everything that had prompted them. It was so hungry and so good that I was almost able to forget all that had led up to it. But not quite.
“No,” I said, pulling back. He stayed where he was, his mouth inches from mine, but I shook my head. “I can’t.”
“Ruby,” he said. Even as I heard this, though, breaking my heart, I could see his shirt, still pushed aside, the reason undeniable.
“Only if you let me help you,” I said. “You have to let me in.”
He pulled back, shaking his head. Over his shoulder, I could see the lights of the pool flickering—otherworldy, alien. “And if I don’t?” he said.
I swallowed, hard. “Then no,” I told him. “Then go.”
For a moment, I thought he wouldn’t. That this, finally, more than all the words, would be what changed his mind. But then he was pushing himself to his feet, his shirt sliding back, space now between us, everything reverting to how it had been before. You don’t have to make it so hard, I wanted to say, but there was a time I hadn’t believed this, either. Who was I to tell anyone how to be saved? Only the girl who had tried every way not to be.
“Nate,” I called out, but he was already walking away, his head ducked, back toward the trees. I sat there, watching him as he folded into them, disappearing.
A lump rose in my throat as I stood up. The gift he’d brought was still on the bench, and I picked it up, examining the rose-colored paper, the neatly tied bow. So pretty on the surface, it almost didn’t matter what was inside.
When I went back in the house, I tried to keep my face composed, thinking only of getting up to my room, where I could be alone. But just as I started up the stairs, Cora came out of the living room, where her CD was still playing— Janis Joplin now—the chocolate box in her hands. “Hey, do you want—?” she said, then stopped suddenly. “Are you all right? ”
I started to say yes, of course, but before I could, my eyes filled with tears. As I turned to the wall and sucked down a breath, trying to steady myself, I felt her come closer. “Hey,” she said, smoothing my hair gently off my shoulder. “What’s wrong? ”
I swallowed, reaching up to wipe my eyes. “Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
Two words, said so easily. But even as I thought this, I heard myself doing it. “I just don’t know,” I said, my voice sounding bumpy, not like mine, “how you help someone who doesn’t want your help. What do you do when you can’t do anything?”