But after I’ve given my talk to the team, I text Ruby to find out where she is. I don’t know if she wants me to pick her up from the hotel or if I should meet her somewhere.
I text her: Where did you go?
I stare at it as I make my way with the team to the bus that will take us back to the training center. I wait, watching everyone get back on the bus, trying to decide if I should go back with them, shower there and get my car, or just take a cab to my apartment and get my car tomorrow. It all depends on Ruby.
Deciding that the text might have been a bit demanding I then text: Sorry the game was shit. Where are you? Do you want me to come get you or meet me somewhere?
I send it and wait.
No response.
Maybe her phone died.
She doesn’t expect to see me for a while, even though it’s nearly eleven at night, so I decide to get on the bus.
But during the whole ride over to the training centre, I keep checking my phone. Nothing. The texts are getting delivered too, so I know her phone isn’t dead. It’s like she’s looking at them and choosing not to respond.
A sour feeling spreads in my chest.
“Cheer up,” Benedito says. I look up to see him twisted around in the seat in front of me. “There’s always next year.”
I give him a stiff smile, my eyes going outside the bus at the headlights passing us on the highway. “We had five wins in a row. Perhaps six was asking for too much.”
He doesn’t say anything to that, and I glance at him, brow raised. “What?”
“Are you okay?”
I try to swallow. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Girl trouble?”
“I hope not.”
Benedito grins at me. “It’s such a nice change to see you like this.”
“Fuck you.”
He laughs and turns around.
I hope I can laugh about this soon.
I hope that creeping sense of doom is just an instinctive response due to being abandoned when I was younger, and that the basis of it isn’t valid for this situation.
I try and live with that feeling the whole ride, then when I get to the centre and I shower, and then on my drive back into Lisbon. I check my phone so many times I nearly drive off the road. Finally I call her.
It goes straight to voice mail.
“Hey this is Ruby. Leave your words at the beep.”
I leave my words. “Ruby, it’s Luciano. Obviously. I was just wondering what happened to you tonight. I don’t want to get on your nerves or anything and if you changed your mind about seeing me tonight, that’s fine. I guess I’m just worried. Call me when you can.”
I hang up and drive.
Get back to my apartment.
Go into my liquor cabinet and pull out that same bottle of scotch I once drank with Ruby. Pour myself a shot and down it. Then I have another.
Finally I pour three fingers into a highball glass and go outside on the balcony, leaning on the railing and staring at the street below. It’s late but there are people out and about, because this is Lisbon after all.
Ruby where are you?
Why are you doing this?
I have to remind myself to calm down, that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
That she lost her phone.
That has to be it.
It’s not the thing that’s been crouching in the dark corner of my mind, waiting to pounce.
The fact that I scared her.
That when I invited her to live with me, it made her realize how bold and forward that was, that we were moving fast. I don’t even know why I said it, other than the fact that it made perfect sense at the time.
It still does. I know it’s fast. But she’s not someone I just met.
She’s my Ruby girl.
And we have a lot of history, as complicated as it is.
Plus, I’m in love with her.
That’s the biggest thing of all.
I love her and I want her to come live with me.
I held back on one of those things. I’m thinking now I should have held back on both.
She lost her phone. She didn’t get scared and run away.
Even though it’s what she always does.
I finish my drink, feeling drunk and bitter, and go straight to bed.
I check my phone one last time, then pass out.
* * *
The next morning I wake up with a bit of a hangover. That’s what I get for fueling myself with scotch after a game instead of food.
I roll over slowly, my head feeling fuzzy, and grab my phone.
All my dreams were interspersed with thoughts about Ruby, my worries, my fears, so my mind already slips into the same state I was in last night.
I check it. No texts.
No calls.
My heart sinks.
I pull up my emails. No emails from her.
I quickly send her one, just in case, and then lie back in bed, trying to figure it out.
She doesn’t use Facebook and I don’t even have Instagram.
I get up and make a cup of coffee, then pull out my laptop to see if I can find her somewhere. But her last Instagram post was from six months ago, her smirking smile at a lake surrounded by pines, Finland probably. Her blog is still up but hasn’t been updated in years.
I decide to Google the hotel she’s staring at.
I call the number.
The woman at the front desk answers.
“Hello,” I tell her. “I’m looking to get in touch with one of your guests, Ruby Turner. Could you put me through?”
“Ruby Turner? Let me see.”
I hear the clack of the keyboard. “I don’t have anyone under that name.”
“Right. Uh, she’s with a friend. Same room. Elena something. She’s Finnish.”
“Elena Hamstrom?” she
