RubyMars: Why am I not telling you no?

AHall80: Because you want to meet me too

AHall80: Because we’re friends and we were going to meet one day.

RubyMars: !!!!!

RubyMars: Sleep on it tonight, and if tomorrow you wake up and you still want to talk on the phone and see if we’d get along, I’ll call you.

RubyMars: I can’t believe I just typed that.

RubyMars: My hands are shaking.

RubyMars: I should feel like the stupid girl in a horror movie who goes on a date with a serial killer right now because I’m not telling you no.

AHall80: It’s just me, Rubes.

AHall80: But fine. I’ll sleep on it

AHall80: I gotta know ASAP. We start driving there the day after tomorrow.

AHall80: You could just fly and I could get you from the airport.

RubyMars: You’re already making plans….

RubyMars: No hard feelings at all if you change your mind.

AHall80: All right. Deal.

RubyMars: Deal.

11:58 a.m.

AHall80: Hey

RubyMars: Hey

AHall80: 270-555-5025

RubyMars: ….

AHall80: That’s my number. Call me.

RubyMars: Did you even think about it??

AHall80: That’s why I’m giving you my number.

AHall80: You said sometimes you know immediately if you hit it off with somebody. We get along already on messenger. I’m not worried.

RubyMars: …..

RubyMars: Are you serious?

AHall80: Yeah. Call me right now.

RubyMars: Do you know what you’re asking of me?

RubyMars: I’m still asleep, aren’t I?

AHall80: For sure.

AHall80: You’re awake. Call me.

RubyMars: You’re sure?

AHall80: Yes. Call.

RubyMars: Fine, but if there’s awkward silence and we never recover from this, I’ll never forgive you. We had a good thing, you and me.

AHall80: It’s too early for the sass to be out.

RubyMars: ……

RubyMars: I barely slept thanks to you.

RubyMars: You better answer the phone and that better not be one of those numbers you give strangers when you don’t want them to know your real number. I’ll never get over it.

AHall80: Just call, Rubes.

Chapter 14

Aaron wanted me to call him.

Aaron wanted me to call him.

Aaron wanted me to freaking call him.

Because he was inviting me to go to Florida.

Because all of a sudden, he’d decided he wanted to meet me. Spend time with me. And he didn’t want to wait until the next time he had leave.

No pressure.

I gulped as I sat there at the kitchen counter, picking at a bowl of Fruity Pebbles with my heart in my throat and my stomach attempting to do somersaults. I should have been freaking out at the idea of traveling with someone who, in a tiny way, was a stranger, but I wasn’t. Not really.

It would be the first time I met someone in a different place for a purpose that didn’t revolve around fittings for dresses or costumes. I wouldn’t be Ruby in work mode. It would just be… me.

That was the terrifying part. Just me and my poor heart that seemed to pick the worst people to have feelings for. People who didn’t see me as anything other than someone’s little sister and a friend.

Then there was the whole “we had never met in person” aspect of it.

Not like that had stopped me from pretty much falling in love with him or anything, so there was that. At some point, after a few months, I’d started going on dates with other guys to get my mind off him because I understood my feelings were pointless. He didn’t feel the same way. Plus, he’d told me to date. How much more obvious did I need our situation to be?

And if none of that was reason enough to convince myself that going was a stupid idea, I knew what I would tell anyone who was going to meet a stranger they’d met online.

I’d tell them they were out of their minds. And if I told any of my family members what I was thinking about doing, they would think the same thing.

The thing was, for once in my life, my gut wasn’t telling me not to go do this crazy thing. It was telling me the exact opposite. Go, go, go. Despite being scared and worried about my safety. Hadn’t I just told him a couple of days ago that women traveled by themselves all the time?

Then again, I couldn’t afford to buy a plane ticket. It would also be really irresponsible of me to charge something that expensive on my credit card when I didn’t exactly have a steady income coming in. I hadn’t been rich when I had two steady jobs; now, I was even further away from that point.

Yet, even knowing all of this, I flexed my tingling fingers and typed in the phone number Aaron had given me.

I ran up the stairs just as I hit the call icon, which in hindsight, wasn’t exactly the smartest decision I’d ever made because by the time my legs got me to the second floor, I was out of breath and still hadn’t made it to my room. My mom and Ben were at work, so they weren’t going to be looking at me like I was crazy for running up the stairs for the first time in my life.

The phone kept on ringing as I dashed into my bedroom, and just as I thought a voice mail recording was going to pick up, I closed my door.

The familiar clicking sound of someone answering the call had me freezing as I turned the lock, and then I heard it. My name. “Ruby?”