The Ineffable Ruth Rhodes

25 it's different this time

vincent

"Cash or debit?"

Vincent thought about Sage's question. "Do you still have the money I gave you last week? Can you use it? For both Ruth and I."

Sage nodded.

"Hey wait. I can p—"

"I'm coming," Sumaiya sang over her friend, following her boyfriend to the till.

He felt a glare from Ruth and blinked at her innocently, before facing the small television screen at the corner of the restaurant room.

"Hey, Ruth..." Her gaze lingered on him for a couple seconds, and he turned back just when she'd looked back at the screen herself. He wanted to kiss her senseless.

"Hmm?"

"Why..." he started, trying to find the words.

"Why what?"

"Why do you tell people your name at all if you hate it so much?"

Ruth opened and closed her mouth several times. It was as if the whole mood shifted, and Vincent suddenly felt like he'd made a wrong move. "Because—"

"I think," he said, "Maybe it's because you do want to let people in. I think that you're afraid of yourself, that you're afraid that letting people in means hell for them."

Ruth studied him the same way she did at that first party they went to, as if she was looking for traces of drunkenness. "No, that's definitely not it."

"Really?" he didn't want to overstep. These days he felt the fear of doing that, of saying something or doing something wrong and her cutting the strings. Maybe she would, if he kept talking. But he couldn't stop. "I think you hide behind 'Liora', because it's easier. I think you think that if you say it's your name over and over some of it will rub off on you. You're afraid of the weight your name has on your relationships, and the reason you tell people is because you secretly want them to get close to you but you're too afraid to tell them th—"

She laughed and he stiffened. "You think you were one of the people I wanted to let in."

"Don't pretend you don't—"

"Pretend... pretend?" she creased her brows at him, searching his eyes over and over again. "Vincent... you are perhaps the last person I want to hear talk about pretending."

"What do you mean by that, Ruth?"

"Don't call me that."

He felt like he'd been slapped. "I care about you, that's why I'm ask—"

"You don't need to," she said, "You don't have to care about me, I never asked you to. You don't need to act like— like you're my—"

"Like I'm your what?" His ears were ringing.

Don't say it.

"Like you're my boyfriend or something. Like you're him."

Vincent snorted. "Don't tell me you're talking about Capernicous."

"His name is Remy, Vincent."

"Okay, Ruth." He didn't know why talking about this Remy guy made him feel some type of way. He didn't want to talk about him anymore. It was making him angry.

"Stop that," Ruth met his eyes, anger in hers. He'd never seen her this easily worked up over him, he wondered just how much she'd loved Remy. The thought made him sick. "I don't like it when you talk about him that way. Like he's disposable or something."

"Why do you still care about him so much?"

"Was I supposed to just stop caring for him because we started this?"

"It's just like..." Stop, Vincent.

"It's like what?"

"It's like you're still so in love with him after all this time."

She was silent, before her voice cut deadly through the silence. "What, like you and Charlotte?"

"I told you I don't lo—"

"Really?" she asked. She was challenging him. "Because unlike you, I got over Remy months after the whole thing happened. You were still in love with Charlotte, months after we started this."

He thought for a while. "This isn't about me," he said finally.

She laughed. "It's never about you when it's time to face the music. It's never about you when you're being a hypocritical jerk who kisses me when he doesn't need to and gets mad because God Forbid I so much as mention my first love when I had to sit there at our first party together as a couple and watch you beg your ex to take you back."

His brows furrowed, ears ringing louder. He didn't know what to address first. He was her first love? "Begged her to take me back...? What? When?"

Ruth scrunched her nose up in the first face of disgust Vincent had seen on her— directed at him. It was an awful feeling, he thought.

She shook her head and stood, gathering her books from the table.

"When?" he repeated, and watched her, wanting nothing more in that moment than for her to stay.

"Is everything okay?"

Both of their eyes landed on Sage and Sumaiya, who were looking worried and confused as to what happened in the small time that they were gone.

"Yup, all good," Ruth said, smiling easily. Vincent wondered if she lied often, with how easily the words slipped off her tongue. "Let's go?"

"Yeah but Sage wants to stop at the convenience store."

Ruth nodded. "We can come, right Vincent?"

"... Right."

The pairs made to leave, and as they were leaving, Vincent spoke to her one more time.

"I just thought it was different," he told her, "Than how it was with him."

"You're right, it is," she murmured, not looking at him. "Because unlike this, my relationship with Remy— or what was left of it— was real."

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i'm curious. do you think anyone is objectively right/wrong? whose side are you on? is either being unfair?