𝕃𝕖𝕥 𝕀𝕥 𝔹𝕖 | 𝕁𝕠𝕙𝕟 𝕃𝕖𝕟𝕟𝕠𝕟 ✅

13

28th September, 1960

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When they got back to the flat, Stu was sitting in the corner of the settee with a book in his hands. He was reading intently.

"Where'd you go earlier?" Ruby asked when she saw him, plopping into the seat beside his. "I came back and you were gone - I had to sit here like a Billy-no-mates while I waited for this one," she jerked a thumb in John's direction, "to get up."

Stu closed the book and laid it in his lap. "I went to my mum's." He paused, "I was going to ask you but I knew that you and John had plans." He looked at John, who had sat on the dining chair, "how was Mimi's?"

John and Ruby exchanged glances and then John groaned. "How do you think?"

"Not your biggest fan, then, Ruby?"

"I think Mimi actually likes me," she replied, "though John says differently."

"You don't know her like John does -"

"Luckily." John interrupted mournfully, "she does my head in. Always has. Glasses, John!" He mocked his aunt.

Ruby and Stu chuckled and then Ruby suddenly stood up. "I got you a present!" She hurried over to where she had hidden it earlier; in the fridge (which wasn't plugged in), and then she hid them behind her back, going back over to Stu. "Close your eyes." She grinned and Stu did as he had been told, cupping his hands in front of him. Ruby laid the gift in his palms and he opened his eyes, beaming when he saw the (quite frankly) expensive set of colouring pencils.

"Ruby!" He exclaimed happily, "you shouldn't have -"

"You're gonna run out of money, Rube," John warned her, "a 45 for me, those for him and all those new clothes sitting in their bags in the hallway?" She had thought that he hadn't noticed the four or five bags which she had struggled back from the shops with earlier that day.

"I'm going to invest it as soon as I work out how to do it." She sat back in her seat beside Stu, "good day, though?"

He nodded, humming in reply as he took out each pencil individually and held it up to the daylight coming in through the window, though it was growing ever closer to darkness.

"Put an album on, Stu, yeah?" John said as he got up and went into his room.

A few hours later, the three of them were quite drunk and all very loud. They were dancing to John's new single, Hello Mary Lou, and he was trying to sing along. He knew a few of the words because he had been playing it nonstop for the last twenty minutes, insisting that it was the best he had ever heard.

"John!" Ruby howled with laughter, her belly aching as Stu and John danced stupidly with each other, treading on the other's toes and falling to the floor everytime they did so. She felt warm; her face was flushed and her ears were bright red. She wanted some fresh air and some iced water, but it was very cold outside and the boys didn't have a freezer so couldn't make ice or even keep it cold.

Nevertheless, she decided to brave the cold, "I'm just stepping out for a minute." She said to them, but neither of them looked at or responded to her so she assumed that they didn't hear her. She went to the front door and opened it, going outside and pulling it to latch closed behind her. Ruby sat down on the stone step of the flat and shivered; she could feel the cold coming through her skirt and knickers.

It's peaceful out here, she thought as she watched nothing and everything all at once. There were people walking along the opposite side of the road, and they were laughing, but they paid her no mind. She wondered what their story was, and where they were going. Perhaps they were in a dream like she was, though her dream had now lasted longer than any that she had had previously.

"You should come to Hamburg with us, y'know."

Ruby turned her head and saw John standing behind her in the doorway of the flat. He stepped over the threshold and then sat beside her, the two of them as close together as they had been by the Mersey earlier.

She chuckled, "Hamburg?" She echoed, "what would I possibly want with Hamburg?"

"Stu'd be there." He hesitated, "... and me."

Ruby turned to look at him after he had said that. He seemed so vulnerable, but she didn't comment on it. Instead, she replied, "and who'd look after the flat here?"

John shrugged, "don't know. Don't care."

"I can't come to Hamburg with you, John," as much as I want to, she finished in her head. "I have to finish college."

"You've only just started -"

"I don't know how it works," she said, "but I think I graduate when you all do."

"So you joined college for all of about three weeks?" She nodded. "What a waste," he said in a bored tone as he took a cigarette from the box that he had bought on the way back to the flat with her. He lit it up and sucked in its smoke. She made a mental note to get him to cut down because of George contracting cancer, but didn't want to chide him in that moment, "you should come to Hamburg with us." He repeated.

Ruby sighed. "I can't." She desperately wanted to.

"I'll write you a letter everyday." He promised, handing off his half-sucked cigarette to her. She took it gratefully and took a drag, "and send you postcards, too."

"You'll get to Hamburg and forget me. I'll be the girl who you knew for a few days and then lost."

"Lost?"

She didn't know why she had used that word. It had just... seemed to fit.

"You're not going to go missing on me, are you?"

"I -"

"Good," John took the end of the cigarette off of her, finishing it before he continued, "because I expect to come back to a four course meal served with eighteen different wines, and to eat it with twelve types of fork."

Ruby giggled.

John watched her, marvelling at how pretty she seemed in what was now the moonlight.

She has nice teeth, John thought as her lip curled back over them as she laughed. They were quite white, and very straight. And the way her hair falls is beautiful.

It was often that John assessed a girl based on her looks and only her looks, but it wasn't often that John actually got a chance to know the girl outside of what she looked like... he was glad that he had had that chance with Ruby, because he felt like he knew her just as well as he knew Paul, despite knowing Ruby for two days and Paul for four years.

There was something spectacular about the girl sitting beside him, he just didn't know what it was yet.