Please note that this chapter contains a sex scene.
Part One
Chapter Two
Every Hour, Every Minute
Ruby sat at a little table underneath a large potted plant that casted a shadow over her. For the first time in her life, she regretted her choice of wearing something shiny. She was nervous to approach Sophie. The previous night had been complete fun, but now things were bound to return to normal, and Sophie looked very busy and a tad bit stressed.
"Is the great Ruby Sheridan seriously hiding from everyone?"
Ruby looked up and saw Tanya was standing just a few feet away, wearing a flowery dress and a large floppy sunhat. Tanya's mouth was neither smiling nor frowning, clearly unable to decide if she still was holding a grudge against Ruby.
"Would you like to sit?" Ruby asked, waving towards the other chair.
Tanya didn't look all that tempted. She shook her head. "I think I'll pass." she drawled with a hint of coldness. "But you listen to me good, there can't be anymore heartache in that little girl's life. If you want to be a part of Sophie's future, you better be committed."
Ruby opened her mouth to retort, but Tanya was already strutting off, her heels making loud, dramatic sounds as they clapped against the stone pavement. She sat there, both angry and sad, realizing all of sudden, that Tanya was right. Was she ready to fully commit? What about her home back in Las Vegas? Was there a way to have a cross-continental relationship with your grandchild?
"Grandma." Sophie had appeared next to the little table.
Ruby looked up quickly, still rather anxious about the sudden thoughts swimming around in her head. She admired Sophie's long, pink summer dress that danced in the gentle breeze. Stop worrying...she told herself.
Sophie, detecting that something was wrong, took a seat from across her grandmother and smiled warmly, a smile that reminded Ruby so very much of Donna...
"You look just like your mother." she said, unable to help it.
Sophie's eyes looked down at the table for a moment, undoubtedly filled with some sort of sadness or reminiscence. When she looked back up, however, it was clear that Ruby had said the right thing. Sophie reached out across the table and grasped onto her grandmother's hand.
"I really did love her." Ruby said. "But I know that I failed at being a mother. I don't expect you to ever forgive me for that."
Sophie's lips tightened a little bit. "I can forgive you," she assured Ruby, "but I just don't understand what ever went wrong between you guys."
Ruby's heart began to pound. She did not want to tell Sophie that story, not at all. There was too much of an explanation that was better off being kept a complete secret. "I just cant tell you about that." she said finally, looking apologetically at Sophie. "There's more to it than you think."
Sophie's expression was unreadable at first, but after a few seconds, she nodded her head, accepting that Ruby was just not yet ready to talk about Donna. She instead changed the topic completely. "What about you?" she asked. "You told me you are ready to be a grandmother. What did that mean exactly?"
Ruby did not even know the answer to that herself.
"I mean..." Sophie continued. "Does that mean you're going to help me run this place? Or help look after my baby when it's born? Are you finally going to get to know my fathers and Sky?"
Ruby clenched her toes underneath the table, having a difficult time comprehending all of this. She just wanted Sophie to be a part of her life somehow...was that not enough? Did she really need to help run a hotel and become a fulltime babysitter? She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again.
"What's the matter?" asked Sophie.
Ruby sighed a little bit harder than she intended to. "Nothing is the matter." she lied. "I just don't know if I am ready to move across the country like Donna did. That is just asking a little bit much."
Sophie let go of her grandmother's hand. She looked to the side, away from Ruby, as if to hide tears.
"Sophie." said Ruby, aware that she had probably just upset her granddaughter. "I promise I will be involved in your life. I really do want to be. I promise that much has changed."
Sophie moved her head a little bit back towards Ruby at the sound of these genuinely convincing words. "But you don't want to stay?" she asked.
Ruby felt her heart tighten. Of course she wanted to stay, that much was easy, but leaving her home and moving across the world was something she never imagined doing so late in life. She had friends and a mansion of her own. Nearly her entire life had been in Las Vegas...
"What about him?" Sophie questioned. "If you can't move for me, can't you at least move for Cienfuegos?"
Ruby's eyes immediately met Sophie's. She hadn't even thought about that...about her plans with him. It had all just seemed so easy the previous night during the music and the fireworks. It was as if she was being forced through a tunnel back into the real world and being confronted with countless questions and problems that had seemed so small just a matter of hours ago.
"You broke his heart once," Sophie went on, "don't do it again."
Ruby raised her eyebrows at this. "He talked to you about me?"
Sophie nodded her head. "Yes," she said, "well, I mean I didn't know it was you that he was talking about, did I? He just talked about the same woman whenever I mentioned love."
Ruby smiled a bittersweet smile. This made her heart tingle like nothing else could. "Really?" she said, unprepared for her voice to immediately get all high and cute.
Sophie suppressed a mini giggle. "Yes, really." she assured her grandmother, "And believe me, I spent the past year getting to know him. He was a sad person who lived through other people's happiness..." she paused to reflect on something that Fernando had said to her just the other day. "And the other day he told me that love had sailed away for him... that he had made his peace with pain."
Ruby didn't want to believe that she had caused Fernando nearly a life of pain. It hurt her to imagine that he had really said all of these things, that he had really truly never gotten over her. The stupidly adorable smile vanished from her face.
"Don't leave Greece." Sophie pleaded again, taking advantage of Ruby's wild emotions.
Ruby was overcome with a pinching sensation in her chest. She knew she had to see him right now. She and Fernando could not avoid talking about the heartbreak any longer. She had known that there was still a lasting pain between them, but to hear Sophie repeat Fernando's crushing words made it all too real. She began to stand up from her seat.
"Where are you going?" Sophie asked, realizing that perhaps she had said too much.
"I need to find him." Ruby said. "I wasn't supposed to meet him until dinner, but I can't wait, not if he really said all those things."
Sophie hesitated, feeling somewhat guilty. "You have to walk down the road and follow it to the beach." she told Ruby. "It's a small blue house, really close to the Hotel Bella Donna entrance sign."
Ruby was about to run off but the look on Sophie's face caused her to wait. She walked around the table and squeezed Sophie's shoulder. "I promise we will figure it all out." she said. "I am always going to be your grandmother."
The blue house sat alone on the sand in between rocky formations, giving it a very private feeling. Ruby approached it at a fast pace although her high heels sunk into the sand with every step she took. She knocked on the shabby little door once she reached the house, unsure of what to do or say. Part of her wanted to tell him that she too had been hurt, that it wasn't fair of him to put this all on her... The other part of her wanted to apologize profusely and kiss him until every ounce of pain was gone.
Nobody answered. He was somewhere else.
Ruby pushed on the door and it opened. How secure...
It was the blandest, shabbiest place she had ever seen. She knew that it could never compare to her mansion back home, but this was seriously all beaten down...and sad. She looked around the kitchen at the bare wooden walls and the table with one chair. There was no character at all. Her heart hurt even more than it had before.
Off of the kitchen was a tiny little sitting room and a bedroom. She walked into the bedroom very slowly, attempting to hold back tears that were threatening to turn into full on sobs. This room at least had some paint, but no pictures hung on the wall, not even a single piece of artwork. She sat down on the bed and placed her hands on her knees, feeling Fernando's presence even though he was out. She knew that he had slept here, thinking about her every night, missing her and wallowing. All her life she had pretended that he was probably somewhere pleasant, with some new woman, having moved on, but nothing could have been more false.
Ruby leaned back on the bed and stretched out. She smelled his blankets and sighed sweetly, knowing that she could never let this happen again...leaving him to sleep alone. How many nights had he stayed awake missing her? She could not erase this thought from her head.
Around four o'clock, Fernando arrived back home after walking on the beach, enjoying the weather on his day off, having fantasized about the dinner that was soon to come with his one and only true love. He let himself into the house and went to change out of his most comfortable shirt.
"Ruby?"
Ruby sat up. She had been so engulfed in her own thoughts, she had not heard the door open.
Fernando's face was worried. He hurried over to the bed and grabbed onto her. "What's wrong?"
She was no longer crying, but her eyes were red. She shook her head and leaned it on his shoulder, unable to explain the realization that she had come to...the realization that she had let him live in agony and longing for years and years.
He pulled her legs over his and cradled her in his arms. "Tell me what it is, mi amor." he said.
She snaked her arms around his neck and prayed that her touch alone could heal him. "I know I hurt you." she said, managing to keep her voice above a whisper.
He brought his lips to her forehead and kissed her softly. "I love you." he said. "I love you so much that I can forgive that."
Ruby moved in to kiss him. He rubbed her back while exploring all of the parts of her mouth that he had craved to kiss again. He did not want to stop kissing her, not until they were forced to break apart. This was the dream he dreamed every night come to life again at long, long last.
But Ruby could not forget. She broke away and stared regrettably into his loving brown eyes. "Sophie told me what you said about making peace with pain...and about..."
He kissed her again, unable to listen to the hurt in her voice. He did not care about the past anymore. This was enough.
"Please." she sighed into his mouth. "Tell me you're mad at me."
He pushed her back on his bed and hovered over her for a long moment, unable to believe that this was real, taking in the sight of her laying atop his blankets. "You told me that I broke your heart too." he whispered, moving one hand up to stoke her face. "We're even."
Ruby couldn't help but smirk a little bit. "But I at least had my touring and my daughter." she reasoned. "You were alone, weren't you?"
He moved his fingers down and traced her lips so that she could not talk anymore. She kissed every part of his fingers that brushed across her.
"You are so beautiful." he said.
She allowed a small tear to leak from her eye. "Fernando," she breathed, "we can't put off talking about this anymore"
He moved his face closer to hers so that their foreheads were touching and a burst of pleasure shot through them both. "Later." he said. "Right now I am going to make love to you again."
Ruby opened her mouth to object at first, but once his words sunk in, she shut up and felt the butterflies erupting inside of her. She was completely weak when he said things like that. She angled her head back on this pillow the second she felt his hands moving up her legs, pulling her tight black skirt above her waist, ready for him to conquer her body and find complete happiness in her again. She stifled the moans that were attempting to escape her, wanting to listen to the sound of his body moving on top of hers like it was destined to do.
"You are so beautiful." Fernando repeated, pulling her closer than ever before and beginning to make her feel indescribable bliss.
Whatever Ruby had been worried about a matter of seconds ago was now complete nothingness. They would talk when the time was right, but now, all that mattered was never letting go. She kept her arms and legs tightly around him, unconcerned about anything, unworried about dinner or plans or life in general.
Fernando buried his face in Ruby's hair as he moved inside of her, feeling her hot, smooth body underneath his. Nothing had changed about this woman. She was still weakness itself, his beautiful heart-warming weakness. His. And her light had never gone out because she still glowed like a star in the sky.
Time did not exist, and not a worry was in sight as they shared their love well into the evening. Everything else could be put off until tomorrow. It was finally time to live in the moment.
To be continued.
