make sure you outlive me. ruby&ivory

I paint along the lines of my ruin, hands unsteady. Marveling, in awe in horror, at all the ways I'll never be the same. Captured in the vanity like this, I think I understand why I was too precious not to save. Too useful not to keep.

That should feel good, right?

I'm careful to erase all trace of my decision, draped rosy quarts along my neck and pinned up my hair with much of the same. I draw lace gloves up to the middle of my forearms until all the puckered skin disappears. Not perfect, but hidden away, as clean as a dirty secret can be. Ruby isn't the sort to ask uncomfortable questions anyway, that's not the kind of game we play.

I'm not sure what he's trying to win this time. Amusement, surely, there was indulgence in that smile he wore. Teeth digging into the plastic casing of a ballpoint pen, leaving little dents that my thumb finds every time I scrawl a new note to myself. Pandering with lovesick lyricism is Sable's specialty, not mine, I'll die before I finish that particular love song.

There's no room for it in my story, too much a tragedy already. No intimacy in digging two graves. This is a date only as long as he can stand a mud-stained hemline. And he's above those sorts of things. Better than. I'll enjoy getting to feel lovely for an evening, anyway.

I'm still tangled in powder pink chiffon when I hear the door open, wind singing through the hinges in a pitchy squeal. His shoes stick to the floor, accents to a slow approach. I've never known dread to feel so pleasant. "In here," I'm not sure why my voice dies in my throat, I try again, "could use a hand."

Leaning over the vanity, hasty to excuse the color in my cheeks for creme blush. I'm not looking at my reflection, only pretending to. When the door opens he catches the lights, braided in gold, I find myself wondering if the sun now knows shame. "My previous assistant has run off with his boyfriend and I can't put this on myself."

Hoisting the dress higher on my chest, my imperfections feel obvious as bloodstains on parchment. He lingers in the doorway too long, and I curse the practiced way he holds himself. Impossible to read until he opens his mouth, "Yeah. Yes. Turn around then."

I relax, not quite into a smile, and sweep my hair to the side, "Be careful." I realize I don't know if he has a gentle touch. My thoughts stagnate, I'd rather not look at him or myself as he fastens the dress so I shut my eyes and stretch the tension in my neck to a fine line. Breathing in time with the path he draws up my spine, one long inhale until my lungs tremble. Is this how you hold a scream?

"Okay."

It leaves in laughter instead. He leans in closer so that I may pinpoint the minute he twists his smile into beautiful calculation. I still don't know what he thinks he's winning, there might not be a prize at all. Perhaps we are just running ourselves in circles, choking on our own tails. He offers the hand I'd asked for, so I squeeze it tight enough that his metal rings dig into the sides of his fingers.

I twirl beneath his arm, first away and then in. Against his chest so that my free hand may trace the gold embroidery upon his suit, "Your suit is very loud." Ostentatious, even, I revel in the sight a minute longer, pretending to dust lint from his shoulders. "I haven't done this since I was a little girl."

I remember being treated like I was delicate on dance floors, it was nice to commiserate with wailing rhythms. My first few memories of being adored, before it metastasized. "Let me have fun before the carriage turns into a pumpkin."

I curtsy, and kiss the back of his hand for emphasis. As pleading as pride will allow.

"Let's go, I'm ready."

I don't pause to make sure he follows me out the door.

("This is so stupid!"

"Ugly words, little thumper, how are you going to play music if you cannot move with it?"

"Dancing isn't teaching me anything. Everyone is staring at us."

No one would believe that my father laughed, knelt over where I'd thrown myself upon the floor. He held out his hand, palm upturned toward chandeliers and catching their multicolored motes of light, "Then we best make sure we are something worth watching.")

---

The couple's first dance is clumsy. A juvenile mimicry of the real thing, so practiced that I can pinpoint every trouble spot. Where toes bump and leather scuffs against itself. For all the effort that has been put into perfecting this day, it seems they will be settling for almost.

Not that I care, it's just a bit boring.

I tap my lower lip with my fingers, chin resting in my palm. Ruby keeps playing pretend with his offered hand, defacing every instrument he can think of in a bid for attention. If I weren't still bitter about being left alone, I might have caved. Instead, I count all the newlywed's mistakes they won't have the decency to be ashamed of.

What a privilege it is to settle for mediocrity. They look so damn happy.

It's not until I'm perfectly brittle, the kind of thing that should not be touched, that I grab his hand. "Have I ever told you I'm fantastic at dancing?"

As if I could be anything else.

---

(Father only drove when he was angry. Gas pedal to the floor, 'til the world was nonsense and it was just the two of us. I was used to having nowhere to go, it didn't bother me like it did my brother.

He asks me to name the notes car horns play in our wake, I tell him it's G Sharp and A.

"You will never embarrass me like that again, do you understand?"

I rubbed at the blisters on my heels, they wouldn't hurt until the next day but that pain would linger for a while. "Okay. Are you trying to kill us?"

His answer was an engine's roar.)

---

I'm unaccustomed to being lost in a crowd, a part of an audience instead of above it. The dance floor is flooded by drunken revelers, all swirling tulle and crooked ties as they toast to eternal love. I realize too late that we are alone here, faceless and forgotten. I should not want to perform for nothing, but I want many things I shouldn't.

"Can I have this dance?"

I rest my forearm behind my back and bow low, playing chords backwards. Calling dissonance a harmony. When I kiss the back of his hand again, it feels like salting a wound. Maybe his, maybe mine. My gaze flicks from him to the decorum laying shattered at our feet, I wait with baited breath to see what he'll do with it.

"But only because you asked so nicely." He says, already matching me in a feigned curtsy. Filling the space I had so gleefully abandoned, the show must go on even if my heart stops beating for a measure or two. I can trust him with that, at least for one night.

I make sure the dance is cruel. Twisted up in three-four time, going dead weight in his arms without warning. Every time I fall, I do not check if he is there to catch me. Our steps slow only when my curiosity gets the better of me, catching my bearings in a counter-clockwise turn "Not bad, perhaps we had the same tutors."

Not my father but the ones who came after. When pretending he had time for me lost its novelty.

For how little we belong here among lovers, I'm shocked I don't feel more out of place. Then again, there is nowhere that Ruby can't fit himself and it seems he's dead set on dragging me with him. I tilt my forehead against his, swaying as the music falls into a crooning lullaby, "Shame you didn't bring a real date here, she'd have been very charmed."

"Oh she would, would she?" I'm not expecting a real answer, and I don't get one. "I'm glad I've charmed you." He speaks into the top of my head. Acting like I'm a real person, to have, to hold. Vows are only words, I'd rolled my eyes as the couple had whispered them up on the altar. Treated them as sacred, weighted things.

Ruby speaks in a similar way like he doesn't know he's lying.

"Not what I said." I've seen him breathless a thousand times but never felt his deep measured breathing like this.

Just once, I'll let him catch his breath - "Ask me after the next dance."

He smiles at me.

I map the shape of it, picturing the layers of skin and stringy muscle which hold it in place. It dips into the hollows of his cheeks, just below the bone, and in asymmetry I find the the beginnings of something awful. As heavy and dull as his hands feel in mine - I don't know what to do with them anymore. He's my friend but I find no comfort in him. Just the endless, anxious unease of having something I know I can't keep.

(He smiles at me.)

The orchestra peters out on an exhausted C minor, four counts fading into echoes. I hold the most sympathy for those sad reflections, wasting away for boys looking in glassy water. At the end of love is the start of misery, I am soaked in sweat and struggling to catch my breath; bobby pins jab the base of my skull, the weight of gemstones shifting down toward my nape.

That thing in my chest is as steady as ever, it didn't used to be. But things have changed since the hospital, I miss it's painful racing.

So I pull off a lace glove and press a pointer finger to Ruby's pulse instead, as I ask - "Can we go practice now?" frowning.

Like a spider hung on it's own web I get tangled in all that I've given. He does not ask permission to hold my palm against his skin nor does he relent when I flinch against the touch. Ruby quietly works my other fingers open around his neck and lets me feel every breath he catches from thereon out.

"Yes. We can go practice now." We stay connected through interwoven fingers swinging at our sides. He's never held my hand when it was not splinted into an instrument or dressed up in lace. When it was just a hand.

Then it's time for the goodbyes, which is a more annoying affair than the hellos. It must be easy to mistake the way I glare up at his profile as quiet adoration, because his acquaintances seem happy to leave me to my brooding.

I wait until we're back at his car to level the accusation, "Are you going to give that back?" gesturing at the glove in his pocket.

"Of course." He means no, in so many unnecessary words.

"But only if I can hold the pair first, until we're practicing?" I've never heard him speak with so little breath control. Voice gone rough, catching like thread does on my calluses as I allow him to pull the other glove away. I don't make it easy and press my palms onto the console between us when all is said and done.

The little things tend to matter when secrets are made of scars.

"You sound-" It's the first thing that comes to mind, "off key." I've found that when I don't know what to say I seek open wounds. "Not very much like a singer at all." I rub my thumb along my wrist, digging a nail into the raised skin because that's an easy one "why?"

"Probably because this isn't an act." The dusk light is too soft and his fingers too warm where he holds me. He digs them into the valleys between my knuckles when I make to pull away. We start driving. "Have you ever thought of that?"

"No," I tell him, because I haven't. We're a game, a transaction, we are chasing an answer but never letting ourselves reach it. Because then what reason would we have to exist at all?

None of this is supposed to feel real.

He craves adoration and I have given it to no one else. And I could excuse it if I could pretend it meant nothing. I lay my cheek against the back of his hand only because he would have to crash to look at me. "This date was a bad idea."

Ruby thinks he can have something he has already lost, he has no scars to find. "But thank you." I turn my face and watch as my colors flake off on him, "I never thought I'd get a day like this. I'm not very suited to it." I sigh, long and low, "I miss my set. Are we almost there?"