The One With Ruby’s Box of Treasures
The club was dark and quiet when I entered; only the soft hum from the beverage refrigerators behind the bar greeted me as I stepped inside. I flicked on half the overhead lights, not needing more than that to accomplish my task for the morning: finding a costume for this party.
The talent at Double Entendre was largely responsible for their own wardrobe, though Ruby did have a box of old Halloween costumes she’d gotten from various places (such as Goodwill, family members, and patron donations) which we could sift through for inspiration, final touches, or, in my case, for actual use on Halloween. My goal was to get to that box, find something low-maintenance I could use as a costume and get out of the club before Ruby put me to work doing manual labor. My eyes couldn’t help but look in the office to see if she was there as I walked by, but the door was shut and the light appeared to be off.
Either Ruby hadn’t arrived yet, or she hadn’t left, as she tends to do.
Shaking my head, I finally made it to the ready room I shared with the other guys and clicked on the light for the storage room. The space was tiny, more like a closet than an actual room, but somehow Ruby had managed to cram in all the cleaning supplies, a few pallets used to cart out the bottles at the end of the night and the costume leftovers. I found the box perched rather precariously on a shelf just out of my reach. Grumbling, I grabbed my dressing chair, wheeled it into the room, and climbed up on it.
My fingers had just secured the lip of the open box when I heard someone behind me. “Need a hand?”
Cade’s voice startled me, the chair sliding out from under me with the sudden shift in my weight. The next thirty seconds moved in slow motion before me–I watched as the box came tumbling down, spilling its contents all over the floor and I prepared myself to collide with the floor, praying nothing broke when it happened. I couldn’t afford to be out of work.
The impact never came. Instead, Cade caught me under my arms, gently lifting me to a vertical position before bending down to help pick up the rogue pieces of clothing off the floor. I grabbed the rest of what had spilled out, stuffing it in the box and picking it up.
“Thanks,” I said. Warmth spread across my cheeks, and without even seeing I could tell I was blushing.
“Least I could do for startling you–it was my fault you fell.” He smiled widely at me, flashing a row of perfectly straight, white teeth. “What’re you doing in the closet, anyway? I thought you weren’t gay.”
“Har har.” I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t help smiling back at him. “I need a costume for the party next week and Taylor has left me to fend for myself this year.”
“So you’re raiding Ruby’s Box of Treasures?”
“Something like that,” I shrugged, nodding toward the door to indicate it was time to vacate the tiny, enclosed area. Cade moved back into the ready room, allowing me to pass him in the process, and I led him over to my vanity area. I dropped the box onto it, then started sifting through the contents. There wasn’t much in there, and what was wasn’t anything exciting. It wasn’t looking very promising. “This is disappointing,” I frowned into the box. “I now know why Ruby stuffed this box in the store room. There’s nothing useful in it.”
“Nothing striking your fancy?” Cade had wheeled my chair back from the closet and was sitting in it, watching me.
“There just really isn’t anything that’s my style, you know?”
Cade lifted a pair of bell bottoms and a flowery top from the pile of discarded items I had created on the floor. “What about these?” he asked, holding them up. “The pants might be a bit big, but you could pull them off.”
“As what? A flaming flower child? That’s a woman’s blouse.” I took the shirt from his hands, looking at the tag just to confirm my suspicions.. It was, indeed, a woman’s shirt. But it was also incredibly soft. “Well. I guess it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have a backup plan in case I don’t find anything else.”
“That’s the spirit!” Cade smiled, clapping me on the back.
After replacing the box on the shelf in the closet, I gathered my Plan B and motioned toward the front of the club. “I’m out of here…Tay and I are off tonight and he wants to go see a movie. God forbid I’m late by even five minutes so he misses the previews.”
Cade let out a hearty chuckle. “Have fun.”
I nodded and waved over my shoulder as I walked out of the room. The light in Ruby’s office was on, though the door still closed, when I passed this time, and I hurried past toward the main area of the club. I checked my surroundings before making a break for the door; as long as one molecule of my body remained in the building, I ran the risk of Ruby lassoing me into some kind of chore. My hand had just circled around the doorknob when I heard Ruby calling out for me.
“Zac? Is that you?” My wrist had already started to turn the knob when, with a begrudging groan, I let go and turned around. “Oh, good. I’m glad you’re here, I wanted to talk to you. Listen, I need your help. I bought a whole bunch of neon signs for the bar on Craigslist and I need someone to go pick them up on the thirty-first at four o’clock; I’ve got an appointment at 3 and I don’t think I’ll be done in time. I was hoping if I asked really nicely you might be able to do it?”
“Sure, Ruby. Where do I have to go?”
“San Diego?” the answer came out a question rather than a statement, Ruby biting her lower lip and forcing a nervous smile at the same time.
“Ok. Fine. Just, get me the address and I’ll drive to San Diego.”
“Thanks! I knew I could count on you, Zac!” Ruby gave me a quick hug, then scurried off back toward her office.
The drive home passed by in a blur, and Taylor was ushering me out the door before I even came in, all the while rambling about how he didn’t want to miss the previews. I barely had enough time to chuck my fall-back hippie costume on the couch before he literally was pulling me out the door. As much as I wanted to enjoy the movie, I found that being drug along behind Taylor just made me want to punch things.
Namely him.
I shook his hand off, apologizing for the millionth time about being late, and slid into the car. I turned the radio up for an excuse not to talk and we drove along mostly in silence the entire way, though Taylor kept grumbling what sounded suspiciously like curses at me under his breath. He was so incredibly passive-aggressive sometimes, and his immaturity always boggled my mind more than his diva outbursts ever could.
We finally made it to the concession counter, with about five minutes to spare before the previews got underway. The look of irritation on Taylor’s face was potent enough to melt the smile from the lips of our overly-perky concessions barista. She cleared her throat before politely asking, “What can I get for you today, gentlemen?”
“Could I please have a large Coke, a large popcorn, and a box of Sno-Caps.” I flashed the counter girl a smile. Her cheeks flushed and she giggled as she filled my soda. From my right, Taylor sighed heavily, leaning on the glass counter. “What’s your problem?”
“I don’t know what to get,” he said after a moment, pushing himself off the glass.
“Really, Tay? You do this every time we go to the movies and always wind up with a Diet Coke and a box of Milk Duds, then you eat most of my popcorn. It’s why I’ve started getting larges, despite the ass-raping that is concession pricing.”
He dramatically rolled his eyes before he turned toward the counter girl. “Large Diet Coke and Milk Duds, please.”
“You guys are a cute couple,” she giggled, taking Taylor’s money.
I just snorted, and when Taylor had his damn Milk Duds and Diet Coke, I led him down the hallway to our theater. He took the steps two at a time until he found the middle row, then counted the seats until he found the center-most spot in the entire theater and sat down, smiling widely. “We didn’t miss the previews!” he announced.
“Did you ever doubt me, Taylor?”
His brow furrowed for a second before the smile spread back across his lips. “Maybe for like, half a minute when you were stuck behind the garbage truck on Clover, but once you cut off the soccer mom in the minivan, I just knew that we’d get here in time.”
It was things like that which made me want to punch him the hardest–he could be your best friend and your worst enemy in the same breath. He had more mood swings than a chick on the rag, and acted like a toddler when he didn’t get his way, but he was loyal to a fault. Now that I thought about it, it made more sense to run him over in my dad’s ATV than just to punch him.
The cartoon dragon I had pictured in my head had just set Taylor’s silky hair on fire when the opening scene of the movie–a slasher flick Taylor had begged me to go with him to see for weeks before I finally agreed to go–started. What startled me the most about the opening credits wasn’t the heavy music, or the flashing imagery of ghosts and ghouls, or the loud shriek that transitioned into the first scene. It wasn’t even the pain of Taylor’s fingers circling my forearm, his neatly-filed nails digging crescents into my skin.
The shock was that, despite the sting of having the first few layers of my skin scraped off, it didn’t bother me. As a matter of fact, I felt my face flushing at the thought that Taylor had grabbed me for comfort, the heat spreading past my cheeks and filling my abdomen. My eyes, which had been immediately torn from the screen and to Taylor’s hand, slowly followed a path over his wrist to his elbow, and continuing until our eyes finally met.
For a moment, the world was quiet.
A loud thunderclap sent me jumping nearly out of my skin, and my eyes wrenched back toward the screen, leaving my heart racing, my pulse thudding loudly in my ears.