13
Jem
The intercom buzzesinto my dreams, pulling me from the edge of the nightmare. I stayed up late attempting to finish a song I’m working on, and frustration hit when the notes wouldn’t gel. The time spent recording the Phoenix album last year is lost in my drug-addicted haze; the guys dragging me through the process. Not our best work. These days, the songs wake me in the night, months of buried creativity pushing to the surface and consuming me. I’d kill for a session with Dylan, to be in the recording studio with the guys.
I grope the side of the bed for my phone and squint at the display, three a.m. Who the fuck comes here at three a.m.? No missed calls, so whoever this is doesn’t know me well enough to try calling first.
Muttering expletives under my breath, I head out toward the intercom. The sticky weather has broken and rain pours outside.
“Yeah?” I snap at the intruder.
“Jem?” A woman’s voice. Fucking great, I thought late night groupie visits had stopped.
“Who’s this?”
The intercom crackles again. “Ruby.”
Her name jolts me to alert. “Ruby?”
“I didn’t know where to go.”
“Wait there. Gate’s opening.” I hit the button to unlock the security and pull my jeans on.
My confusion follows me downstairs, through the carefully restored Victorian house to the original but now heavily secured doors. Unlocking and sliding back the bolts, I pull open the front door.
Ruby stands on the porch, soaked. The security light shines on the red hair flattened by the rain, water running down Ruby’s pale cheeks. Tears or rain? A thin blue t-shirt and jeans are glued to her body, and the expression on her face rips my heart out. Ruby often looks lost, but this girl is terrified.
“What happened?”
“Sorry, I didn’t know where to go,” she repeats.
I step back and gesture to the doorway, Ruby walks in and drips rain onto the floor. “Sorry.”
“Stop apologising. Why else do you think I gave you my address?”
Her face is messed up, a cut below her blackening eye. She shivers and I don’t know what the fuck to do.
Ruby misreads my hesitation. “I can go.”
“No. Upstairs.” I gesture to the polished wooden staircase and she slowly climbs, unsteady on her bare feet. Fuck.
Again, Ruby hovers, this time in my lounge room, staring around at her surroundings when I flick the lights. She squints against the spotlights so I swap them for a lamp in the corner of the room.
Towel. She needs a towel.
I grab a grey bath sheet from the linen cupboard and return, handing it over. Ruby stares blankly.
“You should get dry.”
“Oh. I should.” She pulls at her t-shirt, and then let’s go, as the damp item becomes part of her skin again.
“I can give you a T-shirt, but I don’t have any women’s clothes.”
Ruby giggles. Then snorts. Gripping the towel, she descends into a cross between laughter and hysterics that blows my mind considering the silence since she arrived. “No, I don’t suppose you do.”
Unsure whether to be insulted or happy she’s snapped back to the living, I rub my head. “I’ll find you a T-shirt.”
I root around in my drawers, pulling out the first one I find then go back to Ruby. What the fuck happened? I can guess and bet she has more than a cut face. At least she’s upright and conscious because I laid bets the time Ruby fought back that I’d be visiting her in hospital.