Ruby Alleyway's Crushes

Late Invitation

Late Invitation Ruby made her way through the empty corridors of the hotel trying finding her room. It had been exactly four years since she had blocked him from her life. She was so frustrated for the rest of the month that she could only do one thing. She wrote it all out, from her first crush till him being an ass. It was her kind of coping mechanism.

She really thought of making it as her personal journal, but personal journal doesn’t include every guy she had a crush on till she was nineteen. The word documents which she created were somewhere between the forgotten files on her laptop.

Writing everything about her past made her more depressed than ever, so she abandoned the idea of writing about it all together. She did save the fifteen-word document files in her hard-drive, but it is now almost invisible in the line of her other works.

After blocking him, life had been really good to her. She found out that her passion was really writing, of course she found it after she had vented all of her emotions about him by writing. Point one to him.

She was big time romance fan as we all know, so she wrote about what she wanted a story to be. At first her work didn’t get much appreciation, but she never gave up. She had two years of college to practice and make it better.

As everyone says, practice makes a man perfect, Ruby’s work started showing up. Her stories were starting to get a little buzz in the entertainment industry. She never wrote novels, but she created stories, which were perfect to be converted into screenplay.

One of her stories was converted into a Netflix original movie. She was pretty proud of her achievement.

That’s why she was here in this fancy hotel trying to find her room. There was a big party for the movie’s success that night. Ruby booked a room at the same hotel so she didn’t have to make an entrance.

Even though the original idea was hers, there were two more writers who wrote the screenplay. She was still the original writer, but the other two making an entrance before all the cameras was better than her fake smiling to every one of them.

Why are there so many doors on the same floor? Ruby blew the hair on her forehead and looked at the key to see the room number again. How about that? The room was right in front of her.

She threw her luggage to the side as she made a big leap to the bed. Ah... a comfortable bed, perfect for a nap after a three-hour long flight.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, she took it out and stretched it in front of her face. It was Derek, as soon as she saw who was calling, she dropped the phone on her face. Derek and Ruby met a few months ago in a coffee shop. She was trying to find a little inspiration of her next story.

She was a regular there, turns out people still went to coffee shops to talk and vent emotions. It was a great energy booster for her. Sometimes the stories were so funny Ruby almost spilled the coffee right out of her mouth.

It was one of those situations. She was trying hard to listen to this one old lady who was with her grandsons. It’s wasn’t her fault, the whole cafe could listen to them, they were basically shouting.

The older kid was a teen and it seemed he had been through break-up, he was trying hard not to cry and his grandma was consoling him. The younger kid though, looked annoyed right from his eyebrows

“Look I bought you double chocolate fudge shake you like” she gave him his order.

“I’m not a kid anymore Gran” he replied but took a large sip anyway. “Beside I don’t need you consoling me, I think it’s not over yet”

The younger boy obviously had enough of this drama “Oh for f***s sake! Will you shut your whiny-self up? She told you that you should go die. Even a ten-year old like me can understand that it’s over” He stumped his foot and got out.

The grandmother stood there horror-struck and the older kid started full-on crying.

Everyone was trying to suppress their laughter as they both left, which was very fast. When they were finally out the whole café erupted in laughter. That’s when Ruby realized that someone was staring at her.

Derek came and sat beside her introducing himself. “I noticed that you come here a lot, I was looking for the perfect opportunity to introduce myself. But this was more than a perfect opportunity” he pointed at the spot where the drama took place.

Ruby laughed in reply and introduced herself. Derek was a handsome guy, with grey eyes and the perfect height. Also, he had broad shoulders which was a big plus sign for Ruby.

So, they started dating. Ruby felt special with him but it was just the beginning. She wasn’t going to run into it. These things take time.

“Hey! What’s up?” she tried to put a little pressure on her nose to stop the pain with her free hand.

“Are you in the hotel? Are you on the bed?” he replied with more questions.

“Yes, I’m on the bed. It’s so comfortable, I could sleep within seconds” she turned on her side to look out the beautiful view from the window “plus the view is great”

“Don’t make me jealous, I should be there with you but I have piles of paperwork from out weekend getaway” He sounded dejected.

“Yeah, I know.” She replied remembering the fun they had hiking.

“Plus, I went to your apartment half an hour ago, to pick up Betsy, and your mail came…”

Ruby stopped listening after hearing that Betsy, her pet fish was safe. Her eyes started to droop as she tried to contain her composure.

“Ruby are you listening?” Derek spoke again.

“Yeah, yeah. My mail came and talked to Ms. Lieberman. Go on” she replied, forcing herself to get up from the sleep-inducing mattress.

“Yes, I talked to your landlord, But I said that your mail had an invitation. It’s from your high-school, they are having a reunion. I’m telling you this because It was marked as delayed, so now you have only one day to give an answer.”

The mention of her high-school took all the sleep out of her eyes. She lowered the phone as she thought about all the not- so-good time she had there. Just as she was about to say no, she saw a notification pop-up on the top. It was from Gemma.

‘Just curious, but you did send a yes to the school, right? If not, I’ll kill you. No pressure though’- her text read.

Now Ruby had no choice but to say yes when she really wanted to say no.