Ruby and Mia Make New Memories

~ * ~

Thursday, June 25, 2026. Maplewood, New Jersey.
-- 8:40 am

"He's wearing the shirt."

"I can hear you," Jack said.

"Mom. He is wearing the shirt. To a car lot."

Ruby didn't look up from her book, sipping coffee. "Which shirt?"

"The parrots."

"Ah."

"It's a good shirt," Jack said.

"It says you'll pay sticker."

Beth said it into the fridge, and Ruby watched Jack take the hit and enjoy it. He was leaning on the cabinet by the hallway, drinking his coffee.

"I'm gonna do the talking," Beth said.

"And what am I gonna do?" Jack replied.

"You look at the engine and make the face."

"What face?"

Beth made the face. She got the eyebrows right and the little sideways nod, and Roscoe barked at nothing out in the hall, and Jack laughed.

Ruby closed her thick book with the trojan horse on it, she hadn't been able to focus on it anyway.

God, it was a good morning.

Ruby knew exactly what her mind was doing. She'd been up since six. She'd heard more birds out there than any yard in New Jersey actually has, and the bread had tasted too divine, and everything in the house smelled like coffee and coconut sunscreen. Of course, none of it was real. But who cares?

"What time's the appointment?" Ruby asked.

"Ten." Jack rubbed at his left forearm, absently, the way you rub a thing's been bothering you too often. "We'll be out most of the day. She wants to look at two."

"Three," Beth said.

"Three?"

"Two and one more if the first two are bad. And if the finance guy tries to walk my rate up, I'm just going to ask him what the buy rate was."

"The what?" Jack said.

"The actual rate I qualify for. Before he pads it for his commission. They're allowed to mark it up like two points, it's legal, it's just shitty."

"Where do you even learn this stuff?"

"There's this place called the internet."

"OK." Jack said.

"It's like a library, right," Beth continued to stab her father. "But you can also ask questions and watch these things called videos."

"You fuckin'-" Jack took pebbles out of the decorative glass cylinder in the hallway and started pelting Beth. "Respect you elders, you little-"

"And you can get on there, they have like these stores. You can tell the big bright box that you want undies and a walking cane-" dodging the pebbles, "and it gets delivered right to your door."

"OK, kid, we get it," Jack laughed, ceasing the air assault, to Ruby's disappointment. She loved watching Jack and Beth go at it. "You probably think you're the first generation smarter than the one before you."

Then Beth had gone back to the fridge and found the yogurt she'd been looking for. Ruby watched her daughter eat standing up in the kitchen she'd be gone from in ten weeks time.

Couple months. And then the house would be theirs.

The idea of her daughter leaving for college produced a thread of relief. That caused a bit of guilt, but the guilt didn't bother her. She didn't need her every thought to be flawless and motherly to know she loved her daughter.

Ruby looked at Jack's arm. "That still bothering you?"

He turned the palm over as he walked up to show her the pink new skin and scabbed over cuts. "Pulls when I sleep on it."

"Healing nicely, though. Just a bad spot, huh? A lot of movement." Ruby said.

"What're you up to today?" Jack said. Ruby let him change the subject un-called-out. She had her attention on something else today.

"Meeting with Mia at Lonnie's."

Ruby said it into her coffee. She said it the way she'd have said dentist, and she felt her own pulse tick up, but she knew that had not made it to her face.

Beth looked up. "For what?"

"Nothing."

"For what, Mom."

"Nothing, sweetheart. Adult business. Deeply boring."

"Oh my God, is this the thing? It's the thing, isn't it?"

"There's no thing."

"There's a thing," Beth said to Jack.

"I don't know nothing about no thing," Jack said. Unconvincing, but by design, Ruby thought.

Beth pointed the yogurt spoon at both of them, smug in her knowing, and went to find her shoes.

Then it was the two of them and the dog and the sound of Beth upstairs.

Jack put his cup in the sink. He came around behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.

"You okay?" he said.

"I'm great."

"You look great."

"I know."

He laughed and kissed the top of her head.

"OK, tell Mia I said hi."

"Will do." She put a little extra on it, the way a cartoon villain might.

"Don't say it like that." Jack laughed, walking away.

"Yes, dear," she said it like that.

She was kidding, of course, but it was all colored by the fact that Ruby had been obsessively thinking about the night of the dinner, some two weeks ago now. In the shower and in the car and at the grocery store and at lunch and while listening to a podcast and... like a teenager.

Ruby felt behind, compared to Jack. That was one thing. Balancing too much Mia on one side of the marriage for too long would sink it, no doubt.

But the birds and the rainbows and the unnatural morning light were not there that morning for reasons of marital balance.

Mi-yah. She thought. She remembered again, like she had done every day. The surprise of Mia taking charge. The way she had made her lose composure. The touch of Mia's tongue between her legs.

Time to make new memories.

~ * ~

Thursday, June 25, 2026. Lonnie's cafe, Maplewood.
-- 10:30 am

"She thinks I'm a bad person now." Mia said.

"She doesn't."

Ruby turned her cup a quarter turn on the saucer. Was that something?

Ruby had ordered without opening the menu. Said good morning to the girl behind the counter by name, even made her laugh. And it didn't sound like it was a fake laugh either.

Fucking Ruby, man. It's like the whole town takes a step in toward her as she walks by. How does that happen? Or was that just Mia projecting?

It didn't help that Ruby, in her white blouse and smart pants, looked like she was taking a quick lunch break, soon to go back to running some Fortune 500 company.

Mia had decided to try and keep her outfit casual, she didn't want to overdo it. She knew because she had overdone it at first, hours earlier, and then decided it was a mistake. To be stuffed in an unfamiliar outfit, held in a scaffolding of makeup? No need to feel any more like a make-a-wish kid. Jeans and a T-shirt for her. Hair down.

Is she just following Ruby's lead here? Or is she making her own choices? She wants to be here, sure, but...

"Tell me what she actually said."

So Mia told her.

She'd been carrying it around since Fairleigh and it had come out messier than she wanted, but the information was there.

"There are so many lies twisted up there, you know, that I can't even keep them straight." Mia said, after.

"You can," Ruby said. "You just don't like how it feels."

"Yeah, maybe,"

Ruby was right. She could keep her shit together. But how did she know that? Mia herself barely did.

"Later in the night she asked me what I meant when I'd said 'I need you' to Jack."

Mia had expected Ruby to say something to that. She didn't.

"I said I panicked. That I meant, like, we'd be stranded. Me and Beth. No ride, no way home, and he's in a cell, and what's that do to your family, right? So, I need you, as in, we all need you. Which is true. It is true."

Ruby nodded. "Sure," she said.

And that was it. She didn't push. Mia almost wished she would have. Though not sure why.

Mia pulled a piece off the pastry she wasn't eating. "I keep thinking, if it was the other way around? Would I have taken her apart? Would I have found the shit she's hiding?"

"She's not going to find it," she said. "Not from you. You're better at this than you think."

"Not at the top of the list of things I'm trying to be good at. But it's something."

Ruby said nothing.

Fucking Ruby, man. Here with her. Out in public?

"Can I ask you something?" Mia said.

"You can ask."

Mia had rehearsed about nine ways into it. She'd rehearsed them at the gym and in bed and once out loud when she knew no one could hear. Every time it had sounded, when she got to the end of it, like asking for absolution, forgiveness. So she picked the shortest version.

"Does he tell you everything?"

Ruby looked at her over the cup.

"No," she said.

"Like what?"

Ruby smiled at her, almost a laugh.

"Oh," Mia nodded, understood. "How would you know? Right."

"I mean, I know enough to know that there are things he leaves out and he knows I know. Does that make sense? It sounds complicated and stupid, now that I'm saying it out loud."

"I think I get it."

Mia waited for more. There wasn't more. There was just Ruby, warm and completely unbothered.

Mia put a hand around her iced coffee to have something to do with it. The condensation had made a ring on the table and she smeared it with her thumb, and when she looked up Ruby was still looking at her, and had been the whole time.

"So the party," Mia said.

"The party."

They did the planning they'd met for. They actually did it, solid fifteen minutes of it.

They talked about guest counts and about which of Beth's friends couldn't be in a room together anymore, and Ruby pointed out that Beth would probably somehow sniff out any booking they made at any of her favorite restaurants, and she was funny about all of it in a dry, low way that made Mia keep laughing and imagining Ruby's hands on her.

"So not a restaurant, maybe?" Mia said.

"Not a restaurant."

"Her actual birthday's the seventeenth."

"Mm. A Friday."

"Right. So why not do it away," Mia said. "Do it somewhere... I don't know, like a getaway?"

Ruby put the phone down.

"Go on."

"There's that place they used to take us. Well, you used to, and my folks." Holy shit that's weird, she thought and moved on quickly on purpose. "With the cabins? Up past Newton Hollow. Birch, Birch-something. Lake thing. There was a lodge and there was a sorta DJ-ish music guy who was, honestly, pretty good?"

"Yeah, yeah, it's Birchwood, I think? You got it, I remember. Huh... That could work." Ruby sipped her second flat white. "And Beth used to love that place. Love!"

"Yeah, I know." Mia smiled, proud. "She still brings it up as a sorta nostalgia thing."

"Damn, OK, that could work."

"So that, then? Book the cabins, get everyone up there, she has no idea, and then it's not a party, it's a whole - "

"Weekend."

"Weekend." Mia said.

Ruby laughed at that, and picked the phone back up and started a new note, and Mia sat there with an entire flock of mockingbirds in her stomach, thinking holy shit, did she just make a getaway happen. With Jack and Ruby?

"But that's..." Ruby said. Leaning in a little, as if to not be overheard, but there was no one in the empty patio at Lonnie's. Dark clouds gathering to interrupt the sunny morning. Only these two. Mia leaned in too. "That doesn't sound like the kind of thing for a big crowd, does it?"

"Yeah, not exactly the kind of thing you do in, like, a big group..." Mia was so excited, she wondered if Ruby could see past the silly face she put on. Mia saw that they could all go away. It would be risky and stupid, and they'd probably not even get any alone time, but she wanted to do nothing more.

"Yeah..." Ruby mused. Mia knew Ruby was actually relieved to possibly have a plan for Beth's birthday that didn't involve having to wrangle a ton of people together.

"So it's almost like we have to keep it small?"

"It'd be almost weird not to."

Both of them making exaggerated villainous faces at each other then. Ruby was the first to break, submitting in laughter. Mia's face relaxed, smiling, looking over Ruby lean back, wondering then if Ruby knew just how hard of a time she was having trying to keep it together.

Ruby opened her eyes and her face changed into something a little more serious.

"Don't do that here." She said.

"Do what?" Mia asked.

"That look."

Mia's ears went hot.

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry." Ruby turned her cup another quarter turn. "Our eyes say plenty. Even when nothing else is happening. Actually, especially when nothing else is happening."

Mia felt the whole town go quiet around the table. She looked at the ring of condensation on the table instead. The clouds were getting darker. Wind picking up. The weather had turned completely.

"You know what?" Ruby interrupted the silence. "The spa on Vose is pretty much dead on weekdays."

"Oh?" Mia tried not to seem overly eager.

"You feel like getting out of the rain?"

"It's not r-"

A thunderclap. Both of their eyes went wide.

"How did you-" Mia started.

"I didn't!" Ruby said, grabbing the table, genuinely surprised, smile sneaking back in.

It started raining. A little at first, but in about 20 seconds it was like a monsoon.

"Are you a witch?" Mia asked.

"Fuck, I might be."

"So, what was it you were saying about a spa there?"

"A party planning committee retreat, I'm thinking," she had to almost yell to be heard over the rain now, looking at the threatening sky around them from underneath the awning. "Strictly professional, of course!"

"We have been working very hard!" Mia doing her best to mimic Ruby's matter-of-factness.

"A little steam?"

"Oof. A little schvitz?" Mia scrunching up her eyebrows to say 'don't mind if I do'.

Ruby chuckling at her jokes did something to Mia that felt so unfair.

~ * ~

Thursday, June 25, 2026. The Wellhouse Spa, Maplewood.
-- 11:20 am

"Wait! I don't have a swimsuit," Mia said in a loud whisper to Ruby, wringing out the end of her shirt in the lobby.

The awning had gotten them from Lonnie's cafe to Ruby's car mostly dry. The walk from the car to the spa's front door had drenched them in seconds. Mia struggled to remember the last time it had rained this bad.

"They sell them." Ruby was already at the desk. "Two, please. A medium and a small." Mia noticed she didn't look back at her to check her size.

The girl behind the desk didn't ask for a membership number, didn't ask for anything. She just pulled two sealed suits off the shelf.

"You come here a lot?" Mia said, once they were walking.

"Don't tell anyone."

Why did it seem like Ruby was always saying more than the thing she'd said? Why did Mia imagine cold, goose bumped skin under Ruby's soaked blouse as they walked to the locker room?

"Oh, would you look at this!" a lady from inside the locker room said, full of what seemed like forced enthusiasm.

"Mary, Jessa." Ruby replied, walking in, kisses on cheeks. "How's things?"

Mia knew them too. Their naked breasts touched her as they exchanged cheek kisses and pleasantries. Mary was her old classmate Ray's mother and Jessa had once renovated a house with her mother Joan before they ran out of money or something. Just one of Joan's numerous expensive attempts at finding herself.

"Oh, you know," Jessa sighed, putting on a show, "it's just such a shame, my bad ankle. I can't work, I can't jog. All I can do is soak and steam."

"A tragedy, truly." Ruby said.

"And what's your excuse?" Mary asked Ruby and Mia.

"Mia, how's your mother?" Jessa asked.

"She's good, thanks. I'll tell her you asked." Mia said. She wanted to melt into the locker and for something shiny to distract them.

"Jack's out with Beth, shopping for cars." Ruby replied to Mary. "We had some event planning to get done. Then we got soaked in the rain," she looked over at Mia. "Now we're avoiding pneumonia the only way we know how."

The ladies laughed.

Mia had to put her head in her purse behind the open locker door when she turned and noticed Ruby had already peeled off her wet blouse and bra and was busy gathering her hair in a ponytail. Her upper body exposed. And it was goose bumped, she had managed to notice.

OK, keep it together now, Mia told herself.

The locker room was tiled, smelled like eucalyptus and someone's expensive shampoo. Two rows of lockers, a bench down the middle.

"Mia, how's things with Nick?" Jessa asked.

"Who's Nick?" Mary said. Pulling on the top of her swimsuit. Mia had hoped they were on their way out.

"Oh, Nick's... You know, I think he's at UNC now, he went on a football scholarship."

"You guys not talking anymore?" Jessa was turning in the mirror, checking out her own ass.

"Nah, not really."

"Who's Nick?" Mary asked louder.

"Nick and Mia used to date," Ruby said. Turning to Mia after. "But that was, what? Like almost a year ago now?"

"Yep."

Mia didn't feel like retreading her private past in front of these strangers.

"That's a shame, you guys were so cute together!" Jessa said.

"How's the antiques game, J?" Ruby asked.

Mia wondered if Ruby had changed the topic on purpose.

As the small talk continued playing in the background, Mia was changing quickly, not looking around. Her clothes thrown in the locker, the fresh swimsuit on. Hers was a two-piece dark purple one, surprisingly cute and fit her well.

She turned around to see what Ruby's looked like, but she had gone somewhere. In the restroom, Mia figured.

"Rinse before the pool, please," a sign said, in a font that tried to be friendly. It was, actually, Mia thought. Good choice. The showers were the open kind, four heads on a tiled wall, matte glass separating the stalls.

Mia went in one of the stalls, pressing the button to start it. The warm water felt so nice and the noise gave her a reason to feel like she had some privacy.

"Whatcha doing?"

"Huh?" Mia pushed back her wet, heavy hair, opening one eye to find Ruby in front of her, holding her towel. "I'm showering."

Her swimsuit was very similar to Mia's, but a dark green color, looked almost suede, with a little shine to it. Classy. Fuck, Ruby could attend a masquerade ball in a barrel and still look classy.

"You shower before going swimming?" she asked.

"But the sign-" Mia laughed. "I mean, who am I to question a sign."

Ruby laughed.

"Let's go."

Mia took her towel off the hook and felt like a wet street dog next to Ruby.

The pool room opened up all at once past the showers - one large room, high ceilings where the only windows, the skylights, were streaked in rain.

An older man at the far end of the pool climbed out, toweled off, and was shuffling off.

"Frankie!"

"Ah, Mrs. Dauwalter - morning!" he stopped mid-shuffle, rubbing his red eyes, and they all shuffled toward each other to meet in the middle.

"This is Mia."

"Nice to make your acquaintance, miss. Frank."

"Hello, nice to meet you, Frank." Mia smiled.

"How's the hip?" Ruby asked.

"About as good as it's gonna get, I think. All according to age." He trailed off a bit and snapped back to Ruby as if he had owed her an apology for the indulgence. "Haven't seen you in a bit. Keeping busy, then?"

"No, I'm here every day. Trying to bump into you." Ruby was putting on a bit of a flirty act.

"Sure, sure." The old man laughed. "Tell Jack I said hi."

"Will do. When are you making the ribs again?"

"Whenever you want, dear. Sunday afternoon?"

"Make it Monday afternoon and I'll bring vinegar slaw and Yuengling?"

"That's a deal then!" Frank made a finger gun at Ruby and made a clicking sound. "It's been a pleasure, ladies."

"Nice to meet you, Frank!"

"Walk away slow, buddy, give us a view." Ruby said.

Mia suppressed a laugh, looking at Ruby. "You guys friends?"

"Yeah, kinda?" Ruby didn't seem sure. "No, yeah, we're friends at this point, I'd say. Weird."

"How'd that start, then?"

"About like this? He comes here to swim for exercise and we kept bumping into each other and I guess small talk has turned into something a little more? He lives alone, his kids live far away and I get the feeling he can use the company from time to time. Sometimes I go over there myself, sometimes with Jack."

"That's so sweet."

"Not entirely selfless. He cooks these incredible ribs - no idea how. And he's full of wild stories."

"Open invite?"

"For sure. Let's get a drink."

Mai Tai for Ruby, Mia got a Virgin Mojito.

From the little bar built into the far wall like a walk-in closet - one guy behind it fixing their drinks then - they could see a hallway with a bunch of dark glass doors, a hand-lettered sign by each one - FINNISH SAUNA, STEAM ROOM, INFRARED SAUNA, SALT ROOM.

They walked themselves into the pool. They didn't talk about Beth. They didn't talk about the party, or the getaway. Ruby told a story about a hot yoga class she'd walked out of after ten minutes because the instructor kept saying 'find your edge' and Mia laughed so hard she got chlorine water up her nose.

"Do you think those two suspected anything?" Mia asked. Meaning Jessa and... Mary, was it?

"They'll suspect something if you looked like you were hiding something."

"Did I?"

Ruby laughed, and shook her head.

"Maybe a little. I doubt they noticed. They're uhh... how would you say it nicely?"

"A little self-obsessed?"

"Bored and intellectually atrophied, I was going to say.."

Mia hoped Ruby's judgement didn't land on her like that. She felt like Ruby could probably see through any kind of bullshit anyone tried to feed her or themselves.

"And we have nothing to hide anyway, right?" Mia said. "Just two girls out on a leisurely spa day."

Ruby said nothing, just smiled, looking up at the skylight, rain flowing, looking to Mia like part of the decoration. Ruby's hands were stretched out to the sides, resting on the side of the pool. Mia was a few feet away in the round corner of it, doing effortless leg-lifts under the water.

"You living out your calisthenics dreams there?"

They both laughed. Again. Mia was surprised by how much they laughed. And relieved. She had fun with Ruby. And with her husband.

"Jack." Mia said.

"Yep?"

"He's got some..." Mia not wanting to be insensitive or seem nosy. "He's so sweet and calm usually."

"Right."

"But at the mixer thing..."

"Mhmm."

"Yeah. I just wanted to ask... I dunno, like, he's not usually like that, right?"

"No. Not on the outside, anyway."

"He's always seemed very composed." Mia sipped.

Ruby considered. "He is. But he..." Maybe she didn't have it all or didn't know how to say it? Mia was hanging on the edge of her imagined underwater seat.

"Look, the thing with Jack, to sorta simplify it so that this conversation wouldn't have to be an hour long, is that he's all the good things you think he is. And he's all the bad things a good man has to be. The problem, more or less, is that he's fucking terrified of the bad aspects and wants to pretend like they're not there."

"Mm." Mia looked down, thinking.

"Does that make sense?"

"Yeah, I think so." Mia answered. She wondered, Ruby having mapped out Jack like this. Did Jack know? And if it was so easy for Ruby to navigate everyone's psyches... It made Mia wonder how much of this whole situation had Ruby orchestrated herself? And why?

"Not to say it's all good." Ruby said. "His outbursts could land him in real trouble. They are rare, so there's that, but a guy like that." Ruby chewed on it. "I mean, look at Beth, right? Do you want to see your father do shit like that - as an overreaction?"

"My father wouldn't, but I see your point."

"Then again," Ruby said, dragging it out. She looked around for people without it looking like she was doing it. Except to Mia. She'd been doing plenty of that herself. "I'm not embarrassed to tell you that I find the darker side of my husband very sexy."

Mia smiled, looking at Ruby, knowing what she meant.

"It's hot, right?" Ruby said.

Mia laughed.

"I was nervous and scared for him at the mixer. But after, I kinda noticed my thoughts going back to it. Maybe the danger of it, maybe the... what is it? The contrast?"

"The good, the bad."

"Yeah!"

"He's an animal."

Mia took a deep breath, eyebrows up. "You can say that, yeah," as she took a sip.

"OK, sweetie," Ruby splashed a bit of water at Mia, playfully. "enough fantasizing about my husband, I'm right here."

"You want me to fantasize about you?" Mia said, looking very much away from Ruby.

"Do you?"

Mia breathed deeper, feeling her body. She wanted so bad to wrap herself around Ruby. Tell her to just shut up and take her. What would they do? She didn't know. She'd only been with guys. Fuck!

Mia dipped into the water. Swam a little lap and came back to rest on the edge, chest to the side of the pool now.

"I've been meaning to ask, how do you do that," Mia said. "The whole - " she gestured, vaguely, around. "Being fine. Making it look like nothing. Snapping in and out of it in a second the way you did in the closet."

Ruby considered the question longer than Mia had expected.

"Give it another twenty years." She took a drink from her Mai Tai.

"Pff, this fucking broad." Mia heard herself saying before she could catch and censor herself.

Ruby choked on her Mai Tai, the red-orange liquid splashing back on her lip. Both of them laughing then.

"You know," Ruby said after palming some pool water to her face to rinse away the cocktail, "I like this version of you."

"What version?"

"You keep surprising me, Mia."

Mia's stomach did a somersault. "You better not talk to me like that, Mrs. Dauwalter. I'm liable to let my eyes betray the nature of our relationship again." She did her best to keep it together and appear at least as funny as she was flustered.

"Oh? The nature of it?"

Mia put her plastic virgin Mojito on the edge of the pool and kicked off.

She did a small arc, coming back toward Ruby, stopping a few feet away. She didn't say anything. She looked around. The bar guy was on his phone. Frank had left. No one in the main room anywhere. Jessa and Mary somewhere in the saunas.

Ruby looking at her now. It seemed like she was no longer looking at Mia as the family friend or the party planning assistant. Ruby was breaking her own rules. Her eyes were.

But she must have known, like Mia did, that no one was watching. Right?

"What is it, sweetie?" Ruby asked. "The nature of our relationship."

Mia dipped into the water slowly, it rising to just under her nose. She tried not to giggle when it made her think of a hippo. She didn't want to ruin the mood. She had ruined plenty of charged moments with her stupid jokes before and she'd been on a good streak of not doing that lately.

Instead she stared at Ruby. Letting her eyes say what she didn't quite know how to put into words. And Ruby really fucking stared back at her. The attention felt so revealing on Mia's body, even underwater, the light broken, image distorted. She felt like she couldn't have a single thought just then, not one that wouldn't be shared with Ruby.

"You tell me." Mia came up just long enough to say it and dipped back down.

Ruby rested her elbows on the side of the pool. The bathing suit even darker now. Mia could see her nipples hard under it and she didn't try to hide her attention wandering down to them.

Click.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Ruby said, rolling her eyes.

"-m I supposed to give a damn about your downturn or whatever? He tells me Venice in the spring and then he's giving me some sob story about how he's getting squeezed or whatever."

Along with the sound of a glass door clicking open over one of those round latches, the lady background noise came back in full force as Mary and Jessa came out of one of the saunas or steam rooms behind the wall. They hadn't made it to the pool room yet.

"Eww, don't talk shop when I'm talking shopping, that's what I ALWAYS tell mine."

Mia laughed, watching Ruby get annoyed.

"Let's go." Ruby said.

"Where?"

"Where we won't be bothered." Ruby effortlessly pulled herself up to the edge of the pool, sitting on it now. "Unless you wanna stay here, keep pretending you're an alligator or whatever."

Mia felt like she might need to consult a priest to get Ruby out of her head. But not quite yet.

~ * ~

Thursday, June 25, 2026. The Wellhouse Spa, Maplewood.
-- 11:55 am

Ruby left the pool, hearing and seeing Jessa and Mary go to the bar. Mia following her. Those two seagulls won't come back to the saunas for a bit, they'll drink and be in the pool or hot tub.

Ruby picked the Finnish sauna. The least visited one, dark enough to blind anyone coming in for a few seconds, the extreme heat is disorienting and tiring, and it's definitely too much work for Jessa and Mary to endure.

"Oh wow," Mia said, as they walked through the dark glass door. "This is a hot one."

"It is that," she moved in behind her, closing the door, looking at Mia.

"Come here," Ruby said.

She took Mia by the hand, spinning her around to face her. She kissed her, not used to having to lean down to do it. Just as she remembered. Her lips tasted so sweet now, tongue still cold from the icy drink. An arousing contrast to the hot room.

"Mmm," Mia softly pushed against Ruby's chest, both breathing fast. "Isn't this too risky?"

"Do you want me to stop?"

"Fuck no." Mia pulled Ruby back down by her neck.

Ruby walked Mia back toward the seating. The planks hot to the touch, but skin adapting quickly to the shock.

They sat down, Mia on Ruby's left. Next to Ruby on the other side - a wooden bucket, water and a copper ladle in it. Meant for throwing on the hot rocks to create steam.

Ruby had a hold of Mia's face with one hand, her lower back with the other. Their tongues finding each other, Mia's feeling so... fuck... refreshing? Nourishing? Life-affirming? There were no words in Ruby's vocabulary for the things Mia did to her.

Mia then surprising her once more by sliding her hand under Ruby's top, grabbing her breast firmly.

Then Mia stopped the kissing, she shot the door a quick glance and then gave her full attention to Ruby's breasts. She pulled Ruby's top up and over, cupped them, from the bottom, from the side, admiring them.

"God, your breasts!"

"God, kid, your... everything!"

"He calls me kid too."

Silence. Ruby read the fear in Mia's eye. Their eyes had adjusted to see details in the darkened room now. And Mia had the look as if she'd just waved a piece of meat in front of a tiger, hoping then the animal would take it and not kill her instead.

"Does he make you cum?" Ruby said, already knowing the answer, no intention of killing Mia.

"Yes."

Ruby put her hand to Mia's lips, working them open, gentle. Mia opened her mouth, Ruby slid her middle and ring fingers in, noticing her own wedding ring for a change.

She used her other hand to slide under the front of Mia's bikini bottom, pulling it away from her abdomen a little, seeing inside the untanned areas not meant for anyone but herself and the most intimate of friends. Mia spread her legs a bit wider and Ruby put her slicked up fingers against Mia's pussy.

"Oh my god, Mrs. D."

The muscles on Mia's stomach twitched a little. Ruby wondered if that was true of all of her, body answering before her mind caught up.

"It must be so overwhelming to be you, sweetie."

Mia didn't open her eyes, she was breathing heavily, her head leaned over to Ruby's shoulder. Ruby giving her a kiss on the head, whispering to her as she gently rubbed Mia's soaked, slippery pussy.

"Your feelings are loud, I bet. Can you make sense of them?"

"Almost never." Mia said.

"How's this feel?" as she rubbed Mia's clit.

"Fuck."

"Does it feel wrong?"

"Yes."

"Do you like it?"

"Yes, Mrs. D."

"My husband is Mr. D., I'm Ruby. It's my hand you have between your legs, sweetie."

Mia grabbed Ruby's hand under the elbow. Not to stop it, but to almost hold on. As if it was a theme park ride and they're about to drop.

"Fuck, Ruby, I'm gonna--" Ruby felt Mia's body tense, her stomach pushing in and out.

Click.

The door.

Ruby told herself to focus.

She put her left hand down between Mia's legs, relieving her right hand to move, first using it to pull her bikini top back over her breasts, then to the bucket of water by her side. Ruby found the ladle by feel, and brought a full scoop of water down on the stones in one motion.

Mia grabbed Ruby's hand, pulled it away from her.

The invisible steam from the rocks blasted them.

Mia propped herself on her hands on the bench, leaning down, scooping her hair behind her ear, looking over at Ruby in what seemed like a mix of fear and desperation.

Ruby just looked at her, smiling. Mia's eyes had a hard time staying on one thing. They darted from Ruby, to her knees, to the person coming in.

The woman closed the door behind her, eyes squinted, putting out her towel on the bench on the other side of the room, laying down quickly, face to the wall. The hot steam pushing her there quicker. Well timed.

Mia grabbed Ruby's hand, tight. Like she had lost the control needed for measured touch. She pulled away the front of her bikini herself and moved Ruby's fingers back down there.

She had gone rigid, right at the edge of orgasm, a tremor low in her thighs.

Ruby moved her fingers. Rubbing Mia's clit. The woman lay there just a few feet away.

There were sighs in the room. Perfectly justified. Nothing odd. Nothing suspicious at all, as Mia came, holding onto Ruby's arm with both hands, as if to stay afloat out at sea. Mia pressed her mouth against Ruby's shoulder to stop, it seemed, from screaming or moaning.

Mia's shaking subsided in time.

She looked over at the lady. Then back at Ruby. She mouthed a big, slow WHAT THE FUCK? at her and Ruby did all she could to stop herself from laughing out loud.

Both of them were out of breath, there was nothing to prepare you for heat and humidity like this.

Ruby removed her hand from between Mia's legs. She sucked her middle finger clean. Mia smiling at her, they exchanged a quick, quiet kiss.

"Welp, alrighty. I gotta get myself in the cold plunge, this is too rich for my blood." Ruby said and got up.

"Oof, yeah," Mia said. With a theatric sigh. "Same."

Out into the little hallway then, the cold plunge more or less a hot-tub-sized hole in the ground, just much deeper.

Ruby lowered herself in slowly, long steady breath out, goosebumps, hard nipples.

Mia stood over her, sweat dripping, looking down.

"When are Jack and Beth back?"