Chapter 2
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From the second Ruby had seated herself, Bucky had been fighting the itch to lean forward and talk to her. However, this wasn’t the Dance Hall, and she wasn’t alone. Beside Ruby were who Bucky assumed to be her siblings – two sisters and a brother – and then her parents at the very end of the pew. Even from just the back of them, Bucky could tell that they weren’t the kind of family that would live near him. No, Ruby was an uptown girl. Her parents gave that away, so why were they sitting in a Church with the majority of Brooklyn’s working class? Bucky didn’t know. He didn’t have a damn clue why a family such as hers would be here, unless they had been visiting Brooklyn and didn’t like to miss Church. It wasn’t uncommon for folks from New York to take trips to come to Coney Island, so that must have been what they were doing. Ruby was visiting. She didn’t live near where to he lived. There wasn’t a chance of that. As he looked at her, studying those blonde curls, he received a sharp jab to his ribs.
“Ow! What the hell?” Bucky hissed at Steve.
“You’re gonna fall off your seat, Buck,” Steve whispered back to him. It was only then that Bucky realised he had been slowly edging forwards to Ruby. Shuffling back, he sunk down in the pew again, keeping his voice low so he didn’t attract her attention. Unfortunately, Steve Rogers was no fool. He noticed Bucky staring at the girl and turned to him, raising an eyebrow.
“Don’t tell me that you’re gonna hit on a dame while we’re at Church.”
When he didn’t get a response, Bucky’s ears were met with a very harsh hiss of his name, forcing him to roll his eyes at his best friend.
“Relax, Steve. I ain’t gonna ask her out.”
“That counts when we get outside, y’know. You can’t hit on a girl in front of her family.”
“I’m not gonna!” Bucky hissed back. Ruby turned her head to the side and Bucky took a deep inhale of air, but luckily she didn’t turn to face him. She had involved herself in a conversation with both of the blonde girls next to her. Breathing out a sigh of relief, Bucky looked at Steve again. It was then that Steve’s eyebrows knitted together, gesturing to the pew in front of them.
“You know that girl?”
“Keep your voice down, huh?” Bucky grumbled, then nodded. “Kinda. Met her the other night.”
“And what, she turned you down?”
Bucky pointedly looked away from Steve, which made the smaller man’s eyes widen in shock. Of all the girls that Bucky had ever asked on a date, he had never known one of them to say no. Bucky just had a way with girls that other boys their age didn’t. He had always been like that, ever since their days at high school. Steve had known him had a handful of steady girlfriends, but none seemed to be the one that Bucky was looking for. Steve had always thought him too hard to pull into a decent relationship. Bucky kept the girls he went on dates with as friends rather than singled one out to make her his girl. He enjoyed having options, so to speak. Steve was lucky if just one girl met his eyes accidentally, but he could never have several just waiting for him to take them on a date like Bucky could with just one flash of his grin. That’s who Bucky was. He was a ‘Charmer’, as Sarah had always said.
“What’d you do to her?”
“What?” Bucky raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms.
“What did you do to her to make her turn you down?”
“I didn’t do anythin’ to her. I asked her to dance and she said no.”
“Come on, Buck. Girls don’t just… Do that to you.”
“This one does.”
“Tell me what happened. I know you aren’t sayin’ everythin’.”
“Some guy was all over her, so I went over to tell him that he ain’t got no business with her, and that she was with me. Then I asked her to dance when he’d gone, and she said no because I’d already danced with Connie.”
“Ain’t that a good thing, then?” Steve frowned. “I mean, you woulda upset Connie if you’d have gone dancin’ with that girl instead.”
“That’s why she turned me down. She told me to go back to Connie anyways, and then she left.”
“She looks too upperclass for us anyway, Buck. I bet she woulda expected you to take her somewhere real nice.”
“Yeah, yeah…” Bucky grumbled. Steve had a point. Steve always had a point, and Bucky supposed that it was a good thing that Ruby had told Bucky to go back to dancing with Connie, but that didn’t mean he was happy about it.
“Ain’t it ironic?”
“You still talkin’ about it?”
“You got girls all over Brooklyn fallin’ around ya, and the one that you actually wanna take on a date won’t give ya the time of day.”
“How about you shut up, huh?”
Bucky’s tone hadn’t been clipped, but it was enough to silence Steve anyway. Well, Bucky’s tone and the fact that the Church had begun to quieten, drawing everyone’s eyes forward and stopping their conversations. Leaning his head back against the hard wood of the pew, Bucky drew in a deep breath and tried to prepare himself. Boy, was it going to be a long service.
By the time the service came to an end, Bucky had only almost fallen asleep once. It wasn’t necessarily that he was ignorant, but it was more of a matter of that religion wasn’t as big of a concern in his life as it was in Steve’s, and that was okay with him. He didn’t call Steve out on it, and Steve didn’t call him out on it. That’s just how the two of them worked. Of course, Bucky would have received a clip around the head from his father if he had almost nodded off sitting next to him, so in Bucky’s eyes, it was an all-around good service. That was, until they were standing outside and Bucky turned to the Church doors to see Ruby walking out with one of her sisters. Her eyes caught his and a pink tinge erupted on her face at the same moment he started to scratch the back of his neck. The younger blonde next to her looked Bucky’s way too, then began to smile and talk rapidly to her sister.
“Shit,” Bucky murmured to Steve, nudging his friend. Steve looked at Bucky and then followed his gaze until he saw Ruby too, and the tops of his ears turned red. But it wasn’t Steve’s reaction or even Ruby’s blush that made Bucky’s eyes widen. It was that her little sister waved at him, then made her way over to him as if they knew each other. Steve excused himself the moment the smaller blonde had started to move, leaving Bucky alone. Ruby tried to catch her, but she slipped her arm out of her sister’s hold and only stopped moving when she was in front of Bucky, looking up at him. She weighed him up for all of a few moments, until she was smiling at him.
“Did you ask Ruby to dance?”
“Pearl!” Ruby’s embarrassed tone found its way to Bucky, but he didn’t stop looking down at her sister. Shrugging, he winked at her.
“Maybe. How’d you know about that, huh? I didn’t see you there. I woulda remembered seein’ a pretty girl like you.”
“Ruby told me when she came home,” Pearl said, very-matter-of-factly. “And I’m not old enough to go.”
“She did? Did she tell you what she said to me?”
“She said no because you were already dancing with a girl. But –”
Ruby’s hand flew very suddenly over her little sister’s mouth, pulling her back. Bucky watched as Pearl’s eyebrows knitted into a frown, grumbling under her sister’s pale hand.
“You say somethin’ that bad about me that your sister ain’t allowed to repeat it?”
Instead of getting an answer, Bucky got a change of conversation topic.
“I didn’t know that you lived around this area.”
Bucky drew back at her words, almost as though she had insulted him. He knew he didn’t live in the best part of Brooklyn, but he didn’t live in the worse part, either. There were far poorer areas closer to where Bucky worked. Whether she was looking down at him simply because he had turned up at this particular Church or not seemed to rile him far more than it should have.
“Born and bred right here in Brooklyn. I could say the same for you, anyways. What’s a girl like you doin’ slummin’ it down here?”
“We live here now,” by now, Pearl had gotten free of her sister’s grasp, and was back closer to Bucky than she was Ruby. “We just moved in on Monday.”
“Is that right? What happened to you guys?”
“That’s not any of your business,” Ruby’s voice was curt and clipped, to which Bucky raised his hands in forfeit.
“I wasn’t lookin’ for no argument. You guys just don’t look like the kinda family that’d move to Brooklyn without a good reason to.”
“Well now we’re here, and if you’ll excuse us, we –”
“James!”
Bucky winced as he turned around to face his father, seeing him with Becca, Steve and Sarah. He nodded to his father, gesturing for them to go forward and he would catch up. Once his father had taken a few steps, Bucky turned back around to see Ruby raise an eyebrow at him, crossing her arms. Pearl had disappeared, leaving him alone with the blonde.
“You said your name was –”
“It is.” Bucky cut her off, knowing exactly what she was going to say.
“So why is your father calling you James?”
“That’s my name too.”
Meeting a serious expression, Bucky sighed heavily and stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets.
“Bucky’s just a nickname. My name’s James Buchanan Barnes. Named after the President, just like my Pop wanted. I don’t like bein’ called James.”
“No,” Ruby shook her head lightly, making her blonde curls fall about in a way that made Bucky want to touch them. “James doesn’t suit you.”
“Well thanks, doll.” His voice turned flat, tugging his hands from his pockets.
“I’m not a doll.” Ruby’s voice fell flat.
“You don’t like gettin’ called that? A lotta girls do.”
“I’m not like the other girls that you know.”
“No, you ain’t.”
Bucky cast a glance over his shoulder to see his family and Steve’s gone, knowing full well that they would at least be halfway home by now. Turning around, he could see Ruby’s parents talking with a few of the other people that had come out of Church, along with her siblings standing close to them. Against his better judgement, he took a step back toward her.
“If you won’t dance with me, can I take you out on a date? Like, I dunno, I bet you got a curfew, ain’t ya? I could take you for –”
“No.” Her tone was clipped, and she took a step back from him for his step forward. “I’m not going on a date with you.”
“Why not?”
“You’re not the kind of boy I’d go on a date with.”
Even though he agreed with that – she was far too good for him, and he had known it since he had seen her at the Dance Hall – it still didn’t stop the drop in his expression. Nice girls didn’t go on dates with guys like him. That was the way it was.
“Yeah, I guess not. Look, whatever, yeah? Forget I asked.” Bucky turned on his heel abruptly, waving his hand over his shoulder to her. “See ya around, Ruby.”
“Goodbye…”
Ruby’s voice was quiet, watching him as he walked away. That defeated wave of his hand over his shoulder told her more than she needed to know. He was disappointed that she had turned him down again, but there wasn’t a possibility that she could agree to a date with him. She didn’t know this boy. She didn’t know whether he was the kind of boy that she could bring home to her parents. All she had to go on was what the girls from work that she had been out with on Thursday night told her. Bucky Barnes was a name well-known to girls all over Brooklyn, it seemed. He took girls on dates for fun, and he was skilled in knowing what a girl wanted. That had darkened her cheeks immediately from Andrea’s tone when she had said been told, and then the point had been confirmed by two of the other girls. Bucky Barnes didn’t seem like the type of boy that wanted a steady girlfriend. Bucky Barnes seemed like the type of boy who only wanted a girl to have a bit of fun with, then he would find a new one to take on a date. What Ruby found the most ridiculous of all to believe was that the girls enjoyed it. They enjoyed knowing that one day, maybe Bucky would take them back out on a date again. After all, he had taken Connie on eight, and she had thoroughly enjoyed every single one of them. As the dark-haired boy disappeared around the street corner, Ruby felt an insistent tug on the sleeve of her coat.
"Well? Did you tell him?”
“Did I tell him what?” Ruby asked the smaller blonde, watching Pearl roll her eyes.
“That you think he’s handsome.”
“I don’t think that.”
“Yes you do! I heard you telling Em at breakfast on Friday!”
“You shouldn’t be listening to conversations that you’re not involved in.”
"Well I think he’s handsome,” Pearl said, crossing her arms as she looked up at her sister. Ruby imitated her pose, until she then pinched the tip of Pearl’s nose and made her giggle.
“Did he ask you to go dancing with him?”
“I don’t think he wants me to dance with him anymore, Pearl.”
“Is that because you said no again?”
“When you’re older, you’ll understand.”
“I don’t want to understand when I’m older, I want to understand now! Why did you tell him no again?”
“Because –”
“Girls, come along. If we set off now, we’ll be able to get that ice cream we talked about before it closes.”
That ended the conversation between the two quick enough. Within moments, Pearl was hanging onto her father’s hand, her other sister and her mother were walking in the middle, and Ruby had joined the back to walk in line with her brother. Even though it was pointless, she still cast another glance over her shoulder to see if Bucky had come back. Sighing when she didn’t see the sight of a boy wearing a grey shirt and suspenders, she took to linking arms with her brother instead.
The words of her unfinished sentence rocked around her head as they walked, making her bite her bottom lip. She had told Bucky ‘no’ for a very specific reason. Bucky seemed like the kind of boy that girls her age fell hopelessly in love with, and Bucky also seemed like the kind of boy that wouldn’t care about breaking her heart. She had known too many boys that had ‘good’ intentions, and then had broken her heart. That was a game she no longer wanted to play in this new place. Those were risks she refused to take after her last—. No. She wasn’t even going to finish that thought. She wanted a fresh start, and saying no to a boy like Bucky Barnes was going to give her that.
If the truth was to be told, Bucky hadn’t quite gotten over being turned down again by Ruby even when they had reached Sarah’s home. It had become a tradition that every Sunday, they would pick up groceries and then throw together what little amount of a Roast Dinner they could at Sarah’s. It had all started after Bucky’s mother had passed, as before that, Sarah and Steve came to the Barnes household instead. Now the job fell to Sarah, but the four of them pitched in where they could. As they settled down to dinner – it was Bucky’s turn to say Grace, which ended up being no more than a few mumbled words until ‘Amen’ – he found himself pushing food around his plate rather than eating it, which set Sarah off into a wave of panic. Regardless of him reassuring her that he was fine, she still watched until he had cleared his entire plate of his dinner. His loss of appetite wasn’t the best of things to be experiencing, especially with the workload at the docks starting to increase now that they were coming into the summer months. Bucky needed all the strength he could get for all the lifting and extra shifts that he would be working.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Sarah had asked him more than once, but Bucky couldn’t justify his reason for his childlike sulk.
“He’s just sorry he has to pull a double shift tomorrow, Ma,” Steve cut in. “He’s gotta cut out some of his primpin’ time in the mornin’ to get to work on time.”
“Aw, shut up, Steve!”
“Bucky.” His father shot him a warning glare about his language, to which Sarah started to shake her head.
“Please, George. He wouldn’t be Bucky without his language.”
“You should hear him when he comes home from the Dance Hall,” Becca looked at Sarah seriously, talking in a loud whisper. “He cusses, sometimes.”
“I do not.”
“Yeah you do! I heard you!”
“Keep makin’ up stuff and I ain’t gonna help you with your homework no more.”
“Steve will help me.”
“No he won’t. Will ya, Steve?”
“She ain’t done nothin’ wrong to me,” Steve grinned at Becca, earning a grin in return. Bucky pretended to hit his hand down on the table, chuckling.
“Well shucks. My best friend and my own sister turnin’ against me. What do you think about that, Mrs. Rogers?”
“How many times do you have to be told to call me Sarah, Bucky? Or am I going to have to start calling you James until you understand that?”
“Not you too!” Bucky groaned, leaning back in his chair. Even George Barnes smiled at the comment from Sarah, giving a shrug that imitated Bucky’s perfectly, even down to the expression on his face.
"You don’t argue with a lady.”
“Yeah, yeah…” He tilted his head back, looking up at the ceiling instead. Oddly enough, that made him think of Ruby even more, to the point where he almost groaned out-loud. Luckily, he caught himself and sat back up straight, looking at where Sarah and George had now involved themselves in conversation. That was Becca’s, Steve’s and Bucky’s cue to leave the table and go to the sitting room, where all three of them collapsed down onto Steve’s tatty furniture.
“Why don’t you call Sarah her name around Pop?” Becca asked, looking over at her brother.
“Ain’t polite. I call her Sarah all the time when Pop ain’t here.”
“But I call her Sarah.”
“Yeah, but Steve never called our Ma by her first name. Girls don’t have to go by the same rule.” Bucky waved his hand absentmindedly to her. “Like you wouldn’t ever call Virginia’s Pop by his first name, but I bet you call her Ma by hers.”
“They’re Mr. and Mrs. Springer.”
“Ain’t you just a little Angel?”
“Shut up!” Becca scowled at Bucky, making Steve chuckle. “I bet you’ve never even had to call somebody else’s parents Mr. and Mrs.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Betty said that you took her sister Cathy out on a date, but you wouldn’t go to the door and pick her up. Do you do that to every girl you take out?”
“That ain’t a question you should be askin’, Bec.” Bucky frowned at his sister, sitting up straighter in the chair. “Betty shouldn’t be tellin’ you anythin’ about what her sister said.”
“All the girls at school talk about you, Bucky. They’re waiting to be old enough for you to take them on a date. You’re gonna have a wife before then, aren’t you? You know what dad said.”
“Pop can say what he wants,” but with his father in the next room, Bucky’s voice had dropped to a mumble. “I ain’t found a girl I wanna settle down with. Drop it.”
Fortunately, she did. Becca’s mouth closed and there was a moment of awkward silence before Steve asked them if they wanted to play one of the old boardgames he had lying around. A mumbled yes from both Becca and Bucky was his response, and so Steve set to getting the game ready for the three of them.
Bucky rubbed his forehead as he watched, slouching back in the chair again. Becca’s words had triggered something in him. There were only two sets of parents he had met in his entire dating life, and even then, he hadn’t known those girls for much longer. It didn’t bother him, but now his little sister was beginning to notice, and that’s not what he wanted. He didn’t even want to think about the conversations-turned-arguments that he had had with his father over the matter, either. Bucky shook his head, pushing the thoughts away. He wasn’t going to deal with this again. Not when the threat was growing ever closer of the one thing his father kept telling him was going to be the good thing in his life. He couldn’t think about that right now. Trying to lighten his mood, Bucky turned his head to the side and rolled his eyes at Steve, wearing a playful kind of grin.
“Snakes and Ladders again, bud?”
It wasn’t late when they got home from Steve’s, but it was late enough that Bucky had to head straight up to his room rather than go out. His shift at the docks began at five AM sharp, and if he was late, he ran the risk of getting fired. He couldn’t do that, especially with the shipments starting to come in bulk now that Summer was approaching. He needed the money, because when Winter came, his shifts fell short and he would have to pick up work where he could get it. Fortunately this year, the jobs wouldn’t be as dire. He was now twenty-one, and would be able to find bar work somewhere.
As he changed out of his Sunday clothes and into an old sleeveless undershirt – and no pyjama bottoms, Bucky preferred to sleep in his underwear – Bucky’s mind went to Ruby. He cursed under his breath, falling into bed the minute he was changed. How could one girl get under his skin like she had? There were hundreds of girls in Brooklyn, just waiting to be taken out. Yet, he was still thinking about the one girl that didn’t want to go. More specifically, the one girl that didn’t want to go out with him. He wasn’t a bad guy, he decided. He worked hard, he never got drunk, he was always polite when it was needed, and he wasn’t stupid either. He might have dropped out of school, but Bucky knew that he wasn’t as dumb as his looks might have made him seem, so what was her problem with him?
“Snap outta it, Buck. A dame like that ain’t gonna fall for a guy like you.”
His voice was as blunt as he needed his thoughts to be. Slipping under the thin sheets, he sighed against his pillow.
She wasn’t going to fall for a guy like him, and that was that.