Ruby's

Ruby’s is a bar in Fairfield that functions as a refuge, a social hub, and the setting for Colton and Marcel’s first meeting. Its significance lies in the difference between what the room permits and what its regulars are enduring outside it: Colton can sit there without being made to drink, while Marcel can enter a place where his blindness is accommodated and where a community has formed around him. Ruby’s practical kindness makes the bar a site of welcome, but not an escape from conflict; it is also where Brad is eventually ordered to leave.

A refuge for Colton

Colton is technically allowed into Ruby’s, although Ruby will not let him drink, no matter how much he tries to charm her. She knows that he comes not simply for alcohol but to feel, for a while, like someone other than the good Mormon boy he is expected to be. At the bar he can approach a life he has been taught to fear without having to pretend that the fear has already disappeared. He wants to stop being afraid and to become brave enough to live as himself, but the distance between wanting that confidence and possessing it remains palpable.

Ruby’s welcome takes a particular form: a Shirley Temple. Colton hates the drink’s sticky sweetness and fake cherries, yet he associates it with the night he first ran from Ted House. He had been in Fairfield for only three weeks, and was overwhelmed by the fear that one good thing would be taken from him because he could not control himself. Ruby made the drink and called Will, who was closing Masala nearby. Instead of being thrown out or locked away, Colton was invited into the kitchen to make gulab jamun with Will. They talked about everything and nothing without forcing a discussion of what was wrong or how Colton was settling in.

Sage collected Colton later, and Colton spent a week braced for punishment before realizing that he had been given a pass. He ran away four more times, always returning to Ruby’s for the same sweet drink and an hour in Will’s kitchen before going back. The welcome was not an unconditional exemption from consequences: Colton was not given a pass every time. But he was not hurt, either. His memory of Sage’s disappointed expression—almost worse to him than the camp’s electrodes, which scarred his thighs and damaged his nerves—shows how the refuge’s gentleness coexists with his continuing trauma and fear of failing those who care for him.

When Colton later returns to Ruby’s, the bar is still a place where he can arrive without being required to explain himself immediately. Ruby is behind the counter with a clipboard when he walks in; she knows why he seeks the bar and offers him the space to sit. On a Tuesday night she points out a new regular across the room. Colton finds himself unable to look away from the stranger, then panics when their eyes meet. Ruby’s is where his longing becomes an action: after she tells him the encounter looks promising, he decides that the worst outcome would be rejection and gets up to approach the man.

Marcel’s familiarity and Fairfield community

Marcel, too, has a history with Ruby’s, though the room presents a different challenge for him. When he enters alone, the bar’s overwhelming darkness makes him totally blind. He normally avoids places like that when he has no one with him, but Ruby’s is among the few places where he feels comfortable. The contrast is significant: the lighting could make the space difficult to navigate, yet familiarity and the people there make it feel safer than many places designed around sighted expectations.

Sam first introduced Marcel to the bar after Marcel had taught a Thursday evening gym class with Wyatt, a blind man. Sam’s wider circle included Sam’s quiet, shy fiancé, Wyatt’s husband Mat, who had a nervous stammer, and a group of tattoo artists whose kindness had impressed Marcel. Marcel’s parents and brother were good people, but the love and loyalty he encountered among his Fairfield friends felt different. Brad hated those friends, a hostility Marcel later recognized as an early warning sign that the relationship was deteriorating.

The bar adapts to Marcel without turning that accommodation into a spectacle. Staff who know him bring a braille menu; those who work there full-time have eventually stopped bringing one because they know his routine. Ruby recognizes him by his usual order and asks if he wants to talk. On an evening when Marcel is distressed about his choices and the possibility of losing what he has built in Fairfield, he asks instead for wings. Ruby supplies them, along with a gin and tonic. The meal offers no solution to the pressure he faces, but the exchange gives his distress a familiar setting and leaves him free to decide whether to speak.

The meeting of Colton and Marcel

Ruby’s brings Colton and Marcel into the same room at a moment when each is lonely in a different way. Colton is drawn to the stranger Ruby has identified as a new regular, while Marcel is sitting alone, thinking that the evening has been wasted and that Ruby, like everyone else, has written him off. Marcel does not notice Colton until the younger man leans into his space and accuses him of staring. The opening is teasing and uncertain: Marcel reads a desperation in Colton’s voice and responds by drawing him in, first letting him think he has been turned away, then promising an unforgettable night.

For Colton, approaching Marcel is tied to a specific private burden. He has been thinking of virginity as a word hanging over him, in capital letters, and believes that even rejection would be familiar enough to bear. He pushes his drink away, straightens his shirt, and crosses the room despite feeling far from brave. The flour on his shirt and in the crook of his elbow, left from making challah that morning, remains with him as he approaches. Ruby’s is not just the place where desire first appears; it is where Colton tests whether he can act on desire while still feeling awkward and afraid.

Marcel’s response is shaped by his own sense of exposure and isolation. He is tired of feeling cast out, and the choice before him seems stark: accept Brad’s condescending offer or try to make a life in Fairfield independently, without the safety net he had previously relied on. He has money, time, and a community that could help if he asked, but he does not want to be alone. When Colton approaches, Marcel is intrigued by the younger man’s desperation, even while registering that he sounds almost too young for Marcel to consider. Their encounter begins within that tension between attraction and uncertainty rather than with either man already secure in what comes next.

A social room with boundaries

The bar’s welcome does not mean that Ruby permits every kind of behavior. At a gathering of friends, Colton arrives to find James and Rowan together, Derek and Sam nearby, food on the table, and beer being shared. Ruby notices Colton’s long day and teases him about the flour in his hair. Marcel sits beside him and checks whether he is all right before joining the others; Colton admits that the day has been difficult and tries to hold onto a little time with Marcel. Ruby’s familiar banter, the friends’ gathering, and Marcel’s attention make the bar an everyday setting for care rather than a formal service space.

That boundary becomes forceful when Brad confronts Marcel and Colton at Ruby’s. After Brad insults Marcel and makes a degrading accusation about Colton, Ruby leans across the bar and identifies herself as the owner. She orders Brad out, then makes clear she will call the police if he refuses. Her intervention protects the people Brad is targeting and establishes that the bar’s hospitality is not neutral toward harassment. Ruby’s is a refuge because it offers welcome, but it remains a place governed by Ruby’s judgment about who may stay.

Narrative significance

Across Colton’s recurring visits and Marcel’s established place in the room, Ruby’s gathers together several kinds of belonging. Colton can return after running from Ted House without being reduced to his mistakes; Marcel can rely on a braille menu, familiar staff, and friends whose loyalty contrasts with Brad’s contempt. The bar does not erase the barriers each man faces: Colton still carries the effects of religious rejection and abuse, and Marcel still confronts loneliness, blindness, and the challenge of making an independent life. Instead, Ruby’s offers concrete, repeated forms of recognition—a drink made to order, a familiar greeting, a place to sit, a friend called for help, or an aggressor told to leave.

The setting’s role in their relationship is similarly grounded in ordinary details rather than an idealized refuge. Colton approaches Marcel with flour still on him and a hated sweet drink left behind; Marcel, who had been expecting another wasted evening, chooses to engage. The bar makes room for both the hesitation and the risk of that first contact. In this way, Ruby’s becomes one of the novel’s clearest places where private vulnerability can turn into connection, because the welcome it offers is practical, repeated, and backed by boundaries.