The List

by Melanie Jacobson

  I fumbled my phone out and decided to give Ryder five more minutes to make an appearance before bagging the whole idea as stupid and grabbing a Jamba on my way home. I scanned the crowd once more, noticing all the couples walking hand in hand. Somehow, without me noticing, Matt and I had become one of them, wandering up and down the pier a couple of times a week, holding hands and finishing off a smoothie or watching the surfers. I thought about how easy it felt to just be with him and decided that I had lucked out in spite of myself. And The List.

  Nothing I attempted to cross off The List had gone quite as planned this summer. Learning to surf was supposed to be a been-there-done-that kind of item, but being out on the waves had become the best reason to get up in the morning. I couldn’t imagine not coming back again and again to face the day from my surfboard. Karaoke had swung wildly the other way toward total humiliation, although the horrible and hilarious duet with Matt had lessened the sting somewhat. Making sushi had inadvertently outed Matt and I as a couple, and skydiving had somehow become a metaphor for the relationship that was only supposed to be a fling.

  Even this hello, good-bye date proved how far afield The List had strayed. I had intended to find someone to date when I went back to school. Instead, I made a new friend who had led me to see Matt more clearly. Everything kept coming back to Matt.

  Although Matt hadn’t asked where I was tonight, had even said he didn’t want to know, I felt bad sitting there waiting for Ryder to show up. A quick glance at my phone showed that he had passed the five minutes late mark. I made a split decision and pulled up the keyboard screen on my iPhone, then composed an e-mail to Ryder. I’m sorry I missed you. I waited a few minutes but realized that as much fun as I had talking to you, it would feel weird to be with you and not Matt. I’m going to go find him. I hope you find what you’re looking for with LDS Lookup. Thanks for all the advice. I hit Send and started to slip my phone back in my purse when the wallpaper caught my eye. It was a picture of all my nieces and nephews squished into a cute pile in front of my parents’ Christmas tree. Maybe I would be one of those drippy girls who puts up a picture of herself and her man instead. Or better yet, a picture of Matt on his surfboard. Oh, yeah.

  Almost like I conjured him, he spoke my name. Startled, I turned to find him standing on the terrace above me, his hands shoved in his jeans pocket.

  “Matt! What are you doing here?”

  He took the large step down to stand beside me. “I’m here to see you.”

  “How did you know I was here?” I asked. I waved my phone at him. “Did you install a tracker in here?”

  He sighed. “I didn’t need one. I had your IM.”

  “What IM? What are you—” I stopped, stunned.

  “What’s your middle name, Ashley Barrett?” he asked quietly.

  “Kaye,” I answered, dazed.

  “Mine’s Ryder.”

  Chapter 25

  Instead of stretching or compressing, time just . . . stopped. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t blink. I just stood, frozen and uncomprehending.

  My heart beat a few times and then everything sped up to normal. The noise of the ocean and the people on the pier overhead filtered in and I drew my first deep breath since Matt had said the name Ryder.

  “Ashley? Are you okay?” he asked, his eyes full of concern. That made me angry. There should be something different in his face, like guilt or misery.

  “I’m fan-freaking-tastic,” I snapped.

  He nodded. “You’re mad.”

  “You’re a genius.”

  He winced. “I’m a jerk.”

  “Yes.” And I saw the first flash of misery ripple over his face. It made me even angrier. Turned out I didn’t want to see misery after all; it implied he had a right to feel bad for himself. He didn’t.

  I did. I didn’t want him appropriating any of my emotions. “Quit looking like I kicked your puppy,” I said, biting out each word.

  “Can I explain?”

  “I don’t even know what’s going on here. Except you’re Ryder. And I don’t know how. Or why.”

  “It was an accident.”

  I felt pressure building in my temples. “An accident? Falling off the pier is an accident. Wiping out on your surfboard is an accident. Assuming a fake Internet ID is deliberate and twisted.”

  “You make it sound like I’m some kind of sick Internet predator. I’m—”

  “Not far off. You’re not far off at all, because that’s exactly what I think.”

  “Ashley,” he said, reaching toward me.

  “You are completely misreading me if you think I want to be touched right now, so let me spell it out for you. Do not come near me.”

  He dropped his hand. “Okay.” He backed up a couple of steps and sat down on the edge of the terrace. “I’m going to talk. I hope you’ll listen. Anything you want to know, I’ll tell you. But I want to start with this.” Looking up into my eyes, he said, “I never, ever played you.”

  I backed up a few more steps and turned so I could watch the waves, focusing on the rhythmic swells. I couldn’t think straight, half-formed questions tripping to the tip of my tongue and then fading before I could ask them, replaced by more unasked questions that washed away in new tides of hurt and confusion.

  “I told you stuff,” I said, latching on to that thought. “Or Ryder. I told Ryder stuff that you weren’t supposed to know.”

  “I know,” he mumbled.

  “Then how can you say you never played me when you had an inside track on everything I was thinking and feeling because you were lying?”

  He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”

  I whipped around. “Then how was it supposed to happen?” I asked. “What sick plan did you have in mind when you asked me questions about who I was dating and how I felt?”

  “When I found your profile, I didn’t know you very well yet, Ashley. You do a great job of keeping people at a distance. I was already pretty interested in you and I thought it might give me a chance to get to know you better than you were letting me get to know you in person.”

  “What are you talking about, Matt? We’ve hung out constantly this summer, and we’ve talked for hours and hours and hours. What were you trying to get to know?”

  “I know we talked. It was just . . . small talk for a long time. Anytime I tried to dig a little deeper with you, you blew me off with a joke. And I didn’t go out of my way to show much depth either because I didn’t want to blow the image you had of me and risk you walking away.”

  I stared at him, stone-faced. “What image was that? The one where you seemed like an honest, straight-up guy? Yeah, that’s definitely blown.”

  “No, the image all the summer girls get. It happens every year, Ashley. We get a new crop of faces in May when BYU lets out and everyone comes home. They don’t like the small singles wards in their home stakes so they drift to Beachside for the summer. And I don’t date those girls because they’re not looking for anything serious. But I am, and I hang back. That somehow gets taken as a challenge, and suddenly I’m tripping over girls.”

  I glared at him. “Humble, much?”

  He blew out an exasperated breath. “I’m not bragging. It’s the truth. It’s happened every year since my mission. I think I’m supposed to be some kind of summer surfer trophy they get to add to their collection, but that’s not what I want. So I stay quiet. I’ve always stayed quiet and tried to keep a low profile. It somehow makes the attention worse.”

  “Poor baby,” I said.

  “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen guys do the same thing to you. It’s stupid,” he said. “Not because you aren’t worth it,” he added when my eyebrows shot up. “But they’re just hanging around you because you’re hot. They don’t know you. Doesn’t that ever bother you?”

  I ignored the question. After a beat, he went on. “I could tell right away you were different. Even though I noticed you the fi
rst week you showed up, I just figured you for one of the summertime honeys. But I watched you. You did your own thing from day one, you know? You don’t dress the same or act the same as other girls. You didn’t go to every single activity and sit around giggling with Celia. And you didn’t flirt with every single guy around you. Then I bumped into you at that linger longer with Derek and started to get really curious. Ashley?”

  I gave no indication that I heard him, but I was listening. He hesitated, then continued. “You got under my skin. Dave mentioned that he was teaching you to surf, and I started keeping an eye out for you. I thought maybe that would be my way in since you weren’t into the barbecue thing.”

  I turned head my slightly. “You could have just asked me out.”

  “No, I couldn’t. You would have said no. I knew I had to play it right.”

  “Play it?” I whipped around. “So much for not playing me.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” he protested. “Are you telling me that you didn’t have the whole hard-to-get thing going on? That’s playing too.”

  Since I couldn’t deny it, I stared at him in silence.

  “I had to think of something, Ashley. I know guys hit on you all the time. I’ve seen it. I needed something less obvious, something you really wanted, and so I thought maybe the surf thing could be common ground for us. Or common ocean, I guess.”

  “What does surfing have to do with you creating a false Internet profile?”

  “It’s not a fake profile,” he said. “I’ve had it since college when I was up at Pepperdine. There’s not a ton of members there so Louisa talked me into trying Lookup. I’ve never really done much with the account, but every now and then I check in on it. I was shocked when I saw that you’d been checking out my profile, but I figured I had lucked out.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Because, Ashley. I learned more about you and your personality and background from reading your profile for three minutes than I had in three conversations with you. I found out about your degree and your mission and where you’re from, none of which you explained to me yourself.”

  “I wasn’t keeping it a secret.”

  “I know. But you hold back, and I don’t think you even realize you do it. I figured I needed every advantage I could get in getting to know you if you were only going to be around for a few months. I didn’t think of it as spying or anything like that. It’s kind of in the public record, you know?”

  “I don’t care that you read my profile, Matt. If I had thought about it, I probably would have checked to see if you had one too. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t tell me right away who you were when you contacted me. Why did you talk to me as Ryder and not as Matt?”

  “Because you talked to Ryder as all-of-you-Ashley-Barrett and for a long time you only talked to me as part-of-you-Ashley-Barrett. It felt like the only way to get the whole picture, to really know you, and I needed that or there was no way you would—” he stopped.

  I turned. “I would what?”

  He stared at the ground for a long time. “You would consider a relationship past the end of the summer.”

  My temper spiked. “What is wrong with you? I told you every way I knew how that the end of the summer was the end of us. You said you were fine with it. Why couldn’t that be enough?”

  “Blame it on bad poetry,” he muttered.

  “What does that even mean?”

  He stood and walked to the edge of the next terrace, watching the water, his hands deep in his pockets. “I’m twenty-six. I’m done with school, I have a growing business. I’ve had a couple of relationships that didn’t go anywhere, but I’ve dated enough to know what I want.”

  He turned to face me. “I knew that night after you came to my house for the first time, Ashley. We were sitting there on that ridiculous jungle gym and listening to that kid spout that poem to his girl, and you got all over me for laughing even though I could tell you thought it was funny too. Something about that . . . I don’t know. You could have laughed or taken cheap shots to impress me, or cracked your own jokes. But you gave him his dignity or whatever. Look,” he said. “I don’t know how to explain it without it sounding cheesy. It impressed me. I could have predicted what a hundred other girls would have done in the same situation. Giggled, or cooed. But not you. You see people and things clearly, but you don’t see yourself as above them.”

  “You like me because I’m nice?” I ground out.

  “No! I mean, you are. Kind of—”

  “I’m kind of nice?”

  “Stop,” he said with his first hint of impatience. “You’re taking this the wrong way on purpose. Look, I didn’t mean for it to happen this way. I kept trying to back out of the Ryder thing, and it wasn’t until this last month that you gave me, Matt, a shot at all. But every truth I told you as Ryder, every truth I told you as me, is real.”

  “And yet the fact that you are Ryder makes everything a big lie.”

  “It doesn’t, Ashley. I swear it doesn’t. That was my personality, and those were my facts. So is everything you’ve seen about me this summer. I didn’t see how you and I had a shot past the end of this summer if there wasn’t something more than having a good time beneath it all. Talking to you as Ryder was supposed to—”

  “What? Build a foundation on a lie?”

  “No! I figured I’d come clean with you and you’d see that there was something real between us, something more than just a shallow fling. I kind of hoped that when I showed back up that Ryder would fade away and you’d focus more on me.”

  He had. It was true that once Matt was back, I’d neglected Ryder. “I did because Ryder convinced me to! We keep coming back to that! Why don’t you understand how wrong that is?”

  A couple holding hands gave me a wide berth as they passed us, the woman looking nervous as they hurried toward the safety of the strand.

  “I do get it, Ashley! I do. You feel like I betrayed your trust by getting all this information from you as Ryder and using it on you as Matt.”

  “I don’t feel like you betrayed me. You did betray me.”

  “I didn’t, I swear. I never dug for deep confessions of your feelings about Matt. I mean me. I only advised you when you asked for it and steered the conversation away from anything deeper than that. I was trying to give you the reassurance that I wanted to be with you. All of our other conversations were just about politics or music or movies.” He sounded frustrated. “I wasn’t trying to find out your innermost feelings or whatever. I just wanted to get to know you, let you see me. I swear I wasn’t trying to lead you on or sucker you.”

  “That’s a good word. Sucker.” I sighed. “Like sucker punched. Or being a sucker. That’s what I feel like. A total idiot.”

  “I never thought that about you.” He stepped a little closer, careful not to set me off again. “I think you’re amazing.” Slowly, he reached over to take my hands and lace his fingers through mine, tugging me closer. I let him. “How much does it change things, Ashley? As mad as you are, can you forgive me? I am so, so sorry.”

  I stared down at our hands, joined between us, the solid wall of his chest blocking any other view. He had long fingers, his tan a deep gold against the more olive tones of my skin. I felt the warmth spreading from his hands to mine, turning back the chill blowing off the waves. He was sorry. I believed that. At some point down the road, I was sure I would forgive him. But he had asked the right question, because this did change things. It changed everything.

  I pulled my hands back, sliding them out of his. “I can’t do this, Matt. I can’t be on a constant roller coaster with you and still focus on school. I can’t wonder what’s going to come next or wait for you to destabilize me every time I start to feel sure and grounded. Because that’s what this feels like. It’s like right when I figure out where you fit and I make the space for you, you wreck it. You’re never what I expect you to be. You’re an HB surfer. No, you’re a Utah businessman. No, you’re a snowb
oarder named Ryder.”

  I tucked my hands pack into my jeans pockets and found them a poor substitute for his warmth.

  “I’m all of those things,” he said quietly.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t even know now. Whoever you are, I went against my own better judgment and fell for you a little.”

  “I fell for you a lot.”

  I hardened my heart against that. “Falling hurts. It was stupid. I wish you would have listened to me from the beginning and just kept it light.”

  “If that’s what you wanted when you went back to school, I would have accepted that,” he said angrily. “But I had to try to make you think about how right we are for each other. Didn’t you see that? Don’t you see that still?”

  “No. Maybe I thought I did for a little while. But the Matt I thought was right for me was a guy who wanted to give this thing between us time to grow. You?” I laughed, hating the edge in my voice. “You were only concerned about what you wanted. Why, Matt? Why work so hard to change my mind? Did I become the trophy this summer?”

  His head jerked like my words had formed a physical slap. “If you could believe that was true about me even for one second, then you really don’t know me.”

  “That’s the truest thing you’ve said tonight,” I said. Confusion and hurt welled up inside me, tightening my throat, but I held on to my anger. “I’m so over this.”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and took a step back. “So this afternoon you were totally ready to pursue a relationship and now you’re just done?”

  “No, this afternoon I was ready to consider spending more time with you after school starts. Now I’m realizing that I was making a big mistake.”

  “I’m still ready, Ashley,” he said, a quiet challenge in his voice. “I’m ready to accept your terms and take it slow and make sacrifices if it means being with you. Does that count for anything?”

  A sick feeling crowded the back of my throat. Steeling myself against the plea I saw in his eyes, I swallowed back the pain and focused on the hurt I felt. “It doesn’t. The truth is, no one could really make me change my mind about this. I just sort of forgot that for a little while.”