by Unknown
“Kid college,” he says on an impressed chuckle. “Not something you hear every day.”
The silliness from my own statement finally hits me and I giggle too. “I can't believe I said kid college.”
Instead of letting me be embarrassed he squeezes my hand. “It's a fair comparison.” When my face tilts to the side to further hide, Ryder adds, “And fucking impressive. I knew you'd be amazing at whatever you decided to do. I don't know why I didn't assume you would end up working around children. You loved being a part of the program we had in high school. I forget its name, but the one where you would go to the elementary schools to read to them or push them on the swings or whatever it was you did that gave their teachers a break for the day.”
Another laugh escapes as I question, “You remember that?”
“Presley there isn't a goddamn thing I don't remember about you.”
Softly I sigh and lean forward body wanting to praise his words with my tongue.
He bites his bottom lip, evidence his brain is turning the same direction as mine. The heated intensity of his blue gaze only adds to it further. “Uh...um...H-H-How did you become the owner? Did you take it over from someone else?”
“My best friend Katherine, lent me the funds and I paid her back. Her daughter now attends it. She's in the same class as your adorable niece.”
“She is adorable,” he echoes. “Too adorable. I'm gonna have a hard time not spoiling her rotten.”
Hearing the joy for a child in his life doesn't help the lingering lust to be in bed with him rather than here at the table. “No kids of your own then?”
“No,” he instantly answers. “You?”
“No.”
“And you were single,” he starts as our food is delivered. “Merrick mentioned something about an ex.”
Assuming that was when they were moving boxes, I place the napkin in my lap. “Don't you mean are single?”
“No.”
The forceful answer pours gasoline on the fire burning me from the inside out. No matter how many times he claims me over and over again, I don't think it'll be enough. Guilt over this being the least responsible line of decision making I've done in my adult life has me reaching for a fried pickle in haste.
“Pres,” Ryder quietly demands my attention. The moment our eyes lock he states, “I don't plan on losing you ever again. I damn sure have no intention on fucking sharing you with someone else.” He shakes his head slowly. “I won't share you.”
I swallow the bite in my mouth. “Am I sharing you? Because I did that once and...well I don't ever want to do it again.”
Without hesitation he shakes his head again. “You won't. I swear.”
Rational thoughts continue to roll through my brain waking up the pieces paralyzed from pleasure. “You hurt me, Ryder.”
His hand stops from grabbing the piece of food it was headed for.
“Bad.” Bravery nudges me to continue. “I don't even know if I ever healed from what happened between us. After we broke up, I buried those thoughts, emotions, any inkling of the person I was when I was with you. I ended up broken on a completely different level. And no, it wasn't all your fault, I was there too. I didn't have to make those choices. I could have dealt with our separation differently. My point is...”
Ryder's eyebrows lift.
“While I feel the same as you do, while I feel we should be together, or at least try again, I refuse to end up a withering worthless mess this time. I'm stronger now. I deserve better than half of someone. I deserve to know everything. I mean everything, Ryder. No secrets. No lies. If you're expecting some sort of doormat-”
“You were never a doormat,” he whispers. “But I understand what you're saying.”
I shove another bite into my mouth to keep from rambling further.
“You're right. You do deserve better than the piece of shit I turned into. And let me make this clear for you, Pres. I've never truly forgiven myself for how I hurt you. Mentally. Emotionally....phys...” He chokes on the end of the word. Ryder surprises me yet again and says, “Physically. I wanna say that wasn't me, but that would be a lie. It was me. It was who I had become. It's the very person I stayed until a few months ago when I entered rehab for the final time.”
His confession unhinges my jaw.
“I have the spent the last ten years strung out and addicted to anything I could use to numb the pain of living without you. To keep my mind dulled to the backlash of my parents’ divorce and their inability to really care about me. Drugs ruled my existence. They seemed to be the only way to hide from the demon I had become. Losing you was the first as much as it was the final straw. Between the bullshit with my family, the bullshit of adolescence, and the bullshit fear there was nowhere to go but down, I began to drown in a world I never wanna see again.” Ryder's body tenses. He rubs his scruff covered chin. “I've made mistakes. Of the unimaginable kind. I've carried them and the nightmare of every wrong moment between us for a decade. When I was in rehab, a therapist finally got to me. He tore me apart. He forced me to look at myself in pieces, in ways I've been too much of a coward to.”
The idea he had his own Katherine poking around in his brain causes my hand to stretch for his across the table. Amazed at our parallel existences, I toss out the loitering doubt we aren't meant to journey through life together.
“He broke me down, reminded me I'm still alive and need to rebuild. So here I am.” His fingers fold with mine though his eyes stay glued on our hands. “Rebuilding. One day at a time.”
Gently I ask, “Is it hard?”
“You make it easier.” Dragging his attention back up to my face he confides, “A helluva lot easier.”
“Trying to contact me with the letter you wrote, was that an attempt to say goodbye before you began to put yourself together?”
Shock travels across his face. “You got my letter?”
“You...mailed it to me.”
Ryder shakes his head slowly. “I didn't. I mean...I wrote it. I addressed it but Doc made it feel like it was just a part of the exercise for closure.”
There's a minor sting at the word. “You wanted closure from me?”
“Fuck no,” he quickly tries to correct. “It was supposed to be the last piece of closure to my past. Apologizing to the one person I felt I desperately needed to in order to try to go anywhere in life. I would never close the door on you, Pres.”
The heaviness of the topics has managed to kill my appetite, returning me back to the new level of feeding my sadness with starvation. “You should eat. You didn't have breakfast this morning.”
“I had you.”
My cheeks heat. “We probably should've talked about this sooner given the rapid rate we keep jumping into bed, but I am clean in case you were worried. I recently was tested and haven't been with anyone...well...since the breakup months ago.”
A halo of relief seems to surround him. “I'm clean too. Noah has my blood tested once a month for narcotics of any kind and forced me to see a doctor about a month ago for a wellness check. He has an increasing paranoia that diseases run in our family. I haven't been with anyone in....” His face scrunches at the difficulty of trying to recall the forgotten knowledge. “In a very long time.”
The new information blankets me with comfort I didn't realize I needed. I attempt to return the conversation back to what's on the table. “You've gotta be hungry. You didn't have any food before you left this morning.”
“You didn't either.”
“No, but I have a highly trained chef who can whip me up something while I'm working if necessary,” I playfully argue.
Ryder smirks. “Lucky you.”
We chuckle together and he lets go of my hand to choose something to eat. I know I shouldn't feel empty from the immediate loss of his touch, so I try my best to focus on something else.
After a couple bites, Ryder asks, “Do you have plans after work?”
“No.”
“How about we go to the
movies?” He suggests as he wipes his fingers. “Not the fancy first date I would like to take you out on, but it's what I can afford.”
Impressed at how comfortable he is not only admitting the fact but owning it, I grin. “If there's something you wanna do, I can pay. I've got a job too. I make damn good money.”
“No way in hell am I going to let you pay for our first date.” The sternness in his voice is covered with a tease. “If I've gotta walk Big Mike's poodle for some extra cash to take you somewhere, I'll do it.”
“He's got a poodle?”
“Yeah, but not a toy poodle. One of the full sized ones. He named her Cotton.”
“Weird.”
With a shrug he changes the topic back. “Was that a yes, you'll go out with me?”
Giddiness unconsciously floods my answer, “Of course.”
Silence slips between us, but this time it's the strange comfortable one where you know it's enough to just be in the presence of the other person. Part of me is relieved at the easiness of this moment. Part of me is still terrified. Ten years is a long time not to know someone, only to instantly fall back in line damn near exactly where you originally left off. Katherine preached and encouraged me to find that passion again, to spring back to life. With Ryder around it naturally happens. His spirit unlocks mine like the gatekeeper with the only key to Heaven. Even after the dreadful ordeal should've permanently severed our connection, we're still bonded in a breathtaking manner. Maybe this is the real second chance we wanted, not the one we were pretending to take. I have to try. I floated by for years not really living. I owe it to myself to go after what I want. And that's Ryder Collins.
Ryder
Kara leans her thin frame against me and whispers, “Thanks again for the ride last night. Last time I don't drive myself to a party.”
I'm not sure if her decisions to return to her previous ways of life are bold or idiotic. In ways it takes a pair of nuts to attempt to live like you once did while alienating the things you used to find most exciting and depend heavily on. On the other hand repeating past actions seems to land you in past results, which is the last thing I want. Dating Presley for this past month could easily be considered repeating actions of the past if it wasn't for the fact it's nothing like it used to be. She doesn't have a curfew. There isn't school for us the next day. We don't have cliques or parents to answer to every day. We're the only people in this relationship. The way it should be. The way it should've been. Not to mention I don't pick what we do and then we do it. There's a give and take value we were missing before. It's one I'm growing to appreciate.
“How was I supposed to know there wouldn't be anything non-alcoholic there?” Kara continues to ramble despite the fact someone is in the front of the room explaining their tragedies.
I turn my head and give her a sarcastic look.
“Oh, shut up,” she nudges me in the side and folds her arms firmly against her chest.
To call us friends wouldn't be a complete misuse of the word. Despite my continued denial of breakfast foods and television, we talk at least once a week. Almost more like co-workers than friends. Most of the time it's about the overdue play date she's convinced herself we need, but occasionally it takes a deeper level. She'll send me lines contemplating her own worth. Confide in me the hollowness she can't cover up enough with her outlandish outfits. The confessions she leaks are often ones that are mirrored inside of me. Even with Presley back in my life there's habitual self-loathing that still occurs. Surprisingly there's still faint desires to fall into old, less than harmless routines. Smoking a cigarette because I'm frustrated. Hitting the blunt to make a movie funnier. Mixing a couple pills to hush the doubts for a decent night sleep. It's moments like that I don't loathe having Kara around. I need someone to understand what I'm going through besides Law.
“I was dipping into my son's college fund,” the man says in a melancholy tone. “Behind my wife's back...”
He continues to speak, but my attention is drawn elsewhere.
“Can you hold him for a minute?” Presley questions to me, our son moving uncontrollably in her arms. “I just need to put my heels on.”
She transfers him into my arms. “Come here wiggle monster.”
“Thank you.”
I offer her a smile seconds before there's a sharp tug on my hair. “Ou!”
“Yeah, he's in that stage now,” she refreshes my memory. “His teachers say he's the most handsy in the bunch. Whenever I go in there at lunch he's always trying to grab a hold of something.”
Hearing about our son makes me peck him with a kiss on the cheek. “You'll learn not everything is for your hands sooner or later.”
“Not soon enough,” Pres mumbles and grabs her clutch from the dresser.
“Like boobs. Those aren't typically for your hands any more. You have to wait for a few years before they are again.”
“Really, Ryder?”
Playfully I wink.
“Did you remember to grab cash for the babysitter?”
He wriggles and fusses in my arms to go back to hers. “I did.”
“Did you remember to set up automatic transfers to his college fund?” The question furrows my eyebrows and she snaps, “Ryder, you promised you would do that! What happened?”
What did happen? I quickly recall taking out cash from the ATM, but instead of heading for a bank, I ended up pulling into the driveway of a familiar run down home. The faded blue paint, the junk kicked around the yard, and the chain fence are all indicators I had no business being there. This house hadn't changed in the number of years I had been to it.
“I...”
Another memory of the front door opening to usher out an extreme thin female with sunken eyes and pale skin hits me. The money that should've been being used to build my son a future, to build more trust with my wife, I used to build myself an unnecessary high.
A sharp breath of air fills my lungs as the clapping for his story begins. While I slowly bang my hands together, I sink lower into my seat certain my brain had it wrong. I won't stumble back that direction. Hell, the original reason I did was to stifle the pain of losing Pres, so why would I need drugs if I have her again? Other than Noah, no my family life hasn't been revolutionized, but I don't fucking care. Noah is the only one from that fabricated lie known as my childhood that matters to me. He's the only one helping. Fighting to have a brother. Fighting to have an actual family. I don't need drugs to deal with that either.
Final words are said and group is dismissed, leaving me with an uneasiness in the pit of my stomach. I wouldn't do that to my own family. Maybe the old Ryder would, but not this one. Not the one who comes to these goddamn meetings. Not the one who has to piss in a cup and be prodded with needles. Not the one who would rather slit his own wrist than hurt the woman he loves again. I wouldn't do that. I couldn't. Could I?
Kara's voice infiltrates my thoughts. “....right?”
Realizing I missed the entire sentence, I attempt to shake them away. “What?”
Quickly she states, “Never mind. I'll text you later. Night, Ryder.”
Her instant disappearance is immediately explained by Law's presence. She doesn't enjoy sponsors. Says it's like having a babysitter or an extra parental figure and since she hates the ones she has, why would she want to add to it? While Law hasn't expressed his particular distaste for her, he doesn't hesitate to remind me of the dangers of our budding friendship. It doesn't seem to matter how many times I deny we're not that. He continues to nag.
Law wraps both hands around the back of the chair beside mine. “You alright?”
Uncertain I mutter, “I think so.”
He lifts an eyebrow.
Quietly I say, “I was just...my mind wandered off.”
“And?”
“And where it went bothered me.”
“And?”
“That's all.”
Law hums. “Hm. What were you thinking about?”
“Just my future.” I
shrug. “Contemplating if there was any way I could end up like that last guy. Trying to reassure myself there's no way in hell I could end up strung out again.”
His large frame shifts on a sigh. “Nothing on this road is that black and white. Every day, every step, every moment is a choice. Some days those choices are simple. Obvious. Other times you're blindsided. Thrown off your guard. Unexpectedly nut punched with so much pain the only outlet to numb it seems to be the one that's been lurking, waiting for you to want to rely on it again. You don't wanna end up like that? You have to work at it. All the time. And when you feel like completely giving up is when it's going to matter the most. Remember that.”