14. Ryder
Ryder
When I was in the seventh grade, my father finally decided he didn’t want to be married to my mother anymore, and he left us.
Permanently. You would think at twelve, after years and years of yelling and walking around on eggshells, that I would have recognized there were serious problems, but I didn’t.
That was my normal, and I had no clue they were headed in this direction.
What’s funny is that I’ve often compared their separation to my own with Alice.
Apparently, I couldn’t read the room then, just like that fateful day over four years ago.
My mother said things between them had been fading for a while, and while I understand that almost fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, what I didn’t understand was how he could screw us over so royally.
We were his family until he decided we weren’t, and everything about our life changed.
The first being them selling my childhood home on the lake and my mother and I moving into an apartment near school.
My father moved into another nice new house, and he used to tell me that I could come live with him whenever I wanted, but I knew it was a ploy to get me away from her and under his thumb.
One I wanted no part of. Once I made that clear, he ceased communication, and I’ve never been able to decide whether that made me happy or sad.
My mother, however, said she was fine with the apartment, that she was just happy to finally have something of her own.
She went back to work and is an office manager in a veterinarian’s office.
She said this job filled her need to own five pets, and like me, she has only one.
A cat named Cupcake. I’ve since offered to buy her and Cupcake a house, but she says she doesn’t want to deal with the upkeep, and that she’s happy here.
As for Alice, I had no idea she didn’t feel the same way. This future that I thought we were building, I should have known it was being built with playing cards. One strong gust was all it took for the whole thing to come crashing down.
“I hope you’re hungry because I made a lot of food,” my mother says, sweeping into the small dining room.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I tell her, glancing at all of the dishes on the table. Dishes that look fancy and non-American.
“Well, I did a thing,” she says conspiratorially.
This dining room table and chairs were all she asked for when I received my signing bonus.
She was beyond excited to have a beautiful wooden table with fabric-backed chairs, and I saw her eyeing a chandelier, so I bought that too as a surprise.
She’s definitely made this room look good with a mixture of earth colors like white, beige, brown, and dark green.
“Do tell.” I take my seat while she pops open a bottle of wine.
She pours me a glass, then sits down. She presses her lips together to prevent a smile, but it’s there. Her eyes are sparkling, and she’s super excited about whatever it is she’s going to tell me.
“A few months ago, I started taking these online cooking classes.”
I know I look surprised, because I am. “That sounds fun.” And it sounds great for her. She’s always loved cooking.
“Well, I started a social media account and post videos of me cooking. I watched a few tutorials about how to make them.”
“Okay.” I’m starting to feel a little skeptical. “How’s that going for you?”
“Well, I have over two hundred and fifty thousand followers, and I’ve started getting brand deals,” she says proudly.
My eyes nearly bug out of my head. “What?”
“Isn’t that exciting?” She clasps her hands together in front of her.
“Yes, I’m very excited for you. But what brought all this on? What made you think to do this?”
Her expression slips a little, and she looks off to the side while biting her bottom lip.
“Mom.”
Her eyes find mine again, and she straightens her back.
“Well, no one taught me per se, but I follow Alice and her friend Kelli and see all of the things that they do. I took another influencer course for thirty-nine dollars, and they walked me through setting up the account, how to pick something niche that I love, and then how to make the algorithm work.”
I lean back in my chair. I don’t know if I’m more shocked that she’s done this or that she follows Alice. Actually, it’s that she’s done this. She loved Alice. Of course she kept up with her.
“What’s your niche?”
“International cooking made simple.” She grins.
“Oh my gosh, there are so many great cultures of food. I make seven dishes on Saturday, and I change my clothes for each one. I edit them on Sunday, pair them to themed-appropriate music, and then post one every day of the week. This week is Peruvian food.”
I glance at the table again, and sure enough, there’s a ceviche, a roasted chicken dish, a beef and rice dish with a fried egg on top, a beef stew, a potato casserole, stuffed peppers, and I think those are donuts.
“Wow. I don’t know what to say. What type of brand deals are you getting?”
She gets up to grab my plate and starts scooping each dish onto it.
“I got a new line of pans. I got a sauce blender, it’s like a cross between a single-serving smoothie maker and a blender, and a fancy wooden cutting board.”
“I don’t know what to say. This is all great. I’m proud of you, and I’m certain if Alice knew, she would be too.”
At that, her movements slow, and she looks at me cautiously. “So how’s it going with her? You know I saw you both together at the game.”
“Yes, you know we have to do those media moments together.”
“Yes, but how’s it going?”
I hate this question.
“What do you mean? It’s not going at all.”
Over the years, we’ve never really talked about Alice. She became an off-limits subject, and my mother respected my boundaries. I mean, she gets it, though. She was the one who followed me home after graduation, and she’s the one who found me a complete and utter mess.
“I just thought that maybe now, since the two of you are spending more time together, you’d put to rest what happened four years ago.”
Four years ago.
I try my best to never think of that day. Every time I do, a wave of embarrassment sweeps over me, and I hate it.
It was graduation day. We were sitting side by side, you know, Monarch and Monroe. I had been waiting for this day for what felt like forever. There was nothing anyone could do to ruin this day for me.
This was the best day of my life.
As we neared the end of the ceremony, I slipped my arm around the back of my seat so the guy behind me could grab my phone. After the graduation rehearsal, I sought him out to see if he would help me, and of course he said yes. Remember, I was a king on campus.
From there, most everything was a blur. Dean Rivas said, “Congratulations, seniors. You have officially graduated.” Caps started flying, a sea of navy graduation gowns started rolling all around us as people all across the gymnasium were on their feet and cheering, but I only had eyes for Alice.
She was jumping up and down, laughing, and just as I knew she would, she threw herself into my arms.
“We did it!” she shouted, and I laughed. She was so happy and so beautiful. I picked her up until her feet were dangling, and I breathed her in. That was going to be our moment. It was finally here, and I knew together we were ready to move on to our next chapter.
I loved this girl. Loved her in a way that there was no beginning and no end to me that didn’t have her. She meant everything to me, and I was ready to tell the world.
I lowered my head, and our lips had barely brushed before her hands were on my chest and shoving me away.
“No, Ryder.” She gasped while staring up at me. The laughter in her was gone, and her expression was replaced with one of complete horror.
Horror.
Not happiness.
Not love.
Horror. Or was it disgust?
“No,” I whispered back, meanwhile my ears started ringing like there was a siren on a fire truck coming right at me. It kept getting louder and louder, and I wanted to scream at someone, anyone, to make it stop.
I took a step back from her, and I saw her mouth the words again, “No, Ryder,” and she reached for me at the same time the guy from behind us slammed my phone into my chest.
“Here, man. Sorry,” he said, pity shining through his words, as he let it go and turned to go celebrate with his friends.
“Ryder,” Alice called my name, but emotionally, I was too far gone.
All I heard and saw was her telling me no.
The world started to close in on me. I knew I was about to lose my shit, and all I could do was turn and run.
I think I heard her call after me again, but my heart was hammering hard as it cracked in half, one tiny piece at a time, and there were so many people.
This was an absolute nightmare come true.
It never occurred to me, not one time, that she didn’t feel the same way.
That we didn’t have a future. At least not one where there was a me and her and only us forever.
Of course, over the years we had close encounters of almost kisses, but we never did.
Maybe I should have thought about that harder before I decided it would be a good idea to open up my soul and try to kiss my best friend in front of the entire world and God.
Somehow, I made it home. I know I shouldn’t have been driving, but my heartbreak was almost complete, and I was riding out the numbness. My heart was almost done being cleaved in two, and I had to be at home when the pain hit. Had to.
In front of me, my plate is placed, and the sound against the wood pulls me back into my mother’s dining room. For so long, I’ve kept those memories in a box. They aren’t ones I want to revisit. Ever. And I seal it up tight again.
I pick up my fork to take a bite. “It’s not going because she hates me.”
“I doubt that. That girl has loved you her whole life.”
My fork pauses, and I look over at her.
“You seem to forget that if she loved me, then we wouldn’t be in this situation right now.”
My mother frowns, as deep sadness moves into the lines around her eyes and her mouth. “I don’t know. Looking back, I think I gave you the wrong advice.”
Oh no. She is not putting the demise and nonexistence of my relationship with Alice on her shoulders.
“No, you didn’t. Leaving was exactly what I needed to do. You of all people know this.”
“Is it, though? I was hurt for you, devastated. I had never seen you like that before, and I went into fight-or-flight mode. I should have taken a step back and looked at the whole picture.”
“The whole picture is that she told me no. Not hang on, not wait a minute, not can we talk about this first, just no. In fact, she told me twice.”
I take a bite of the food, but this conversation makes it hard for me to taste it.
She leans back in her chair. “You know, I checked on her after you left?”
“You did? Why?”
She holds her hands out. “Maybe because I loved her like she was my own daughter. She was a part of our family for a long time.”
“And?” I set down the fork. Apparently, she’s not going to eat until we have this talk.
“Her mom thought it would be best if I didn’t reach out and if I left her alone. While they were appreciative, I needed to let things lie. She took you leaving pretty hard.”
I snort. “I don’t know about that. Maybe because we had been friends for such a long time, but I’m not really sure what she had to be upset about.”
She didn’t want me in the way I wanted her so badly.
Being friends was never going to happen.
I couldn’t go off to college, have her go off to college, and then hear all about it.
I didn’t want to hear the stories. I didn’t want to look at pictures of all the fun she was having with other people, or see her with other guys.
Any progress I would have made trying to move on, I would have been sucked right back into the black hole of misery.
“I saw her before she left for school.”
My fingers grip the napkin in my lap as I wait for her to continue. Her expression is melancholy, and I’m taken aback.
“And?”
“She didn’t look good.”
“What does that mean?”
“Obviously, I don’t know if something was medically wrong with her, but she had lost a lot of weight. Her face was gaunt, pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She looked like she needed to eat a whole pizza and sleep for two days.”
Alice was already a tiny person. She didn’t have any spare weight to lose. She also loves food, so her looking like she needed to eat is odd. The dark circles too.
“I don’t know anything about that time.” And I don’t. If she was sick, or something had happened, no one said anything to me. No one reached out.
“I know you don’t. Besides, even if you did, what would you have done?”
She and I both know the answer to this. That day, the day we drove out of town, I blocked her number and her name on all my social media accounts.
I didn’t want to see or hear anything that had to do with Alice Monarch.
In my mind, there was no gray area. It didn’t get any clearer than her response of, “No.”
“Probably nothing.”