Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty
“Well, here we go.”
Allie was poised at the door of Ryan’s bedroom, hand on the doorknob. She could hear Ren and Anisha laughing in the kitchen. It was 2 p.m., the day after the party. The day after…She looked down.
She was wearing a T-shirt of Ryan’s that came almost to her knees. She’d also borrowed a pair of woolly socks. They covered the bottom half of her legs. Though the sheer size of his clothes provided automatic modesty, it would still be very clear to their friends what had happened last night. And this morning. And then almost again just a few minutes ago, until they both decided they were too hungry to do it again.
“You ready? They’re going to bug us.” Ryan smirked at her.
“Yeah. Of course they are.”
“And it’s absurd because we’re the ones who caught them having sex in the café. We should not be embarrassed. I mean, no one should be embarrassed. But if anyone should, it’s them.”
It occurred to Allie that his babbling might be an indicator of nervousness. “You okay?”
Ryan stood up straight and tightened the belt of the purple terry cloth bathrobe he was wearing. “Yes. I’m fine. Sorry, I get weird like this sometimes. Puritanical holdover, thinking I’m somehow going to get in trouble for having sex.”
“Has that actually happened to you?”
“Once. Sort of. That was more getting in trouble for coming home at three in the morning, but I think my parents knew that I wasn’t at a particularly exciting Bible study session.”
Allie giggled. She tightened her grip on the doorknob. “We can do this. We are consenting adults.”
“Very consenting,” Ryan said, his hand wrapping around her waist. “If I remember correctly, we both consented several times…”
Allie closed her eyes and willed herself to resist him. If only in the interest of breakfast. “We agreed.” She removed his hand from her body. “We need to eat.”
“You’re right.” He held both hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Let’s get this done.”
When they emerged from the room, Ren and Anisha abruptly stopped their own conversation and openly stared. It didn’t take long to cross the living room to the kitchen, but on this particular occasion, it felt like an epic journey.
“Well, then!” Anisha’s smile took up most of her face. “How was your night, friends ?”
Allie squinted and rubbed her palm over her face. “Is that coffee?”
“Oh, this?” Ren asked, holding the coffee pot just out of Allie’s reach. “This here? This is coffee, yes. Coffee for people who admit that all their friends were right that they should totally bone the podcast guy .”
“Is that me?” Ryan reached over Allie’s head and easily extracted the coffee pot from Ren’s hand. “Am I the podcast guy you were supposed to bone?” He poured coffee into a mug, added cream and handed it to Allie.
“Well, mission accomplished,” she muttered into the cup as she drank, unable to hide her smile.
He knows how I take my coffee.
Anisha and Ren whooped.
“Okay, folks.” Ryan poured a cup for himself. “We’re all adults here.”
“ Yeah , we are.” Anisha managed to make this sound wildly salacious, and Ren laughed. They high-fived.
Ryan rolled his eyes and headed for the fridge. “Let us know when you’re done.”
“We’re done.” Anisha boosted herself up to sit on the counter and looked at Ren. “Are we done?”
“I guess so.” Ren sounded unconvinced.
“Oh, by the way, I told Ren about the Jessi search. They want to help.”
“Yeah, I figured that would happen.” Allie shrugged. “Just don’t tell Mindy.”
“Wow.” Ren leaned back against the counter beside Anisha. “One night of good sex and you’re totally chill?”
Allie accepted the bowl of yogurt and fruit that Ryan was handing her. “I guess that was all it took.”
Ryan caught her eye and leaned against the counter with his own bowl of yogurt. “We actually had a breakthrough in the search for Jessi last night.”
“That’s right!” Allie had somehow forgotten. The events between the conversation with Jonah and Flora and the present moment had overwhelmed her memory. “We did!”
Ryan explained the discovery of Ayla to a rapt Anisha and Ren. Allie listened and considered what to do next.
“And then Flora gave us Ayla’s number, so we can call her and see if she knows where Jessi is. We’re so close. I feel like she’s right there, waiting for us.” He turned to Allie, putting his arm around her shoulders. “We should call her today! Dang, I’m excited for this one. I wonder if I’ll eventually get to meet all the Jetskis? What a great couple of days.” He winked at her.
“Actually,” she said, “I was thinking I would call her myself? And maybe see if she wants to have coffee with me?”
Why am I talking in questions?
Her palms were sweating as she worried about offending Ryan, but she couldn’t change direction now. “I don’t want us to freak her out. And I should probably…apologize? It’s weird, I know. Just something that I should do by myself this time.”
She saw something flicker in Ryan’s eyes. A flash of hurt that he quickly worked to conceal. He removed his arm from her shoulders. “Oh yeah, sure. Of course. She’s your friend. I get it.” He set his empty bowl down gently on the counter. “I’m gonna go have a shower.” He kissed Allie’s head as he walked by her. Anisha watched him go and leaped off the counter as soon as the bathroom door shut behind him.
“Allie, don’t let him get weird.”
“Get weird?” Allie was overwhelmed by Anisha’s intense attention.
Anisha clapped her hand to her forehead and groaned. “He’s having a freak-out right now because he thinks you don’t want him around.”
“It’s not that!” Allie could hear the panic rising in her own voice. “I just…want to apologize. It might be too much for two of us to show up!”
“I know.” Anisha nodded and held Allie’s arm. “It’s totally a reasonable request. That’s why you can’t let him spiral. It’s just like I told you! He’ll do this. He’ll convince himself that you don’t really like him, that this was some kind of mistake on his part. This is what he does. He gets all in his feelings really quick, and I never say anything if it’s just some girl I don’t care about, but I like you, and I can’t deal with the idea that he might fuck this up.”
Allie looked at Ren, who was nodding solemnly. Her heart plummeted. This was exactly why she’d spent so long convincing herself to never make a play for Ryan. She was standing in this perfect kitchen, with her perfect friends—the first she’d had in years—and she was one wrong move away from losing everything.
Again.
Losing everything again.
Anisha grimaced. “He will seriously try to abandon you before you can abandon him.”
Allie’s mind wandered back to Sheila’s arrival at the party. Would the same thing happen to her? Was she now destined to be some girl that Ryan felt he had to invite to the party but didn’t actually want to talk to?
Her stomach lurched.
This was all a mistake.
When Ryan came out of the shower, she followed him back into his bedroom, feeling awkward about it, but not sure where else to go.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d still be here.” Ryan was smiling but not looking into her eyes.
“Uh, did you want me to go?”
“Only if you wanted to.”
She sat down on his bed, anxiety flowing through her. Ryan dressed quickly. She wanted to look at him but, somehow, now felt embarrassed. Instead, she flipped through a music magazine from his bedside table.
Ryan finished buttoning his shirt and turned to her, taking a deep breath.
“I want us to be friends.”
Allie looked up at him. She’d never felt relieved and destroyed in exactly the same moment. But here she was, those two contradictory emotions coursing through her as she fought to keep her voice steady. She nodded and swallowed. “Me too.”
Ryan’s eyes widened. “You…too?”
What had he expected her to say?
Does he want me to fight with him about it?
“Yes. I value our friendship, and I don’t want to lose it.” She sounded like a robot.
Ryan looked at her and was silent for longer than she expected. Her stomach clenched. She bit her lip and steeled her resolve.
It only takes one fight to ruin everything forever. Don’t ruin this forever.
Ryan took a deep breath. “Yes. Same. I don’t want to screw up our friendship with, you know, all those expectations that come with, uh, romance.”
Until several minutes ago, Allie had been thinking that adding all those expectations to their existing relationship was a great idea, but now the thought of losing Ryan and, by association, Anisha had pushed that opinion out of her mind. Her fears of being just another Sheila were stronger than her desire to see Ryan naked, even though her desire to see him naked was achingly strong. She let her eyes rest on his handsome face. He was looking at her with a strange expression. Was it pity? She did not need to be pitied.
“It’s fine, Ryan. I get it. I agree with you.”
Ryan blinked at her and then gave a sharp laugh. “Right? Just because we had great sex doesn’t mean we need to try to have a relationship , you know? I’m kind of bad at relationships, anyway. But we could be friends, like, forever . I mean, if you wanted to. I don’t think that we’d be doing each other any favors by trying to make this more than it is.”
It felt like more to me.
Allie squashed the thought as soon as it entered her mind. She would get over that feeling. That feeling of more . She and Ryan could both get over their attraction to each other for the sake of their friendship.
And besides, maybe Ryan wasn’t being weird, maybe Anisha was wrong. Maybe he was the one who was being honest.
He doesn’t like me. Not the way I like him.
She stood up. She needed to get out of that room. “I’ve got to…uh…get going.”
She scanned the room for her discarded clothing, not wanting to stay there for any longer than absolutely necessary. Getting over their night together was going to take some hard work, but she would force herself to do it.
She was suddenly desperate to be alone.