7. Ryder
7
RYDER
I make it two days before I text her.
Ryder: Hey, it’s Ryder. The incredibly attractive man who waited on you hand and foot last week.
Vanessa: I’m sorry, that doesn’t ring a bell. Do you have the wrong number?
Ryder: I doubt it. Isn’t this the stunningly beautiful woman who bought me a drink?
Vanessa: Definitely the wrong person.
Ryder: …alright, that’s enough of that game. Do NOT make me have to show you how hot I think you are.
Vanessa: Ryder…
Ryder: See? You made me break character.
Ryder: Now that I’ve successfully broken the very thin ice… are you busy tomorrow afternoon?
Vanessa: No. Why, what’s up?
Ryder: I’d like to cash in on my previous mini golf idea
Vanessa: That sounds like a lot of fun, I’d love that
Ryder: Okay, now I kinda AM wondering if I got the right number
Ryder: Quick, what beer did you send me at the bar the other night?
Vanessa: Honestly, I have no idea. I just told her to get you a refill of whatever you were drinking.
Ryder: See, it’s a testament to how badly I want to see you again, because you didn’t even answer my question and I already know I’ll meet you wherever you want.
Vanessa: Why don’t you tell me which mini golf spot, and I’ll meet you there
Ryder: Done. I’ll be there at 7, if that works for you.
Vanessa: Perfect
I'm not ashamed to admit I beg more than one—technically, four—of our employees to take my shift the next day. I want to take Vanessa mini golfing at night, but I don’t have a night off for another week, so bribery it is. By the time I get one of the waiters to take my shift, I owe three shifts in return.
Worth it.
Ryder: Just walked in. Are you driving or Ubering?
Vanessa: Uber. I’m pulling up now.
My heart immediately pounds harder in anticipation. Even a day away from her has me withdrawing like an addict, and we’re not even a real thing. I mean, yeah, I’d like to be, but I also understand why she’s not looking for anything. After a decade of marriage to a royal douche, I’d be a little skeptical to date anyone, too.
I force that thought through my brain once, twice, three times before she finally walks in. And all of it is for nothing, because the second I lay eyes on her, I want to worship at her feet all over again.
She’s wearing a dress, similar to the first night I met her. But other than that, she looks entirely different from that first night. Then, she had her hair perfectly curled and smoothed, and her makeup was subtle but flawless. It was like she had just walked off a magazine cover. And she’s just as beautiful tonight, but now she looks… happy .
Her hair is wavy like she recently unbraided it after a day on the beach. And she has no makeup on, but her sun-kissed cheeks are prettier than any blush I’ve ever seen. And most importantly, she’s got a huge smile on her face when she spots me.
“Hey,” she chirps, hurrying over to me. It takes everything in me not to scoop her into my arms.
“Hey,” I manage to croak out before clearing my throat. “Find the place okay?”
Amusement twinkles in her eyes. “Yes, Ryder, it was very hard typing the place you told me into the Uber app.”
I choke on my laughter. “Just making sure.”
That earns me the smile I’ve been waiting for since I last saw her, the sight of it knocking even more of the breath from my lungs. Jesus fuck, Ryder, get it together. She’s only looking for a friend.
I shake myself from the haze I fell into and gesture toward the clubs and balls. “I already paid, since I got here early, so we can just grab what we need to. I didn’t want to guess on your height.”
She cocks her head in the cutest way. “How tall are you? ”
I wink at her. “6’2”, babe.”
God, I love that blush. I wish I could taste it again.
Instead, I sweep my arm wide. “Shall we?”
Smiling, she walks ahead of me, and I’m happy to see there’s less hesitation in her step now than when we went jet skiing. I don’t know if it was the activity or being with me again, but I did everything I could last time to put her at ease. Same as I’ll do tonight.
I watch patiently as she measures the perfect club, then as she grabs a green golf ball. Her eyebrow quirks when I select the bright pink one.
“I feel like I shouldn’t be surprised, but…I am.”
I shrug, a shameless grin on my face as I place a hand on her lower back and usher her toward the first hole. “You should see how many pink shirts I have in my closet. My sisters think it’s hilarious to buy them for every gift-giving occasion. But the joke’s on them: I look fabulous in pink.”
Her laugh comes out as a snort, which delights me to no end. I enjoy peeling the prim and proper layers back from Vanessa’s shell.
Her amusement settles into a smile as we take up our place by the first hole, waiting for the group before us to finish up. Then I hear her ask, “How many sisters do you have? Or how many siblings, I should say.”
“Two sisters, one older, one younger. Both are manipulative little jerks who live to fuck with me. One brother—he’s the oldest. He was always the most serious, and the one who ended up trying to wrangle the rest of us after my parents decided to embrace the chaos.” I let out a snort of my own when a memory hits me. “This one time, my younger sister caught me kissing a girl in our tree house, so she ran to tell my older sister. Since it was dark already, the two jerks decided it would be hilarious to flash the lights in the treehouse and make ghost sounds to freak my girlfriend out. Which she did. She immediately bolted from the treehouse.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Vanessa comments, but she’s biting down on her smile like she knows something’s coming.
“Oh, didn’t I mention? My lovely siblings also decided to remove the ladder.”
Vanessa barks a laugh before dissolving into giggles. “Oh my God,” she says, leaning onto her club, “that’s awful. Was she okay?”
I can’t hold back my smile. “Kind of. It was only about six feet to the ground, but she tweaked her ankle a bit. Her yell is what alerted my brother to the chaos. After which, he promptly shooed my sisters back to their homework, put ice on my girlfriend’s ankle, and after helping me walk her home, scolded all three of us to hell.”
Vanessa is still laughing as she asks, “What were you doing while he was helping her? Did you fall too?”
“No way. That wasn’t the first time they had taken the ladder from the treehouse. I was too busy trying to hide my boner and escape more ridicule.”
Another fit of giggles, this time making her collapse onto the bench beside us. Smiling, I take a seat next to her.
“Do you have any crazy sibling stories?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Crazy doesn’t exactly belong in the same sentence with my family,” she says. “I have an older sister, but we never had the kind of relationship you seem to be describing with yours. We—” She cuts herself off, her eyes flicking over to me in hesitation.
I nudge her gently. “You can tell me.” When she still looks skeptical, I add, “I won’t judge you for anything. Especially not with my boner in a treehouse story.”
That seems to do the trick because the tension eases from her shoulders. Her attention locks onto the group golfing in front of us as she starts talking.
“I grew up in a very traditional family who… let’s just say never wanted for anything.” In other words, richer than God. Got it. “Even when I was a kid, my sister and I were expected to act a certain way, talk a certain way, be a certain way. Our lives—and our personalities—were carved out for us.” Her voice takes on an edge. “ Be a nice, polite girl. Get good grades so you can go to a good college. Find a wealthy husband to take care of you. Be a nice, polite wife. ” She sighs, the sound sad. “I love my family, and I’m immensely grateful for the life they’ve provided for me, but they’ve never felt like the kind of family you just described in one story.”
An ache spreads in my chest at her admission, her hesitation to step into a relationship making a little more sense. By the sounds of it, she didn’t only spend a decade of marriage being told who to be. She’s overcoming an entire lifetime of it.
“You can meet my family, if you want,” I say before thinking better of it. “Come to a Sunday dinner at my parents’ house, my sisters will cure you of ever wanting siblings.”
Vanessa gives me a smile, but it looks a little sad. I don’t want to think about if it’s because she knows that won’t solve her family problem, or if it’s because she doesn’t want to get that close to me.
Thankfully, the group ahead of us finishes up before the moment can turn awkward. We silently stand from the bench, and I gesture for Vanessa to go first.
I watch as she places her ball on the ground, then lines up her shot with the utmost concentration. I can’t take my eyes off her.
Until she swings and hits the ball clear across the greenery and into the hole at the other end.
For a moment, I can only stare in shock. It takes me a second to unglue my tongue from the roof of my mouth.
“I take it back; you’re not allowed anywhere near my sisters. You’re a hustler.”
She chuckles, swinging the club over her shoulder. “I promise that was just beginner’s luck.”
My eyes narrow. “I don’t believe you.”
With a sparkle in her eyes, she gestures for me to take my shot. “Only one way to find out.”
It takes me five tries to get the ball in the hole. By the time I finally sink it, Vanessa is failing miserably at holding back her grin.
“It takes me a little to get warmed up,” I grumble as I scoop the ball up.
Vanessa’s laugh is a tinkle in the air, but it’s her hand squeezing my forearm that really takes my breath away. I don’t even think she realizes she did it.
It takes another swallow to be able to get out, “I don’t know how to feel about the fact that you see mini golf as this incredible thing I’ve suggested, but meanwhile I’m trying to fight back memories of being destroyed by my sisters during family nights here.”
I don’t really expect her to respond to that as I line up my own shot. But then I hear her muse, “When you put it like that… we do seem to come from very different worlds.”
That’s enough to make me pause and look at her. “Is that bad?” I ask bluntly.
When her expression softens, my heart rate goes back to normal. That first night at her house—when I saw her house—I had wondered if she’d think we were too different to make any of this work. I had meant to ask her the morning after, but...
Her voice is sweet when she says quietly, “Ryder, that’s only ever been a bonus.”
And that brings my grin right to the forefront. Spinning back around, I line up, bite my lip in concentration, and haul back on the shot.
Hole in one .
I don’t even bother to smother the joy. I’m fist pumping as soon as the ball drops in the hole.
“ Now who’s being hustled?” Vanessa asks with a laugh.
“Trust me, I’m as surprised as you are. I think that’s happened maybe twice in twenty years.”
That earns me a sigh as she hits her ball again—right into the hole, of course. “I keep forgetting how young you are,” she says.
Leaning on my golf club, I give into my curiosity again. “Does that bother you?”
She spins to face me, and I have to focus to keep my eyes on her face instead of the miles of leg that spin just revealed. “That I’m hanging out with a twenty something year old?”
“That you have a friend a few years younger than you,” I correct carefully.
With the way she’s looking at me, I think the unspoken part of my question is clear. Is my age one of the reasons you didn’t want to explore this thing between us?
I can see the thoughts tumbling through her head, and I wait patiently for her answer. “No, our age difference doesn’t bother me.”
But there’s something else she’s not saying, so I stay silent.
Sure enough, she continues after a moment. “It’s not the age difference, and it doesn’t bother me, necessarily, but…” She bites her lip in thought. “But us being in different stages of life does affect this,” she admits, gesturing between us. “I mean, you’re twenty-five, with the world spread out before you. You know exactly who you are, and what you want. You’re a whole person . And I’m…” She lets out a heavy exhale. “I don’t know… not . I’ve lived through this entire stage of life where I completely lost myself.” She locks eyes with me. “When I was your age, we still would’ve been different, but I at least would’ve been at the same stage, filled with the same hope and excitement. I wouldn’t be… this version of myself.”
I hold her gaze, letting her see that I do get it. Ten years is a lot of experiences that I haven’t had the time for yet.
And yet, I still have enough hope that our journeys aren’t so different that we won’t meet in the middle. But only when it’s good for her .
So for now, I merely say, “I think you might be closer to your true self than you think you are.”
It must be the right thing to say, because a smile lights up her face. And it takes everything in me to fight the temptation to kiss her.
Instead, I walk over to the hole and pluck her ball from it, then drop it into her open hand.
“Alright, hustler, let’s see how many more ‘accidental’ hole in ones you can get.”
The rest of the game is light and easy. I ask her more about her childhood, she asks me for more stories about my family. I ask her about her interests, she brushes me off and turns the question back on me.
I’m starting to see what she means about never having had the chance to find herself. Even when she does answer one of my questions, there’s always an undercurrent of my family pushed for this, or my ex-husband suggested that . It’s like she was never able to figure out what she likes.
By the twelfth hole, I vow to broaden her horizons a little bit. Or at least to give her the motivation, or the inspiration, or whatever the fuck she needs to go find it on her own. The world deserves to see the vibrant, passionate woman waiting just behind her walls.
An idea hits me as soon as we tap our balls into the clown’s mouth at the last hole. By the time Vanessa returns her club, I can feel my grin stretching from ear to ear.
Sure enough, when she turns to face me, her expression becomes skeptical. “I feel like that smile should scare me.”
“Oh, definitely. Do you trust me anyway?”
I don’t realize I’m holding my breath for her answer until her gaze tracks over my face for a moment, right before she says in a strong voice, “I do.”
My exhale is heavy with relief. “Good. We’re going to the carnival.”