35. Ryan
CHAPTER 35
Ryan
I put the finishing touches on my time card for this week, ready to head out since the fluorescent office lighting makes my eyes ache. I hate doing the damn time card, even though I understand it’s necessary. Billable hours and all that. Still, I wish there was some automated way to do it instead of having to go into explicit detail over every working hour, attaching each one to specific jobs. I always forget to do it until the last second, and I spend the last couple hours of the pay period scrambling to get it together. I’m reading over it one more time, the ache in my eyes getting worse as I try to focus on the tiny typeset in the Excel spreadsheet cells when my phone starts buzzing.
I let out a sigh of relief, glad for something to pull me away, and answer. “Hello, this is Ryan.” I close my eyes and rub them, making a mental note to get an eye exam soon.
A voice crackles down the line, sounding muffled and a little far away. “Ryan, hey man, this is Jared.”
My head rears back in shock and I clarify, “Forrester?”
“Yeah.” My eyes spring open and narrow in confusion.
“Uh. What can I do for you?” I’m trying to stay as polite as I can in my bewilderment. I don’t want to give him any ammunition.
His voice breaks up again, and all I can make out is, “Can you… Emma?”
“Sorry man, you’re breaking up pretty bad. What about Emma?”
“Sorry, heading out to a work emergency. Better?” His voice sounds a little clearer, but it's still tough to make out. It makes sense that the call quality is so bad if he’s headed off to some lumber emergency. Summer usually has to rely on text messages when he’s at work to communicate about Emma. When I confirm I can hear him, he continues, “Can you pick up Emma from gymnastics in, like, twenty minutes? I can’t be there and I already tried to call Summer. She didn’t answer.”
I’m stunned by the request seeing as he’s had a zero-tolerance policy against this very thing: Me having even casual contact with Emma. “Are you sure?” I ask slowly, wondering if this is a test.
Even through the poor reception, I can hear his annoyance, “Yes. Just take her to get ice cream or something and I’ll pick her up after. There’s a place just down the road. I shouldn’t be long.”
I think for a beat before saying, “Okay, I can do that.” Maybe this is how I show Jared that I can be helpful, and that Emma and I can get along. We hang up and I release a tight exhale. I’m nervous, but I can’t pinpoint why. Maybe I just want Emma to like me. It feels sort of strange to be meeting her formally without Summer.
I try to give Summer a call even though Jared said he couldn’t get ahold of her. Her phone goes straight to voicemail, and after the tone, I leave a brief message saying, “Hey, so I’m going to pick Emma up from gymnastics. I’ll explain later. Love you.”
After I hang up, I wonder if I should have mentioned Jared, but decide against it. I don't want to bother her at work and I figure since Jared asked, she'd be okay with it. I’ll just tell her when she calls me back. I don’t want to leave Emma waiting for long, so I click save on my timesheet, and power down my computer, waving to our receptionist as I head out of the office.
When I pull in front of Oasis Gymnastics, I turn off my audiobook (one of Summer’s favorites) and shove my phone in my pocket. I quickly get out of the truck because I’d hate to be late and unexpected.
I open the glass door and am greeted by an icy blast of air conditioning that smells vaguely of feet and disinfectant, a front desk, and a waiting area full of parents either looking down at their phones or watching the kids through the large glass wall separating us from the rest of the gym. “Are you here to enroll a new student?” the teenage girl behind the desk asks me, boredom rolling off her in noxious waves. She has her hair pulled back in a thick blonde ponytail and her crossed arms have the toned definition of an athlete. She must be one of the older students here.
“No, I’m here to pick up Emma Forrester?” I realize I end the sentence with a question and mentally steel myself. I need to get it together because right now I sound like a confused old man.
She narrows her dark brown eyes at me and pops her gum once before replying, “You’re not her dad.”
“No, I’m not. I’m a—um—friend of her mom’s,” I fumble. My god, who knew teenage girls could be so intimidating?
She sighs and holds out a hand, palm up, “Let me see some I.D. and make sure you’re on the approved pick-up list.” I take out my wallet and slip my I.D. out from its slot, placing it into her open palm. She makes a show of squinting at the picture, then up at me, “You look old now.” I feel my ears turn hot and I grumble something about not taking a new picture for my license in a while. “I’ll say,” she responds while clicking around on her computer. “Okay. Looks like Ms. Evans put you on the approved list a few weeks back. Lucky you,” she says the last part so dully, you’d think she was talking about her least favorite class in school.
I look over her shoulder to see that Emma is finishing up. I take my I.D. back and stand by the wall near the exit.
Emma follows a few other students through the glass door and comes to a stop to scan the room. When her eyes land on me, I wave awkwardly (I swear I hear the girl behind the desk snort), and her mouth turns down in confusion. She slowly approaches me and asks, “Do I know you?”
“Sorta. I’m Ryan, your mom’s friend. You might not remember, but I drove you to the hospital the day your appendix got removed.” I sit in the chair nearest me, so I’m not towering over her.
She frowns again before her expression clears. “Oh yeah, I kinda remember you. What’re you doing here?” She looks around, clearly searching for her mom or dad.
“Your dad called and asked me to pick you up. Said he was running a little late from a work thing. He thought we could go get some ice cream and then he’ll get you from there soon.”
She shrugs and says, “Okay,” in the easy, accepting way that children often have. I’ve always admired how they can just roll with the punches. I lead her out toward my truck, and when she looks at the backseat she says, “Where’s my booster seat?”
I mentally facepalm. I don’t know how I forgot that little detail. “Well, I don’t have one for you, but we can probably just walk to the ice cream place. Your dad said it was nearby?” Didn’t think I’d be asking for directions from a six-year-old, but here we are.
“Oh! We’re going to Swirl? Yes! Come on.” She excitedly slams the door, takes hold of my hand with a surprisingly firm grip, and tugs me back on the sidewalk. As she leads me (hopefully) in the right direction, she prattles on about all the different flavors she’s tried and warns me away from a flavor called Curd Your Enthusiasm proclaiming it’s “yucky.”
A few minutes later, we stop at a storefront with windows painted in bold swirling patterns of every color. I pull open the door and am immediately assaulted by sweet-smelling, cool air. “ Come on, kiddo. Let’s get you a scoop. Do you want it in a cup or a cone?”
She looks at me like I must be missing a few brain cells and says, “Cone,” in a way that implies “idiot” was tacked on at the end in her head. She must be getting sass lessons from the front desk girl at her gym.
Despite the heat, there’s no line, so we walk right up to the counter. I order her a watermelon lemonade flavored ice cream in a cake cone and get a scoop of strawberry cheesecake in a cup for myself. Once we have our ice creams in hand, I lead her to the seating area, which is made up of two giant swings hanging from the ceiling on either side of a small picnic table.
The decor looks like something they threw together in the hopes that it would photograph well on social media and attract more customers. Inexplicably, there's a stuffed animal section in the back corner with one massive teddy bear whose head nearly touches the ceiling surrounded by his much more appropriately sized minions. It looks vaguely like something I’ve had a nightmare about once or twice. I shiver and tell myself that it's just from the cold.
I pointedly angle my body away from Nightmare Corner and feel the bench swing sway under me. “So, how are you enjoying your summer?” I ask, hoping the neutral question will launch her on another tangent and I can avoid any awkward conversations.
She purses her ice cream covered lips and looks at me shrewdly, “Are you really my mom’s friend?”
“What else would I be?” I ask back after swallowing an admittedly delicious bite of ice cream. I suppose I can ignore the horrifyingly large teddy bear for this. Maybe I’ll bring Summer here one night on a date. I glance again at the gargantuan bear and I swear it moved positions since I last looked at it.
Okay, maybe we can get our ice cream to go .
“Her boyfriend?” Her retort comes quickly and ends with a titter I was not expecting. Oh god. I do not want to lie to this kid the first time I’m officially meeting her. That sounds like a recipe for disaster.
I gracelessly switch topics, “So, what’s your favorite part about gymnastics?” I breathe out a sigh of relief when she brightly discusses the balance beam, bar, and bouncy floors to practice tumbling. Her favorite skill is doing a cartwheel on the balance beam even though she was scared to try it at first. I’m about to ask a follow-up question about a bar maneuver she called a “backward hip circle” while scraping the edges of the cup to get one last bite of soupy deliciousness when the door bangs open. In storms an irate-looking Jared.
“What. Are. You. Doing with my daughter, ” he growls, approaching like a storm cloud. The last bit is said so quickly that the words bleed together, but I get the gist. He walks over to Emma’s side of the table and wraps a protective arm around her. A little much if you ask me, since we’re clearly enjoying some ice cream, but whatever.
I feel my eyes go wide as I look at him glowering over the table and realize he’s serious, “Um, what you told me to?” I say like a question, because I am genuinely confused right now.
His head rears back and a puzzled look draws his brows together. In his current state, it makes him look like a bull getting ready to charge. “What are you talking about?”
“You just called and asked me to pick her up less than an hour ago. You said something about a work emergency and not being able to get ahold of Summer,” I say as calmly as I can.
“I never called you! I don’t even have your number.” Emma watches the exchange, head bouncing back and forth like she’s watching a tennis match.
“Well someone called me, said they were you, and that you needed help.”
Jared laughs, a sharp sound that seems like it hurts coming out, and says, “Even if I needed help, you are the absolute last person I would call.”
“Well, if you didn’t call me, then who did?” As he scoffs, I pull out my phone and check the call log. I turn my screen to him, pointing out his incoming call. “See? You called.”
“That’s not my number. It’s not even the right area code,” he says slowly. He wrinkles his brows in confusion before he types something into his phone. After studying it for a bit he says, “This is one of those throw-away numbers that you can use as long as you have a Wi-Fi signal. How do I know you didn’t call your phone from your computer just to make this all up?”
I shake my head, genuinely taken aback. “Because that's insane.” I stretch out the first word, not able to help myself. What the fuck is going on?
“Daddy, it's true. He said you told him to come pick me up,” Emma says, eyeing her dad, tiny hand clutching at the arm banded around her shoulders.
“Shh baby, this is between the grownups, okay? Why don’t you go hang out with the teddy bears and I’ll come get you in a second.” He brushes a kiss to her brow, helps her down, and gently pushes her in the right direction. Or the wrong direction if you ask me. I shiver at the thought of her sitting in that thing’s lap.
Jared sits across from me and takes a deep breath. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know that I didn’t call you. I showed up a couple of minutes late to pick my daughter up from class because I did have something come up at work and couldn’t find her. Then when I panicked and asked the girl at the front desk where Emma was, she said she left with some guy and they mentioned something about ice cream. When I exploded on her asking why the hell she let my six-year-old daughter leave with a man who wasn’t me. She said you were on the approved list and showed me your sign-out signature. If you weren’t setting this whole thing up, why are you suddenly on the approved pick-up list when it hasn’t changed since Emma started there two years ago?” His voice gets more and more heated, but I can tell he’s trying to keep it down.
I spread my hands out in front of me and say, “I didn’t even realize I was on the list, or that there even was a list. Summer must have added me at some point. Listen, I didn’t introduce myself as Summer’s boyfriend or anything, okay? I just told her that I was picking her up and her mom knew me. No harm, no foul.” I am trying to be understanding because I can’t imagine how terrified he was to get to Emma’s class and find her missing. Still though, I wish he would calm down so we can get to the bottom of this.
I see his jaw clench once, twice. “You know what I think? I think you orchestrated this whole thing so you could soften up my daughter. Make sure she likes you so she’s on your side when the whole six-month clause is up. Which is, conveniently, in about a month. And you just couldn’t wait to come in and be Prince Charming or whatever. You want to push me out and make one happy little family,” he sneers. I blink, stunned. Does this man think that I’m some sort of Bond villain?
I shake my head firmly. “I promise you, not at all. I truly want what’s best for Emma. I think that means having you and Summer here for her. I’m sorry this was such a fucked up thing. I genuinely thought you called me and that I was helping. Can I have your actual number so nothing like this ever happens again?” I ask, trying to show I’m not the bad guy here. He grudgingly gives it to me and then stands to leave.
Just before he goes to Emma, he knocks once on the sticky table and says, “I still don’t think I believe you. I’ll be talking to Summer and my lawyer about this.” A lead ball drops in my gut, but before I can say anything more, he’s shepherding Emma out the door. She gives me a meek wave and a small smile before following her dad out. Well, shit. This won’t be good. I scrub my hand through my hair and hope I don’t get charged with kidnapping or something equally as ridiculous.