“Is that actually her?” Dale Odom asked his girlfriend, Lindsey Beck. I couldn’t hear Lindsey’s response, but out of curiosity, I pushed through the crowd to investigate. Surrounded by security personnel and looking like a power couple, Ryker and Gabi stood in the middle of the crowd with a halo of empty floor surrounding them thanks to the burly men in suits keeping the school from mobbing poor Gabi.
“Gabi’s here to enjoy the prom. She’s not signing any autographs tonight,” Ryker announced to the mob.
“Is he dating her now?” Austin said, coming up beside me.
“I don’t know.” I’d worried in the beginning that Ryker had been interested in Gabi, but he put those fears to rest right away. As far as I knew, they were still just friends. But they looked so natural together I began to question what I’d been assuming all along. Had I ruined everything? I’d had my chance with Ryker, and now I might have lost it forever. Gabi was charming and sweet and a famous actress. Like I’d said from the beginning, I would never be able to compete with that. And now my worst fear looked like it very well might be coming true. But I’d chosen this road. And now I had to deal with the consequences. I had Austin. I might as well make the best of the relationship I’d worked hard to build for the past four years.
“They sure look like they’re together now,” Austin said.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “They do.”
“Well, he sure moved on fast,” Austin said. “I guess it wasn’t that serious between you two, after all. Not that it matters now. Because you have me.” He took my hand and kissed my fingertips. It would have been a sweet, romantic gesture from the right guy, but when Austin did it, it just gave me the creeps.
Ryker and Gabi moved to the middle of the room. He spun her around, her sparkling white gown fanning out around her. They really did look like Cinderella and Prince Charming at the ball. The scene was something straight from a Disney movie.
I thought I would be sick. I had to get away from the dance floor.
I migrated over to the refreshment table. I had to weave around several couples to get there. I got a glass of lemon water and sipped on it, taking deep breaths. Slowly, the ill feeling in my tummy subsided, and I felt my shoulders relaxing a bit. I leaned against the wall next to a decorative tree strung with twinkle lights. How was I supposed to survive much more of this night? At least the crowd was so thick I couldn’t see Ryker and Gabi anymore. I felt safer hiding behind this tree. I knew I was being a coward, but I needed this moment to escape.
“You clean up well,” Austin said.
I was tempted to crane my neck to see who he was talking to. Why was he flirting with someone when he’d promised that he only had eyes for me this time? And why had I been stupid enough to believe him?
“You don’t look so bad yourself,” a female voice said. This time I did crane my neck and spotted Austin smiling at Tabby like she was the most beautiful woman alive. She put a hand on the lapel of his suit jacket and ran it down his chest, caressing him. The chemistry between them was undeniable. Who was I to deny them that? By all means, they could have each other. Because I was done being their source of entertainment.
“Shannon, are you okay?”
I turned to see Ryker standing before me in his tux, and yummy didn’t even begin to describe how good he looked. My heart jumped in my chest at his nearness and begged me to allow myself to be with him. But my heart didn’t have a brain. Ryker looked like he was very much with another girl tonight.
“What are you doing against the wall by yourself?”
Even after the terrible way I’d treated him, he still cared about me? Tears sprung to my eyes. I hardly deserved any kindness Ryker had to offer.
Tabby let loose a shrill laugh, and I looked over to see her still touching Austin. This time she was standing much closer to him, and he had his hand around her waist.
Ryker must have seen the direction where I was looking because he stepped forward to confront Austin and Tabby. “Are you guys serious right now? Can you be any more disrespectful to Shannon? Austin, you were supposed to be her date tonight. You have never appreciated how amazing Shannon is. You had an incredible girl who wanted to be with you, and all you ever did was take advantage of her and treat her like dirt.”
“I only treated her the way she wanted to be treated.”
“What does that even mean?” Ryker asked, fury lacing his words. “No one, and I mean no one, wants to be mistreated. There’s never an excuse to be disrespectful to another person. And especially not someone you’re dating. That’s the person you’re supposed to respect the very most.”
“Whatever, man. Save it for the movie camera. We’re living in reality over here.”
Ryker was wasting his breath trying to explain decent human behavior to Austin. But regardless, Austin still needed to know he couldn’t walk all over me anymore. I was beyond done with the way he was treating me.
I stepped in front of Austin and Tabby and looked both of them square in the eye. First Austin and then Tabby. “I’m through with you both. Don’t talk to me again. Austin, when we’re at UNC, and you see me on campus, I hope you act like you don’t even know me. Because I don’t want to know you. I don’t hate you. In fact, I hope your life is full and happy. I only wish the best for you. But I’m done being used by you, and I’m not going to let you hurt me ever again.”
I spun on my heel and stalked away from them.
“Are you okay?” Ryker was by my side again.
“Where’s Gabi?” I asked, avoiding his question. The truth was, I wasn’t sure if I was okay. I was pretty shaken up and confused by what had just happened.
“She insisted that I let her sign some autographs. I think she really just wanted me to come talk to you.”
“To me?” I squeaked. “Why would Gabi want that? She’s your date.”
“Gabi and I aren’t together. You know that, right?”
“Nooo . . .” The word stretched out slowly from my mouth.
“When we went to Charter, she told me that she’d always dreamed of having a normal high school experience. When you told me you were going to prom with Austin, I decided to offer her your ticket. I figured she’d love to experience prom. I want to get to know her since we’re filming the movie as soon as graduation is over.”
“So you’re not together with her.”
“No. Not at all. Gabi and I are just friends. And we’re new friends. Hardly more than acquaintances.”
I took a minute to absorb this new information. It settled on me like a warm blanket, and I felt the truth of it. I just wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it.
“I can tell that you need some space to figure your feelings out. I can respect that. So I’m taking a step back, Shannon. When you’re ready, if you ever decide that you are, I’ll be waiting for you.”
Because he loved me. And that's what people did when they loved someone. They put that person’s needs before their own. Wasn’t that what I wanted to do for Ryker when I decided to break off our relationship?
Because I loved him. I realized that now. I’d wanted to put my own feelings to the side so he could have the career he deserved. The truth was, I was better off with Ryker. But he wasn’t better off with me. I was a mess. And that would only be distracting to him and his future.
Ryker and Gabi hung out with me for the rest of the evening. They were both so sweet and kind to me. Gabi was genuinely worried and listened as I told her what kind of boyfriend Austin had been. When I heard how invested she was in me getting together with Ryker, I realized she’d never intended to take him. She apologized if it had ever seemed that way. She even let Ryker walk me to my car so I wouldn’t have to go out in the dark alone.
For the next few weeks, Ryker and I didn’t really talk. I finished my novel, and Mrs. Drake and a few of the other girls from my English class who wrote for fun, read through it, giving me feedback. I went through and worked long hours, fixing what they had suggested to make the story str
onger. Beyond that, I went back to my old life of going to school, going to Toppings to work, and doing what was left of my homework for the rest of the semester. I felt happier than I had in a long time. Writing had filled a huge void in my life. But it wasn’t the same without Ryker.
Mid-May arrived, and I finally turned in my completed manuscript to Mrs. Drake. The next morning, she stopped me after English class.
“I stayed up late reading the finished version of your manuscript. It’s very good. You’ve completely nailed it with this story. You have a strong chance of winning the competition—I hope you know that. But I want to talk to you about something, and I hope I’m not intruding by bringing this up. I know you got the inspiration for your book from your relationship with Ryker, but I have to admit, I’ve noticed that you never sit with him at lunch anymore. Did something happen between the two of you? I normally wouldn’t ask, but your book characters have their happily ever after, and I feel like you deserve one too.”
“My characters get together in the end, but let’s face it; that’s not how real life works. Real life is when people leave each other and get hurt. Hearts are left smashed. I’m trying to keep that from happening to me. And if I don’t give my heart to anyone, I don’t have to worry about it getting broken.”
“But then you don’t get the kind of happiness you deserve either. Sometimes you have to take a risk to get the biggest reward.”
I’d heard the same thing before. Maybe it was worth thinking about. I just wasn’t sure I was ready to do that.
Late one night just over a week later, after I got home from Toppings, I sat at the kitchen table, across from my mom, sipping on a cup of hot chocolate. It was rare for us to talk, just the two of us.
“I hope you know how proud I am of you for finishing that book. I have to admit that when you told me you were planning to write a book in two months, I thought you were taking on too much, especially right at the end of your senior year. But you’ve far surpassed my expectations. I couldn’t be more impressed. But I’m still concerned about you. Despite how happy you’ve been to finish your first book, you seem sad at times,” Mom said. “What’s been going on with you?”
I shrugged, looking down into my cup.
“Does it have something to do with the reason Ryker never comes over anymore?”
“He and I aren’t really friends. We had a little bit of a falling out.” It wasn’t exactly the truth, but I wasn’t sure I wanted my mom to know what had actually happened. It was easier to paint a picture of a big breakup. But the truth was, I couldn’t explain why we weren’t together. Every time I tried to understand it, my brain didn’t want to acknowledge the thought. I usually ended up distracting myself by picking up my phone or working on my fan fiction.
“Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
I took a deep breath. It was a struggle to open up at first, but before I realized it, I was pouring out my heart to my mom about Ryker and had filled her in on everything that had happened between us. It had been a long time since I’d had a good heart-to-heart talk with my mom, and it felt great. I’d been holding everything inside.
“I think I’m scared Ryker will end up leaving me just like Austin did. Just like Dad left you.”
“Austin and Ryker are two very different people. Ryker is one of the good ones.”
“I know he is.”
“Then what’s stopping you from being with him?”
“That’s what I can’t figure out.”
Mom sighed. “When your dad left, I tried to protect you as much as I could from what I was going through, but now I see that maybe I should have opened up a little bit more with you. Because I stayed quiet, you ended up in a relationship with a guy who treated you like your dad treated me. But when you get a divorce, everyone tells you to never badmouth the other parent because it’s hard on the kids. I thought that meant I couldn't talk about what happened at all. I didn’t know how to talk about the level of abuse he put me through without shedding a bad light on him. But now I’m wondering if that was a mistake. I wanted you to grow up carefree and fun.”
“But I was in the situation, too,” I argued. “I saw the way Dad treated you. I heard him tell you he’d been with another woman. You didn’t have to badmouth him. I saw it all on my own.”
Shock registered across Mom’s face. “You heard him telling me he’d cheated?”
“Yeah. I’ve known the entire time. I know Dad’s a scumbag. But I thought that maybe you guys should have worked harder. I blamed you for a long time because I thought that if you’d just tried harder that he wouldn’t have picked another woman, and then he wouldn’t have left.”
“You blamed me?” Mom’s face went white.
“I did. I decided that I was going to try my best to work things out with Austin. That’s why I stayed with him for so long. I wanted to do what I thought you weren’t doing right. I wanted to prove that I had what it took to keep a relationship together.”
“And what did you learn?” Mom asked.
I laughed bitterly. “I learned that there was nothing I could do to change Austin. No matter how sweet I was to him, he would still mistreat me. After a while, I started to hate him. But I stayed with him anyway because I kept holding onto that hope that I’d figure out what it took to fix the relationship. But it never happened.”
“And when he cheated on you with Tabby, you decided you’d had enough.”
I nodded. “Exactly.”
“And then Ryker came along, and you recognized what you were missing.”
“Well, Ryker was there the entire time. I just didn’t understand how he was getting me through it all. But when he started getting all the attention from the girls, and I saw I was going to lose him, I kind of woke up. And eventually, I realized I’ve been in love with him the entire time.”
“Why aren’t you with him now?” Mom asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t make sense of it.”
“You know what I think?” she asked.
“What?”
“I think you don’t believe you deserve a guy as good as Ryker, so you’re self-sabotaging. You had Austin’s behavior modeled to you by your father. I’m not going to dig too deep into what happened because he still is your father, and I want to respect your relationship with him, but from an objective perspective, I can still see that he had a big impact on you and your self-worth.”
“So, I think I deserve someone like Dad who thinks it’s okay to cheat on a woman.”
“You said it, not me,” Mom said with a smile. I could see a dam of emotions built up behind her eyes. How much had Mom been keeping from me about what she’d gone through? I was just glad Mom had been able to go to a therapist and talk it out.
“Mom, I’d like to go to therapy over what happened with Dad. I think I’m ready to start healing.”
She reached out across the table and took my hand in hers. “That is definitely something we can do. I’ll see if my therapist has any openings this next week. How does that sound?”
“Honestly? It sounds scary. I’m not sure it will be easy to talk about everything I’ve been keeping bottled up all these years.”
“You just have to take it one day at a time. In the meantime, you need to make it right with Ryker. I know you’ve been in love with him the entire time.”
“You did? How?”
She quirked an eyebrow. “I’m your mother. I know you better than anyone. I knew you’d recognize what you felt for him when the time was right.”
Maddie came into the room. “Shannon, I overheard you talking to Mom just now. There’s something you need to see.”
She slipped into the chair next to me and showed me a video she had pulled up on her phone. Ryker was sitting on a couch, talking to what looked like a talk-show host. He was wearing the same shirt he’d been wearing when we were in California. Maybe he was being interviewed while I was getting my hair done for the charity ball. He had mentioned that he had an appoin
tment set up for him that day.
The man in the video wanted to know who the girl in the waterfall picture was. So Ryker told him our story from the beginning. He let them know that we were the poor kids at school who had been best friends since elementary school. We were next-door neighbors with single parents. He told him that we had recently begun dating and that we were happy together.
“This video changed Ryker’s entire image with the public,” Maddie said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes. “Maybe if you bothered to open a web browser once in a while, you’d know what people are saying about you online.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I open web browsers,” I said defensively.
“Clearly not to the sites that matter,” Maddie said.
“What are they saying about her now?” Mom asked.
“Everyone sees her as a modern-day Cinderella.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Now that they know Ryker hasn’t been jumping from girl to girl, the response online has completely shifted. Ryker has this new role and the money that goes along with it, and they see him as an actual Prince Charming in love with his best friend and next-door neighbor. His fans are eating it up. Because who doesn’t love a real-life Cinderella story?”
My mind reeled. Maybe Maddie was right. I did need to open a web browser more often. This new information changed everything.
“I think you know what you need to do now,” Mom said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You need to go after Ryker before you lose the best thing in your life.”
I sat back in my chair, my mind racing. She was right. I knew exactly what I needed to do.
The next morning, I got up to go to the last day of school. While I was brushing my teeth, an email came through on my phone. I swiped at the screen and saw who it was from—Tufted Pen Publishing submissions. My heart dropped to my feet, and I frantically opened the email. I scanned through the attached letter and spat my toothpaste in the sink, screeching.
My Best Friend Prince Charming: A Sweet YA Romance (Sweet Mountain High Book 6) Page 11
