You don’t know what he’s been through. You don’t know what he deals with. She bit down on the response. He already knew too much about her life, her relationship, there was no sense in volunteering more information, even if it was vague.
“Gee, I don’t know. He’s here, though. Why don’t you ask him if you’re so curious?” she sassed.
“Did you have trouble lugging his oxygen tank up the front steps?”
That did it. Something within her snapped.
A switch had flipped and unleashed the fury she had barely managed to conceal beneath a facade of civility.
Ryleigh whipped around, jaw tight. She glared at Daniel, eyes piercing him like rough cut sapphires fresh from the mine, their edges sharp and unpolished. She could have sworn he recoiled at her intensity.
Served him right.
“Whatever this fixation with me is, you need to give it up,” she bit out. “Your jealousy is ridiculous. Absurd.” Pointing toward the kitchen, she said, “In case you haven’t picked up on it, I’m in love with Peter. You’re not even a fraction of the man he is. I’m his, forever. Nothing will ever break us up. Nothing will ever come between us. Not you, and not your mother. So, forget about it, Reyes.” Ryleigh slapped a hand to her forehead. “You’re here with my roommate, for Christ’s sake, and you’re following me around when you should be looking for her. Jesus, Daniel.”
“Can we go somewhere quiet?” His hands dove into his pockets, thumbs hanging back. “I have to tell you something. It’s important and I should’ve told you a long time ago.”
“Unbelievable. Did you not hear anything that just came out of my mouth? I don’t know how to make it any more clear that I’m in a relationship and I am 100% not interested in you. And now you’re trying to whisk me away from the party to what? To kiss me or something?”
She surprised herself with the accusation, but was at a loss for what other reason Daniel might have for taking her to a more sparsely populated area.
“I had no idea you were so full of yourself. This is enlightening, truly. Suppose I just wanted to talk, would you believe that?”
“No, Daniel, I wouldn’t. Besides that, we have no reason to ‘just talk.’” She flashed air quotes.
For once, he was speechless. In lieu of giving him a chance to recover and respond, Ryleigh stormed off to the kitchen.
The same group of guys hovered around the ongoing game of beer pong. Peter, however, was nowhere in sight. As she mentally labeled the kitchen a dead end, she noticed Min-ji slouched on the tiled floor by the refrigerator. Everyone else pretended the zonked girl did not exist, desensitized to the affairs of this breed of party and thereby extending zero help.
Ryleigh knelt beside her and gently shook her shoulder. “Min-ji? Are you alright?”
The light touch reanimated her from a momentary dip in consciousness. “Hey, girl.” She dragged out the ‘l’ sound much too long. “Have you seen Daniel? I thought I saw him earlier but then...ugh, my head.”
Ryleigh felt a pang of pity for her. What kind of guy invites a girl to a rager, only to abandon her?
An asshole, that’s who.
“I’m going to help you up, okay?” She slung one of Min-ji’s arms around her shoulders, assisting her crumpled figure off the ground.
Helping her up proved to be as difficult as helping someone right themself on an oil-slicken surface. Min-ji stumbled like a lamb on its new legs before Ryleigh at last helped her stand.
A mass of drunken students spared no sympathy as she ushered her roommate toward the front door. Though Min-ji did not weigh much, Ryleigh fought to keep her afoot amid the unyielding chaos.
“Peter and I will take you back to the dorm, alright?” Ryleigh’s foot caught the door at the expense of her strained ankle as a trio of girls crossed over the threshold but struggled to open it wide enough so they could both pass through.
Several groups of people lingered on the expansive front porch, engaging in hushed conversation and guzzling from the punctured mouths of aluminum cans.
Her head throbbed as the effects of the blaring music, shouting voices, and marijuana fumes set in. And she had only taken one sip of her sure-to-induce-death cocktail. Ryleigh needed to call Peter, but that would have been impossible while balancing the weight of a drunk girl, so she eased Min-ji to a sitting position.
As she reached for her phone, she spied a curly-haired man crouched on one of the lower steps, a cigarette suspended haphazardly between his fingers.
The image stoked a fire within her more brilliant than the smoldering cherry red ring burning holes into her heart.
Min-ji rested a few feet away. Ryleigh rationalized she would be okay for a couple of minutes. She clunked down the steps in her sneakers as Peter took a lengthy drag from the cigarette and released the smoke with a heavy sigh.
His look was not in the least bit surprised or defensive, but rather one of reluctance when she materialized in front of him.
“Is this something you do now?” Ryleigh gestured to the cigarette. Her voice cracked for Peter’s disgusting secret, for Daniel’s damnable presence, for the night that had been swept up in disaster.
Thumb jerking toward the frat house, he bit back, “Is this something you do now?”
Ryleigh crossed and uncrossed her arms, fuming and failing to supply a rebuttal. Her capacity to put up with any further drama had diminished after her run-in with Daniel. “This most definitely isn’t something I do. You know that. You know how stressed I’ve been this week. I just wanted to relax.”
“Fuck, Ry. You don’t think I’m stressed, too?” Peter rose to his full height, brushing off his khakis. He flicked the cigarette to the ground and put it out with the heel of his loafer as he reached into his pocket to produce a stick of gum. Rage bubbled inside Ryleigh as she watched him unwrap the gum and pop it into his mouth. She recalled the day at Le Croûton when Peter had worn far too much cologne, the too-close smell at the job fair that she had written off as belonging to anyone but him. “This job hasn’t been an easy transition. A job, by the way, I took for you, I took for us. Try to consider that the next time you feel like ripping into my bad habits.”
“You don’t smoke, Peter. You’re not a smoker.” She felt small as the words left her lips, and irrationally worried her downsized lungs were not capable of producing sounds loud enough to be heard by her worked-up boyfriend.
Jamming his hands into his pockets, he shrugged. Peter startled her along with everyone else hanging around the porch when he shouted, “You know I used to. Are you honestly that surprised?” Then, more calmly, “You think I feel good about this? I don’t.”
Pools of students spilled out of the house and crowded onto the porch until it was filled to the brim. People hung over the railing, some aiming their phones at the action. How their lovers’ spat had captured the attention of an entire frat party would forever be an enigma to Ryleigh.
“Break her heart, Rosenfeld,” someone cheered.
“You’re the man,” yelled another.
“I know exactly why you’ve been smoking.” She raised her voice to a foreign decibel and the force splintered her insides. Daniel lurked among the crowd but her current lens of choler blocked everyone from view except her target. “You’ve been off your meds, and for how long? Why haven’t you found a new psychiatrist? How could you be so reckless?”
“You’re upset because you’ve only ever seen me through a medicated filter. That’s cute. Well, guess what? This is the real me. Take it or leave it, sweetheart.”
His tone sliced her major veins and she bled out in this unforgiving arena of public humiliation.
Survival kicked in. Ryleigh resorted to self-defense.
“I should’ve known you were off your meds when you asked me to move in with you.”
A K.O. had not been her intention.
His face shifted. Peter’s armor fell to the ground in a deafening clatter. Hurt etched so deeply into his features, it was sure to scar.
But his pain did not register in Ryleigh’s flummoxed brain, and she went on, cutting deeper, “Our relationship is so new. Who asks someone to move in that quickly? You expect me to spend every weekend at your place as it is. You’re suffocating me!”
Dullness ruled her chest, the passion fueling her speech gone without a trace. As Ryleigh stared into the brokenness reflected in his eyes, her heart wrenched and she registered with irrefutable clarity the weight of what she had said, and that its impact could not be undone.
Lifting his chin, his gaze bounced here and there as his eyes went glassy. Peter spit out the gum, lit another cigarette, and trailed off along the trashed sidewalk.
Ryleigh did not wonder about how she would get home nor did she pay any mind to the audience of whispers at her back. Her focus remained on Peter until he was out of sight, at which point her pulse flatlined and the night’s wind felt more biting in its assault of her skin.
Clothes littered every surface of the girls’ dorm, from the dresser top to the desks to the beds. Between the crunch of studying for midterms and dealing with the emotional fallout of the ASig party, it had been easy to overlook their basic responsibilities.
Some god awful ‘80s hair band screeched in the background as they folded their clothes. Ryleigh would have loved nothing more than to chuck the laptop blasting the hideous music straight out the window if it had not been a vital part of Min-ji’s healing process. She had not yet gotten over Daniel blowing her off at the party, and while Ryleigh had fed Min-ji’s speech right back to her about knowing her worth and making a guy come to you for an apology, Min-ji checked her phone within a half second of every ding.
“You’re better than this,” Ryleigh said in a sing-song voice whenever her roommate flocked to her notifications.
Her own phone lit up and vibrated on her desk. A sinking sensation rolled through Ryleigh at the thought of Peter being on the other end, but she was cured of the mini manic attack when the contact line did not spell out his name. She put it on speaker, greeting, “Hey, mom.”
The faint wailing of ambulance sirens and muffled voices of staff rushing through the emergency room made Ryleigh miss her mom, her dad, her home in Connecticut and all that she had known before being dumped in Ann Arbor.
“Hey, sweetie. I only have a minute. I’m on break.”
“Okay.” Ryleigh stuffed a hooded sweatshirt in an overcrowded dresser drawer, sinking to the floor once she managed to close it. “What’s up?”
“Your father and I have been talking,” Charlotte began. Min-ji side-eyed her roommate, perhaps intrigued by the potentially ominous phrase, but Ryleigh paid her no mind. “We’d love it if you invited Zayn to Miami, if he doesn’t already have plans over break. I know it’s last minute.”
Min-ji mouthed ‘who’s Zayn?’ to which Ryleigh responded with a shooing motion and Min-ji poked out her tongue like they were in kindergarten before returning to her pile of tracksuits.
“He doesn’t have plans.” Skepticism led her to admit, “I can’t picture dad welcoming the idea of my boyfriend tagging along on a family vacation.”
“Your father’s just over the moon that you’re with someone in your age group.” Charlotte laughed while her daughter grimaced.
Had they been on a video call, Ryleigh would not have been able to keep a straight face after that damning line. This is bad. What have you done? You should’ve known this would come back to bite you.
A beat of silence passed before her mother spoke once more. “I guess we’ll see you two on Monday, then?”
“Looking forward to it,” Ryleigh lied.
She chucked the phone atop her desk and buried her face in her hands, emitting a muffled groan. She was dead. Deader than dead. Her parents would resurrect her for the sole purpose of killing her again.
And again. And again.
Shit.
“Oh my God.” Min-ji over-enunciated each word, as if she had uncovered the most unbelievable thing in the world. “Your parents don’t know about Peter?”
“They know him. I mean, they’ve met him and everything. They don’t know we’re still together.” Ryleigh attempted to soothe her panic by folding t-shirts, taking the time to ensure she smoothed out every wrinkle and crease. “My dad punched him in the face, knocked him flat on his back in the snow. Mortification at its finest.”
“Jeez.” Min-ji flexed her thin brows. “What are you going to do about the trip, then?”
It was a question Ryleigh did not want to consider. She had been lying to her parents for months; they would turn ballistic once everything came to light.
Shoulders slouching, she said, “Maybe I’ll call them a few days out and say that my mysterious boyfriend fell ill. I’m talking bed-ridden. That’s plausible. Problem solved.”
The idea grew more enticing as it was verbalized. The solution was practical, the credibility was there. Sure ruin could be avoided—but such avoidance could only further delay their ruin.
Min-ji’s voice, soft and sincere, broke through her internal scheming. “I’ll admit to not knowing everything about you, and I haven’t met your parents, but you obviously love this guy, so seize this opportunity and tell them. Yeah, they’ll probably be pissed at first, but by the end of the trip, you’ll all be better for it.”
“Until tomorrow, I’m Peter Rosenfeld, signing off. Stay cool, Ann Arbor.” He yanked off the headset and braced a hand around the base of his neck as if to choke himself.
Stay cool, Ann Arbor? Peter thought he sounded like a rather uncool, thrift store knockoff Ron Burgundy. Though he had used the cringe-worthy parting phrase going on two weeks, they had not asked him to drop it.
He pitied whoever downloaded the podcast, the innocent victims who had to withstand his low-pitched, bordering on monotonous, scratchy voice if they wanted to stay up on local affairs. A pang struck Peter’s chest when considering the possibility of Ryleigh being one of their 10,000 listeners.
They were not speaking, but maybe she downloaded it to hear his voice, because she missed him, because she was sorry—and really, he was, too.
His hand closed around the pack of cigarettes parked in his pocket. Peter shut his eyes and sucked in as much oxygen as he could stand. That little box had been the kindling to their entire argument, and here he was, weak and spineless to an old addiction he had allowed to reclaim him. He extracted the pack and lighter out of his pocket, tossing them onto the recording desk.
Body slumping and arms falling limp over the chair’s sides, Peter caught sight of the clock and wanted to scream—four more hours of work. No one would have heard him if he had. The room had been soundproofed, something he deemed wholly unnecessary though he had learned from the jump that things were showy and state of the art at Reyes Media Group.
What had happened to him? In a new place, working at a pretentious paper, driving a car that had not been conceived in the ‘90s, in a relationship that, as of late, gave him emotional whiplash.
Not that he did not love Ryleigh. In fact, Peter often feared his heart would swell and burst from loving her because it had no space to house those kinds of feelings until she had come along.
That was precisely why he needed to make things right, so the aching and twisting wreaking havoc on his heart could be replaced by the now familiar fullness of her love.
Peter had apologized last time, and while he felt she had been in the wrong at the party, each hour that went by without a peep from Ryleigh urged him to swallow his pride and extend a peace offering.
His stomach went leaden like a cannonball as he replayed the events of Saturday night.
After his dramatic exit, Peter had gotten in his car and circled back to pick up the girls, who had been waiting out front of ASig for an Uber. Though Ryleigh had not said anything to him, she afforded him a quick glance of gratitude as he helped her lower Min-ji into the backseat.
And the ensuing ride, short in distance but not on torture. Peter’s hands had trembled against the stee
ring wheel, his mouth remaining taut and downturned lest they add to the evening’s verbal carnage.
Total defeat did not claim him until the doors slammed and Ryleigh had gone. When he returned to his apartment and spotted her weekend bag still there, her current read on the coffee table, her clothes on his bedroom floor, numbness sheathed that defeat.
Fingers tracing the lighter, Peter contemplated stepping out to smoke—and while he was at it, perhaps phone Ryleigh and clean up the whole damn mess. The idea of hearing her voice gave him greater impetus to go forth with the plan than the promise of nicotine.
As he motioned to stand, the studio door cracked open and Ms. Reyes ducked her head in. Her eyes landed on the desk and she immediately frowned.
“You can’t smoke in here, Rosenfeld. This isn’t ‘60s radio.”
He conjured a slight head shake. What had she said? No matter. Her disapproving gaze fixed on his Newports filled in the blanks. “Oh no. I wasn’t going to—”
“Come and have a drink with me after deadline. It’ll give us a chance to discuss how the podcast’s going.”
“Yeah, okay. Sure.”
“Wonderful.” Ms. Reyes’ smile shone brighter than her coral lipstick. “There’s a cozy spot a block away, Alessandro’s. We’ll meet there.”
Had Peter agreed to have a drink with Nora Reyes?
He would have to extend his smoke break.
The contents of Ryleigh’s stomach resembled a quaking gelatin mold as she padded through the main wing’s entrance at the Ann Arbor Times. She tugged on the sleeves of her sweatshirt and felt herself shrink within the material. To her dismay, it did not afford any invisibility.
Begging for forgiveness in glorified pajamas and a ratty bun at a significant other’s place of work did not come easily to Ryleigh, and yet she had come of her own volition.
She had no choice, really.
Having Rosenfeld (Rosenfeld Duet Book 2) Page 13
