by Kelli Walker
“Miss Whitley, I’m going to tell you the same thing he told us after every mission we ever came back from,” Brendan said.
“Okay?”
“After every mission, we would give ourselves forty eight hours. Then we would all get together for beers. And he would raise his beer bottle in the air, clear his throat, and say ‘The only outcome we are responsible for is the ones we create for ourselves. You did good, men.’ And what he meant by those words was that whatever collateral damage we left behind and whatever we had to do in order to accomplish the mission, it didn’t fall on our shoulders. It was all started when people who thought they could control the actions of others stooped to a level that required physical interference. And the fight we put up to right that wrong? It was par for the course because of the decisions others made.”
I leaned back into my chair as I kept a hold on Ryder’s hand.
“You aren’t responsible for what happened to Ryder today,” he said. “Langley is. If Langley hadn’t spiraled like he had-- hadn’t dropped off the grid and come after you like he did-- none of this would’ve happened. Ryder didn’t do anything or take any blow he wouldn’t have already taken for you anyway. None of this is your fault, Miss Whitley. And he would want you to know that.”
“If I’m calling you ‘Brendan’, the least you can do is call me ‘Alicia’,” I said with a grin.
“It’d be a honor.”
“How so?”
“It’s always an honor to meet the women behind the men I’ve fought with. You guys keep us alive more than you understand.”
I felt my lip quivering as Brendan turned to walk out the door. I reached over and took the manilla folder in my free hand and settled it on top of my purse in the corner. All these years, and Ryder had kept me in his mind. Kept me at the forefront of everything. My heart slammed against my chest as more tears rushed down my cheeks. I couldn't imagine the terrors he had seen. The blood he’d shed. The horrors he’d witnessed. But I knew there was one thing I could do.
I could make sure he got through this.
“Brendan?”
“Yes, Alicia?”
“Do you want to stay?” I asked.
His eyes drifted over to Ryder from the doorway before they fell back onto me.
“It’s obvious you care about him, and that the two of you are close. And I guess, in a way, you and I are connected as well. If he does wake up sometime soon, I’m sure he’d enjoy seeing you here.”
I watched the man mull over my words as he stood in the entrance to the hospital room.
“I don’t want to intrude,” Brendan said.
“You wouldn’t be. And I’ll make it worth your while. I’ve got tons of stories on him from high school.”
“I guarantee you they don’t top the stories I have on him from the Navy,” he said with a grin.
“Then sit down and let’s compare,” I said.
Then I watched as Brendan walked in, grabbed a chair, and pulled it up to the other side of Ryder’s hospital bed.
Ryder
“Alicia! Wait up!”
“You can’t catch me!”
“You’re running too fast!”
“Come on, Smith. Get a move on! The sun’s almost set!”
I watched her wild hair blow behind her body as she ran up the hill. She’d been riding my ass all day about coming to this place. The fucking park on the other side of town. There was a hill with a few trees and she was determined to show it to me. Just some damn branches with some crusty leaves that provided shade as the sun bared down on someone’s back.
But her smile.
The way she smiled when she ran up that hill made it all worth it.
“Ryder, come on. Hurry up.”
“I’m coming, Alicia. But why are we here? I thought you wanted to go get some food.”
“I do,” she said. “But first, I want to watch this with you.”
I got to the top of the hill and went to stand beside her. The leaves were rustling with the fall wind and the grass fluttered around our ankles. Her cheeks were tinted with a wild blush and the wind looked good flowing through her hair. She was wearing a massive sweater and jeans that were a bit too tight for her legs. Self-conscious about the jean size she wore, but gave me a great view of her round ass.
But nothing could’ve prepared me for what we watched.
The sun started to set in the sky and it bathed the entire town in a honey glow. Her beautiful hair twinkled with the rays of the falling sun and the light that shone in her eyes left me breathless. She closed her eyes and allowed the wind to caress her hair. To stroke her cheek. To whip around her waist.
I reached over and pulled her to me before I took her hand within mine.
“What are you doing?” Alicia asked.
“What does it feel like?”
I pulled her body close to mine and felt those supple breasts mold against my chest. I rocked us side to side, turning underneath the setting sun of the park. Her head fell to my shoulder and my lips graced the side of her face. Pressing kiss after kiss to her honey-bathed skin as we swayed to the silent tune of the pulsing rays of the sun.
“This is my favorite spot,” Alicia said.
“Why’s that?”
“I come here to read a lot. To get away from things if they get too overwhelming.”
“Classes that rough this semester?” I asked.
I felt her smile into me before she nuzzled closer to my body. I wrapped my arms around her and took a deep sniff. Memorized the way she smelled. The way she felt pulled against my form. The way her sweater dipped slightly off her shoulder in the most innocent way possible.
I pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder and watched goosebumps trickle up her neck.
That was the night I figured it out.
The night I came to terms with the fact that I was in love with Alicia.
“This is important to me, Ryder!”
“I don’t want to go to the damn dance, Alicia. It’s stupid anyway.”
“It’s not stupid to me.”
“Well it’s stupid to me. And why do we always have to do whatever you want to do? Why can’t you just come over like you always do? I’ll put on some music if you want to dance,” I said.
“I want to get dressed up, Ryder. I want to go with you on your arm and show you off to the entire school. What’s wrong with that!?”
“I’m not some trophy, Alicia. Dating the bad boy doesn’t make you cool,” I said.
“It’s not about that!”
“Then what is this about?”
“I love you, Ryder! And I want to go to your senior prom with you because I know you love me, too!”
Did I hear her right? Did she just tell me she loved me? My heart slammed against my chest as I watched her nostrils flare. It was that time of the year. Spring semester and every fucking person had some grand romantic gesture to ask the fuckheads around me to prom. It was gross. It really was. It was just a damn dance. There was nothing special about it. The guys would rent tuxedos too big for them and girls would buy dresses they’d only wear once and we’d all dance to shitty music approved by the principal first and everyone would act like it was the epitome of existence.
“You love me?” I asked.
“Yes,” Alicia said breathlessly. “I do. I have for months. And I want to go to prom with you. I want you to have that moment for your senior year.”
“What if I don’t want that moment?” I asked.
“I know you do. You say you don’t want things, but I see the look in your eyes when you fail another test. When you forget about another paper. You work really hard, Ryder. But you’ve got so many things working against you. And prom would be a way to get your mind off all that. We could get dressed up and go dance before going and getting milkshakes at midnight. We could ride around town until two in the morning and find an abandoned parking lot to make out in.”
I raised my eyebrows as a smirk grew across my cheeks.
�
�You want to make out in a parking lot?”
“Is that all you latched onto?” Alicia asked.
“When you’ve got lips like yours? Yes,” I said.
I watched her cheeks flush as I rose my hand to cup her cheek. I brushed away a tear that had been initiated because of our fight. A tear that I was partially responsible for. Alicia was too pretty to be crying over something like this. She was wrong. I didn’t give a damn about prom. But she obviously did and I loved her. Which meant that had to mean something to me, even if I didn’t understand it.
I rubbed my thumb across the swell of her cheek before I pressed my lips to hers. I felt her sigh, leaning into me as her body molded to mine. I wrapped my arm around her waist and fisted her hair, grinning as she moaned into my mouth.
I loved it when she moaned into my mouth.
“I love you too,” I said.
“What?” she asked breathlessly.
I pulled back to look into those stormy blue eyes as a grin crossed my face.
“I love you, Alicia Whitley. Will you go to prom with me?”
Theater Club.
Fucking theater club.
There wasn’t a damn thing I wouldn’t do for this girl.
She wanted a creative outlet and I wanted to be her outlet. She wanted to throw herself into something that didn’t have anything to do with furthering her education and I wanted to throw myself at her. Theater Club met twice a week, and one of those days was our stairwell day. When I got to press myself into her beautiful body and watch her rise to ecstasy in the empty stairwell at the back of our school.
“Why do you want to join theater club again?” I asked.
“Because I’ve always wanted to be in a play. I think it would be fun.”
“Have you ever acted before?”
“Does the stairwell count?” she asked with a smug little grin.
“You better be joking,” I said.
“What? You don’t know if I’m joking?”
“This isn’t funny.”
“I think it’s pretty funny,” she said with a giggle. “Besides, you could join with me.”
“I’m not fucking joining the damn theater club, Alicia.”
“Why not?”
“Because losers join things like that.”
“And the great Ryder Smith is no loser,” she said with a coy smile.
“The leather jacket should tip you off to that.”
“Your leather jacket is nothing but a symbol you use to hide behind because you’re afraid to express your true self.”
“And it makes you hot for teacher.”
“You’re not a teacher.”
“I could be your teacher, if you're into that kind of thing,” I said with a grin.
She rolled her eyes and a chuckle escaped from my lips.
“Come on, I think it would be fun. We could try out for the lead roles.”
“I’m not joining theater club, Alicia.”
“What if I told you that you’d get a chance to kiss me?” she asked.
“I’d tell you I get the chance to kiss you everyday.”
I scooped her up in my arms and pulled her close to prove my point. My lips hovered over hers and I could see her entire face flushing. I walked her back into the brick facade of the side of the school and pressed my knee between her legs. She was standing on nothing but her tiptoes and gripping onto the collar of my leather jacket.
“See? It serves a purpose,” I said with a grin.
“What if I told you the leading male and leading female have two kissing scenes in the play they’re doing this year?”
“I’d tell you we could do a lot more than kiss if you ditched the club and kept our weekly dates.”
I bent my lips to her neck and nibbled on her skin. She giggled and sighed, then pressed her hips into me. Rolling down onto my knee as her body began to heat. I loved the way she coated me in it. The way she freely gave herself over to me, never once saying ‘no’.
Because I always wanted her.
Alicia. The girl I loved.
“I really want to join,” she said breathlessly.
“And I really don’t,” I said as I nipped at her skin.
“We could move our weekly… oh… dates. See each other three times a week instead of two.”
“Or we could do that anyway and still not do theater.”
“Please, Ryder?”
I groaned into her neck as her hands curled into the tendrils of my hair. I rose my face up to look at hers and she sank those puppy dog eyes into mine. I watched her beautiful blue orbs widen as she begged. I felt her body trembling in my wake as my hands stroked her sides. Gripped her hips. Kneaded her beautiful stomach.
“Stop.”
“Please?” Alicia asked.
“Stop with the eyes.”
“I really, really want to do it, Ryder.”
“Cut out the damn eyes, Alicia.”
“This is really important to me,” she said.
“And you’re really important to me,” I said.
“Then why won’t you do this with me?”
I sighed and rolled my eyes as our foreheads fell together.
“Will this really make you happy?” I asked.
“I really will,” she said with a smile.
“Three days a week after school?” I asked.
“And we’ll still have our weekends.”
“I must really love you,” I said with a sigh.
She squealed and wrapped her arms tightly around my neck. I pulled her into a hug and dragged her away from the wall. She was bouncing against me, her feet doing a little jig as she wiggled against me. I smiled into her hair as her excited squeals turned to laughter. It was the most beautiful sound in the world to me. Like raindrops of lemonade falling into the perfect glass for us to share.
Or some shit like that.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Alicia said with a whisper. “Thank you so much.”
“But there’s something you have to do for me,” I said.
“Anything. Because this is going to be so much fun and I know you’re going to enjoy it.”
Her eyes fluttered up to mine and I kissed the tip of her nose.
“You have to promise me that, no matter what, you won’t kiss my fucking understudy.”
“Oh, already getting jealous, I see. And you think you’re going to just… snag the leading role?” she asked.
“I know I am. The puny boys in this school don’t stand a chance against me. And if they take me out before opening night, you make sure you don’t kiss my understudy.”
“Scared he’s going to be better than you?” she asked with a grin.
“Oh, you’re gonna pay for that comment,” I said.
Then I grabbed her ass, picked her up, and pressed her back into the wall of the school. I was going to make sure she always remembered who the best kisser in this place was. I was going to make sure she always remembered the bad boy who transformed her from a quirky little girl who hid behind glasses into a confident woman who embraced her sexuality.
And in return, she always reminded me that a lonely, somber, jaded kid like myself could love. Could be happy. Could succeed in school and dream of a future that didn’t include bagging groceries at the local grocery store.
A lesson I knew I would carry with me for the rest of my fucking life.
Alicia
“Have you been home at all the past two weeks?” Becca asked.
“Not particularly,” I said.
“Don’t you think you should go and get some rest? You look like hell.”
“I don’t know why I keep you around sometimes.”
“If anything, you need to go home and get a decent cup of coffee. The cafeteria coffee tastes like diesel fuel.”
“Hospitals claim to save people’s lives, not serve gourmet food,” I said.
“But decent coffee? With all the doctors and nurses that pull thirty six hour shifts? Come on.”
“Becca, can you be serious for a second?”
“You want to be serious? Okay. You’ve lost ten pounds, Alicia. You aren’t eating. You're barely sleeping. You’ve been in that same outfit for the past four days. You need to go home and clean yourself up.”
“If Ryder wakes up, I need to be here.”
“You’ve been saying that for the past week.”
“And I’ll say it for another week if I have to!”
I sighed as I put my head in my hand. Ryder has been unconscious for two weeks and the doctors were really beginning to worry. They kept asking me questions about long term care that I had no idea how to answer. Nurses asked me if anyone in his family needed to be contacted and the only thing I could tell them was what I knew from high school. That he wasn’t close to them and hadn’t talked to them in a long time. But even if he did have a good relationship with his parents, I had no idea how to contact them.
At all.
“Alicia?”
“What?”
“I need you to hear what I’m saying without getting angry,” Becca said.
“Why isn’t he waking up?” I asked with a whisper.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think anyone knows.”
“His brain isn’t swelling anymore. They removed the port. His plate and the screws in his head are healing nicely. It’s almost time for those stitches to start falling out. He should be awake, Becca. He should’ve been awake days ago.”
“Which is why I want to talk with you about living your life,” she said.
“Don’t do this,” I said with tears in my eyes. “Don’t do this now.”
“Just… hypothetically speaking. If Ryder doesn’t wake up-”
“He will wake up,” I said with a growl.
“But if he doesn't, listen to what I’m saying. You’re a divorced woman with a good chunk of change at her disposal and the prospects are endless. You could go anywhere. Do anything. Go back to school for your Master’s without digging yourself into debt. You could invest that money, get a decent job, and retire early. You could live off it for a few years and recuperate, then start again. The world is completely at your disposal.”
“When I know Ryder’s okay, I’ll start considering those things.”
