by Keya Jay
***
When Ryder got back to Skylar’s it didn’t take him long to realize that Skylar wasn’t yet there. It was killing him to wait for her to come back he wasn’t sure if she was in trouble or not, and he was outside of his mind with worry. He got bored of flipping through her TV channels and walking around her house, he thought about going to her mother’s room because he knew that that was where the dog was but it was locked and so he went back to sitting on the couch with nothing else to do. He lost count of the time because he got tired of checking it and he was tired of sitting down too so he decided to go out and search for her. Just as he was walking toward the door the door flung open, Ryder moved toward Skylar and hugged the shit out of her. “Damn it what the hell took you so long?” he asked as he hugged her.
“Sorry I guess I lost track of time,” she said as she pulled back just enough to see his face. “When did you get back?” she asked.
“Hell if I know, I forgot a long ass time ago.”
“That long huh?” she said with a small smile.
“Yes, that fuckin long,” he said as he pulled away from her to look her over.
‘What are you doing?” she asked clearly amused.
“Making sure you’re not hurt.”
“You could have just asked me and I would have told you that I wasn’t hurt.”
“Nothing went wrong?” he asked after he was fully convinced that she wasn’t hurt.
“As in addiction wise? No nothing went wrong,” she assured.
“Good,” he breathed out as he took her hand and pulled her toward the couch. “Now tell me what happened and why exactly it took you as long as it did,” he said as he pulled her down beside him.
“Well when I found Brooke she was talking to her mother trying to calm her down because her boss had just fired her, and if you didn’t know her boss is Hank. I tried to help but she wasn’t trying to listen to me and her friend Casper was just making it all worse. So by the time she was done with that we had left and began to walk around as we talked. She told me how her friend Casper’s boyfriend had died in a car accident and of course I freaked the hell out I wasn’t sure if it was Hank’s doing or if he really just died you know? Then I tried to get her to talk to me about her dad because believe it or not I’ve never truly met him she said he died when she was young, but she didn’t want to talk about him and so I asked her what she did want to talk about and I brought up that she had stopped by my house for a reason and then she said surprisingly that she wanted to talk about you,” she said pointing at Ryder.
“Why the hell would she want to talk about me?” Ryder asked confused.
“Umm I don’t know honestly but she did so we wasted our time doing that—”
“Wait what did she say, no what did you say?”
“Nothing bad calm down but she did ask me if I’ve ever been to your house like she knew I haven’t and she kept pressing me on the matter. She asked me why not and I told her I didn’t know—”
“Skylar,” Ryder went to cut in.
“No wait let me finish,” she said obviously wanting to get this out there, “So I asked her why she was asking and she said because she’s been to your house and that I’d be surprised to see where exactly you lived and that it was closer than I thought.” That surprised Ryder for two reasons one being he was pretty damn sure that he never told Brooke where he was living and two being her details of where his “house” was located was spot on. Skylar was looking at him as if she was waiting for him to confirm what Brooke was saying.
“Brooke has never been to me house,” he had to stop himself from putting quotation’s around the words house seeing as though it wasn’t a house at all but it was where he was staying.
“So you’re saying she’s lying?” she asked raising a brow in question.
“Yes, I’m most defiantly telling you that she’s lying.” Skylar didn’t say anything else about it she just nodded her head but something about the way she did made Ryder think that she thought he was lying.
“Well any way’s that’s all we talked about so I really didn’t get much information out of her what about you?”
“Well to tell you the truth I kind of forgot my reasoning for going there because I was too busy getting chewed out by your uncle but I did notice that Hank either quit or he was fired but the look on his face suggests that he was fired.”
“Why were you being chewed out by my uncle?” she asked as if that was all she had heard.
“I honestly don’t know,” he said deciding against telling her, that would just prove that her uncle knew where he lived and she didn’t and that would no doubt infuriate her.
“Oook,” she said slowly. Ryder could see it in her face that she didn’t believe him. “So I guess we both accomplished pretty much nothing,” she said disappointedly as she got up to leave.
“Skylar,” Ryder called but she didn’t respond nor did she turn around. “Damn it,” he said as he got up to go after her.
“Please don’t Ryder, just…go home,” she said. Ryder didn’t at all like the way she said home, he knew then that she was upset about that. Instead of listening to her he went to follow her anyways and she closed her bedroom door on him before he could reach the top her stairs. Damn it, he thought to himself knowing that she was obviously upset with him. He wanted to pound on her door and demand that she open it but decided against it and just left.
