nai - black - twenty - she/her - american british jamaican
about me!
lover of sports, tv, film, music, and comics
especially: baseball, indycar, f1, basketball, chicago fire, the rookie, the pitt, johnnyswim, kneecap, zach bryan, nightwing, captain america, and the flash
dni: racist, homo/transphobic, maga, zionist
my works:
Animal Kingdom (2016)
High School Baseball Star - Andrew Pope Cody
Chicago Fire (2012)
With All the Weight of What We Could Be - Stella Kidd x Kelly Severide: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2
Chicago P.D. (2014)
Release - Dante Torres x Reader: Chapter 1
The Pitt (2025)
Silence - Jack Abbot x Samira Mohan
Lego Connoisseur Jack Abbot - Jack Abbot x Samira Mohan
Sneakerhead!Frank Langdon
Project Hail Mary (2026)
Bay Area!Ryland Grace - Part 1 | Part 2
The Rookie (2018)
East Side of Sorrow (Tim Bradford Backstory/Character Study) - Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
› summary: after realizing that your hookup, intended as a rebound after your long term relationship, is actually your coworker, you deal with it the best way you know how: avoidance. that is, until you're forced to talk to ryland grace.
› tags/warnings: no use of y/n, TW: trivia night mention, explicit mentions of smut but no actual smut (yet), drinking, mentions of reader's past toxic relationship, strong language
› wc: 5.5k
› part one | direct address series masterlist
ᯓ★
On Tuesday, you show up to the school earlier than everyone else, likely one of the only times you've been more than an hour early to anything in your life. The hall is still dim when you arrive, the custodians’ floor wax gleaming beneath the fluorescent lights. You lock yourself in your classroom to decorate in peace.
You make a point of putting your earbuds in, tuning out the noise in the hallway as other staff begin to trickle in and stop by to chat to Grace. Everyone is charmed by him, this stupidly overqualified molecular biologist that somehow ended up teaching eighth grade science. But not you. No, not you. You know better.
You know a lot of things about Grace, like the low sound he made in the back of his throat when you tugged on his hair. The concentrated pinch between his brows when he was between your thighs, mouth latched onto your clit. The pleased little smile he got when he had you writhing and moaning underneath him, heaving from your second (and certainly not last) orgasm of the night.
It's fine. Really, it's fine. You're a professional. You can be professional.
Your phone buzzes in your back pocket. You take out your earbuds. Even without looking, you know that it's Hallie and Reagan. Ever since you told them about Grace last night they've been treating your life like a spectacularly interesting romcom.
Halls: And have you talked to your good karma yet?? ;)
You: Don't call him that! I don't need you manifesting shit for me
Halls: Ok sorry I'll rephrase
Halls: Have you talked to professor sexy yet?
Reg: That's objectively worse
Halls: It's objectively funnier but thanks
You: Omg stop it with the nicknames
You: It's Grace. Just Grace
You: And no I haven't talked to him
Reg: You probably should
Halls: I second this
You: You guys are the worst
A knock sounds at your classroom door. For one wild second, you think it's him. You curse and shove your phone back in your pocket in a panic. When you sneak a look at the door, relief washes over you so strongly that you feel a bit woozy. Marisol is peering into your room through the vision panel with an impatient expression. She spots you, decides you're not moving fast enough for her liking, and knocks again, harder this time.
You exhale and cross the room.
Marisol has been teaching sixth-grade English at Grover Cleveland for ten years. Eleven, maybe. You're never certain, because every time you ask, she says something unhelpful like longer than anyone should or wouldn't you like to know? The latter is especially frustrating because yes, you would like to know.
But she'd been there for you, when you were starting out. The kids, being able to smell fear, walked all over you that first semester. It was awful. You remember being thirteen, but you don't remember being so mean. Maybe it was a new generation kind of thing. Ugh, even thinking that makes you feel old.
Marisol had helped, giving you pointers and making you feel better about being more strict with your students. A lot of detentions were doled out after that, but the behavior in your classroom improved by miles.
When you open the door, you catch a glimpse of Grace across the hall, pinning some poster up to the wall behind his desk. He's dressed more casually today, a plain navy t-shirt stretching over the broad slope of his shoulders, short sleeves squeezing around his biceps as he reaches up to smooth tape against the wall.
Your brain unhelpfully supplies the image of those same arms braced on either side of your head, muscles flexing under his skin.
You're such an idiot. It's the same every time you see him—that awful feeling of your stomach swooping and body tensing. Humans have been evolving for hundreds of thousands of years and here you are, your survival instincts kicking in at the mere sight of Ryland fucking Grace.
"Are you going to let me in or are we just going to stand here?" Marisol snipes. She speaks loud enough to catch Grace's attention, and he glances over, his eyes landing on you, glinting behind his glasses. You flush, your whole body feeling as though you've been doused in molten lava. You pivot away and usher her in, closing the door behind you.
She gives you approximately five minutes of peace before questioning you.
This is generous by Marisol’s standards. Practically saintly. She busies herself unpacking a box of new copies of Lois Lowry's The Giver while you work on your bulletin board, smoothing a border of blue paper around the edges and trying not to listen for movement across the hall.
"What's the deal with you and Mr. Sunshine?" she says. You look behind you. Her back faces you as she sets books neatly in the cabinet at the back of the classroom.
"What do you mean?"
"Don't play dumb." She slides another stack of paperbacks into place. "You're not any good at it."
Your mouth clamps shut. You're not sure if you should be offended.
She continues before you can respond, "I've never seen you act the way you did yesterday morning. And then the second the meeting was over you ran away like a bat out of hell."
You look back to the bulletin board, stapling the blue construction paper border and wishing you could be anywhere else. "It's nothing."
"Mhm."
"Seriously."
She scoffs. "It didn't feel like nothing when you were trying to hide in my shirt. Did you date him?"
"No."
"Does Anthony know him?"
"No."
"Come on. You said you'd tell me later. Guess what? It's later."
Your shoulders droop. Your hands fall to your sides, giving up on the border for now. The construction paper peels, curling in on itself in a pitiful spiral that you can't help but relate to.
Marisol won't quit until you tell her what's going on. You may as well rip the band-aid off.
"We slept together," you mumble at your shoes. Jesus Christ. You don't think admitting that is going to get any easier.
Silence greets you on the other end of the room. You glance up to see Marisol has stopped stocking the books. She's gawking at you, openly, and you feel like a bug under a microscope, completely at the mercy of one very judgemental coworker.
"I'm sorry," she says, slowly as if she's still trying to process what you said. "When you say we…"
You close your eyes. "Grace and I."
"Ryland Grace."
"Yes."
"The new science teacher."
"Yes," you grit out, starting to get a bit irritated. How many times are you going to have to say it?
"Mr. Sunshine? Right across the hall?"
"Please stop saying Mr. Sunshine," you say. Your face is getting hot again now, palms clammy.
Marisol's expression is unreadable. To you, this is worse than laughter. Right now, you would even welcome laughter. At least then there'd be something concrete to be annoyed about. Instead you stare at each other, her eyes wide and disbelieving.
Finally, she seems to pull herself out of her state of shock. She nods once, then again.
"Tell me everything," she says, and so you do.
You perch on the edge of your desk and explain how Hallie and Reagan wanted to drag you out to a new club that just opened a few weeks ago. You tell her about making eyes at Grace from across the bar when he was talking to another girl, and before you know it you're rambling. It spills out of you with such force that you don't think you can stop if you tried.
ᯓ★
"I need another drink," Hallie grouses, waving the bartender over. Reagan had disappeared into the crowd, tugging along a man in his early-twenties wearing a confused and somewhat fearful expression, leaving the both of you behind.
You're decently buzzed, having already gone through two Long Islands and a shot of tequila. Hallie drinks like she's still in college, and you always find it hard to keep up, but you try.
You prefer wine nights, splurging on a nice charcuterie board and huddling together to watch shitty reality television, but you had been moping around the last few weeks and Hallie and Reagan insisted going out would make you feel better.
Mourning your relationship comes and goes in waves. Some days you wake up and thank any deity that might be listening that you're done. You're truly, finally done. No further contact, no pathetic texts begging to get back together, no actually getting back together.
Other mornings you find it hard to get out of bed, crushed by the fact that you're alone. It's not the end of the world. You know that. But sometimes it feels that way. You had plans with Anthony, you were talking about getting married, for fuck's sake, and now he's just… gone.
So you finally gave in, and now you find yourself surrounded by pulsing lights and sweaty bodies crushing together on the dance floor. This is a thing normal people do, isn't it? Who cares. If it will take your mind off of the breakup for at least a few hours, then you're willing to take your chances.
Hallie slides a glass towards you, something blue and fruity that tastes more like juice than alcohol. It's a dangerous gamble, drinking like this, but you find it hard to care. You're here, with your two closest friends, and you're not letting the night go to waste.
"Oh," Hallie murmurs, teasing her straw between her teeth. "Look at that guy, over there."
You follow her line of sight. There's a lot of people at the bar, a group of girls a little younger than you, a guy that definitely looks underage hassling the bartender, and a couple that's being far too touchy to be appropriate in a public space. At the very end, you see who she's talking about.
You've always had a thing for nerds. Well, you say thing, but really it's a weakness. And this dude fits your type to a T so much that it's almost painful. His glasses are teetering precariously on the edge of his nose. You're certain if he moves his head with too much force they'll slip right off. He's leaning against the edge of the bar, an amused smile on his face. You can only see his side profile, and… the woman in front of him.
He's taken. Of course he is, how could someone like that be single? What you don't understand is the flash of disappointment that zings through you. You don't even know the guy, why do you feel let down?
"I wonder if that's his girlfriend," you say, trying to come off as politely curious but ending up sounding more envious than anything.
Hallie makes a dismissive noise. "That is not his girlfriend."
"You don't know that." You turn away, taking a long swallow of whatever the hell Hallie had ordered for the both of you.
"I absolutely do know that," she says, indignant. She reaches forward, the tips of her fingers nudging at your jaw, forcing you to look back at the man. "See? That's not girlfriend body language."
"She's touching his arm."
"It's not a flirty touch. Just look. Please."
You sigh and devote a little more attention to the scene before you. The woman is saying something to him, her smile bright and wicked beneath the bar lights. He tips his head back slightly, laughing, one hand lifting as if in surrender. There's something wonderfully awkward about him, you think. Not clumsy, exactly. Just a little too sincere for the room. Like he wandered into the club by mistake and decided to be a good sport about it.
He ducks his head down in order to speak directly into her ear, and that should not be as attractive as it is, but what can you do about it? The heart wants what it wants. She laughs in response, and he rolls his eyes, but his half-cocked smile doesn't leave. Her mouth moves and you squint, trying but unable to read her lips. His expression shifts into theatrical offense, and she pats his arm once more before disappearing into the crowd. Gone, just like that.
Hallie jabs her elbow into your arm. "Well?"
"Well, what?" you ask. The man remains at the bar alone. His posture slumps, a little defeated, and he brings his beer up to his mouth, a large hand wrapped around the neck of the bottle.
"You know what. Go talk to him."
You whip your head towards her. "What? No!"
"Yes!" Hallie hisses. "Do it. You're hot, you'd have him wrapped around your finger before you even opened your mouth."
"You're just saying that," you say, shooting a glare at her.
She shakes her head, lips pressing into a thin line. "No, I'm not. I don't care. Either you go and talk to him or I'll buy him a drink and have the bartender say it's from you."
"Why do you hate me?"
"I don't and you know it. Quit being dramatic. Finish your drink and fucking go."
You stare at her.
Hallie stares back, unwavering.
You consider arguing. It would be nice, to dig your heels in and refuse to put yourself out there. That's what you would normally do. You've never seen the appeal of chatting people up at the club. You mostly go just to have a good time with your friends, to dance and drink and enjoy yourself.
But then… when was the last time you actually went out? Beyond trivia night with your coworkers and nights in with Hallie and Reagan or dates (however rare the occurrence) with Anthony. You can't remember.
You'd tried, a few times, but there'd always been Anthony, wheedling about how you should stay because he'd miss you and are you sure you should wear that out?
You inhale deeply, lifting your chin.
"Okay," you say, and you drain the last of your drink before you can lose your nerve.
Hallie's face lights up, victorious and encouraging all at once.
"Actually?" she chirps. At your unimpressed expression she manages to rein in some of her excitement. "Fuck, sorry. You got this. What's the worst that can happen? If he's a dick we'll just go dance and forget about it."
"Right." You nod to yourself, adjusting your halter top and thrusting a hand through your hair before sliding off of your stool. "Wish me luck."
"Luck!" Hallie calls after you as you start to walk away, reaching out to land a light slap to your ass. You flinch, barely biting down on a yelp, and glower at her over your shoulder. She grins, not looking apologetic in the slightest. You turn back around before she can make obscene hand gestures, aching to borrow some of the easy confidence her and Reagan always seem to possess.
Maybe you're in over your head.
No, not maybe. You're definitely in over your head.
The closer you get, the more handsome he becomes. At this point it's cruel, and you have no idea if you even know how to flirt anymore, that's how long it's been. What are you even meant to say? You come here often? Oh, barf.
But you're committed now. You'd look like an even bigger moron if you turned around mid-stride and retreated back to Hallie, who would never let you hear the end of it. She'd be bringing it up at your funeral.
The walk is agonizingly short. Before you know it you're sidling up to him. He doesn't notice you at first, but the brush of your arm against his has him blinking down at you in surprise. His pretty blue eyes widen behind his glasses, and for half a second he reminds you of a startled animal. Then his gaze moves over you before you can stop it.
He takes in your face first, then your hair, before dipping down to your neck, your top that complements your cleavage, and to your skirt that suddenly feels way too short. He seems to realize what he's doing and his eyes snap up to your face, the tips of his ears pinking.
Well. That certainly makes things easier.
"Tough crowd?" you ask, and have to make a physical effort not to wince. Sometimes you wish it was socially appropriate to punch yourself in the face. Only in times of great need, of course; you think this is one such situation.
"What?" he says. Your heart is beating so fast you think it might burst out of your chest and flop on the floor.
Fuck it, you think.
You let out a small huff of amusement and nod toward the direction the brunette had disappeared to. "That girl you were talking to. She your girlfriend?"
"Marissa? Oh, uh… no." He laughs, sounding a bit nervous. His free hand lifts to rub the back of his neck. "She's a friend."
You arch a disbelieving brow, and he smiles as if he knows what you're thinking.
"Really," he assures you. "She's very much not my girlfriend. Not that there's anything wrong with her. She's great."
"But?" you press.
"I'm here with her and her girlfriend," he says. His grin widens as your mouth forms a small 'o' of understanding, his cheeks dimpling.
"Third wheeling, huh?"
"Exactly. I've gotten pretty good at it."
"Can't say I relate." Hallie and Reagan are chronically single beyond the occasional fling.
"Are you here with someone, then?" He makes a sweeping motion with the hand holding his beer, gesturing to the swell of the crowd.
"Just some friends."
"Did they abandon you, too?"
You smile. "Yeah. One of them's already vanished with a guy who looked like he was about to cry."
"Good for him," he says. Then, as an afterthought, he adds, "Or sorry."
"We'll know by morning."
He laughs, his head tilting back a bit, and a warm feeling seeps into your chest, so strong it steals your breath. This back-and-forth, this banter, comes so easy to you now that the ice is broken that it's almost natural. You think you could do it forever.
"Should I be worried?" he asks, taking a sip of his beer.
"About her? Probably." You look out over the dance floor, wondering if you could catch a glimpse of Reagan somewhere in the crowd, but you don't.
"And you?"
The question is playful, but there's something beneath it, a flicker of interest that makes the space between you feel suffocatingly close and vast all at once.
"Me?" you say. Your face is starting to hurt from all the smiling you're doing. "I'm harmless."
He watches you for a beat too long. "I doubt that."
Your stomach dips. It's ridiculous, how much one sentence can do, and heat spreads over your face. You know what's happening, or at least, you think you do, and the realization sends a reckless thrill through you.
He seems to notice it, too, because his eyes drop to your mouth, and he licks his lips subconsciously. "Can I buy you a drink?"
You have no other answer to give him besides yes.
Later you remember, a few drinks later and several inches of space subtracted between you, his hand a steady, guiding pressure on the small of your back as he escorts you out of the club to the Uber he ordered. He opens the door for you and leans down, breath warm against the shell of your ear, murmuring something stupidly witty that you're not even sure he does on purpose, and you laugh, slipping inside.
He pauses before closing the door, taking a moment to watch you. His glasses had started slipping down his nose again. There's a pleased look in his eyes as he looks at you over the rim, as if he knows you're going to be trouble, and you look back at him, drunk enough to want to prove him right.
ᯓ★
You become a master at evasive maneuvers.
It shouldn't be this easy to avoid Ryland Grace like he's the plague, but it is.
The week after you explain what happened with him to Marisol finds you busy enough that you end up relaxing into the routine. By the time school starts, Grace is going through the humiliation ritual that is teaching middle schoolers for the first time, so you hardly see him beyond glimpses into his classroom and catching each other on the way to the teacher's lounge. You made the mistake of going at your usual time on the first day, only to find him already there, laughing with Doug (6th grade history) over his lunch, so now you go at the very last minute.
By the time you're nearing the end of September, you think you can finally put the whole thing behind you.
The only interactions you've had with Grace are stiff and awkward, far from how you spoke at the club. A quick introduction, a little small talk about the morning weather one morning when you were running late and couldn't time your arrival in order to dodge him. He stopped by your room, once to ask if you could point him in the direction of the nurse's office, and again a few days later to borrow a stapler.
Every single time, he looked as if he wanted to say more, and eventually decided not to. It doesn't help that you were usually interrupted by a coworker or a student, but to you it was always a much appreciated respite.
The latest was about two weeks ago, when he found you at the printer in the library just after lunch.
Hey.
Hey— oh. Uhm, hi.
Are you… He motioned toward the machine. His lanyard reflected the fluorescent ceiling lights, glaring up at you harshly.
Sorry? You tittered nervously.
I was just wondering when you'd be done.
Oh! You glanced back at the printer, where copies of your Getting to Know You! assignment were lying, forgotten. I'm done now, sorry.
You scooped up your papers, clutching them to your chest and shuffling away to allow him to access whatever he needed. He stepped forward, close enough for you to catch the scent of coffee, deodorant, and the darker, more insistent smell of his cologne. Your stomach clenched involuntarily, and you took a step back.
He glanced up at the motion, a muscle jumping in his jaw. Actually, I've been meaning to talk to—
I have to get back, you blurted suddenly, before offering a fake, apologetic smile. Can't leave them unsupervised for too long, you know?
He had opened his mouth to respond, but you were already rushing away.
Arguably not your best moment.
After that day, though, he had gotten the message.
Grace stopped trying to catch you in the hallway. He stopped lingering by his doorway when the final bell rang. He stopped looking as though he might say your name every time you passed room 214 with your arms full and your eyes fixed firmly on anything that was not him.
Now, when your paths cross during passing period, he nods, professional and restrained, before turning back to whatever student has his attention. When you both reach the staff lounge at the same time, he steps aside to let you pass, offering a quiet greeting that gives you absolutely nothing to work with. No bitterness. No accusation. No smirk. No wounded male pride for you to despise.
It's… whatever. More than you could have hoped for. But if you're honest, you feel a bit left out. Everyone appears to have fallen in love with him. Janitors, secretaries, paras, your fellow teachers. It's annoying, but you wish you could see what all the fuss is about without being a total creep. Even Marisol is besotted, singing his praises to you when you're both alone in your classroom, insisting that you should give him a chance.
"I think you'd really like him," she says without preamble, setting a stack of papers down on your desk. No hi, hello, how are you? At this point, you don't expect much else from her.
"Everyone keeps telling me that," you grumble, before glancing up. "Shut the door, please."
She sighs but does as you ask. You rotate the papers to face you, reading the permission slips for October's Outdoor Education excursion. It's a three day camping trip for the eighth graders, one that you always dread chaperoning.
"Well, maybe everyone is right." Marisol grabs a chair from a student's desk and pulls it up to sit across from you, pulling out her phone. "It doesn't matter, anyway."
You hum, stowing the papers away in your desk drawer, and return your attention back to your laptop where you've been putting in grades for the latest quiz. "Really? Why's that?"
She puffs up her chest, smug. "Lee and I decided to invite him to trivia tomorrow."
"What?"
"Don't give me that look, you're not the supreme leader of trivia night. We can invite who we want."
"I never said you couldn't."
She waves her hand vaguely. "It's all over your face right now. Whatever. The way that I see it, you have three choices."
You scrub a hand over your face and turn your computer off. You're never going to get any grading done like this. "Okay."
"You can talk to him, figure your shit out, and have a nice night with us at the bar." She holds out three fingers, ticking them off as she speaks. "Or you can not talk to him, don't figure your shit out, and make it awkward for everyone."
"And my last choice?"
"You can just not come." She crosses her arms. "Make up some bullshit excuse and skip out."
You glance away with a semblance of shame. That was exactly what your knee-jerk reaction was, to cancel and say you weren't feeling well or that you already had plans.
"See?" She points at you. "Do I know you or do I know you?"
"This isn't fair," you whine.
"Shit's tough. Ryland is coming, and you're coming, too."
You can't help a small smile at her determination. Trivia is a sacred ritual, attended by yours and Marisol's group of work friends. It had been going on for a while before you joined, and held strong through the last few years. Grace being invited is a pretty big deal. At least, it is to Marisol, who has always been very passionate about the whole affair.
"Okay, okay," you acquiesce. "I'll go."
She stands, triumphant. "Perfect. I'll let Lee know."
"If it goes bad, then we're friends off," you call after her as she starts to leave.
"Oh, please. Who else would bring you your stupid permission slips from the office?" she says without turning back to look at you.
Marisol leaves your classroom door open. Of course she does.
Once she's gone, you try to resume grading. You catch yourself putting in the wrong scores for the wrong students, their names all jumbling up together on your screen. You lean back in your chair, pressing the heels of your palms to your eyes.
You can't stop thinking of Grace.
Ryland Grace is coming to the bar with you, Marisol, and four of your other closest work friends. And it's going to be great. You're going to be completely normal about it. Because you're a grown woman and you can handle it.
But you know there will be no grading today, nor any guise of productivity. There's no guide for navigating such a weird situation. There's only room 214 across the hall, trivia on Friday, and the sinking realization that Marisol is right.
You have to talk to him.
You do an odd jerking motion, as though your body tried to get out of your chair before your mind had caught up and put a quick stop to the idea. You sit back for a second and squeeze your eyes shut. You feel a lot like you did right before you approached Grace that night—jittery and mortified and… sort of excited all at once.
Alright, bitch, you imagine Hallie's voice in your head and give your thigh a harsh pinch in an effort to ground yourself. Now or never.
The hallway is quiet when you step out. Most of the building has emptied now that it's nearing five in the afternoon. When you peak inside room 214, you find Grace hunched over some papers, a red pen in hand. His hair is that sort of tousled-messy that, in any other circumstance on any other guy, you admire. His brow furrows, mouthing the words he's reading on what you assume is a student's assignment, seemingly bewildered by what he finds.
You knock lightly on the doorframe. He glances up instantly, swiveling his chair to better face you.
"Hi," you say.
"Hey," he says in return.
You shuffle your feet, hovering in the doorway as though there's some invisible barrier between the two of you. "You got a minute?"
"Yeah." Grace straightens up as though he's bracing for impact, a slight grimace breaking through the neutral, friendly expression he wears. "Of course."
He's nervous, you realize. His fingers tap against his thigh and he pushes his glasses up farther up the bridge of his nose. They slip down again almost immediately. He needs to get them sized and fitted, you think, before you realize you're staring. You look away quickly, examining his classroom.
He's got the makings of a model solar system pinned to the ceiling, but he's still missing Uranus and Neptune. Cute, dorky science posters like Don't trust an atom, they make up everything and Think like a proton and stay positive! are plastered on the walls. It's exactly as lively as you'd imagined. From what little snippets you'd heard from your students, Grace was shaping up to be the cool new teacher, well-liked by the kids. Because of course he is.
What an asshole.
"It looks good," you comment.
"Thanks," he says, glancing around as if to view his own room from your perspective. "Still needs some work, but I'm getting there. They really don't give you a lot of time to set up, do they?"
You smile, tension seeping from your shoulders at his casual tone. "No, they don't. It's easier when you've been here for longer. You get away with leaving more and more stuff in your room during break every year."
"Yeah, that… that makes sense." Grace runs a hand through his hair.
You pause, unsure of what to say. It's a painful silence, and you blurt the first thing that comes to mind in order to fill it.
"I'm sorry," you say. "I just wanted to…"
You lose the end of your sentence as he meets your gaze. He waits for you to finish, and you swallow harshly.
"Marisol told me you're coming to trivia."
"Oh. Yeah, Lee mentioned it."
"This Friday."
"I remember."
"Right." You nod a few too many times, grasping for the right words. "Good."
Grace shifts his weight, the tapping against his thigh intensifying. "I didn't say yes."
You blink. "What?"
"I haven't said yes, yet," he amends. "I, well… I wanted to talk to you first."
"Why?" you ask, but you think you know, and you're so touched it's actually a little sickening.
"I don't want to intrude," he says. "It's your group of friends. Your monthly thing. I don't want to be there if it makes you uncomfortable."
"You don't have to do that." Guilt leaves a sour taste in the back of your mouth. You'd never wanted Grace to feel unwelcome, you'd just… wanted to be left alone. You can't imagine how you would've ended up if Marisol hadn't taken pity on you and swooped in to practically adopt you, and you certainly can't imagine putting Grace in a position where he couldn't have that same opportunity to connect.
He ducks his head, avoiding your gaze. "It's the right thing to do."
"No, I mean… you should come. It's fun. Marisol takes it way too seriously and Lee pretends he doesn't care but he does, and Abby always gets super drunk. Joe has tried to bribe our rival team a couple times. The drinks are good. Can't say the same for the food, though, so—" you cut yourself short. You're rambling. And his face is doing something unreadable and you're so certain you've made a mess out of the whole thing that you do a double-take when he responds.
"That does sound fun."
"It is," you insist. You're aware it sounds more like you're trying to convince yourself rather than Grace, but the words are already out of your mouth and who even cares, at this point? How much more of a fool can you make of yourself? Might as well own it.
He studies you. "You're sure?"
No, you think. You make me nervous and a whole night at the bar with you is going to drive me insane but Marisol will kill me if I don't go.
"I'm sure."
"Okay." He clears his throat, smiles, and you're certain you're getting yourself into something you'll for a second time. "Okay, then I'll be there."
ᯓ★
› A/N: hiii this took way longer than i expected haha writing is hard :( big big thanks to vi (@pixiebuggz) for being my beta reader and helping brainstorm the ending so i could finally get this out! next part is finally some smut and talking things out. if you want to be added to the series taglist just comment! (and also please yell at me if i forgot to add you!!!) i'm debating on making just like a general writing taglist for when i post for other rygos characters is that something y'all would be interested in? idk lmk. i'm pretty sure no one noticed but i changed the title of part two like three or four times i'm so indecisive when it comes to titles LOL. as always if i missed anything in the tags/warnings lmk
CW: MDNI/18+. NSFW. Established friendship w/Andrew Pope Cody. Implied age gap (Pope is early 30s, reader is early to mid 20s). Childhood friends & budding romance. Drug use - cannabis/weed. Reader smokes a joint & Pope watches. Mentions of past intimacy. Mentions of past kissing & dry humping. Discussions of having future sex. Fantasizing. Sexual tension. Reader is messing with Pope but wants that cookie real bad. Reader is wearing a tank top and jeans. Mention of the Cody family.
A/N: Chat, we might be back in business. I haven't written anything since like February, and I managed to come up with some bullshit, aka this. I had a vision, and I still have a vision, but let's sit with this first. Anyways, this is just to say I missed writing, and I especially miss writing for Pope Cody too, MY BABY!! I'm very rusty, so pls be nice. Thank you to @superhoeva who looked this over for me, ily muah. Anywho, reblogs, comments, and likes are greatly appreciated. <3
⟢ NAVIGATION | MASTERLIST
“You shouldn’t be smoking that.”
The words came from a signature rasp you were all too familiar with. Twisting your neck, your eyes landed on the stoic glare of the eldest Cody brother, Andrew. Though for most of your life since knowing him, you adopted the same habits his family did in referring to him as Pope. The joint sits lit in between your fingers as you comfortably lounge on one of the chairs in the backyard, body laid out on the material underneath you with your legs stretching out as you flex your toes.
“Craig said I could,” you mumble with a shrug. Pope responds quickly with a scoff.
“Craig doesn’t know what’s right from left half of the time,” he comments, his ears perking up once he hears you chuckle. He doesn’t hesitate to pull up another one of the chairs nearby and place it right next to you, plopping down with a huff and a sharp bend of his knees.
“You're chaperoning me?” you glanced at Pope with hazy eyes, watching the lines of his face you’ve come to memorize over the years.
“Who else is going to? Can’t leave you alone out here.” You smiled at that, taking another long drag of the joint and inhaling deeply before exhaling out of your nose. Pope’s dark eyes follow your movements, tracing the silhouette of your fingers and the curve of your lips as you breathed in whatever you were allowing into your lungs. “Are you really going to smoke the whole thing?”
“Shit, I’m going to try. I know you won’t help me,” you joked, not that you necessarily minded Pope opting out; honestly you were feeling more selfish tonight.
“You know I’d prefer not to.”
“I know, Pope. You can stay here with me and keep watch.”
This isn’t the first time you’ve smoked weed, especially near Pope. It was always a nasty vice you couldn’t seem to let go of, sneaking out of your high school class and running to your secret spot by the farthest set of bleachers for a fix. The act of smoking also happens to come with a dual order of Pope’s judgmental stare every time you smoke with Craig. He'd always hover around you, patiently waiting for you to be finished so he’d babysit you until the high wore off. At first it irritated you, but by now you've grown used to it.
You figured that having an excuse for Pope to care enough to be nearby was a good reason to maintain your bad habit.
By the time you felt the high reach its climax, only the end of the joint remained, putting it to the side in the ash tray you found. Growing antsy from the lack of stimulation, you moved from your lounge chair and situated yourself over Pope’s lap, resting your back against his broad chest like you’ve done so many times before. He wraps a thick arm around your waist to keep you steady, your hands instantly reaching for his forearm to stroke along his freckled skin. Pope’s head rests over yours, breathing you in and letting you touch him however you want—so long as you're calm that's fine with him.
You usually get like this when you’re high—clingy, touchy and craving something that calmed you down. It’s not your fault it was usually Pope who you’d end up looking for, his presence always had an effect on you ever since you were introduced to the Cody household when you were younger. Being with him like this was far from the ordinary; you preferred to sit or lean on Pope’s strong frame instead of the actual couch cushions, but that didn’t mean others refrained from voicing their opinions.
“You know Baz thinks we’re fucking?” you admit, your voice soft and mellowed out, trailing off into a light giggle of disbelief. The sound that Pope releases by your ear would be the closest thing to a laugh, though you can assume it was from irritation above all else.
“Baz thinks a lot of things. He’s worse than Craig sometimes,” Pope conveys, instinctively tightening his hold on you as if you could get any closer to him. “His head is always in the gutter.”
“He has a lot to say considering he has a kid to look after now,” you found yourself blurting out, feeling Pope nod beside you. You traced the veins that poked out of his arm, drawing lines and circles over him when you got the sudden urge to ask him the question sitting in the back of your mind. “Have you thought of it?”
“Thought of what?”
“Us fucking.” You can feel Pope tense behind you, holding his breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “I’m only asking since Craig told me he would the other day. Curious to see if it's a family thing.”
“Hell no. Craig can’t. He’s…”
“He’s not you, right?” you finished his sentence for him, and Pope almost lets you go as his grip loosens. His heart pounds against your back, and as much as you tried to hide it, you enjoyed making him nervous.
“You don’t need to worry about me ever getting involved with Craig; he’s not my type. He basically fucks anything that walks, so an offer from him is far from a compliment,” Pope hums. That statement seemed to calm him down from thinking of the worst-case scenario, you with his reckless brother. “But I think we should. To get it out of our system.”
He stays quiet for a second, thinking it over and running the fantasy through his head until he’s satisfied. He maintains his hold around your waist but takes his free hand to mess with the end of your tank top that rides higher up your torso.
“I’m surprised you even want to.” You slip out of his arms and turn around to face him, sitting on his lap with your back straight while trying to get his eyes on you, but all he does is stare at the ground.
“You’re surprised that I’d want to fuck you?” you question him, hazel finally meeting your gaze for a couple of beats. “It’s been in the back of my mind since we kissed after Deran’s party months ago.”
Just the thought of it brought a shiver rolling down your spine. It had been a blur of events accompanied by too many beers and tequila shots at one of the local bars Deran liked. It started as a normal night out with the boys after a long day at the beach, catching a tan as they busied themselves with catching some waves. Pope had joined you a while after he grew bored of sitting idly on his surfboard, opting to rub more sun-tanning lotion over your skin and timing your flips so you didn’t burn. He was around you like he usually was for most of the day, carrying that behavior over at night when you were downing drinks like there was no tomorrow, later dragging you into his truck and driving you back home.
What you didn’t expect was to be caught with Pope on top of you in a heavy make-out session on your couch, your legs wrapped tightly around his hips, keeping him in place so you could grind against his thighs as you kissed him. All he tried to do was take you back to your place and tuck you in bed, but you brought him down with you after he picked you up and threatened to drop you. Curiosity simply got the best of you, and neither of you has brought it up since.
“I wouldn’t mind a repeat, Pope. Just once,” you mutter to him teasingly, lightly toying with the collar of his shirt and trailing a finger over his jaw.
“You’re high,” he says matter-of-factly, but from the way his hand was rubbing on your leg, you don’t think he’s far from being fully convinced.
“I’m well aware. So it’s easier for me to say I want your mouth on me.” Your grin doesn’t exactly meet your face, a little slow in coordination with how your eyes flutter as you bite your lip. “I’ll even show you how to do it.”
“I know how to do it,” Pope claims defiantly, a pout forming on his face. You shamelessly laugh in front of him, catching his eyes squinting as he observes you, waiting for you to take back your words.
“No the fuck you don’t. But that’s okay, I can teach you.” You’re absentmindedly playing with the curls on the nape of his neck, something you always did to him when he’d plant his head over your lap. You arch your back more so your chest rubs into his, lips ghosting over his own as you smirk. “Doesn’t sound too bad, right?”
There had always been something between you and Pope; that much was obvious to practically everyone with a set of eyes, including the other members of the Cody family. But when it comes to your relationship with Pope, he never did anything you didn’t want him to do, never went against your wishes, and never disrespected you or made you second-guess his loyalty to you. Whether it was just as friends or something else, you were bound to each other, even if you pretended like that wasn't the case.
Now here he was, with you seated on his lap like you belonged there, wearing a tank top that left nothing to the imagination, proposing that you’d fuck him…and he had to act like his cock wasn’t twitching in his jeans with your close proximity. He simply looks at you, breathing heavier than he did a few minutes ago, smelling the weed that still clung to you despite smoking out in the open.
The second his lips started to curl upward, you knew you finally got him.
“Sure. You can teach me,” Pope suggests casually. His free hand that was on your hip sneaked a bit further to play with one of the belt buckle loops on your jeans, putting pressure on your tailbone. “So long as it’s not fucking Craig doing it, we have a deal.”
You coil a strand of his hair with one of your fingers, watching the dark auburn piece curl in on itself and settle over his scalp. The high from your finished joint was still flowing through you; this whole conversation had your panties sticking to your cunt and pulsing so heavily down south you couldn't focus on anything else but Pope's mouth.
Of course, it was you who just had to keep talking.
“You look nice,” Ryland says, smiling a little shy, as if the compliment had just slipped out and he was supposed to be embarrassed about that.
“I uh,” You pause, swallowing thickly.
Holy fuck he looks good in a suit.
in which: You need a date to the wedding you foolishly agreed to attend, luckily your co-worker is a willing sacrifice. Extremely willing.
[warnings: eventual nsfw 18+, a bit of fluff, excessively drawn out flirting]
wc: 14.2k (Whoops) [ Masterlist ] [ ao3 Link ]
Woe finds you on a Tuesday at the staffroom lunch table.
Picking apart the leftovers of a miserable thrown together attempt of fried rice that came to be after realising there were no better dinner options with the ingredients you had in the fridge two days ago and the determination to not get take out more than once a week that would surely fade come February. Alas, it is still January and all those new year resolutions are still sticking like cheap adhesive hooks that will eventually be weighed down enough to slip as time ticks on.
Eat take out once a week, maximum. Read one book a month, minimum. Sleep more. Stop turning down social invites
The last one is what leaves you particularly perturbed, as your lunch goes lukewarm and your thumb flicks about on the social media profile.
“I just… I can’t say no.” You lament. “It would be weird.”
“Weirder than going?” Margot asks, pulling her own container of lunch from the oven. It’s also leftovers, but slices of impeccably cooked roast with what looks to be red wine sauce and vegetables- no doubt made by her smokeshow of a house husband (he just works from home, she insists. You’re pretty sure the pair are sitting on a lofty investment profile because no man ‘works from home’ cooks roasts bi-weekly and buys his wife diamond earrings for her birthday).
“I don’t know. Maybe.” You manage, the next bite of fired rice tasting like loneliness packed into an over-salted flavour profile.
“What’s weird?” Ryland asks, sitting down in the chair across from you.
The staff room of E-Block is near abandoned. Of the ten-odd teachers with rooms in the little block of aging brick, most tended to eat in their classrooms. Save for you, Margot and Ryland. Occasionally there will be another visitor, but most days, it is just the three of you.
“Wedding.” Margot supplies, sitting down and shuffling her chair in with a sense of poise so rarely found in Middle-Schools. She’s older, somewhere in her early fifties, and still manages to approach the job with the same level of discipline as before ipads made their invasion into the classroom.
Ryland frowns. “You’re already married.”
He’s… well, Ryland's… actually you’re not sure how to put him into words, which is saying a lot considering the literature degree collecting mildew in the filing cabinet of your apartment.
He’s in the same boat as you in terms of finding yourselves with a teaching career. Studied something else first, got your passion and love for it soured by morons and went back to college for a second round, dishing out more cash for a masters in teaching that has you trying to tame fourteen year olds all day. Delightful, truly. Although, Ryland had certainly lasted a lot longer with that first degree than you had. A doctorate. He hates the kids knowing that though. A handful of them had called him ‘Doctor Grace’ last year, after digging about online and getting their grubby fingers on his linkedin profile.
‘Mr Grace’ as he is now known, is awkward. A little socially inept at times, but not enough to come across as anything other than endearing. Now is one such time, as he looks over the frames of his glasses at Margo, the stack of pop quizzes he’d brought to mark and keep himself occupied momentarily forgotten. His eyes darted from her face to the ring on her finger.
“Mm mm.” She hums, shaking her head as she chews, then levels her fork to point in your direction.
“You’re not getting married.” Ryland states when he turns to look at you, like it’s a scientific fact, one he’s so assured of.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mr Grace.” You reply, still sort of wallowing at the photos on your phone.
His gaze flickers, a little less sure as the corner of his lips fall and, like he had with Margot, settles his eyes on your hands. Your lack of a ring. “You aren’t, are you?”
“No. My ex is, though.” You sigh, despondent. The reminder glares back at you from the overly-bright phone screen.
“Oh. That sucks.” He manages, clicking open a red pen to start circling and ticking the first sheet on his pile. “Happens to the best of us.”
The kettle rumbles away on the tiny kitchenette. You look at him for a long moment. The best of us. Like it’s happened to him. Ryland’s not one to discuss relationships beyond the occasional quip about quitting to be a house husband like Margot’s. He’s never mentioned past romances, you don’t think he’s been in a relationship in the three years since he started at Grover Cleveland Middle. It’s such a bizarre glimpse at his life, that he doesn't even seem to register what he's revealed, marking as he waits for the boiling water to cook another lunch of instant ramen.
You sit up a little straighter in your chair, weary of knocking your shoes against where his long legs sprawl under the small table. The staff room is meant for ten but is cramped even with the three of you, nothing more than a little kitchenette and big whiteboard in the corner. There’s a shelf against one wall, just far enough away from the doorframe that the door doesn't crash into it when pushed open. There’s a long window the length of the wall on the door’s other side, a good view of the eighth-grade outdoor lunch area. The other staff call it the fishbowl, it’s why they opt to eat in their classrooms, not keen on the kids' eyes on them when it is supposed to be one of the fleeting breaks during their day.
Thank god the door is closed- if the kids heard you whining about this, a wedding, they’d never let up. “I’m considering the pros and cons of skipping it.”
“You were invited?” He baulks, dropping his pen.
You try not to smile, focusing on your self pity instead of the three shoddy attempts Ryland takes to catch his pen from dropping out of his hand, rolling off the stack of paper then off the table. “I already said I’d go too.”
“Why?” Ryland sounds appalled, like that one time you’d caught him trying to explain that the five second rule is not an effective barrier against bacteria to a student.
“It’s complicated.” You say, biting at your cheek.
“Bullshit.” Margot aptly calls. Looking over with the same expression she used to call students on their bullshit. You're not a big fan of having it directed at you.
“We went out for maybe two months in college.” You sigh, setting your phone on the table face-down to stare at your lunch, contemplative. “He’s engaged to one of the girls from my sorority. We’re… friends.”
Margot watches. “With your ex or the sorority girl?”
“Sorority girl. Daisy.” That's the better option of the two at least. You think it is, not that there is much left to save you from the impending train wreck of discussing the relationship woes of your late teens and early twenties with the only two coworkers who care to eat lunch in a communal space. The company is nice, Ryalnd had said once, when you’d asked, gets me out of the classroom.
Margot screws her face up for a second, muttering it again under her breath as if the name offends her.
“You were in a sorority?" Ryland asks, face a little blank as he looks at you from across the table.
It makes you falter, the way his thoughts seem to be buffering like the school's slow wifi. “I… Yeah? That’s the interesting part?”
He shakes his head, looking down at his marking sheets and pushes his glasses up from where they’re slowly slipping down the bridge of his nose. “No, I just can’t picture it.”
You purse your lips, consider pulling up some photos from your sorority days, then remember the kind of outfits the lot of you wore and think better of it. “Well Daisy and I were roommates for a year and a half. She’s nice. Works in PR now.”
“But she’s marrying your ex?” Ryland asks, still kind of baffled.
You dismiss it with a lazy hand wave. “I mean, she asked before they went out and everything. I just think it’s a little weird. I don’t even know why I said I’d go. It’s going to be embarrassing.”
Margot tuts twice, done with her lovingly made lunch that symbolises how successful she has been in the department of marriage when you have all but failed so far. “Why is it embarrassing? Two months is nothing.”
“I was a little head over heels for this guy.” You admit, sheepish.
Ryland stands up, clears his throat as he turns away. “Yeah? How so?”
His back is to you, as he peels the lid off his cup ramen and wrestles with the flavour packet. You come to the conclusion it’s easier to confess this sort of stuff with only one set of eyes on you. “I was sort of convinced he was my soulmate. He was doing pre-law, witty too.”
“Hot?” Margot asks, always straightforward.
You feel a blush rise on your cheeks as you remember the early days of your sorority experience, flopped back on the bed as you made little love sick sighs at your ceiling. “God, his jawline. And his hair- it was so… ugh!”
The thud is dull when your forehead lands on the table, to the right of your now abandoned lunch. “I don’t even know why I said I’d go. It’s dumb.”
You hate how you sound- petulant like the kids you prod for not searching for better words in their assignments, moping like your world is ending over something so trivial. It’s not even the new years resolution that has you mulling this over so intently. You’d agreed to go months ago- six months ago- and said yes to the offered plus one, adamant to yourself that you’d have someone by then, a partner or something. Someone of importance.
Attending alone is going to be even worse than if you had just RSVP’d for yourself in the first place. It’s one thing to watch your college friend and ex-sort-of-boyfriend exchange vows alone, and a whole other monster to do it with a pointed empty seat beside you.
All of it tumbles out your lips in a hurried hurl of word vomit, followed by a few moments of silence that has you cautiously raising your head to peek over the wall of your forearms. Ryland is staring at you, cup noodles steaming in his hands where it hovers over the sink, like he’d been about to pour out the excess water. Margot is looking at you with a frown, the same one she wears when teaching senior mathematics and the children have drawn up an equation for her to solve with the foolish belief they could stump her for more than ten seconds.
And just as in class, Margot is not phased for more than a handful of moments. “Then find someone with a better jawline and better hair to go with you. You can borrow mine.”
You blink at her, mulling the words over before asking, “Are you trying to pimp your husband out to me?”
“Only for aesthetic reasons, of course. It’d be nice to have the house to myself for once. Not like you have better options.”
It would sting more if it wasn’t so true. There were very few options and with the wedding only two weeks away, that was certainly not enough time to squeeze in enough dates with someone to justify taking them to a damn wedding.
“I mean, how good is his jawline?” Ryland finally says, walking over with his little cutlery box, plastic chopsticks he washes and reuses almost everyday, to set his lunch down on the table and settle back in across from you. “Are we aiming high?”
There is no way to un-dig this hole, not now that they’ve both decided to put their two cents in. You concede with another sigh and reach for your phone, arms and chin still on the table as you fish about Instagram for a photo. It’s the one that had reminded you of this awful upcoming event, posted by Daisy. You all but toss your phone on the table between your coworkers, sinking a little lower into your folded arms, awaiting judgement.
The photos must be from a walk though of the venue, the pair of them posed together between some old marble arch where they were having the ceremony at. She was laughing, hand on his chest, showing off the ring on her finger while he looked at her, besotted. The caption made it worse. Only two weeks left till I get to marry my man on these very steps.
You like them both, you really do, but the thought of showing up by yourself, as the lonely friend who’d never found ‘it’, your own version of the love they were celebrating, well it was just nauseating.
Margot looks the photo over critically before humming in a sort of so-so tone. “You can do better.”
Ryland looks kind of at a loss. “This is your type?”
As if to emphasise the point, he lifts the phone up and turns it around to show you the image you were already being haunted by. “This is the hair that had you all…”
He doesn't find the words, just waves the hand with his chopsticks around in a messy motion, looks at you critically over the rims of his glasses.
“He slicks it back now. It used to be… I donno. Messy? Fluffy? Good to run my fingers though.” He scoffs a little to himself, dissatisfied maybe with your excuse.
The only forgiving factor is that the photo does highlight the sharp cut of his jaw, which even Ryland concedes to. “He does have a good jawline...”
Yours is better, you want to say. Immediate and impulsive, because it kind of is. Especially when the shadow of his stubble stretches a few extra days between shaves. Your ex is clean shaven- you used to think that was sexy, at least sexier than the patchy beards boys in college had back then. Now you’re kind of obsessed with the so-called ‘5-o’clock shadow’ Ryland sports on Fridays.
It’s not something you’re likely to tell him though, especially not when you glance at the clock and realise you have a duty across campus in three minutes. Saved by the bell maybe, either way you’re able to liberate your phone from the pair of them and their conspiratory whispers, bin the scraps of your lunch and haul ass out of there.
By the end of the school day, you have reached the conclusion that you will blame it on work. That some mandatory day of ‘professional development’ as it is called nowadays, has come up and you will just have to miss the wedding, truly you’re devastated about it all.
Then Ryland corners you in your classroom. The bell’s long gone, as are the students. He’s dressed like he’s on his way out, his green backpack tossed over one shoulder and bike helmet hanging by the strap in one hand. You’re halfway through explaining your plan and the wording you’re going to use in the tragic text message to Daisy when he cuts you off.
“I’ll go with you.”
He’s a little breathless with it, like he’d been saving up all his oxygen to get the words out, leaving him in one big rush as they topple though the doorway of your classroom and splatter onto the linoleum floor between you both.
“I know that I’m not Margot’s husband with a ‘better jawline and better hair’ but we can go and eat nice wedding food- If he’s a lawyer it’s gotta be fancy, right? And we can make fun of his stupid slicked back hair together and you don’t have to be alone or make an excuse and feel guilty about it.” Ryland’s big speech is as flawed as it is heartwarming
Because he does have a better jawline and better hair. And Margot looks between you both during lunch hours and staff meetings like you’re her personal romance drama, there to occupy her during the day.
But the wedding food will be good, your ex will shill out for the best and Daisy has always had a taste for the finer things in life. Ryland is the best company you can think of to have by your side and he knows you well enough to understand how guilty lying about something makes you feel, how it churns your gut.
“Yeah. Okay.” You smile, something warm and fuzzy in your chest.
His eyes don’t move, maybe widen a little before he speaks again, still a little breathless. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
It isn’t a hard thought to come around to, taking Ryland to a wedding. As a date is something that goes unsaid between the pair of you, not sure whether it could be classed as such for real, or if this is simply a favour between friends-slash-coworkers. It is certainly a date for show, to the many college friends you’re about to reunite with after a few years, for your Ex, Jack who’s obsessed with his wife, for Daisy who you’d told years ago to ‘go for it, he’s a nice guy’ working under the assumption that she’d only last a few months by his side too.
You’re not sure which answer you’d prefer, honestly; a date or a favour.
He texts you a lot- after school, on the weekend- asking about what he should wear, what you’re going to wear, how he should prepare for this sort of thing. It’s sweet, cute in a way that has little butterflies flapping around in your stomach.
“Okay, I’ll show you. Wait, hold on.” You placate, setting your phone down on the bed, screen up.
“It’s a lovely ceiling fan, but I doubt it fits the dress code.” Ryland drawls, and you can hear the smile there.
“Ha ha.” You reply, a little echo-y as you lean into your closet to pull the dress out.
He’s up in arms about what to wear, says he needs to know what you’re wearing too so he can match. The invite’s dress code called for formal attire in ‘dark colours’. On the facebook page she’d made for the event, Daisy had a full post going into more detail, about how she’d love any and all dark tones- forestry green, navy, even burgundy was fine. You had taken a firm stance against burgundy considering there’s some old wedding traditions that state wearing red indicated you’d slept with the groom. Which you had, but you were not about to advertise that.
So navy it was.
You’d sent Ryland a picture of the invite, where it was stuck to your fridge with letter magnets spelling out ‘woe’- it had felt fitting when you’d stuck it up there- and several screenshots of the lengthy dress-code post Daisy had made that went into excruciating detail. He wasn’t satisfied though.
Even your attempts to describe the dress you’d bought didn’t work well enough.
“I mean it! you expect me to know what any of those words apart from ‘floor length' means?” he bemoans from your phone speakers, face time call crackling. “I need all the data.”
“Oh listen to you, Mr. Science,” You drawl with a smile, pulling the dress out. It’s too long to hang from a door knob so you have to stretch up on your tip toes to hang the coat hook over the curtain rod of your bedroom window.
“I was thinking of changing my name. Very to the point, don’t you think?” He replies, still smiling as you collect your phone. His eyes are sparkling with something cheeky when you appear back in frame.
Ryland’s dressed down, in one of those dumb science t-shirts he wears on ‘Casual Fridays’ as it is called in staff meetings. This one’s dark blue and has the periodic table on it in worn down white transfer ink. You’ve seen it enough to know the punch line sprawled over his lower stomach even though it’s not in frame. I wear this shirt periodically. He finds an extra layer in humor that the shirt is factually correct as well, that he does in fact, wear the shirt in regular intervals as he’d explained to you during a free-period on one of those casual Fridays.
He’s at his kitchen bench, phone propped up against something, while he taps away at his laptop. You’ve not actually been to Ryland’s apartment before, but it sorta feels like you have, the cramped studio always on display in the back of video calls like this one.
It’s just one long rectangle. Kitchen by the front door, a bench, a gap that is probably intended for a kitchen table but he’s stuck a desk there instead, his bed that’s almost always unmade with a tv wall mounted across from it, and a balcony. Like this, you can see the expanse of it behind him. The stacks of paper piled up on his desk, the extra monitors and little trinkets gifted from students, the sage green sheets of his bed, peeled back on one side, sun shining in through his big glass balcony doors. Honesty, you kind of want to see the view from his apartment in person, he’s a little higher up than you are, in a better part of the city too.
Ryland’s not brushed his hair, it’s all spiked up in different directions and you wonder if the mug he’s been sipping from, periodically, is his morning cup even though it’s just past ten. He’s blinking slow behind his glasses, sitting a little too still for his brain to be fully functional yet.
“I’m sure the kids will love it. Harder to spell on their assessment sheets, though.” You can imagine it, the staff badge, the name on his board in fun bubble writing where it would stay untouched for a whole school term.
You flip the camera, showing him the dress he’s been complaining about not understanding for the last half hour over text before he gave up and called you.
It’s cute, how his head tilts and he leans towards his phone for a second before just picking it up and holding it close enough so his eyes and forehead are just about all that is in frame. “Is that velvet?”
“It’s fake satin. I think.”
“Fake satin?” He repeats, confused.
The dress was one you already owned, bought a year or so ago for another friend’s wedding that you had attended alone but not felt crappy about, even if it did seem like everyone your age was getting married nowadays. It’s got a fitted bodice, but there fabric is a little drapey, looks like it pools over the chest and down towards the fluid skirt. "Wasn't expensive enough to be real satin.”
“Okay, I know what you mean by delicate straps now.” That had been his main hang up, whining about, What do you mean delicate straps? Like they’re about to break?, swearing that the shit he was googling was just not helping the mental image considering there were about six different results for everything.
“Yeah, and here, the lace up back.” You say, stepping up to twist the dress away from where it sat flush against the curtains to show the corset style back, with thin cord lace just a little thinner than the straps.
“Isn’t that going to be a nightmare to put on?” He asks, squinting still.
“There’s a zip.” You say, dragging the little hidden zipper down, showing him how the dress fabric parts and slips open. “So it’s fairly easy to get on. The cords are about as tight as they should be anyway, it isn't hard to pull to fit.”
You fumble a little trying to get the zip back up but eventually just conceded to leave out like that until you put the dress away. When you glance down at your phone, Ryland has moved, no longer sitting down and if you had to guess, is now walking the length of his apartment instead. He looks a little distressed.
“Come on, you’ve got the easy part.” You try, a little concerned he’s about to say he shouldn’t go. “You just have to put on a suit.”
“I can’t just ‘put on a suit’.” He whines, flopping down onto his bed like the world is ending. “I’m supposed to be like, your big ‘fuck you’ to the girl who got with your ex. I’m supposed to look good with you. I don’t know if I have a suit nice enough for that dress.”
“Ryland. It’s not about saying ‘fuck you’ to Daisy, or pulling some revenge stunt. I just didn’t want to go alone like a loser when I said I was bringing someone.” You can’t really help the little breathy laugh that weaves its way though his name, because he sounds like you did four days ago acting like the world was about to end, face down on the lunch table. “You don’t have to come.”
“No, I’m coming. I just need to go through my wardrobe.” He’s cute, you decide, in a round-about sort of way. The determination to play this self elected role well, to perfect it and give it his all, like he does with everything else in his life. The whole situation was elevating your ‘aesthetic appreciation’ of Ryland that you’d been attempting to suppress, to a new sort of level.
You flop down on your own bed, roll over on your side and let him derail the conversation towards lesson planning, listen to him talk about the plans he has for the next weeks worth of classes, a couple of activities he’s got in the works. All while you consider the pros and cons of having him beside you instead.
Ryland was probably the teacher you got on best with at work, despite being from two very different teaching areas. When he’d first arrived, you’d assumed he would be a little pretentious, with his Phd and professional experience beyond the classroom. You weren't expecting him to be so awkward. The children took to him so quickly, and Ryland had told you time and time again that he doesn't understand why they think he’s cool.
Over the years you’ve found that he can be cocky, in certain bouts of confidence seemingly appearing via divine-intervention. A local bar had run trivia nights for some six odd months, and it had unleashed a beast within him.
On Monday afternoon he sent you a photo. A little black bag with a logo you’d googled, realising it was a menswear store before the second photo had come though. A tie, sleek navy like your dress, rolled up neatly with a matching pocket square beside it, both nestled in a box that screamed expensive. You’d sent back a random string of praise, imagining him lulling it over in the store. It was nearly five in the afternoon, he’d left work pretty much on the final bell. You wonder how long he spent comparing the seemingly endless ties the shop’s online store offered, considering what would match best to your dress.
It makes you a little giddy, to be honest, has you dreaming of a situation where you’d asked him to come to the wedding, or where you’d already been together long enough that it was simply a given when the invitation turned up in your mail box.
Neither of you mention it during school hours, not keen on the kids hearing whispers of you and Ryland doing anything outside work hours- students will take anything and run with it.
But he messages you about it constantly. Makes a plan; he’d come to your apartment and you would uber from there to the venue, it was a sunset ceremony and evening reception. He lived close enough that it was a brisk walk or quick bus trip. He pointedly mentions that he would not be cycling- ‘In a suit? God, never’- and makes sure you know that the uber would also drop you both back to your flat and he’d walk home or take another separate uber.
There’s talk about your ‘backstory’, which he takes as seriously as he does exam periods. You tell him it’s not super necessary, that saying you met at work is more than enough exposition for the gaggle of college friends you’d not seen in years. But he was never one to do things in halves.
“We obviously would have met at school.” He says, like it’s a given. Ryland is laid out on the reading rug at the back of your classroom, staring at the ceiling. And the fake clouds that are actually just a hobby-fill glue gunned to paper and taped to the ceiling, he’d turned the fairy lights that are threaded though them on before he’d decided the floor was his resting place. “Maybe trivia is where it happened. We liked trivia.”
“We did like trivia.” You agree, pointedly.
It’s almost impossible to not just sit there and watch him, the student folders that you’re sorting worksheets into acting as a very inefficient distraction.
He’s got a button down on, some pale blue that looks nice under his grey wool blazer. The pale wash jeans and white converse are a bit more casual, but he wears the combination well. Too well. Laid out like this, with one knee up, he looks far too attractive for you to swallow. Glasses pulled down to hang off his jaw, sitting there catching the afternoon light as it came through the windows, casting rainbow refractions onto the back wall.
“Maybe trivia was a date. What would you have done?”
“If you’d asked me to trivia as a date?” You glance up. He’s already looking at you, head tipped to the side, something soft, tentative there in his eyes.
“Yeah.” You can see the way his throat bobs when he swallows, how his chest rises with each breath.
Ryland sounds… nervous, in a way that does remind you of the first trivia night you’d gone to. He’d been dressed similarly there, you remember thinking he looked nice, polished up a little more than he did in the school day with dress shoes and what smelt like cologne. Handsome where he waited by the entrance, backlit by the bar’s warm lighting. He’d been a little twitchy for the first hour or so, but settled into himself by round two.
With the way he’s looking at you, now as he plans out the false scenario that’s beginning to sound a lot more like a confession, you’re starting to get the idea that trivia could have been a date. If either of you had put it into words.
“Enjoyed it, probably.”
“Really?” He looks shy, a bit of a flush working its way up his cheeks.
You smile at him, thinking about how nice it would have been to kiss him in that bar with a sweet cocktail on your lips, dizzy from his flattery about your trivia skills. You hum, nodding a little as you look at the folders and sheets spread out over your desk, feeling a flush rise to your own cheeks.
He knocks when you’re halfway through lacing up the back of your dress, holding the cords with one hand as you open the door. Ryland’s not been to your apartment before, something you’d failed to realise until he called you and asked during his walk over, if you’d have to buzz him in.
He was appalled to find out the front door to your building was sporting a broken lock and had been tied back with a length of rope for the last two months while the landlords procrastinated fixing it.
“See,” You say, opening the door for him, keeping it propped open with your foot as he shuffles in. “My door locks.”
“Still one less lock that you’re supposed to have.” he grumbles, stepping out of his very nice dress shoes. They look expensive- black leather shined up propper.
Actually, Ryland looks expensive.
“You look nice,” he says, smiling a little shy, as if the compliment had just slipped out and he was supposed to be embarrassed about that.
“I uh,” You pause, swallowing thickly.
Holy fuck he looks good in a suit. It’s the only thought spinning around your head. It’s a proper one, tailor made no doubt. Blazer, slacks and undershirt, all three of them a deep inky black. The navy tie he’d sent you a photo of is done up around his neck in a knot neater than you’ve ever seen him wear to work. The pocket square is folded too, fluffed up with a little volume that suggests he did so intentionally.
Suddenly you’re reminded of all those times he’d complained about all the formal conferences and charity gala’s he’d attended during his days in academia. You realise you have made a grave error.
There have always been little parts about Ryland that oozed wealth, the glasses he wore for one, that he told you were antique when you’d asked. The watch on his wrist that you thought looked like some practical sporty thing but found out was actually worth three months rent when you’d googled it out of curiosity. These little things fall out of the spotlight and become footnotes that are often ignored when he’s in his classroom, or tiny apartment.
Dressed in such a nice suit, here in you apartment definitely wearing cologne- the same from that very first trivia night, something a little warm, woodsy like oaky bourbon, sharp and contrary to the fresh nothingness he smelt like at work- Ryland seemed so far beyond you.
“You look good.” You manage, letting the door slip shut and dropping the lace of your dress, it loses its tension a little but stays in the same spot for the most part, to run a hand over the lapel of his blazer. “How long have you had this?”
“Ages. Dug it out of the back of my closet. A little tighter than when I last wore it, but it will do the trick. Right?” He tacks that last bit on, like he’s waiting with baited breath for your approval.
“I’ll say.” You slide your hand down the lapel a little bit, down over the press of his chest. The tightness just shows the subtlety of his build, lean muscle that comes from idle exercise and good diet, maybe even a splash of genetics. He’s tidied his facial hair up a little, slid the electric razor over all of it to make sure it’s the same length, no doubt. Ryalnd’s still got his glasses on, you were a little worried he might have opted for contacts and are very relieved you get to see this outfit complete with the lenses that frame his face so well.
With a realisation you might be getting a little lost in your head, you drop your hand, turning to walk further into your apartment, towards the couch where your shoes for the night sat on the floor. “Right, we'll, I'm nearly ready. The uber will be here soon.”
“Do you need a hand?” Ryland asks, and you’re about to turn, ask him, ‘with what’ when you feel his fingertips against the small of your back. It sends a jolt though your skin, he’s cold. From the outside air, where as you’ve been nice and cosy with the heat on while you’d done your hair and make up.
Goosebumps rise under his hands as they gather the ties for the back of your dress. Something low swoops in your gut, like the dip of a roller coaster, free falling as he chuckles a little behind you. “Sorry, cold fingers.”
You swallow. “It’s.. it’s okay.”
“How tight?” He asks, giving the strings a gentle tug. You almost sway with the moment, feeling a little swept off your feet already.
“Bit tighter.” You manage, as he presses a flat palm against the small of your back, over the criss-crossing cord, and gathers both ties in one hand to pull slow and firm. It tugs you back into his hand, a steadier hold than you’d expected.
“There?” He questions when the dress is pulled in to sit flush with your skin but not dig in. You get the feeling he might have done some research, when he plucks at each string to even them out and make sure none of them are too tight, on how these dresses are supposed to sit.
“Yeah, perfect.” It leaves you like a sigh, as his palm dips, brushes where the zipper sits before pulling back to tie a neat bow, tugging the cords out carefully so both loops are even.
All of it has you lightheaded, directing more effort than necessary to get yourself to the couch and pull your heels on, black mary janes that are comfortable enough to walk in. As you fiddle with the buckles, you eye him.
Ryland’s hair is tousled, intentionally a little messy, not combed or slicked back. Looks like it would be nice to run your fingers though, and you find yourself wondering if that’s why he’d opted for the style, if he’s here, dressed up as the guy with ‘better hair and a better jawline’ that Margot had pitched, unaware that he already was exactly who he’s trying to be.
He holds an arm out for you to loop yours though, walking down the stairs in steady but slowed steps. You smile. “Wow, full gentleman experience.”
“I told you, I can't just ‘put on a suit’. It’s more than that.” He chides jokingly, and you pity the version of you that didn’t realise this was an option.
He opens the door for you- the car door, the door into the building door tied back by a rope (he glares at it when you pass it)- then rounds the back of the little toyota that’s polished up to try and seem fancier than it was. You don’t talk much on your way to the venue, comfortable silence that the driver thankfully settles into.
It’s nearing sundown when you pull into the driveway, a big circular road that’s already crammed with other cars and guests climbing out.
“You can just let us out here.” Ryland says to the uber driver, unbuckling his seatbelt to hop out, then rounding the car again to open your door, hand held out like it’s necessary, when the car is nowhere near low or high enough to warrant such assistance.
You place your palm in his anyway, letting him pull you from the car, no more temperature disparity in your hands since you’ve both been in the car for fifteen minutes, but it still makes your skin tingle. He’s got cufflinks, the same pale gold as his glasses, in the shape of atoms. You flick one lightly. “I like these.”
He smiles, something a little smothered like he’s trying to stamp it down from a grin as he threads his arm though yours again, beginning the small walk to the venue's front steps. “Well I like your dress, so I think we’re even.”
It’s a ballroom, with these big stained glass windows in the room they hold ceremonies in, you’d seen some lovely shots on the venue’s website of sunset light streaming through them. Imagining Ryland in the warm sunlight has you in a good mood, he’s always suited it, even if the city’s never had much to offer.
“Not too much for our first date?” You tease.
Something like a laugh tumbles out of his lips, leaning down to whisper in your ear. “First date was trivia- and you were underdressed. Keep up.”
You flush, crowding a little closer to his side to make it through the entryway without shoulder checking anyone. Had you been? It was so long ago you could hardly remember anything other than jeans, tight ones that dug into your waist when you sat down- tight jeans hardly felt like being underdressed, they probably meant you wanted him to stare at your ass. Either way you let him have the win, as minute as it is.
Doesn't really matter what you wore back then when you’ve got him like this now.
Together you sit about halfway down on the bride’s side, the pew’s nearly empty, only someone on the other end you don’t know but looks vaguely enough like Daisy, that's you’d guess extended family.
“So why’d you like this guy so much?” Ryland asks, quiet enough for it to just stay between the two of you. He’s glancing around, but his eyes keep bouncing back to Jack at the front of the venue, where he’s talking to gaggle of similarly dressed guys, his groomsmen.
“What?”
“Him,” Ryland says, tipping his head a little to gesture at Jack. “What had you talking about soulmates? Couldn't just be the hair, tons of guys have good hair.”
“They do.” You answer, raising a hand to tangle one of the longer stands where it’s dangling over his forehead around your pointer finger and give it a light tug. Ryland’s eyes settle on you, like there’s nothing else to look at. “He made me feel like the only girl in the world.”
“That’s a cliche.” He refutes. “And a song lyric.”
You smile. “I’m serious. He’s like that with every girl he went out with. He’s like it with Daisy. He just loses sight of every other woman, so attentive.”
Ryland stays silent for a moment, eyes searching for something in yours. Maybe permission, or a want, for him to keep digging, it’s almost as if he’s scared what he might find. “What'd he do? To make you feel like that?”
It’s cute, how nervous he is, despite the fact it feels as though all week, the pair of you have been laying this ground work, a path to follow that will lead you somewhere inevitable, like a trivia date, or the messy sprawled sage green sheets or Ryland’s bed. You smile at him, wondering if he’s thought about you in them. You wonder if he knows how easily you could be, that you might just follow him to the edge of the universe.
Still, you answer his question, offering a peek into your brain, the way you used to operate when teenage giddiness was closer than adult yearning. "Took me dancing. Kissed me slowly, cared about how I wanted things to go. It was like he just couldn’t stop looking at me, for me. It was intoxicating.”
“I can’t.” Ryland blurts out, all reckless abandon, and he’s looking at you like you’ve already kissed him breathless just by being here. You let your leg shift to press the length of your thigh against his, warm even through the layers of fabric.
You breathe in deep through your nose, the scent of his cologne sticking dizzyingly to the air, a scent you think is enough to get drunk on even without the assistance of wedding champagne. "Can't what?”
“Stop looking at you.” He clarifies, eyes darting down to your lips. “I can do the other things though.”
A flutter knocks about your chest, unsteady and uncoordinated. “Yeah, you like dancing Doctor Grace?”
“If it’s with you.” He amends.
“And slow kissing? You like that too?”
“Yeah I do.” He’s not even trying to hide it now, gaze settled on the dusty pink line of your lips, his own a little slick with spit when he darts his tongue out to trace one quick line along them.
You almost asked him to prove it, but in your peripherals, down the aisle and pausing at the sight of you, was Macey, another one of your college friends, smiling. So you place a hand on Ryland's thigh, just above his knee. “Good. Really good.”
Ryland looks dizzy with the praise, like it’s all rushed straight to his head.
“Hey Macey, good to see you.” You greet, using your hand on Ryland's knee to tip his legs towards you, making room for Macey to shuffle into the pew.
“Oh my god, good to see you too! It's been awhile, hasn’t it?” She leans down a little awkwardly to wrap you in a hug as you half stand, and it’s good to see someone after so long, to look at them and remember times when things were simpler and you were allowed to be a little stupid, a little dangerous. It’s nice to see her here, for her to sit next to you- Macey’s always encouraged you to be a little wild, and with the way Ryland’s been looking at you all night, you might need her ego-bosting tonight.
“I’m Macey, nice to meet you.” She extends a hand to Ryland over your lap and he shakes it curtly, offering his own introduction.
There’s a big rock on her finger, and you remember seeing it on an instagram post, some dreamy forest scenery with a ‘coming soon to a theatre near you’ caption under it.
“I suppose it will be your wedding next then,” You tease, “Where’s Jamie?”
“Oh she had a work trip, couldn't avoid it. She wanted to come though.” Macey waves off. Her and her fiance met on some film set, both camera operators, at the time, although you faintly recall reading something about Jamie’s name working its way up to director for some upcoming project, amongst the throws of social media posts from people who once knew everything about you and now you only see once every few years.
“So Ryland,” Macey starts with a glimmer in her eyes, something evil and mischievous that throws you back to seeing her in the living room with a bottle of tequila and monopoly board. “How’d you two meet?”
“We teach at the same school,” He grins, a hand sliding to your knee, just along the inside of it, where your dress fabric hangs low with slack, enough for his palm to press there, thumb drawing slow lines back and forth. “A little cliche but I don’t mind.”
Macey smiles, fans her face a little like that’s just soooo romantic. “What do you teach?”
“Science, opposites attract I guess.”
“Please tell me you used that line.” She practically swoons.
Ryland huffs a little laugh. “No, the kids threw that one at me actually.”
“Really?” You question, a raised eyebrow because that was not part of the backstory he’d been cooking up all week.
“Oh yeah. You should hear them. “Mr. Grace, you and Miss are ,like perfect for each other. You should ask her to the spring dance. They’re relentless, I swear.”
He pitches his voice a little, lazy tones and improper grammar leaking out in the way it did when he did impressions of your students and you can’t help but giggle a little.
“Their heads might explode when they find out.” Macey laughs too, then like a stroke of inspiration, slaps her hand against your arm a few times in pure, unrestrained excitement. “God- remember when we found out Professor Morisaki and Professor Collins were married? Holy shit it was like our heads exploded.”
You bark a laugh, muffling it under your hand considering the rather low level of idle chatter in the venue. “Oh my god, I forgot about that.”
“Professors of yours?” Ryland asks, this soft smile spread across his lips still.
“Yeah, we were doing a car-wash fundraiser! They were kissing in the background of one of our photos!” Macey still whispers gossip like she did in college, like your students do now.
Ryland looks a little red in the face when he asks. “A car wash fundraiser?”
Macey smirks, always too good at picking things up from others' words and you kind of want to stomp your heel over her toes to tell her off before you remember how this evening had been going so far. “Oh? Don’t you know? We were a little wild in college.”
You scoff. “A little?”
“Okay, a lot.” She corrects. “The car wash was an annual thing. White tshirts, bikinis. There’s definitely pictures. I have pictures.”
“Macey.” You scold, mostly joking.
She shrugs, straightens up and sits to face the fronts, pointedly not looking at you with a smirk on her face. “Hey- I’m just reminiscing on good times. Don’t you remember the kissing booth we ran? Of course you do you were the most requested-”
Now you stomp your foot onto hers, although she doesn’t do anything but laugh to herself.
Ryland is back to that dazed look, like he’s on some far off planet in his mind, when he murmurs, "Kissing booth?”
You glare at Macey, for a sharp moment. Before patting one hand on Ryland’s chest, leaning in close when you say, loud enough for Macey to hear. “Tell you about it later, handsome.”
He ducks his head a little close to you, a tiny little movement that stops as soon as it starts. His cheeks are the reddest you’d ever seen, looking a lot like he’s about to kiss you now, when there’s a music cue somewhere further up the aisle and a hush falls over everyone. He doesn't look away at first, eyes glued to yours for a long second before he bites his lower lip, to stop himself saying something and reaches a hand up to lace his fingers together with yours over his chest. He pulls it gently to his lap, smothering it in between his warm palms, fiddling with your fingers as the ceremony starts.
It’s beautiful, truly. The light lowered through the stained glass windows, reflecting and casting colour across the whole room, gentle music and teary vows. Picturesque really, and it reminded you of that time you’d all made ‘vision boards’ as a bonding activity, and Daisy had a little corner on hers that outlined the life she’d like to live, from a small sunset ceremony to the little white picket fence outside a cottage. You’re happy she’s finally arrived there, that she has a man who’s willing to give her everything she’d dreamed of.
You tell her as much, when you catch the pair of them in the reception hall. A warm hug for each of them and a firm hand shake between Jack and Ryland. It’s a lot less daunting than you had thought it would be, seeing them with the knot tied, no bad blood lingering or awkwardness about what once was. Just contentedness, with where your lives had led you each.
The food is good and the atmosphere is better, seeing people from a previous life chapter all reunited, laughing and catching up. The reception is held in a ball room, with gorgeous polished hard wood floors and lovely low lighting that hangs from the ceiling in delicate chandeliers. There’s a classical band, a memento board for people to take polaroids and write well wishes on them, a corner with photos from Both Daisy and Jack’s lives, in albums and tacked up on walls, showing where they meet and things bleed together into their future. All of it’s beautiful.
It’s heading into the later part of the night, when some people have excused themselves and cake has been cut, a hefty supply of the champagne depleted, that a nice slow song comes on.
You aren’t really paying that much attention to it, until you see Ryland shift beside you, rising and holding out one hand, palm up, towards you. “Care to dance?”
Something warm spreads over your face, a flush probably, as you lay a hand in his and he ever so gently pulls you to your feet, right in close to him. He leans down again, lips pressing feather-light to your temple before he leads you towards the dance floor.
It’s littered with other couples, celebrating the love they have for each other as well as the bride and groom.
All of it has you a little dizzy, settling a hand on Ryland’s shoulder as his palm slides around your waist, fingers slowing around the lace up back of your dress, pressing into your skin with gentle intent. He’s warm, firm against you, breath fanning across your cheek as you look up at him. “I know this isn’t the kind of dancing you meant, but it’s the best I can do for now.”
You humm, feet shifting in time with his, a slow waltz you weren’t even aware he knew. “I think I prefer this kind of dancing nowadays.”
Ryland’s lips tick up into a smile. “Yeah?”
He looks as good in the warm lamp light as he does in sunlight, kissing across his tanned skin and stubble, showing off the highlights of his hair. You want to run your hands through it, press a kiss to the scruff of his jaw. You settle on talking instead, worried he’s not one for such public displays of affection. “Left my wild nights behind in college.”
He sighs, like this is a devastating blow, hanging his head slightly, glasses slipping a smidge down his nose. “A shame. I was looking forwards to an appearance.”
You purse your lips, lifting the hand from his shoulder to cup his jaw, tilting his head back up a little, the pad of your thumb pressing his glasses back up to where they're supposed to sit. “Might do a private showing. Just for you.”
“You going to wash my car?” He asks, teasing. Eyes following the movement of your hand as it slips back down into place on his shoulder.
Your forehead falls, pressing against his collar bone as a furious blush blooms over your face, the worst it has been all night, murmuring, “You don’t have a car.”
He must have known what you were going to say, or some semblance of it because you certainly weren’t speaking loud enough for him to catch all of it, but he still sighs, a little dramatic. “Guess we’ll have to go with the kissing booth then.”
You lift your head a little, to look up at him where he’s smiling down, mirth dancing about in his eyes. “Oh, what a shame.”
The drawl has him crack a grin, cheeks flushed as he looks away. Fingers dancing slowly along the skin of your back, between the cords he’d tied up so perfectly for you.
For you, all of it. His nice suit he’d dug out from the back of his closet, the smart shoes nudging against yours with every step of the waltz. Ryland would do a lot for you, the realisation comes a little late, considering everything. You lean forwards a little, resting your cheek on his chest, as the song slows right down, indulgent.
“You got plans after this?” You ask, and it sounds so cheesy, so bland once it’s left your lips.
Still, when he answers, the smile is audible in Ryland’s voice. “Thought I was getting a private show. Is that offer off the table?”
“Think I can manage it,” You murmur, listening to the final few chords echo about the ball room, basking in the way his voice had rippled and rumbled through his chest, low against your cheek.
He lingers for a few seconds in the quiet, holding you close against his chest. You wonder if he, too, is basking in it. The closeness, the idea of having something that you’ve both been pretending couldn’t happen, wasn’t there in the air of exhaled breaths and weighted stares.
When he pulls back, there is nothing but adoration in his eyes, hand that holds yours falling low, but not releasing it, palm soft against your waist, almost as if he doesn't want to let you go just yet. “Wanna get out of here?”
“Bit forward, Ryland,” You tease, “we’ve not even taken photos yet.”
His eyes follow yours to the polaroid board in the corner, considers it for a moment before he’s pulling you gently by the grasp of his hand around yours, towards it.
The polaroid camera is a little hand held thing, there’s a stand for it, and poster board instructions on how to set a timer delay.
Ryland insists on taking one of just you, and while you’re grinning, trying to convince him to join you against the black fabric backdrop, the shutter goes off.
He rolls his eyes, but lets you drag him in beside you for the next photo. The timer is set, and just as you’re preparing to smile, something a little sweet and knowing, he gets one hand around the small of your back, knocks one of those very smart shoes against your heel and tilts you into a dip. It leaves you a little breathless, as he smiles, nose almost touching yours, shutter flashing off to the side.
He lets you choose which photo goes on the memo board. “Whichever one you don’t put up there, I’m keeping.”
You look a little silly in both, at least you think as much, caught off guard, and laughing a little out of breath. Ryland insists you look amazing in both. Something a bit selfish pulls at your gut, as you apprise both photos, and eventually, hand the one of you and Ryland to him- liking the idea of getting to see it again, of having a physical reminder of the night you two have spent together.
He grins like he’s won something, pulling his wallet out from his jacket pocket- a crisp brown leather that looks worn but well cared for- and to your mortification, tucks the photo into the clear slot. The one most people put their licences, or photos of loved ones, like heart-shaped lockets back in the old days. Ryland says nothing on the matter and he folds his wallet back up and slides it back into his pocket, waiting for you to write your message on the other polaroid’s back.
You scrawl some comment about happy endings and humble crazy beginnings, Signing your name on the bottom under the image of your laughter, and tack it up on the board next to the one Macey’s left.
Ryland’s got his arm out, hooked there for you to loop yours through again.
You manage to catch Daisy by the bar on your way out, and give her a tight hug, telling her again how beautiful the wedding has been, how happy you were for her.
The night air is crisp and the second you’re outside, waiting for the uber that’s just a few minutes away, Ryland strips off his suit jacket, draping it over your shoulders with a lack of hesitation that makes it seems as if he’s been waiting to do it all night.
You look at him and raise a brow, but don’t say anything when you catch sight of his pleased smile. It’s almost devastating to realise he looks even better in just the black button down and tie than he did in the full suit.
Again, the drive is mostly silent, but you notice pointedly, that you’re not going back to your apartment. And when you tilt Ryalnd’s phone and tap the screen awake, you recognise his street name in the trip’s destination.
“Presumptious.” You smile.
He grins back, lets a warm palm wander to the curve of your knee, fingers curling around it then venturing to settle a little higher around your thigh. “How are you going to wash my car if we don’t go to my place?”
“You don’t have a car.” You repeat, curious where all this teasing confidence has come from, if perhaps your very clear signals have finally given Ryland the means to throw out all of that unnecessary nervousness and doubt.
“Right,” He hisses, patting his other hand on his leg, as if to say ‘drat, there goes that plan’. Then he leans in close, whispers to you, “What was the back up plan again?”
“You are much bolder after a few glasses of champagne.”
He hums, a considering sort of sound that rumbles in the minimal air between you. “More so when I know I'm right.”
“And what, pray tell, are you right about?”
“That you like-like me.” He teases, like a child on the playground and if you were a little less level-headed, you might have kissed him right there, leant across the middle seat to lock lips with him in an uber.
But you don’t want the first time you kiss him to be viewed through a rear view mirror by a driver who looks very unimpressed by the conversation happening in the back seat. “You gonna prove that hypothesis in your apartment?”
“That’s very forwards of you.” He teases, head tipping down like he is going to kiss you.
Expect you turn your head, and his lips brush against your cheek, as you tut. “All scientists say experiments are supposed to be conducted in controlled environments.”
He leans back, still close enough for his warm breath to fan across your face. “You’ve been seeing other scientists? I’m heartbroken.”
“Give yourself some credit, your classes are very interesting.”
“Earsdropping, huh? Didn’t think you were the type.” He looks far too pleased by the idea that you’ve listened to him teach, like he doesn't know that when you come for something during class hours that you linger by the door and wait for him to finish whatever he’s saying, as if you could look at anything else when he was so captivating.
“I’ll Tell you exactly what type I am in,” You glance down to tap his phone awake, checking the ride estimate. “four minutes.”
He nods and you wonder if he’d get that head-rush distant expression on his face if you praised him for the patience. It’s something you want to save for later, you decide, for private. Just for you.
Ryland manages to wait, even keep his hands to himself, once you’re both out of the car, leading you though his building with a sort of reverent silence, that you get the impression wouldn’t return once broken. You stand across from each other in the elevator. With both his hands braced on the bar at hip height, Ryland fixes you with a look that echoes in the space, though the mirrors surrounding you and over the idle hum of machinery. You’re still wearing his jacket, over your shoulders, a slight barrier between the handrail and the curve of your back, as you stand with your arms crossed smiling at him.
The giddiness that bubbles up and about inside you, as you huddle in close behind him through the hallway, as he unlocks his door and lets you squeeze in past him, is something you’ve not felt in a long time. There’s not much room for childish excitement in the modern dating landscape, it feels as though everyone is in a rush, trying to get where they want to be with a relationship before it’s too late.
Ryland though, he’s here. You watch him latch the door, before he turns, standing there to let his eyes run up you again.
“Soooo,” He says, pursing his lips and tangling his hands together in front of him, like he’s suddenly nervous.
“So?” You ask, taking a few steps forwards to run your hand down the plane of his chest again, feeling it under your palm just like you did when he’d turned up at your apartment that afternoon.
“It’s been four minutes.” He swallows, and this close you can see how his adams apple bobs. Your other hand reaches up to scratch feather light against the stubble of his jaw, hand on his chest catching on the silky soft fabric of his tie, the one he’d picked out just for you.
Rylands hands are slow, one moves to the dip of your waist, landing where it had during your waltz, if not a little more firm as it presses you close against him. He catches his jacket by the collar, lets it slide back off your shoulders and hang from his grip as it slides to settle on the curve of your hip.
“It has.” You lick your lips.
Tuggin on his tie was not supposed to be a demanding thing, more so a gentle tease like you have been doing all night, stepping around that first move like it was a pitfall trap you’d never make it out of. Expect he pitches forwards much easier than you expected and Ryland's lips are pressed against yours.
Soft and still a little honeyed by the champagne, he moves slowly against you. He takes one step back, then another, pulling you with him and not letting his lips leave yours as he backs himself up against his apartment door.
Your teeth catch on his bottom lip, and a sharp inhale escapes him, almost a gasp, before he melts into the wood at his back, parting his lips and slipping his tongue up against yours.
It’s slow kissing, it’s dizzying and it’s want. Everything he’d promised you hours ago, in the afternoon sun of that venue, looking like a dream come true.
For what could be hours, you stay there, pressed up against him, kissing at his skin, until he shifts his legs, just slightly, enough to press one somewhere between yours, a soft presence halted by the fabric of your dress.
Breathless, you break the kiss and he lays a sweet peck against your temple, an echo of earlier, before he begins to nose at the line of your jaw, your neck. Kissing then sucking at the divot along your collar while you pant. “Ryland,”
He says your name, just as breathless against your skin, his hand dropping the jacket to pull at the chord of your dress.
“Is your doorway where you take all the girls?”
“There are no other girls.” He murmurs like a confession, far more earnest than you’d been prepared for.
“Just me?”
He pulls back, pupils blow wide and face flushed blotchy and red. “Yeah.”
Ryland leans forwards, crowds impossibly close until your feet begin to shuffle, back, back, back into his studio apartment. It passes in a blur as he presses in to kiss your lips again, glued to them until he deems it’s been enough backwards paces and presses another kiss to your jaw. Using his grip on your sides, Ryland turns you around, folds in around behind you.
His bed’s unmade, messy sheets splayed out in front of you, a pile of sage green cotton that feels like a promise, a sight you’ve dreamed about far too many times.
There’s pressure there, against your ass, a hard length that’s tight against his slacks and it makes your stomach swoop to know he’s so turned on by the slow kissing you’d been thinking about all night. His shuddering breath rushes like wind by your ear, as his fingers pull at the bow he’d tied himself. “Been thinking about this for too long.”
“Yeah?” You shudder when his lips find their place against your neck, sucking and biting at the skin there in a way that will probably result in a lasting reminder. “Since you laced it up?”
“Since you showed me this zipper." He pulls at it and the fabric gives, parting to sit low on your hips. Ryland kisses at the juncture of your throat, biting, and nipping.
The dress doesn’t fall, not with the straps still hanging loosely from your shoulders, but it’s a damn near thing. One of Ryland’s hands winds around your waist, dragging you back against him as he presses up with one slow grind that has him choking on a groan. His cock, still trapped in his slacks, drags between the zip and against your underwear in a tease that’s maddening with far too much still left to your imagination.
You try to turn but he’s got you wrapped up so firmly in his arms that it’s not plausible, so instead you reach a hand back, over your shoulder to tug at the knot of his tie, fingers slipping against the silky marital, catching in the bulk to it to tug. A particularly hard tug has him whining.
“Okay,” You huff out as he sucks a little harder just under your jaw that will definitely result in a hickey if you let him continue for much longer. “Come on, don’t you wanna fuck me?”
You punctuate this by groping around between you both until you get a hand over his cock, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“Need to remember this bit.” He mumbles, hand around your waist retreating to slip inside your dress from behind, curving back around so his fingers can skate over the soft skin of your stomach, tips slipping just under the waistband of your panties.
It has you clenching down on nothing and you become actually aware of how uncomfortably wet you’re beginning to get. You squeeze your thighs together, squirming in his grasp.
“Next time, Ry-” He splays his hand over your stomach, using it to press you back into him. “Ryland, come on. Need you.”
It tumbles out in a breathy whine, and it’s like you’ve said the magic words. He’s turning you around in his grasp, hands reaching up to slip the straps off your shoulders and marvel at the sight.
He swallows as you reach for his tie again, loosening it gently now you can get your fingers into the knot properly. Ryland’s hands hover nervously before settling against your rib cage, fingers brushing anxiously against the underside of your breasts.
Your dress was not one that lent itself to a bra, so you’d gone without. You had assumed that he’d figured that one out, given how he’d both laced and un-laced the back of it, but now that it’s out of the way, he’s looking at your chest like he hadn’t expected to see it so quickly.
“You mean it?” He manages, sounding all tongue tied as you pry the tie off, letting it fall onto the floor, blending into the puddle of your dress- a perfect shade match. “I.. I get a next time?”
“Yeah.” You breathe, working on his shirt buttons, one after the other, coming apart as easily as Ryland did under your gaze. “As many as you want.”
When you get to the bottom of his shirt and reach for the belt buckle, Ryland’s hands move from where they’ve been gently nudging your breasts, to your wrists, snagging them gently as he pulls them back. His shoes nudged against yours, another one of those silent signals to step back that you didn’t know you understood so well until tonight.
“Let me.” He says, one hand coming to your hip to push you gently back and down onto his bed.
You land softly, mattress springing underneath you as you shuffle back, leaning on your elbows to gaze up at him as he toes off his shoes and pulls off his socks, a little off balance like the whole path from the door has altered his centre of gravity.
Ryland is a sight, heaven-sent.
His hair’s spiked out in six different directions, and you want to scratch at his scalp and pull at the strands all over again. He slides his glasses down his nose and sets them on the nightstand. The skin of his chest is just as tanned as his arms, a wide expanse that’s begging to be marked up with your teeth and nails.
The belt buckle clinks softly in the empty air as he slips it open, unbuttoning his slacks before he shrugs the black dress shirt off. God, you want to bite his shoulders.
Your teeth clamp down on your tongue at the thought, kind of wishing the tie was in the picture so you could pull him down on top of you. Just when you’re about to reach up, aiming for his shoulder or maybe even his cheek, Ryland surprises you by taking a knee.
His fingers are a little clumsy as they wrap around the heel of your left shoe, pulling it up onto his bent knee as he fumbles with the buckle. He’s gentle with it, more careful than he was with his own shoes that are certainly worth more than your cheap pair, right shoe, then the left.
Still, it has your stomach tied up in knots to witness with just how much reverence he’s treating you. And the sight of Ryland between your legs is certainly one you could get used to.
He presses a kiss to the inside of your knee before blinking up at you. “Are you… Can I-”
Ryland cuts himself off and that same unwarranted nervousness from before takes over his face, fingers curling tightly around your ankle, as if to ground himself. You smile at him, something that feels a little too giddy and a little too much like your 20 year-old self from college, fumbling and laughing your way to bed. “What is it Ry? You’ve already got me on your bed, no need to be shy.”
He bites his bottom lip, rolling it between his teeth as he considers the words. “If you say so.”
Then he gently leads your leg, by the ankle that’s still gripped tightly in his palm, off his propped leg as he drops it to kneel, and hooks it over his shoulder. Ryland kisses a path up your calf and along the inside of your leg and with an overwhelming flood of realisation, you fall back against the bed, bracing for the moment where he presses a soft kiss on your clit, through the fabric of your underwear.
Despite his earlier hesitance, Ryland does not dilly-dally. Once he hears your shuddering breath that sounds more like a moan than anything else, he hooks a thumb though the crotch of your panties, pulls them to the side and presses another slow kiss against you.
It’s maddening, has you gasping out his name as he licks a stripe up your cunt, sighing into it like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. He’s been teasing you long enough that when he presses two fingers along your folds, teasing the resistance of it, they sink in easily. He hooks them up, pressing up against the spongy wall and pulls another moan from your lips.
You're not sure how long Ryland spends between your legs with your hands in his hair and name on your lips, but it’s got you dizzy, clenching around his fingers as he strokes them inside you, languid and slow as he lays gentle kisses over your clit. His stubble scratches against your thighs in a way you’d expected to hate, but are getting rather fond of.
It’s a slow build that crests with you moaning his name and clenching around his fingers as his tongue slows, your hips twitching a little with overstimulation post-orgasm. He moves his kisses to the inside of your thigh, the one not hooked over his shoulder as you catch your breath and it’s highly plausible that he’s leaving another hickey there.
When he does pull back, Ryland is just as breathless as you. Cheeks flushed and chest stuttering as he licked his lips clean. His pupils are blown wide, so much so you can hardly see the blue as he gazes up at you. “You said I could fuck you, right?”
“Yeah,” you swallow, throat scratchy and dry. “You can.”
With your head still spinning from the attention and care he’s taking with you, it’s a moment before you realise his hands are back at your hips as he shuffles you around the bed, up until he can fit his palm behind your head and lift it onto a pillow that smells like him.
Ryland’s above you, propped up on one elbow and a knee to keep his weight off your body. You can feel each heavy exhale on your cheek. “Like this?”
“Just like this.” You say, nodding hand reaching up for his cheek to pull him down into another slow, languid kiss.
He leans in close, whining against your mouth as you part your legs for him to set his between and get a hand on the small of his back, pressing until he gets the hint and grinds downs. It has you both moaning and panting against each other.
You’re getting impatient, and while he must have ditched the pants somewhere between eating you out and repositioning you right side up on the mattress, he’s still got his briefs on and you’re still wearing your underwear.
“Off,” You grunt, hand pulling at the waistband of his briefs.
Ryland’s head drops to the space beside yours, just above your shoulder as he reaches a hand down to pull his underwear down over his cock and down his legs, kicking them off somewhere at the end of the bed.
He gasps, a shaky exhale hitting your skin as you wrap your hand around the length of him.
Warm and heavy in your palm, he’s bigger than you’d expected. When you slide your hand up, swiping a thumb over the head of his dick, there’s so much precum that it pools on your thumb pad. You give him a slow pump, slide eased by the wetness.
Ryland mouths at the skin of your shoulder, and the hand he’s not using to keep himself above you finds its way to your hip, slipping under your panties, pulling at them.
“Condoms. I need-” He cuts himself off with another groan, biting into your skin then kissing it softly like an apology. “I need a condom.”
His hand slips out from your underwear and he gets his knees up either side of your hips to reach over, straining for the nightstand. You take the moment to kiss along his collarbone, using the hand that’s not wrapped around him to tug your panties down, wriggling them off and down your legs.
It doesn’t go unnoticed, and he drops the condom wrapper somewhere beside your head as his gaze whips back to your face. “I was going to do that.”
He sounds a little bit thrown, like he’d really been looking forwards to pulling your panties off.
“You were also going to fuck me.” You prod, giving his cock another languid stroke, watching his face contort with pleasure as he groans. He eases himself back over you, legs between yours and his weight pressing down in a way that has you sighing in contentment.
“Not fair.” He pants, forehead dropping against yours. A hand, so gentle and far too tender comes up to brush the hair by your temple, away from your eyes. “Next time, you let me take my time, okay?”
You press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “We’ll take turns.”
The condom wrapper crinkles in your fingers and you pinch the edge of it between your teeth and rip the corner off, splitting it open with your thumb. Ryland whines, louder and needier than you’d heard him all night, when you roll it over his dick, hips bucking into your hand and cock bumping against your stomach.
He gets his hand down between your bodies, runs three of his fingers through your folds, making your breath hitch. Then he nudges your hand out of the way and runs his cock though them next. You whine, high pitched and stuttered.
It’s a slow steady push when he slips inside you, one that draws out a long moan from your lips. Ryland moans your name, panting and kissing at your throat.
“God,” he pants. “You feel so good, baby.”
A broken whine sneaks past your lips, one hand reaching up to slide around the back of his neck, to lead his face back to yours so you can kiss him all over again.
This type of slow kissing might have been your new favorite, Ryland’s tongue teasing the seam of your lips before you slip them apart, tracing the line of his teeth with your own tongue. He rolls his hips, grinding down in a slow motion. The curve of his cock drags along your walls, along that spongy spot before bumping so deep inside that it must hit your cervix.
You hook a leg up around his waist and it has his stomach pressing up against your clit when he moves again. Moaning into his mouth, you see stars. “Fuck, that’s perfect- so good.”
Your fingers tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling in a way that earns you a whine and a jerky thrust of his hips. “Y-yeah?”
“Yeah Ry- perfect. Feel so full.” The praise kicks him into gear and his slow occasional grinds turn into a building pace, hips pushing against yours and he buries himself to the hilt with every thrust.
You kiss at the line of his jaw, mouthing and biting at the stubble there. He moans, sharp exhale hitting your cheek. “‘M not gonna last much longer, sw-swetheart.”
“S’okay. Let go, baby.” You murmur by his ear, free hand slipping down to press against your clit.
The pressure alone is almost enough to tip you over the edge, pussy spasming around him. Ryland groans, loud and unrestrained, his rhythm falling apart as you do.
When he does come, he manages a couple more thrusts, shallow as they nudge up against that perfect spot inside you. Ryland whines, shaking a little with over stimulation.
“Couple more.” You moan, fingers winding tight little circles over your clit. “Almost there.”
Your spine goes stiff and a drawn-out whine slips out as you cum, clenching around the weight of him. Ryland stills inside, buried deep as he pants.
Slowly, he eases himself down over you, the gentle pressure of his weight relaxing. Ryland only takes a few moments there though, before sliding an arm under you and around your waist, slowly rolling you both, so he’s sprawled out with his back on those sage green sheets with you draped over him.
He kisses your temple, mumbling your name like a prayer. “‘S a good kissing booth. Might be a repeat customer.”
You push up a little to look at him, hands either side of his chest, and a hitched breath sputters out of his lips as you shift, his cock still inside you. “Might? What happened to ‘next time’?”
He smiles at you, hands reaching for your hips as he draws slow lines up and down your skin with his thumbs. “Well, I don’t wanna push my luck.”
“You’re not pushing anything.” You murmur, leaning back down to kiss him proper.
Once the aftershocks of your orgasm have faded and the idea of being empty no longer pulls painfully at your chest, you raise your hips up and let Ryland’s now soft cock slip out. He exhales heavily, and you lay beside him, eyes on the slow spinning ceiling fan.
He sits himself up not long after, slips the condom off and wanders off to the tiny door that you now know is his bathroom. He comes back with a damp cloth, smiling at you shyly as he cleans you up, gentle swipes over your core and along the inside of your thighs.
Ryland walks over and pulls some boxers on, then returns to the bed to slide a pair over your hips too. “You want a shirt?”
You bite your bottom lip in a poor attempt to smother a grin. “Only if it’s one of your nerdy ones.”
He kisses the smile off your lips and wanders back over to his wardrobe, throws a shirt in your general direction then goes about fixing the sheets.
You admire the sight. It had never occurred to you how nice his arms were, you want them around you again. He pulls the sheets straight, then up over you before he crawls in beside you.
“This okay?” He asks, pulling you over to lay up against him.
“More than okay.” You snuggle closer, cheek pressed against the warm plane of his chest. “Been thinking about this.”
The confession slips out in a rush of endorphins, like you’re so happy to be wrapped up in his arms and sheets, smelling like him, that you just can’t help but let him know.
You can hear the confusion in his voice when he speaks. “Having sex with me?”
No. You almost say, even though you had. It wasn’t where you were trying to go with this though. “Sleeping in your bed. With you.”
The rise and fall of his chest, of a heavy exhale, moves beneath you. “Oh.”
“I think our next date should be trivia.” You declare, a quiet sort of smile on your lips as his fingers trace slow little circles on your back between the waistband of your borrowed boxers and the ridden up hem of the shirt. “So we can get it right this time.”
“Deal.”
[ Masterlist ]
baby's first Goose fic? more proabaly on the way, although next fic published will proabaly be an oc one, with either Ryland Grace or Holland March from the nice guys.
“Hey, wait!” a voice calls out just as the elevator doors were about to slide shut.
Instinctively, you reach out and press the “open door” button. The metal doors creak, opening to reveal Ryland rushing inside. He’s out of breath, from having rushed to make it in time. Huffing out a relieved exhale, he turns to face you as the doors resume closing.
“Thanks” he breathes, his mouth curling into a small smile.
You offer him a slight shrug and a smile in return, turning back to face the front as the elevator moves. It had been a few months since you moved into this apartment complex, and Ryland was your next-door neighbour. Your first meeting had been memorable, to say the least. You had just finished unpacking a few boxes one morning when a thumping sounded at your door. Opening it, you found the hallway empty, until you looked down the corridor.
There went Ryland, balancing a cardboard and helmet in his arms. As he had shuffled past your apartment, the helmet had knocked against your door. He had managed to press the elevator button with his elbow, but the movement caused the cardboard to slip. You had hurried over to help him. Looking slightly flustered, he had hastily introduced himself - “Thank you so much, uh, I’m Ryland Grace and…I’m sort of late, so, see you later, I guess”
To make matters worse, the knit of his fox cardigan had caught in the doorway, triggering the sensors and forcing the doors back open. You had giggled, stepping forward to gently push the loose fabric inside, “Your foxes were getting in the way” He had looked mortified, but the elevator doors finally closing had saved him from further embarrassment.
After that rocky start, the two of you grew quite close, striking up casual conversations whenever you crossed paths. You learned he was a middle school science teacher at Grover Cleveland Middle School, which perfectly explained the lingering scent of dry-erase markers and books that always seemed to follow him. You shared details about your own career. You liked him. It was difficult not to. He was kind, constantly bombarded you with random scientific facts you hadn’t asked for, and his stories about dealing with chaotic preteens were hilarious. Plus, he managed to look handsome all the time, which was honestly infuriating.
Your train of thought gets abruptly broken by a screech. The metal elevator car shakes so hard that both of you stumble to keep your footing. A split second later, the overhead lights snap off. The elevator is stuck.
You squeeze your eyes shut, forcing yourself to take a deep, steadying breath. When you open them, the faint glow of the emergency backup lights flicker. Ryland is staring at the ceiling.
“No” he mutters, his voice barely reaches you. He steps toward the control panel, his fingers moving across the surface as he frantically jabs random buttons that obviously had no power.
You push yourself away from the metal wall you had been resting against. “Hey, Ryland” you call out, stepping up beside him. He doesn’t hear you. He is trapped in his own head, muttering under his breath while his hands moved across the buttons. Reaching out, you gently tap his arm, feeling the tense muscle beneath his blazer “Ryland, it’s not going to work”
His fingers froze. He snaps his head around to look at you, his eyebrows knit together in anxiety and distaste, “Why isn’t it working?!”
“Well, the elevator has lost power, which means these buttons are completely useless. I thought you’d figure that out, Mr Science Teacher” you teased gently, trying to ease the tense air.
It backfires. Instead of calming down, he begins pacing the narrow confines of the metal box, his eyes darting around as if searching for a hidden escape route.
You let out a soft sigh, “Hey, Ryland, come on, look at me. Calm down. This happens sometimes. The maintenance crew will have it operating again in no time, okay?”
“When?!” he snaps, spinning on his heel to face you.
“Um, I don’t actually know” you admit honestly.
The adrenaline spike seems to exhaust him. He stops pacing and leans back against the corner of the elevator, closing his eyes tightly as he fights to regain control of his breathing, “Sorry. I just…I really hate being trapped in enclosed spaces. Especially when that space is hovering several storeys above solid ground”
Your expression softens. Stepping closer, you turn so your back rests against the cold metal right next to him, both of you staring at the sealed elevator doors.
“I don’t like getting trapped in elevators either” you begin softly, “but not because it’s a tight space with no exit, or because I’m afraid it might drop. I mean, yeah, it is those things, but more importantly, it’s the uncertainty. I hate the thought of not knowing if we’re going to get out in an hour, or if we’re just gonna to be trapped in here forever”
That is a mistake. A massive one. Ryland’s head whips toward you with such sudden force that his glasses slide down the bridge of his nose, “Why would you say that?!” he whisper-shouts, staring at you incredulously.
You open your mouth to backtrack, but he keeps right on going, “Oh my God, now you’ve put it in my head. I’m literally thinking about being trapped here forever”
A sudden laugh escapes you, “Don’t worry, Ryland. Forever is a myth” You playfully nudge your shoulder against his arm, “You won’t be stuck here forever. You’ll just slowly rot and turn to dust”
He looks absolutely horrified, “Stop!”
His wide-eyed reaction only makes you laugh harder, the sound echoing in the small space.
“Have I ever mentioned that I hate you?” he asks, trying and failing to maintain a deadpan expression.
You chuckle, leaning back, “No, actually. In fact, you’ve only ever shown appreciation for my presence”
He rolls his eyes dramatically, “Well, I don’t appreciate you right now. Out of all the people in this building, I’m stuck with the worst elevator partner”
“Hey!” you protest, putting a hand over your heart, “If anyone should be unappreciative here, it’s me. I’m the one trapped with a boring science teacher”
He lets out a mock, offended gasp, “Excuse me, I’ll have you know I am a very interesting science teacher. My students absolutely love my class”
You giggle, the warmth in your chest growing, “I’m sure they do, Ry”
The moment the nickname slips past your lips, you freeze. But Ryland doesn’t pull away. Instead, the panic vanishes from his face, replaced by a soft, genuine smile that makes you sag against the metal wall in relief.
Sliding down the panel, you plop onto the floor, pulling your knees to your chest. Ryland doesn’t hesitate, sinking down right next to you, his long legs folded in the cramped space.
“Hey, since we have no cell service here, do you happen to have Wordle downloaded offline?” you ask, tilting your head toward him.
A playful smirk tugs at the corner of his lips as he pulls his phone from his pocket, “Come on. I thought you knew me well enough by now to know that I would obviously have the offline version saved” He opens the app, navigating from his blank screen to a fresh grid.
You scoff playfully and shift closer, your shoulder brushing against his as you both lean over the screen, the elevator suddenly feeling a whole lot smaller, but oddly cozy.
“Okay, what’s our opening word?” you ask, resting your chin near his shoulder to get a better look at the screen. The familiar scent of dry-erase markers, old books, and a faint scent of his cologne washes over you.
“Get the vowels out of the way” He taps his thumb across the keypad to type the letters.
Two yellow squares pop up - A and E.
“Not bad” you murmur. Your shoulder is pressed against his now, “try SHRED”
He types it in. The R flips to yellow, while the E and A flash in a different spot.
“Alright, Mr Grace, we have A, E, and R” you say, looking up from the screen to his face. Because of how close you are sitting, you can see his side profile very clearly. You can see the slight crinkle at the corner of his eyes, and the way his lips purse as he thinks.
“SHARE? No, the H doesn’t feel right, and the A would be in the wrong place” Ryland mutters to himself, unaware of your staring. His fingers brush against yours for a second as he repositions the phone, “How about-No, no, it won’t work”
“What about…actually, no, we need our vowels” you laugh, your own mind a little hazy because of his warmth in the small space.
Ryland lets out a soft laugh that vibrates against your arm, “You’re terrible at this under pressure”
“Hey! I’m doing great. Try MINER” you suggest, nudging him.
He enters it. The M, N, E, and R all light up.
“M, N, E, R, and we still have the A from earlier” Ryland counts out loud, his voice dropping into a focused tone he uses when he’s grading tests, “wait. R-A-M-E-N...”
He pauses, staring at the grid.
“RAMEN” you both whisper in unison.
Ryland turns his head to look at you, his face is only inches from yours. His gaze drops to your lips for a second before lifting back to your eyes.
He doesn’t type the word in. The phone stays forgotten in his palm. Neither of you moves away. In fact, you find yourself leaning in just a fraction of an inch closer, your breath catching in your throat.
“Aren’t you going to enter it?” you ask softly, your eyes darting down to his mouth.
“Mhm” Ryland hums.
He reaches up with his free hand, his fingers gently brushing against your jawline as he tilts your face a bit. His thumb rests against your cheek, his skin warm, making your heart skip a beat.
When he leans in, it’s hesitant, giving you a second to pull back if you want to. You don’t. You close the remaining distance, your eyes shutting as your lips meet his.
The kiss is soft at first, an acknowledgment of the tension that has been building between you two for months over brief hallway chats and short hang outs. But as you slide your hand up his arm, gripping the fabric of his blazer, Ryland lets out a low exhale against your mouth and deepens the kiss. His hand moves to the back of your neck, his fingers tangling slightly in your hair, pulling you against him.
For a few seconds, the stuck elevator, the building, and the lack of cell service disappear. There is only the warmth of his mouth, and the beat of his heart matching yours.
When he finally pulls back, his forehead rests against yours, both of you breathing a little heavily. His glasses are definitely crooked again, but neither of you cares.
Ryland lets out a breathless chuckle, his thumb tracing your cheekbone again. “Well” he whispers, a smile spreading across his face, “suddenly, I don’t mind being trapped here forever” Before you can reply, a sound echoes. The overhead lights snap back on, and the elevator gives a jolt as it finally begins to move upward.
part two point five of how do you like your eggs in the morning? | part one | part two | ao3
Summary: An invitation. A garden. A dozen things he could have done differently.
Tags: childhood friends to lovers, pining, fingering, f!reader, flashbacks, angst
A/N: 18+ only! this is part 2.5 of a 3 part series. happy ending guaranteed, but you'll have to wait for part 3. content warnings for mentions of terminal illness and infidelity.
The letter arrives like flowers through frost: cardstock, robin's egg blue, poking out from the mailbox amidst a bouquet of medical bills and junk. Nobody has been to the house in several days. Colt is reluctantly on location, breaking his back rehearsing a car roll. Ryland reckons he is just as sore from sleeping in a hospital chair for a week straight.
He opens it without thinking.
You're cordially invited,
He sees your face before he sees your name.
You look a little sharper than when he saw you last. Maybe from changes in makeup, maybe from the subtle knife of mid-twenties aging; you are still young, but more sophisticated than you were at twenty three. Elegant. Your hair is different. You're in a pale yellow dress, foot popped, grinning at the camera, one hand flexed to show off the ring, and the other one up around the neck of your fiancé (Ryland knows his name—and even if he didn't, it's right there, on the paper, expensively inked and intertwined with yours—but he refuses to acknowledge it on principle).
Three names, on an attached slip, to RSVP. His name is last: his mom's, then Colt's, then his. He hadn't expected an invite. If he thinks about it long enough, he can still feel your hand against his cheek. He'd earned that. He hasn't earned this. But it most likely isn't a matter of earned; you had to invite his mom, and you had to invite Colt, which means you had to invite him.
He recognizes the curve of your Ys, the loop you took on sometime around the sixth grade. His name, in your hand. He brushes a thumb across the ink.
He has a suit.
He has a ticket to New York, for an academic conference he anticipates being disinvited from any day now.
He shouldn't go. To be respectful of you. To stay home with his mom. To spare himself.
He shouldn't go.
-
He skips the ceremony, abandoning any fantasy of speak now or forever hold your peace, and walks straight into the reception.
It's a beautiful venue. No real surprise there—you've always had good taste in everything but men. And lord knows you've been to more than your fair share of weddings over the years. Everywhere he looks are little familiar details (lavender centerpieces, white roses, candles on the wall), like you used all of your mom's receptions to curate exactly what you might want for yourself one day.
He's timed his entrance carefully. Late. The first dance, the garter, the toasts are all finished; the dance floor has attracted a healthy crowd; caterers buzz around the half-empty tables, clearing away glasses, swapping out dinner plates for cake. The room is a sea of people he doesn't know, friends of yours from law school and from work and from your new life. Presumably your mother and Josh are around here somewhere.
And there, across the room. Surrounded by bridesmaids. Hair pinned up. Empty seat to your left.
You.
Your dress is white, of course, white and satin and thin-strapped, and he watches one of those straps slip precipitously close to the edge of your shoulder as you laugh at something a bridesmaid said, and watches the delicate motion of your throat as you sip champagne, and watches the drag of your thumb across your lower lip as you check that your lipstick is intact, and then you look up and he's in front of you and you are here.
"Hey," he says.
You don't quite gape, but you get close. "You," you say, standing. "Hi."
"Hi."
"Hi. I wasn't." You shake your head as you come around the table. "You RSVP'd no."
"Did I?"
"I'm very familiar with the guest list, at this point. The only one who said yes was—"
"Colt, yeah. I'm Colt tonight."
"Right." You stop in front of him, and then—clasp your hands together. Like you were about to hug him, but thought better of it. "Well. Thanks for coming."
Before you can sit back down, he rushes to say, "Can we talk?"
You arch a brow, glancing back at the table. Your bridesmaids are all distracted. Talking amongst themselves. He can't really make out their individual faces. He thinks he recognizes one girl from high school, from your grade, Cathy or Kristen or something. "Uh oh."
"No, it's nothing bad. I'm just, I'm flying back tomorrow." He shrugs. "Thought it could be nice to catch up."
"Depends. Are you going to make me cry this time?" You wind an arm through his elbow, which he didn't know he had extended, and he realizes with a bone-deep relief that this is you saying yes.
"I'll try my best not to."
"You'd better," you say. He lets you lead. He's a little fuzzy on where the exits are. "I spent, like, two hours getting my makeup done. But sure. I could use the fresh air."
In the entryway, you pull your arm from his, getting ahead of him by a few steps. There is a moment where you are shadowed by the light from inside, a dark golden glow cast over your dress. Salt in the air. Waves onto sand.
He blinks, and it's gone.
The exit opens up to a garden, empty of people, filled to bursting with white roses. It must be somewhere around midnight, but the night above looks later, somehow, the hazy purple-grey of a two a.m. sky.
"So, is actual Colt okay," you say, breaking the silence, "or…"
"Away on set."
"That's going well, then. The whole Hollywood thing."
"Yeah. He's, he's really doing it. He sends his best." He adjusts his glasses. "Mom, too, they both—they both send their best."
"She's—"
"She's been better. But she's in good spirits, all things considered. Chemo's going well. Another month until they can check if it worked. Again. And then if it works they're going to. There's this surgery. Anyway. She still has that quilt, um, the one you and your mom, from last time—"
You nod. "Yeah, I'm glad she. Not glad that she has another use for it, but, glad she has it." He feels your hand on his arm. He looks down at it. Your right hand; no ring. "It's good she has you, too."
"Yeah." He chuckles, low. Bitter. His glasses slide down his nose. "That's the one upside to a forced sabbatical. Plenty of free time."
Your hand pulls away. "I saw. UNESCO." If you still keep up with him, his work, that would mean you maybe went into medical malpractice law after all—but he doesn't know—and before he can ask, you continue, "So you're—"
"Still on staff, officially. By the time I get home, probably not."
"You never were afraid of pissing people off."
"Guess I should have been."
"Mm. You'll figure it out."
"Yeah. Maybe. I could use some advice."
"Really? From the child bride?" There's no bitterness in your voice, just a smile. Light. Teasing. The way it used to be.
"You seem to have it all figured out," he says with a shrug. "The job. The ring. Life."
You laugh. "Nobody has it all figured out. There could always be something…" The smile fades, not into a frown. Something in between.
"Better?"
You don't look at him. He watches as you play with your ring. "Different."
He stops walking. You make it a few steps ahead of him. "Are you happy?"
You turn.
He can't read your face. He isn't sure what he wants it to say. Of course he hopes he was wrong about your fiancé; he's never wanted more to be wrong about anything in his entire life. Of course he hopes he's changed. Of course he doesn't want you to be stuck with—it's just that there is a small, selfish corner of his brain, closer to the surface than he wants to admit, that almost—that almost wishes—not that—but if there was any chance at all—
"I should get back," you say. You lean up to kiss him on the cheek, once, quick. "It was good to see you, Colt."
You walk away. Two steps. Ten steps.
"Wait," he says.
You turn.
"I never actually got to see the ring. The new one."
You narrow your eyes at him. "Not much to see." But you do walk back, heels clicking, hand outstretched. "They all look the same, more or less."
He takes your hand, and looks at it.
You're right. It's nothing out of the ordinary. The simple band. The diamond above. But your hand is warm in his. Your wrist is soft where he brushes his thumb across it, your pulse delicate beneath his fingers, and, on a whim, he steps in, and tugs you closer, and brings his other hand around your waist.
Your eyes are wide as you look up at him. He swears he feels your pulse pick up, feather-light. "What are you doing?"
He takes a step back. You follow. Then to the side, then back, vaguely in rhythm with the distant sounds of music from inside, and the ocean in his ears.
"Feels like I owe you at least one dance in your life that I don't completely fuck up by the end. Think of it as a wedding gift."
Your smile is small, but warm. Relaxed. "So I shouldn't be expecting anything off the registry, then."
"I don't know. Anything on there in the soon-to-be-fired adjunct's salary range?"
You scrunch up your nose, like you're genuinely thinking about it; the corner of your mouth lets him know you're not. "Luggage tags?"
He laughs. "Okay. Luggage tags." He dips you. He feels, through the hand on your back, the way your breath catches. "I'll see what I can do."
He brings you up from the dip slow, close. He lets his eyes linger. Your mouth is an inch away from his, less, even, and he watches your lips part and then feels as you press them to his, and
-
No. You wouldn't do that.
-
He brings you up from the dip slow, close, and it's nothing, nothing at all, to lean in and kiss you.
He presses his hand into your back, and cradles your face with the other. He walks you backwards until you are pressed against a wall, and moves his mouth over yours, deep and unhurried, like he can kiss away your husband. Like he can erase the reception, and the altar, and everything that came before.
You seem surprised at first, suspended for a moment, only a moment, before you thaw to his touch. Your hands rise to his chest; his face; they wind up around his neck, your head tipping back against the brick behind you. You open your mouth first. When he mirrors the movement, when his tongue finds to yours, you make a sound, into his mouth. A soft one. A small one.
He pulls you closer.
Your hands are in his hair. He can feel the heat of your body through your dress, the whole length of it, and the dress goes down to your ankles but that doesn't stop him from reaching down, reaching under, those expensive shoes of yours giving you enough height that he is able to run a hand up between your knees and your thighs and. And.
"Fuck." He breaks away to say it. You're wet already, enough that it's soaked through your underwear, which is so delicate to the touch it might as well not be there at all. White lace, he assumes. He wants to pull it off you with his teeth. "Is this for him or for me?"
Instead of answering, you close the distance, letting him taste the champagne on your tongue again.
He thinks about that, that non-answer, thinks about it over and over as he pulls your underwear to the side and presses his fingers into you, or
-
"Is this for him or for me?"
Instead of answering, you lean in—but he pulls back, keeping the distance between his lips and yours. "Come on," he says, his voice low. "Use your words."
"I." He pulls those stupid lacy panties to the side, teasing his fingers at your entrance, and you make the softest sound, less whimper than sob. "Please don't make me answer that."
And then you kiss him, and he's so stunned he lets you, or
-
"For him or for me?"
You lean in, he pulls back—but not so far. Not even enough to see you, really, just far away enough that he can talk without you swallowing the sound.
"Please," he says, letting his forehead rest against yours. "Please just say it."
You hesitate, or
-
"Please," he says, "I know I don't deserve it, but—I need to hear it. Even if it's not true. Please."
You press back. He lets himself meet your gaze. There is a light shimmer across your eyelids, or else nothing at all; your lipstick is a mess, or perfectly intact; your eyes are a little glossy. A little red.
"You," you finally say. "You. Always you."
He kisses you again at the same time he slides a finger into you, so that he can taste the gasp you let out. You are hot around him, hot and soft and wet, and he drags his thumb up, looking for your clit, and he knows he's found it because he can feel the exact moment you start to have trouble kissing him back.
"You're so beautiful," he says, and he feels the way you throb around him at the words.
"Ryland—"
"You are," he says, and you just said his name with his fingers inside you and he is going to be cool about it, he is not going to get distracted, he is going to be so focused and so normal. "You are, you always are, I should have told you—I've thought about this for so long—"
He gets his other hand up to your torso, letting one strap slip off your shoulder so that he can cup your chest, dragging a thumb over a nipple and smiling against your mouth when you arch into the touch.
"Me too," you say. The words slip out of you, ragged, like they're something you weren't expecting, or weren't supposed to say aloud. You're clinging to his shoulders, nails digging into his back as your fingers twitch, as you try to keep upright, try to keep from falling apart—but he can feel the way your breath catches. He can feel the flutter of your walls around him, and he knows, he knows he can get you there, knows moments before it happens that he is going to make you fall apart here, now, against a garden wall, thirty feet away from your own wedding reception.
He breaks away to kiss up your neck, below your ear. "Come on," he says, and the sound you make is so devastating that he has no choice but to return his mouth to yours. "Come for me. Come for me, please—it's you, it's you, too, it's always been you—"
He wants to watch your face, but you kiss him desperately, one hand pulling him closer by the hair like you're trying to muffle yourself, and so he settles for the feel of you, your mouth and your moans and the way they vibrate through you both as you finish around his fingers.
He keeps kissing you through the whole thing.
Softer, when the aftershocks begin. Gentle against your lips; then, when the hand on the back of his head loosens, he moves to your cheek, your eyelids, your temple. Your forehead.
When he pulls his fingers out of you, you let out one last sound—more sigh than anything else. Leg returning to the ground. He narrowly resists the urge to take his own fingers, the fingers still wet with you, into his mouth. Instead, with his other hand, he helps fix your strap, and takes a step back to look at you as you lean against the wall.
You press a thumb beneath each eye, wiping gently. "You promised you wouldn't ruin my makeup."
"I said I wouldn't make you cry," he says. You reward him with a laugh that is tiny and gorgeous and a knife to his heart. "Come back with me."
You pause. "What?"
"Don't go back in there. I have a hotel room, Colt's hotel room. We can—"
"No." You step away from him. "I can't. This was." Your hands run over your dress, trying to smooth new wrinkles out of the fabric. "Shit. We shouldn't have. I shouldn't have. I just stood up in front of everyone and said—I promised—"
"Seems like an empty fucking promise, at this point."
"It's not. It's not." You shake your head frantically. "This was just a mistake. I'm married."
"Sure." He feels like he's about to throw up. "You've got husband number one under your belt. Family tradition, right?"
You go still. Your eyes flick up to meet his, and he feels it in his throat. "Glad to see you haven't changed," you say. Then it's back to business—tucking up a strand of hair, checking your lipstick, not even looking at him as you walk away.
He watches you go, or
-
"Come back with me," he says. "I'm sure there are tickets left, on the same flight. Or we can wait for the next one. Come home."
"This is home, for me." There's a tiny divot between your brows, the one you always get when you are confused, or irritated, or infuriated, and it's there now and he wants to press his lips to it but you are out of reach. "My whole life is here. My apartment, my friends, my marriage."
"What about me? I'm here. I'm here now."
"Yeah." You press two careful hands to your face. There are tears there. He wants to wipe them away, but when he steps forward, you counter with a step back. "I think I was a little better off when you weren't."
You turn, or
-
"Come back with me. Or, or, or I can miss my flight. I can stay."
"I'm married. I have a husband."
"He doesn't have to know. We don't have to tell anyone, we can. Just tonight, or—"
You shake your head, or
-
"Come back with me. Please." You are starting to blur before him, and he doesn't know if it's tears or memory or three years of distance, and he does not care. "Everything is a mess. All of it. I have no idea what I'm doing. Most days I don't—I can't—I don't know anything, but I know that I have been in love with you for ten years, and you have to. You have to at least let me tell you that. You have to know."
You are farther away than before. You are very still.
"You haven't been in love with me for ten years," you say quietly. "You haven't even seen me since—" Your face is calm. The dampness on your cheeks, the red-rimmed eyes, all gone. "You don't know me anymore."
"I do know you." He steps forward. It doesn't bring him any closer. "I do."
"No, Ryland." The kindness in your voice is the cruelest thing he's ever heard. "You don't."
"No?"
"No."
-
No.
-
It's no use.
He doesn't know how long he's been sitting here, looking at the blue envelope. The yellow dress. The loop-tailed y.
It doesn't matter. None of it matters. His career is over and his mother is dying and all he can do is sit here, in an empty house, staring and staring and staring, and no matter how many times he runs the simulation, adjusts the variables, charts and recharts the data, the verdict is the same: there is no sensible world in which you would choose him over a man who was smart enough to kiss you and brave enough to be honest about the reason why.
He looks at the photo again.
You look happy.
He marks three Not Attendings, putting the card aside to bring to the hospital. The registry site remains open on his laptop. He'll pick something off of it, labeled with his mom's name. His mom's, and Colt's. The best thing he can do for you, he understands now, is leave you alone.
-
Months later, in a classroom, scrolling over a break, he sees a post from your brother. A photo album. Green centerpieces on the tables; sunflowers; your hair hanging loose and your smile radiant as your new husband dips you.
Your reception dress was short, not floor-length. Fringed, not satin.
He adds it to the list of things he was wrong about, and goes back to work.
thinking about ryland being introverted and dorky in high school and not getting much attention vs hitting a growth spurt after graduation and styling his hair better and starting to get more facial hair and realizing in university that people are actually interested in him he was just shy and he driiinkkksss that attention up like a dog who just wants to be pet and if he isn’t the biggest slut you’ll ever meet then you haven’t really met him unghhhgh
sorry i'm back. thinking about this version of Ry with this moment from Crashing (30:54). taking a shot, straddling him where he's sitting on a chair or a ratty couch or something, and then grabbing his face and letting the vodka pour out of your mouth into his before kissing him deep and messy. you can even slap him, once you break apart from the kiss, and he is just going to look up at you with the biggest grin in the world
and you know. YOU KNOW RYLAND “been a long time since i’ve taken a pill from a stranger without knowing what it was” GRACE WOULD BE SO INTO THAT. EITHER WAY. BOTH WAYS. TAKING TURNS.
on the same note
i’m also imagining him smoking a joint or smth ur passing it back and forth and he gets the last hit before stubbing the roach and u whine about it but dw bc he is SWOOPING in to shotgun and ur both so fuzzy and into it and it turns into the sloppiest nastiest make out sesh of all time and before u know it ur riding him and i can see him just being such a mess about it. oh my god. oh my god.
every time someone brings up stoner college ryland i shed a tear down my legs. stoner bf ryland come back the kids miss you. stoner bf ryland..
he’d definitely spark up as soon as you straddle his waist. the light from the fire softly illuminating his face as his eyes are focused on the joint between his lips. once its lit, he takes a long drag, and passes the joint to you, but he gets to hold it while you hit it.
psst... drop more torres fics.. and i'll send a l'il good luck to ya... thank u lovey have a wonderful day..
EEEK thank you so much 🤗 i love trying to fill in the gap for dante content between seasons, even though he’s kinda hard to write for due to his lack of screentime. might have to update repentance after getting this ask…
part two of how do you like your eggs in the morning? | previous | ao3
Summary: When he was thirteen, Ryland made you a promise. At nineteen, he fulfilled it. You sort of wished he hadn't. At thirty-four, you've made yourself a promise. You are trying very hard to keep it. You really wish you weren't.
Tags: childhood friends to lovers, pining, breeding, oral sex (both ways), fingering, piv sex, impact play, f!reader, flashbacks, fluff, angst
A/N: 18+ only! this is part 2 of a 3 part series. happy ending guaranteed, but you'll have to wait for part 3. content warnings for mentions of terminal illness, emotional abuse, and reproductive coercion (not from Ryland, obviously).
shirred (transitive verb): 1. To cook (raw eggs removed from the shell) by baking. 2. To gather (a material, such as cloth, or memory) into decorative rows by parallel stitching.
Now
He grabs your hand as soon as the bar doors slam behind you, and tugs you not to the parking lot, but around the corner.
"You know, I'm really not supposed to follow strangers down dark alleyways," you say, and he shushes you, and you're giggling until you round another corner, and the sounds of the street are all but gone, and he presses you back against the wall, hands on your hips, and he looks at you.
That's all. Just a look.
He's been looking at you a lot tonight.
It's the third Tuesday since you first fucked. Olesya teased you at brunch the morning after, and you waved her off with an eye roll and a lie about how you were going to think about donors some more. The week after she didn't bring it up at all, which you take as a decisive win. You don't need her knowing. You don't need anyone knowing, and you're sure Ryland doesn't, either. After all, you promised him nobody would ever find out. Signed on the dotted line about it.
So when he walked into the bar that first Saturday after, you pretended at first not to notice. And when he went in for a hug, you acted like you weren't suddenly very aware of every place his body was pressed to yours, and every place he had touched you the day before, even though for a moment you were convinced everyone else could, too, like he'd left some kind of thermal map in his wake. You spoke with him only in a group, and you waited to leave until five minutes after he did, and walked another ten minutes to meet up at a different bar before letting him fuck you in the bathroom, and when you got home and showered and went to sleep that night you congratulated yourself on being very discreet.
Tonight you are, perhaps, less discreet.
It's not trivia, but you are at a bar. You've allowed yourself two drinks—you didn't drive, and also you think complete teetotalism might make Olya suspicious of the claim that you've put your baby quest on pause—and the drinks are making you a bit reckless with your eyes.
The drinks are making you linger on his hands, as he toys with a straw; his tongue, as he licks his bottom lip; the movement of his Adam's apple when he swallows.
You know what those hands feel like on your neck. You know what that tongue feels like between your thighs, and you know what his throat feels like beneath your mouth, and you are still deliciously sore from yesterday, when he visited you at your office after hours and picked you up and set you on the desk and pressed into you with your heels still on, and you are increasingly struck by the realization that you will never again know what it's like to live in a world where Ryland Grace has not been inside you.
There's a thrill to this, the sneaking around. The longer you do it, the less careful you feel yourself getting. Like you're daring yourself to get caught. Tonight, he waited only a very cursory twenty seven minutes before wandering across the bar to you.
“Smoke break?” he asked, gesturing towards the door.
“I don’t smoke,” you said, already getting up from your seat.
“I know.”
“You don’t smoke.”
“I could start. You have no idea how many vapes I have to confiscate every week.”
“That is, hands down, the unsexiest thing you’ve ever said,” you said. “Also, I think they call them juuls now?”
And then you were out the door, and around the corner, and any pretense of making conversation fled to the wayside, and now here you are, and he is looking at you like it’s the whole reason he came tonight at all.
His glasses are halfway on. His eyes are unbearably soft. It's the kind of look that cuts you to the quick every time, even though it's more or less his default, so you tug him closer and focus on the desire that blooms up behind the softness. Desire is bearable, you've learned. You know what to do with desire. Even now, a few weeks in, you cannot help but be a little thrilled by the knowledge of this, his desire for you, the physical proof of it hard and urgent against your hip.
It's almost enough to outweigh the pit in your stomach.
This is the point, you know, where you should kiss. Under any normal circumstances, this is where the kiss would go. You know what it would feel like. You can feel the phantom of it on your lips.
You're pretty sure, based on the way his eyes slip down for a moment, that he can, too.
These are not normal circumstances. The circumstances you have drummed up for yourself include, in no particular order:
1) Resigning yourself to a life of happy singledom, wherein you raise a child by yourself
2) Sneaking around with your oldest friend in order to acquire said child (and, apparently, a baffling number of orgasms along the way)
3) Forbidding yourself from falling in love with him
4) In the interest of #3, forbidding yourself from kissing him on the mouth
So you don't kiss him. Just like you didn't kiss him in the bar bathroom, or against the wall of the foyer of his house the following Tuesday, or in the back seat of your car, or, on one memorable occasion, the front seat of his car (probably the most action it's seen in months).
Instead, you let your hands trace across his chest to settle on his arms. You turn him around, so that your positions are reversed. You give him a little push, hear the quiet exhale that escapes him when his back hits the wall.
You get down on your knees.
He gets his hands in your hair almost immediately. Not pulling, or pushing, just gathering. He combs back through it, catching any stray strands, and holds it up in the back of your head like a makeshift bun, and even in this he is so gentle, thumbs brushing at your temples, that all at once you have to put effort into keeping your hands from trembling as you undo the front of his jeans. You mostly succeed. Any remaining failure you choose to blame on the alcohol.
His underwear is gray this time. The same branded waistband. You are reminded of a few weeks ago—not when you were looking at his underwear, or even in the same room as it, but after you went home, when you were trying and failing to sleep, and you went down a rabbit hole of trying to find actual underwear with Bunsen burners on the band. It didn't take long to find.
You almost sent them to him, and then you stopped yourself.
It should have been an inside joke. A friendly gesture. To him, it would have been a friendly gesture. To you, it would have been yet more mortifying proof of your fundamental flaw, which is that you fall into things too hard, too fast, and you always have, and this is the one thing that you absolutely, under no circumstances, can fall into.
You tell yourself this as though it will somehow reverse the fact that you are already halfway down the cliff. You fell off this particular cliff twenty two years ago.
He's already hard when you free him from his underwear, hard and flushed and leaking at the tip. You lick your palm, run it over the head, smile at the sound this results in. A long, slow stroke up and down, repeated, because you like the feel of him in your hand, and you like the way his breath hitches, and you like this, this one, tiny way in which you can have any measure of power over him.
You retrace the movements of your hand with your tongue—first licking just the head, then tracing up along the entire length of him from base to tip, and he moans, unrestrained.
There's no reservation in him when he gets you alone, because he cares less. Because the stakes are lower. Because he has nothing to lose. You don't kid yourself into thinking this is anything more to him than a rebound; an opportunity to have easy sex after a breakup and do an old friend a favor. Two for one.
Does that mean you don't think he cares at all? No. Of course not. Ryland has always cared about you, has always tried to take care of you, even when he's done a shit job of it, because at the end of the day you are his friend, you are the little sister of his best friend from elementary school, you are the daughter of his mother's best friend from elementary school, and you see all of this in his eyes, you feel the weight of it settle over you like molasses, every time he looks at you.
When you look up at him, his glasses are three-quarters off. His hair is the exact kind of mussed it was when two years ago when you both walked into the bar.
You open your mouth. You take him in.
-
Two years ago
The hair is the first thing you see. The back of his head. Glasses over the ears.
You tell yourself you're imagining things. You tell yourself there are plenty of blond men. This is a lie; you reframe it. There are plenty of men in San Francisco. Some percentage of them must use hair dye. Some percentage of that percentage could be at this bar, on this night, in your hometown, and then he turns around and sees you and you see his brain glitch in the exact same way as yours.
"Hi," you say.
"Hi." His voice is a little lower than it was the last time you saw him. Lower and softer, even pitched as it is to carry the few feet across the bar. Of course, he was much younger, and much angrier, when you saw him last. You both were.
"What are you doing here?" you ask, crossing to him. You rest a hand on a stool, but don't sit. Sitting feels presumptuous.
"I live here. As of a few days ago. I'm back in the old house." He gestures at you with his beer. "And you…"
"Live here," you repeat. "As of a few months ago. Further out of the neighborhood, but I come here every week. They do a trivia night."
"I heard. Saturdays at eight. That's why I'm here."
"Of course." You stare at him. You can't help it. What helps is the fact that he is staring back, with just as little compunction. "Wow."
"Wow."
"Wow."
"Wow." He nods at the stool. "Do you want to sit?"
"Yeah. Yeah! Why not." You hook your jacket under the bar. "Espresso martini, and one of whatever he's having," you tell the bartender, and then turn back to Ryland. "Consider it a housewarming gift."
"You sure your husband won't mind?"
In lieu of a verbal response, you hold up your bare left hand, wiggling five bare fingers and pretending the question doesn't make the blood congeal in your veins.
"Oh. Shoot," he says. "I'm, um. Sorry."
You squint at him.
"What?" he asks.
"Shoot?"
"Oh. Yeah. Yeah, uh, my first ever performance review, I was told I needed to watch my language around the thirteen-year-olds. Some parents complained. Several, apparently. Stellar reviews otherwise. So since then I've. Adjusted."
"Thirteen-year-olds."
"I'm starting at Grover Cleveland in a few weeks. Mr. Clivers, you remember him, he retired, so now it's me, if you can believe it. Room two twenty. Teaching. I'm teaching, if that wasn't clear." His eyes slide back to your left hand. "And you're…separated?"
"Divorced." You twist at your ring finger with your free hand. "A few years."
"If I'd known—"
"I kept it pretty quiet." You shrug. "It's embarrassing. Admitting you were on a leash."
He doesn't answer that. He doesn't need to. You see the memory play back in his eyes.
You give him a smile that's not really a smile, and then: "I'm so sorry about your mom."
"Oh. Yeah. Thanks."
"The funeral. I wanted to, but. Things with Tyler were."
"Yeah."
"I felt shitty just sending a text, and then I. He'd. I didn't have your number in my phone anymore, and—"
"It's okay," he says. Gently. Like he really means it.
You give him a look. "It's really not."
"You're here now. Apology accepted."
"Did you get body snatched, or something?" You clap a hand to your mouth, but it's too late. "Sorry," you say, absolutely the least sorry you've ever been in your life, because he's also chuckling. "Sorry! You're just so…different." Your eyes drift over him, and you hold a hand up, waving it in a vague circle. "The same, but different. Very, like, mellow."
"So I've heard."
"What happened?"
He purses his lips. "Life," he says, bringing the bottle to his mouth.
"That's not an answer, that's a cliché."
"And if I ask what happened with the divorce?"
You raise your own drink in a toast, making a face meant to more or less convey touché, and take a long sip.
After a moment's silence, he says, "It was mostly the middle schoolers." You look at him blankly. "The middle schoolers happened. They are not nice."
"Is that so."
"Very creative with their insults."
"Taste of your own medicine, huh."
"I was never that brutal. Honestly, it's worse when they're not even trying. I mentioned NSYNC to a class last year, and they didn't know who that was, and then I said they were like One Direction, back in the day, and they also didn't really know who that was, and I said the band with that guy, the style guy, and they were all, like, he's in a band?"
"God, we're so old," you say, shaking your head. "Or you are, anyway."
He points the neck of his bottle at you. "Watch it."
"How long has that been a thing? The teaching?"
"This'll be my fourth year. I pissed off one too many people in the molecular biology academia pool. Guess you could say I splashed too close to the sun."
"Ah." You nod. "Life."
"Life," he agrees.
"Life." You stare. He stares back. "Sorry, I just. I'm still on the." The muscles in your cheeks are twitching. "Shoot is just. That's really good."
"I regularly and earnestly say fudge," he says, which breaks the seal. You giggle. You can't help it, and you don't want to help it, because he's giggling too, and the giggling turns to full hysterics, and possibly the people sitting at the bar around you think you're insane, and you don't care. You haven't seen Ryland Grace in nine years. You don't think you've laughed like this with him for fourteen.
"How regularly?" you barely get out. "How earnestly?"
"Way too much. To both." He claps. "You'll love this—I dropped a box on my toe the other day while moving, and I said, out loud, Christmas Eve."
"Christmas Eve!" Your mouth hurts from smiling so wide, and you press your hands to your cheeks. "Oh, that's gorgeous."
"I really meant it, too."
"You can't even take the Lord's name in vain? Since when is Grover Cleveland Catholic?"
"They're not. I'm just paranoid."
"No, of course, of course. You ever get a Jiminy Cricket in there?"
"I'll submit that one to the PTA for consideration." His eyes flicker back to your left hand again. Your fingers twitch as you fight the urge to cover it up. It's a hard habit to break. "It's really good to see you," he finally says.
"It's good to see you, too."
"I think the last time. I mean. I know the last time I saw you—"
"Wedding number five," you say grimly, holding up as many fingers.
"Right. I'm sorry. About everything I said. That time and—honestly, there's probably about twenty years' worth of stuff I could apologize for."
"It's okay."
"It's not. It's really, really not."
He's really, really right.
But also maybe not. If you'd been asked, nine years ago, if you could ever forgive Ryland Grace, you would have said no. Mostly because, at the time, he was seemingly incapable of apologizing for anything. Now, you can't help but look at him fondly. Time and memory are flattening the old wounds to scars, distant in the back of your mind, superseded by the fact of him sitting in front of you. Real. Breathing.
There are lines in his face that weren't there a decade ago. The last few bits of baby-faced softness are gone. His hair is longer than it used to be, and fluffy up top, like he recently ran his hand through it, and you want to run your hand through it. You tell yourself this is a normal product of being happy to see someone from your past. You almost buy it.
"Look," you say. "I moved back here because I needed a fresh start. The divorce had just gone through, and. I." Your fingers twitch. "The point is, all of that was a long time ago. Case in point: Greg, who I'm seeing now—in the flannel, over there—is very nice and very normal. And, get this, he actually likes when I have friends."
Something ticks behind his eyes. "Good. Good, that's. A real improvement."
"Yeah. So." You extend a hand. "Fresh start?"
He takes it. "Fresh start."
His hand is warm, and firm. You feel the callus from the way he holds a pencil. You feel the lines of his palm against yours. You feel things in your chest and your cheeks and the back of your neck that you should not be feeling during a handshake, and that you should definitely not be feeling three months into a relationship with a very nice and very normal guy.
"Or, you know, I'll do my best," he says. "Hard to forget the time you put Play-Doh in the microwa—
"Okay," you cut him off, freeing your hand to pick up your drink. Your fake indignance can't hide your real smile. "Maybe we go back to the part where you were trying to apologize."
-
Now
He tugs at your hair, and you moan around him. "Sorry," he says, immediately letting go. "Sorry."
You pull off, looking up at him briefly with his cock on your tongue, in a way that is, you have found over the years, very reliable in its ability to render a man speechless.
"Do it again," you say, before swallowing him back down.
If he was going to say anything in response, it disappears into the groan he lets out, his head tipping back against the wall. To your delight, he does get his hands back into your hair. He pulls again, gentle. Hesitant.
There is no hesitance in your responding sound.
You can't take him all the way down right away. You don't even try; instead, you press the tip of him against the roof of your mouth, laving your tongue against the underside and letting your moans vibrate through him any time his fingers tighten in your hair. You are enjoying this far more than you had any expectations of. Maybe because it's him. Maybe because he has an objectively pretty dick, long and flushed and slightly curved at the end.
Or maybe it's just the sheer relief of finally, finally getting your mouth on him one way or another. You've resolved to never kiss him. You can at least have this.
You take him deeper slowly, in increments. You use your hand to cover the ground your mouth cannot, slick movements up and down the length of him, squeezing slightly every so often just to be a little mean. Just to get to hear what it sounds like, to hear how surprise briefly breaks his voice from groan to whimper, and to feel him try and fail to keep his hips from jerking into you.
By the time you get him deep enough that you don't need your hands anymore, he is so hard you wonder if it doesn't hurt, red and twitching, his pulse a real, tangible throb against your tongue. You have one hand on his hip, his ass, pressing through his jeans to urge him closer, and the other one tangled up in the hem of his shirt, pushing up to graze across his stomach, lean but soft, and you feel as the muscles beneath begin to tense.
"Okay. That's—ah—get up here."
You shake your head as much as you can with him in your mouth, which is not much, and pause only to say, "I'm busy."
"You—ah. Hang on, hang on."
He pulls you off of his cock with two hands fisted in your hair, and when you try to lean forward he holds you where you are. The tension of your hair wrapped around his fingers is delicious, hazy, and you feel the thrum of blood through your lips, your tongue, your throat. You look up at him, plaintive. "Is something wrong?"
"No, but I'm—I'm close. You should stand up."
"Why?" Your hands are still free, you remember. You bring one of them up. He groans, loosing one of his hands to catch yours before you can wrap it around him. It's not a foolproof plan; you have another hand, and you use it. You're gentle. Slow. Slow enough that he can think about it. A bead of precum rises at the tip, and you run your thumb over it. "You don't want to come in my mouth?"
"God," he breathes. "Yes, I want to, of course I want to, but that's not. I mean." Your tongue is lolling slightly out of your mouth, and you let your gaze flicker back and forth from his eyes to his cock, back and forth, back and forth, as you strain towards it. "The point. The whole point."
"Maybe we can make an exception," you say, then look up at him entirely. "It's going inside me either way, right?"
He lets out a low, shaky breath on a desperate vowel. "You can't say things like that."
"I don't have to say anything." You bring a hand to your mouth, and lick your palm, long and slow, savouring the taste of it, and then take two fingers into your mouth. "You're the one who keeps trying to make conversation."
You bring your hand below your skirt. When you lean forward, this time, he doesn't pull you back.
Your fingers brush against your clit, over your underwear, as he reaches the back of your throat. It gives you something to focus on, something to distract from the overwhelm, as you breathe through your nose and relax your throat and press forward a little more, a little more. You're already wet, somehow. Very possibly you've been wet since before you got his pants open; from before he got you outside; from the moment you saw him in the bar and felt his hand pressed against the small of your back and imagined what that same hand would feel like, will feel like, later tonight when he presses into you.
You push your underwear to the side, slipping a finger in, then two, and match the rhythm and pace at which you are taking him with your mouth. It's simultaneously not enough—your fingers can't reach as far as his, can't curl at quite the same angles—and too much, too much stimuli, too many things competing for your attention as you let him fuck your mouth and pretend that's filling you where you need.
And the thing is—it's good. It's not enough, but it's good; you want more, but you're somehow satisfied, just like this, because you like to make him feel good, and because you trust that he will want to make you feel good, and the reciprocation may not be the whole point but it makes all the difference in the world.
The hand intertwined with yours tightens. He holds fast, gripping you as you grip at his waist, like that one point of contact is an anchor in the ocean. Like it's keeping him steady. Like you are keeping him steady, keeping him together, holding him the way he's always held you. The way he always manages to take you apart.
-
Eleven years ago
In your mom's defense, she really scaled down for her fifth wedding.
In lieu of a fancy venue, it's in the Grace's backyard, which is bigger than yours. Your mom is rewearing her first wedding dress, claiming that she'd been waiting for it come back in fashion. You're the maid of honor, having been passed the mantel by Mrs. Grace, who, thin and soft-spoken and freshly in remission after a grueling year of chemo, assured you that she was more than happy to take a backseat and let someone else plan the bridal shower for once.
You have put together and taken apart five separate plans for this wedding over the past six months. You are beyond relieved that things went off half as well as they did.
You were supposed to wear your last bridesmaid dress. Your last bridesmaid dress is several cup sizes old. So instead you went into the back of your childhood bedroom, and dug out something long and brown and satin, and steamed out five years' worth of wrinkles from where it had been living on the closet floor, and you wore it like it meant nothing to you at all.
Now you're wearing it sitting in a plastic lawn chair, swatting away mosquitos and watching the last few stragglers tear up the dance floor to Whitney Houston. Just like you watched them through "Sweet Caroline," and "September," and the Cupid Shuffle. Not that you mind sitting. It's good, for the maid of honor to oversee.
And, anyway, Tyler doesn't like dancing, and you feel bad leaving him at the table, even though he left for the bathroom and hasn't come back in three songs.
As always, your mom cried during the ceremony. As always, she claims its the final one. As always, you know she genuinely believes it. That's the thing about your mom: outside of her job, she isn't flighty, not really. She just loves hard. And you have an optimistic feeling, about Husband Number Five (he'll earn a name once they make it past the two year mark. You're optimistic, not stupid). With any luck, there'll only be two more weddings in your family's future: yours, and Josh's. Josh might never get married, which is fine, and you, much to your relief, are only going to have to date one person before you get married.
You're happy to be like your mother in every way but this. Her capacity for love is impressive, and exhausts you just to think about. You've only ever really had room in your heart for one person at a time.
Someone steps in front of you. "Hey."
"If this is about Aunt Irma throwing up in the bathroom," you say, looking very pointedly at your nails and very pointedly not at him, "then yes, I know, and I put Kristy on it, and if it's about which of the bridesmaids is single, the answer is no. Actually the answer is two, but I'm pretty sure they've already been dibs'd on, which is gross and terrible, but that's how it was conveyed to me, and if you were hoping for a different answer then you should have asked me this three days ago." You look up. "But also the answer then would have been no. Unless you've got your eye on Aunt Irma. She could probably use the win."
"Uh, I choose E?" He fidgets with his glasses, giving you a very sheepish, very smug, very him smile. "None of the above?"
He looks good from this angle.
He looks good from every angle, of course, that's always been the problem—and, worse, you're pretty sure grad school has made him aware of it. He's wearing a suit similar to his prom one, but not exact. He's grown since then. Same height, more shoulders. His glasses are all wrong, because they always are, in some new and exciting way. He has facial hair, too, a light beard that you know is soft to the touch from when his jaw brushed your temple, from when you hugged him hello, before Tyler cleared his throat and gently tugged you back.
You feel normal about all of this. You've had a solid five-year streak of feeling and acting very, very normal about and around Ryland Grace.
You see him when he comes over to get high with your brother in the basement on school breaks. You saw him a lot in the hospital, when his mom was there and your mom would visit. You've seen him bike down your street almost every day for the past two weeks. You do pleasant smiles, and civil hugs, and I've only ever seen you as a friend banter, and you do them well because you do only see him as a friend, because you have a fiancé and he has a revolving door of short-term girlfriends and it's been half a decade since you allowed yourself to hope for anything different.
It's not like how it used to be. Not really. You'll never be that close again. But that's okay. People change, and time passes, and life moves on. You, at the very adult age of twenty-three, know and understand this in a way you didn't at eighteen.
"Then what?" you ask. "No Blue Moons left in the cooler? You guys were on alcohol duty, that's all you."
He shakes his head, then gestures at the dance floor. "For old times' sake?" When you don't immediately stand, he adds, "Technically I still owe you one. From prom."
"A night I desperately want to relive," you deadpan.
"You're the one who wore the dress."
You glance over your shoulder. "I should wait for Tyler."
"Yeah, uh, I think he and Josh went around the side of the house? For a smoke?"
You're simultaneously annoyed and pleasantly surprised. You can count on no hands the number of times your brother and fiancé have voluntarily hung out. Still, you hesitate.
"Music's ending soon, right? I think this is the last song. Technically the song before this was supposed to be the last, but I pulled some strings." He nods in the direction of the DJ booth. "You haven't danced all night."
You look at the booth, and Colt behind it. You look at Ryland's hand. You look off towards the side of the house. You look up.
You give him your hand, and let him gently tug you to standing.
"These shoes are new," you warn as the two of you cross to the makeshift dance floor. "And expensive. You step on them, you're buying me a new pair."
He chuckles. "Yeah, sure." He brings you around to face him. One hand slides around your waist, warm through the fabric of your dress, resting respectfully above the small of your back. He keeps his other hand in yours, and you bring up your free hand to rest on his shoulder. "I'll put that top of list if my funding comes through."
"How is all of that going?" you ask as you slowly step in time. "You've been making some splashes, lately. In the molecular bio academia pool."
"Kiddie pool, with how fucking shallow it is." He brings your hand up to meet the other around his neck, and places both of his hands on your waist. "You've read my papers?"
"I'm thinking of going into medmal, when I graduate, so. Seems relevant."
"Right. Yeah, it's, it's going fine. It's good. I just need my PI to grow some balls. I started working under him a few months ago, but he knew who I was when I applied, and it's still like pulling teeth getting him to approve anything original."
You reach up and fix his glasses. He scrunches his nose, immediately fucking them up again. "By original, you mean splashy?"
"Hey, science takes cash. Splashy is good for getting money thrown at you, if you're not afraid of pissing people off."
"That's never been your problem, huh?"
He shrugs. You feel the movement of each muscle in his shoulders, his neck, beneath your hands.
"Maybe it wouldn't hurt to try catching some flies with honey," you say. "Like, your PI. Go along with his ideas for a little bit to get him to trust you more, and then start doing what you actually want to do."
He chuckles.
Your brows furrow, even as you laugh with him. "What?"
"Yeah, uh. Much as I appreciate the words of wisdom, I'm not sure I really need advice from the child bride."
You blink. Your feet are still moving only of their own accord. You'd leave the floor, if you weren't so convinced that you must have heard him wrong. "Sorry?"
"You're twenty three. What are you getting engaged for?"
"You sound like my mom. Who, by the way, got married at nineteen."
"Yeah, and look how well that turned out."
"Okay. Cool it. My point is, twenty three isn't even. I mean, I'm an adult. That's a normal age to get married."
"If you live in Wisconsin, maybe."
You swallow, and then continue the monologue you've had to deliver to pretty much everyone you know in the two months since Tyler proposed. "We're not even getting married until I'm done with school. That's another few years, at least. This is just a promise. It's a commitment."
"It seems more like a leash," he says. "You're moving across the country for him, you turned down Stanford—"
"Yale isn't exactly a consolation prize."
"It's not what you wanted. Plus, he's an asshole."
You laugh, short and bitter. "Got any evidence to support that particular hypothesis? Other than it takes one to know one?"
"It's not just me. Everyone thinks so. Josh hates him."
"Okay," you say, stung. It isn't like you need your brother to be best friends with the love of your life, but that's worlds away from hates. "Well, if Josh feels that way, he can tell me himself."
His eyes trace across your face. "You're always looking around for him."
You stop yourself mid-looking-around, furious at having been caught doing something perfectly innocuous. "Because he's my fiancé."
"Because he's your fiancé, or because you're scared he might catch you dancing with someone else?"
It's his tone that really pisses you off. How gently he says it. The edge is still there, but beneath it is a softness that's reflected across his entire face, his brows, his eyes, and the back of your neck is hot, and your arms are still around his neck, and you are so, so sick of Ryland Grace acting like he knows what's best for you.
"Because that's what you do when you love someone, Ryland," you say. "You look for them. You'd know that if you'd ever dated someone for more than three months at a time."
That lands. You can tell by the slight drop of that infinitely smug mouth. He tries to bluster his way through it. "Just because I'm not throwing myself at every half-decent option who comes along—"
"Throwing myself?" You step away. He lets you. "Nice, really nice."
He follows you the few steps off the dance floor. "No, I just mean—I'm not going to stick around with the wrong person just for the sake of not being alone."
You turn on him. "I am perfectly capable of being alone. I just don't have to be, because I'm not going to spend my life running away because I'm scared of being with the right person—"
You hear your name, in your fiancé's voice, from the end of the backyard, and flinch so sharply it's impossible to pretend it was anything else.
You step back. Your face is burning. You don't look at Ryland. You are intensely aware of the fact that he is looking at you, which means you are intensely aware of the moment he stops. "Thanks for the dance," you say.
"Right," he says. Then, more quietly, when you don't move, "Well, you heard him. Better go fetch."
You slap him.
Not very hard, but the sound of it—only a few people are looking at you, so it can't have been that loud, but it rings in your ears and your chest and the throb of your pulse through your palm. His cheek is pink with it. His glasses are askew. He doesn't bother making eye contact with you.
"Fuck you." It feels toothless, but you can't think of anything that will make the situation better or worse, so you force yourself to settle for toothless as you walk away.
He doesn't reach for you. He doesn't try to follow. He doesn't even call your name.
-
Now
He finishes with one hand in your hair and your name in his mouth, and you keep him in yours through the whole thing.
His free hand clings to yours, tight. Desperate. Wanting. The hand on your head doesn't push so much as it cradles, following you as you take the initiative to press forward, swallowing him down as deeply as you can, hollowing your cheeks until you can tell, by the sounds he makes and the shaking in his hips and his hands on your head, that it's too much, and only then do you pull off, breathing heavily, to rest your forehead against his thigh. You pull your own hand out from between your legs. You didn't get off; you didn't have the bandwidth to focus on it, which means now you are just wet and worked up and wanting.
When you shift, pressing your thighs together in a hopeless attempt at nothing, he takes it as a signal to help you to standing, giving you a better vantage point from which to appraise your handiwork. His chest is still rising and falling at post-orgasmic speeds. His hair, despite nobody touching it, is a disaster. His glasses are establishing their own area code.
He cups your face in one hand, gentle, and looks at you, and traces his thumb along your lower lip.
"Your lipstick," he says, apologetic.
You lean forward to kiss his neck, half to hear the sound it draws out of him and half to escape his thumb, his gaze, the softness of it.
"It's okay," you say against his skin. "It was a good use of it."
His hand slides around to the back of your head, your neck; the other takes the measure of your body, the landscape of it, running down over your back and your hips to land between your legs. His breath catches when he feels how wet you are.
He turns the both of you around, returning your back to the wall. "Can I—"
You nod into his neck.
His fingers trace over your underwear, feeling where you've soaked through the fabric, and you are making soft noises into his neck and you can feel it, you feel the moment when he's about to push your underwear to the side and—
Thunder. Far away thunder, but thunder.
You pull away from each other—not fully. Just enough to make eye contact. It's the most bearable eye contact you've made all night.
"Uber?" you ask.
He nods, already reaching for his phone. "I'll call."
-
Fifteen years ago
"Hey. It's me. Don't hang up."
"Josh isn't back in town until next week, you'll have to call him at school."
"I know."
The silence stretches. You don't hang up, but you don't help him, either.
"So," he finally says. "Freshman year. That's big. How's, uh, how were midterms?"
"What do you want, Ryland?"
"Brr."
"What?"
"Frosty. Like, you're being cold, like—it was a joke."
"Funny."
"You can't seriously still be mad about last year. Look, it was my first time going through a breakup, and I was still really messed up about it, and then you were. You were just—there."
"Great apology. You practice that one?"
"I'm trying to—"
"Look." You sigh, and then plaster on a smile so broad you know he'll hear it through the phone. "Just forget it, okay? That was ages ago. I don't even think about it anymore."
A pause. "Great," he finally says. "Okay."
"I'll tell Josh you called."
"I—"
You hang up, and flop back on the bed, and stare at the ceiling for a long, long time.
There's no reason for you to be upset about this. Prom was forever ago, and you've seen Ryland in passing plenty of times since then, and you haven't been angry. You've just been—distant. That's normal. That's fine. And, anyway, you have a boyfriend. You've had a boyfriend for about three months, and you're pretty sure you've cracked the code to happy, healthy, mature relationships.
Tyler brings food to class when you forget, and insists you sleep over so that you don't have to walk alone across campus in the dark. He kisses you in the middle of the quad, in front of everyone. When you walk into a party together, he keeps one protective arm slung over your neck, and when you go back to the dark of his attic dorm and twin XL bed you never have to worry that he's going to recoil from your touch. He's tall enough that you can wear heels, and smart enough to hold his own against you in an argument, and he makes you feel wanted.
He makes you feel wanted.
When you compare what you'd offered to Ryland—sneaking around behind everyone's backs for a few months—to this? You could laugh, really. So there's no reason why a twenty second phone call should leave you with tears pricking at the corners of your eyes. It doesn't make sense.
Then again, nothing you've ever felt about Ryland has really ever made sense.
So you cry anyway. You give yourself five minutes on a timer, and then you wipe your tears and dig out the informational pamphlets you received in the mail from various NorCal law programs, atop a backlog of Cosmopolitans (your mom leaves you her subscription when she's gone), and you flip through them all until your head is full of meal plans and finanical aid brackets and day-to-night looks, and nothing and nobody else.
-
Now
You love your shoe collection. In particular, you love the shoes you've chosen to wear tonight: a very sensible heel, perfect for the office and for a night out. They are strappy, but not too high. They are suede.
They are also, incidentally, terrible in anything but perfect weather.
You can walk fine in them—you're not eighteen anymore—and the storm still hasn't arrived quite to where you are, but it's muggy and grey and they're suede, for fuck's sake. You frown down at them as you stand on Ryland's front porch, waiting for him to find his keys.
"Shoot," he says, patting his pants agressively for the third consecutive time. You fight for your life not to tease him mercilessly about shoot. You've done it often enough in the past two years to straddle the line between inside joke and gauche. You settle for saving it to deploy at a later date. "I think—maybe they fell out in the car. Or else I left them at the bar?"
"Hopefully not behind the bar."
He groans, but he's smiling through it. "I think we've got to go through the back," he says, and so now you're following him up down the porch, up past the driveway, and the concrete is turning to mud and these are your favorite shoes.
He finds the spare key in short order, unlocks the door, notices you aren't right next to him anymore, and turns around. "What are you—oh, my god."
"They're suede," you say, fumbling with the buckle. It is, it turns out, much harder to unbuckle them when the humidity has rendered both your fingers and the fabric a little damp. "And the mud—I don't want to ruin them—"
You're in the air before you finish your sentence.
"You are just," he says, looking at you, then shakes his head, laughing, and you can't help but join him, laughing with your face pressed into his shoulder (he was much less muscular, the last time he carried you like this) at the absurdity of the situation as he carries you across his back lawn to the back door, and over the threshold.
"I can walk, you know," you say, as he kicks off his shoes without putting you down.
"Can is irrelevant," he says. "Like you said, they're suede."
"We're not in the mud anymore. This is hardwood."
"Hardwood could be terrible for suede."
"I think hardwood is pretty neutral, as far as suede is concerned."
"That's hardwood's PR answer," he says, and the bed is here, you've reached the bedroom, and he puts you down on the bed, and you sit, still a little giggly with your two drinks, and try again to unbuckle your shoes.
His hands settle over yours.
"Here," he says from his current position, which is apparently on his knees, on the ground, in front of you. "I can—" His fingers brush against your ankle as he undoes a buckle, pulls the strap back, eases the shoe off your foot, places it to the side.
As he tends to the other side, he presses his mouth to the inside of your knee, open, and as soon as the buckle is undone he lifts up his head and looks at you while he runs a free hand up your calf, up your thigh, under your skirt.
When he reaches your underwear, you let out a sound somewhere between a sigh and a whimper.
You are still wet from before, wet through the fabric, and his fingers press against the fabric and against the wet and against you and he is still looking at you. He looks at you as his thumb finds your clit, applying an amount of pressure that could charitably be called teasing. He looks at you as he pulls your underwear to the side and touches you directly, dragging a finger across your entrance but not pressing any further. He looks at you between kisses pressed in an upward trajectory along your thigh.
You aren't looking away. You don't know why you're not looking away, because the looking is unbearable. You just know that not looking is impossible.
He breaks eye contact to reach for your underwear. You lift your hips to allow him to pull it down, just until it's dangling from one ankle. He gets his hands more firmly around your hips at the same time he leans forward to get his mouth on you, he tugs you to the edge of the bed and you are flat on your back with your legs over his shoulders.
He tastes you like he is hungry for it.
Not that he ever lacked enthusiasm. Or technique, for that matter. A few weeks ago, he was good, genuinely good, at reading your reactions in the moment. Now he has done the reading. Now he shows you how terrifyingly quickly he has learned what you like, and occasionally that he has new ideas of things that you might like, and do like, and it doesn't take very much time before you are close. You were already close, on your knees outside, with him in your mouth, and your own fingers trembling and inadequate inside you. Now, he drags his own fingers along that same path, but it's more—more inside you, more intense for the fact that you have no way of knowing what he's going to do before he does it.
The orgasm shudders through you, gentle and languid, and you know he feels it because he keeps doing exactly what he's doing, not changing the rhythm, until you've crested the wave and you're coming down and he eases up to avoid overstimulating you.
He eases up. He does not stop.
"Hey," you say, reaching down to tug at his hair. This is maybe a mistake, because now the roles are reversed, and tugging his hair makes him moan into you. "I—oh."
He pulls off. His mouth only; his fingers are still inside you, slow. "I'm not done," he says, into the crease where hip meets thigh, and then, into your mons: "You never let me take my time with you."
"You take plenty of time with me," you say. The fact that you are producing coherent language at this point is a miracle worthy of canonization, because he is back on your clit, first with his tongue and then with his whole mouth, lips and tongue together, like he's kissing you.
"You never let me take as much time as I want." He curls his fingers a bit more, moving his hand with your hips as they lift off the bed a little. "You know, the contractions of the vaginal walls during orgasm help to draw sperm up deeper inside. Towards the uterus. Scientifically, this is useful to the cause. You can't argue with science."
"That doesn't make sense. That only works if there's sperm to. To. To draw up."
"I'm priming the engine," he says. "Putting one in the bank for later."
"That's not—that makes even less sense. That's, like, two half metaphors sandwiched into a quarter. Quarter metaphor," you say, and then you stop saying anything at all because he has his mouth back around your clit and he is sucking, and there are three fingers pushing into you instead of two.
Your muscles have all sorts of opinions on what the appropriate reaction to this situation is. The muscles south of your waist, especially—not just where he's currently the most focused on, but your legs (twitching), your toes (curling), your thighs pressing around his head with absolutely no input from your brain. He seemingly figured out how to circumvent your overstimulation fuse—while still riding the aftershocks of your first orgasm into the before-shocks of what appears to be a rapidly-approaching second—but you are sensitive. Shaky. The sounds you make are rapidly decreasing in dignity.
You press a hand to your mouth—half to stifle your own moans, half to give your mouth something to do—and you feel him shake his head, "mm-mm" muffled against you. One hand leaves your hip to reach up, feeling, grasping for yours. You give him your hand, slightly baffled.
He pulls back just enough to say, practically into you, "Don't." He squeezes your hand. "Let me hear you. I want to hear you. Please."
He gets his mouth back on you, and your head tips sideways. You can make out your reflection, just barely, in a sliver of window. He curls his fingers, and it pulls a moan out of you from somewhere deep in your chest, and you do not try to hold it back.
-
Sixteen years ago
Your mother is out of town, and so is your brother, so Mrs. Grace invites you over to get ready.
She lets you rifle through a box of old lipsticks, and laughs when you make a face at the more egreiously frost-forward options. Sun through the bathroom window. Donna Summer crooning in the background. Hair in a curling iron; AquaNet, acrid in your nose, a fine mist that hangs in the air for a moment before settling in a thin film on the bathroom sink and the bobby pins scattered across it. Mrs. Grace is full-cheeked and smiling, her long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, her fingers under your chin, delicate, as she brushes on a layer of eyeshadow. Whenever you think about her, years down the line, it will be like this.
"There." She pats your knee. "All done."
When you look at yourself in the mirror, you don't look that much different. You found your dress on consignment: bronze satin that gathers at the waist and falls like water to your ankles, which you have yet to twist in the shoes you borrowed from your mother's closet. The heels are three inches high. You have been practicing walking around the house in them all week, with mixed results. Mrs. Grace kept your makeup simple. You look a little more shimmery than usual, maybe, but—yourself.
When you come out to the living room, and see Ryland, his reaction (or lack thereof) confirms it. "You look nice," he says, and nothing more.
He looks nice. It's not that you've never seen him in a suit before, but you've never seen him in a suit for you. He didn't go to his own prom, you remember. Too busy. And the last time your mom got married was when you were sixteen. So it's been a few years. The suit is dark, and the tie is white, matching the boutonniere pinned to his lapel, and the corsage he pulls out of a box on the living room table.
"You never told me what color," he says. He reaches forward for your hand, and your heart freezes. "So I figured white was safe."
"Right." You let him slide the corsage on. Roses. "No, yeah, this is. This is great. Thanks."
"The car's ready out front, so—"
There's a flash from your left. Mrs. Grace, with the kind of disposable camera that she's still loyal to, despite the boys gifting her a digital camera for the holidays. "Not so fast."
Ryland groans, rolling his eyes. "Mom."
"Oh, shush. I didn't even get to do this with you last year."
"You got to with Colt. Same difference."
"Step in like that, perfect."
He stands just behind you, his hands resting gingerly on either side of your waist for a moment, before reaching further to take either one of your hands in his. You've taken dozens of photos with Ryland. You've hugged him dozens more times. There's no reason why this version of that same touch should be any different. Your pulse argues otherwise.
"No faces, Ry, you know I'll keep you here forever if you don't—"
"Mom."
"Smile!" The camera flashes. "One more!"
You feel his head turn, and you turn to look up at him. "Sorry," he mouths.
You're still smiling a little. "It's okay." You look forward just in time for another flash.
"Mom, we're going to be late."
"Alright, alright." She fidgets with the camera. "I won't be able to get them developed until next week, but—"
"I'm sure they're great, Carol." You run up to her—or wobble up to her—and give her a hug, and a kiss on the cheek. "Thank you. For all of this."
"Oh, it's nothing." She pinches your cheek. "You two stay out of trouble, all right? I'll be home all night if you need to call, but I DVR'd the Days finale, so don't. Spare key's in the back, usual spot, and I already made up the bed in the spare room for you."
"Thank you," you say again—and then follow Ryland, who's already out on the porch. With a not-insignificant amount of effort, you manage to walk down the stairs and get into the car, and you wave goodbye as he pulls back out of the driveway and down the street.
"Thanks for doing this," you say, after about thirty seconds of silence. "Even if it's just because your mom made you, or whatever."
"She didn't make me. I promised." He glances at you, then back to the road. He clears his throat. "It's cool if you don't remember. You were, like, ten."
"I was twelve. My mom's wedding. Second to last. I remember." You look at him. He doesn't look back. "It's, um, it's nice of your girlfriend. To be okay with it." You fidget with the volume on the radio. "She sounds great."
"Yeah. She isn't really my girlfriend right now. We're on a break. I mean. We were on a break. We're broken up now, or whatever. So it's not like she really has a right to care."
"Oh." You leave the radio dial alone, and fold your hands back in your lap. "I'm sorry."
“It’s fine. It's not a big deal. Happens all the time. You'll see, when you get to college."
You turn to face the window, so that you can roll your eyes without him seeing. "Sure."
It is very Ryland, to think he's figured out the way the entire world works in a nine-month span. You don't look forward to the person he'll be once he makes it through all of undergrad and starts grad school.
To his credit, though, he keeps any insufferability to a minimum the rest of the night.
He doesn't comment on the food (which is, objectively, terrible). He's sociable and pleasant to your friends, making jokes and asking about their graduation plans with a distinct (and, you suspect, effortful) lack of condescension. He dances with you without complaint, and rescues you from losing your balance on more than one occasion.
The only moment he objects to anything, really, is when one of your classmates tries to pass you a flask.
"No," he says, taking it from you and passing it to the couple next to you.
"What? Why?"
"I'm not drinking because I'm driving, and you're not drinking because you are eighteen."
"You're nineteen."
"And driving," he says.
When he briefly leaves to go to the bathroom, your friend Kristy passes you a cup full of punch. You take a sip. It's bad. You gulp down another six sips before he comes back from the bathroom, and you smile up at him perfectly innocently, and he gives you a look like he knows exactly what just happened.
"What did you do," he says.
"Nothing."
He picks up the cup, which is mostly empty, and takes a small sip. He makes a small face. Then he puts it back down, and sighs, and reaches a hand down.
"What?" you ask.
"We're going to get you some water, and then dance off whatever you just drank."
"I barely had any. And it was more fruit juice than tequila, anyway."
"Vodka," he corrects you. You roll your eyes, but you drink the water he gives you, and you stumble over to the dance floor, hand in hand, and all you can think is that this is a night you're going to want to remember forever.
Most of the music has been upbeat. You figure the chaperones don't want to have to worry about getting a floorful of hormonal teenagers to leave room for Jesus. But you can't help but look at Ryland, all elbows and knees, eyes squeezed shut as he moves so gracelessly it's a wonder his hair is still on his head, let alone his glasses—and you think about his hand in yours pulling you to the dance floor. You think about his arm around your waist when you were taking photos at his house, and the way it makes you feel to have his eyes on you, even just sideways for a second in the car, and you can't help but wonder what it would feel like to have all of that for a whole song. Unrushed.
The song ends. The lights dim. The music slows. He slows.
He looks at you.
The heavens open.
If by "the heavens," you mean "the ceiling of the high school gym." And if by "opens" you mean opens. The fire sprinklers are going off. Your hair is wet and your dress is wet and the floor is wet, and the water sends mascara stinging into your eyes, so now all you can hear is everyone screaming and all you can see is nothing.
A hand finds yours. You squeeze. He squeezes back.
"Come on," he says, just audible above the chaos, and you nearly slip and twist an ankle no fewer than three times as you wind your way through the crowd, out a side door, and into the relative calm (most people must have rushed for the main doors) of outside, the night air cool on your newly damp skin. Once you're outside, he lets go of your hand.
You rub at both of your eyes. "Oh, my God."
"Are you okay?" He sounds breathless, and there's genuine concern there, sure—but also a smile.
"Yes, I'm—God." You stop, laughing. "Shit." You rub until the stinging abates enough that you're able to open your eyes, just a little, your entire face a squint, and he looks over at you and starts laughing twice as hard. "Shut up."
"You look like a raccoon!"
"Yeah, and you look like a drowned rat," you say, which is sort of true in that his hair plastered to his head and his glasses are beaded with water and sitting at a full diagonal, and not at all true in that he is smiling and he is smiling at you and you don't think he's ever looked more beautiful.
He reapproaches you, fidgeting with his suit pocket. "Wait." He reaches, then hesitates, then commits to putting a hand on your face, your cheek.
There is a brief, gorgeous, terrifying moment of stillness.
Then he uses the handkerchief in his other hand to start swiping at your eyes.
He does it with all of the gentleness of a teenage boy who has never had to take off makeup in his life—which is to say he is slow, and he is careful, and he is using way too much pressure.
"Hey," you say, catching the handkerchief hand in yours. "Okay. Thank you, but—just let me—" He relinquishes it to you, the hand on your jaw lingering for one half-second longer before he steps back. "I can't believe you have a pocket square."
"Fuck off," he says, his voice fond and exasperated. "Car's over this way."
You follow him a few steps, still dabbing at your eyes. After a particularly treacherous step, you stop, and bend down, doing your damnedest to stay balanced on one foot as you tug at the straps of the other. "One sec."
He turns back. "What are you doing?"
"These aren't—the ground is too soft," you explain. "My heels. I'm taking them off."
"You can't just. Okay." Before you know it, he's back by your side, and there's an arm behind your back, and an arm beneath your knees, and your heels are not on your feet but also your feet are not on the ground.
"What are you—"
"You can barely walk in those things. I don't know why you even wore them."
"It's a—" You hiccup. "It's a rite of passage. My mom picked them out. Said they went with my dress."
It was the only thing she had time to help pick out. She cares a lot, your mom, she really does; that's why she's out of town all the time, picking up extra flights so that you and Josh don't have to worry quite so much about college. You know this. Still, in some of your more self-pitying moments, you can't help but wish she had the kind of job that kept her a little bit more in one place.
So yeah, you wore the shoes. And yeah, you can't walk in them, but that's seeming less and less like a bug and more like a feature if it's the thing that landed you here: cradled against his chest, one arm slung around his neck, your impossible shoes dangling from your other hand.
His face is closer to yours than it has been all night, so you see him visibly soften a bit. "They do go with your dress," he says. "They're pretty. I just don't want you to sprain something. Or step on a nail. Tetanus feels like bad prom date protocol."
"It's very chivalrous of you," you say. "That and the handkerchief."
"Shut up."
Bold with six and a half sips of punch, you press your lips quick to his cheek. Then you let your head flop back. "Put me down. I want to run."
"No running."
"Why not?"
"Because that would also be bad prom date protocol. And we're at the car already."
Three minutes later, when you are both in the car and wrapped in old camping blankets pulled from the trunk, he says, "We didn't dance."
"The blisters on my feet say otherwise."
"I mean a dance dance. A slow dance."
"Mm. Maybe there'll be dancing at the afterparty."
"Right. Where's that?" You give him the address. He pauses. "That's a hotel."
"Yeah. A bunch of people pooled together and got a suite, I guess."
"There's no way your mom is cool with that."
"She is somewhere over Nevada right now, so she doesn't really get to be un-cool with it. Plus, she heard you were coming and basically gave carte blanche to do whatever. But, um, you don't have to come, if you don't want. You can just drop me off. I think you've solidly fulfilled your prom date duties at this point."
"No. We're not going there. Unless you really want to, I guess?"
"No." It's the truth. You don't really have a desire to go to a hotel with a bunch of other eighteen-year-olds drinking and hooking up. You had thought that might be the kind of thing Ryland would want to do. "No, not really."
"Great." He puts the car into reverse. "I have an idea."
-
The beach is almost empty when you get there.
Far down, so far you can barely see them, is a group of kids having a bonfire. You leave your shoes in the car, and run down the sand until it shifts from powdery to packed, and you lay down in your dress and your wet hair and let the tide lap at your feet.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see him walk up to you. He sits. He lays down.
Above you, the sky is so dark it almost circles back around to lightness, a heavy purple-grey that you make an active effort to commit to memory.
"This is perfect," you say, after a while. "Thank you. For keeping your promise, even if your mom didn't make you. You didn't have to do that. I could have gone with someone else."
"I'm glad you didn't. It was good to have a weekend home. School is good, but. I missed this." He waves a hand up, at the sky. You understand what he means. "All of this. So, you know. Thanks for letting me crash your prom."
You hum. "It wasn't really crashing. We agreed, just. A long time ago." You look at him. He looks at you. You both smile, and then look back up at the purple sky.
His hand is an inch away from yours. You are so aware of it, embarassingly aware, as if there is some kind of electrical current that's pulsing from him, through the sea-damp earth, into you.
"And." You stop yourself. You start again, "If this was going to be my first d—I mean, my first time going to a dance, or whatever. I'm glad it was with you. I mean. You’re the first person I ever really liked."
He doesn't say anything.
"Back when we were kids," you rush to add. "Obviously. Sorry." You laugh. "I—that's embarrassing, or whatever, but I couldn’t say it before, and I know I probably shouldn’t have said anything because I don’t want things to be weird, I just—”
You turn to look at him a second time, midsentence. This is the bravest thing you’ve ever done, and maybe the bravest thing you ever will do.
The best case scenario is something you don’t even let yourself dream about. The worst case scenario is that he looks at you with disgust, and you really don’t want to see him looking at you with disgust, but you have to know something about what he’s thinking, and so you turn your head and you don’t even get a chance to really even look at his expression before he kisses you.
He kisses you.
You’ve never kissed anyone before. You don’t know if you’re any good; you don’t know how to be any good. You just know his mouth is warm and soft against yours. Gentle. You think he might be wearing chapstick. You have no idea what to do with your hands.
His hands are more decisive, coming up to cup your face. This gives you something of a blueprint; you let your hands lift to his chest, then to mirror his, tentatively brushing against his neck, his jaw.
He pulls back—not far away enough to really look at you. Just enough to mark the end of that kiss, and separate the beginning of the next one, which is deeper and fiercer and has one of your arms winding back around his neck.
He uses one hand to pull you closer, the other still at your cheek. Your clothes still aren't dry from the fire sprinklers, and for a moment you could almost believe you are flush against him, nothing in between. You still aren't really sure what you're doing, but you understand, by some instinct built up by years of sneaking your mom's magazines and Harlequin books, that this is maybe where you're supposed to open your mouth.
So you do. Just slightly.
There is a distinct shift from warm to hot as he mirrors the movement. The hand on your cheek slides back around to the back of your head, the back of your neck, and the hand on the small of your back urges your body against his, and you make a sound, a small one, a soft one—
He stops.
You spend a second like that—still, clinging to each other. Panting slightly. Your heart is a hummingbird in your chest.
He pulls away. Far enough to look at you. The hand on your neck is back to your jaw, and the hand from your waist comes up to touch your cheek, tracing down to your mouth, thumb dragging across your lower lip.
"Your lipstick," he says. "Sorry."
"It's okay." It's barely a whisper.
"We should. Um." He swallows. His eyes don't meet yours. "Come on."
He gets up. The night air hits, with a sudden chill, everywhere he was just pressed against you. He holds out a hand without looking at you, and helps you to standing, and starts back up over the little dunes.
You don't speak as you walk to the car.
You don't speak as you get in.
It isn't until several endlessly long minutes driving that you ask, "Where are we going?"
"Your house. I'm taking you home."
You pause. It takes you several skipped heartbeats to be able to formulate some kind of response. "My mom is out of town," you settle on, slowly. Cautiously.
"I know."
"Right." Your heart is in your stomach, and your stomach seems currently to be making a play for your throat. "I, um. You should know, I haven't. I mean, we can. We can do whatever you want. I want to. But I haven't, I mean, I haven't even kissed anyone before, so it might not—I'm probably not going to be as good as your ex—"
"What."
You look at him. He keeps his eyes firmly on the road. "What?"
"What are you talking about?"
"You're driving to my house."
"Yeah. I'm dropping you off."
You blink. "Nobody else is home."
"You're a big girl, you can handle a night alone." There's a layer of sarcasm that wasn't there before—and it's not that you haven't heard Ryland be sarcastic, and it's not even that you haven't heard him be condescending. But there's an edge to it, a hardness, that is new.
"That's not. I just thought—"
"I'm not hooking up with you."
"Okay." You nod. You don't know what the hell you're nodding at; mostly because you need to do something that isn't sitting still and listening to your entire nervous system explode. "Why not?"
"For starters, your brother will kill me."
"He doesn't have to know," you say, and you know that you should have more self respect than to say that, and you hate that you don't care. "I don't have to tell anyone, we can just. Until you go back to school, or just tonight, whatever you want."
"I'm not doing that," he says sharply.
There are several stoplight's worth of silence.
You hate how small your voice is when you ask, "Did I do something wrong?"
He sighs. It's the worst sound you've ever heard. "Everything you said before was really sweet. You've always been sweet." On his tongue, its impossible to hear it as anything but naive. "But you should be more careful, in college. There are a lot of guys who would take advantage of that."
"How is it taking advantage of me if I'm asking for it?" He doesn't answer. "Ryland, you don't really think you took—"
"No," he says sharply. "You're right. I didn't. And I'm not going to. So stop asking."
"Okay. I'm just a little confused. Why would you—"
He hits the breaks, harder than he has all night, and the car lurches to a stop. "God, I was just trying to be nice." The silence that follows is heavy. There's no air in your lungs. Very possibly there is no air in the car, or in San Francisco, or in the entire state of California. "Don't overthink it. I was doing you a favor."
You realize, dimly, that you're in front of your house, where he has driven so that you can get out of the car and take off your wet dress and climb into bed and spend the night alone in an empty house with the past thirty minutes on replay behind your eyes. You should unbuckle your seatbelt. You make no move to unbuckle your seatbelt.
"A favor," you say.
"Yeah," he says. He pauses. Then he clears his throat, and says, more confidently, "Yeah. Otherwise your first kiss would probably have been, like, with some random guy in a frat basement somewhere, you know? You deserve better than that."
"Right." You unbuckle your seatbelt, and open the door. "Right. Thanks a lot, Ryland, this was so much better than that."
You slam the car door shut behind you, muffling whatever it is he says next.
The sidewalk is wet beneath your bare feet. You drop your shoes in the foyer, and watch the shadows move on the wall as he pulls away and down the street.
You peel off your dress. You don't bother to shower. You just tug on an old shirt, and climb into bed, and press the side of your face into the pillow, and wait for it to be morning.
-
Now
You fight the urge to quiet your moans with the pillow, because he asked you to let him hear you, and you want him to hear you, and there isn't much to quiet, anyways. You are making sounds, but they are soft. Hitched breaths. Little rhythmic whines, in time with the pulls of his mouth on your clit. Something close to a please, when you feel the pleasure beginning to crest, and you clutch at his hand and at his hair as he finally, finally gets what he's been begging for, and the moan he lets out against you rolls through you like far-off thunder.
Now, after two, your body twitches away from him. Too much pleasure. Too much everything.
He leans back before you can push his head off. You are hazier than ever—eyelids low, mouth a little slack. He looks up at you, and you expect to see smugness on his face, and maybe there's a note of it but primarily he just looks—pleased. You'd almost say relieved, if that didn't feel like an odd adjective for the moment.
His mouth is still wet with you. His hand is still in yours, thumb tracing patterns across your fingertips. His other hand lies flat on your abdomen, slow, slow, slow strokes up and down as he rests his head on your thigh and looks up at you.
"Good?" he asks.
The answer is yes. You do not have any words left with which to answer him. Instead you grab at him with both hands, pulling him up, undoing his pants and his shirt with shaky fingers.
He's tugging at your shirt, too. You are a mess of hands, the two of you, a mess of hands and of lips—yours on his neck, his on your forehead—and you both get about half undressed from the waist up before you feel the full weight of him settle between your hips.
You haven't actually slept with him in a bed before, you realize.
You haven't slept with him in a bed, and you haven't slept with him fully naked, and, while you've certainly fucked face-to-face, you've never actually slept with him in missionary. The old-fashioned way. You know, traditional.
Without really thinking, you push at him. He pulls away immediately. "What? Are you okay?"
"Yes—just— " You manuever him, and he lets you, until he is flat on his back, and you are above him, knees to either side. If he has any problems with the sudden coup, you'd never know it from the unabashed delight on his face. And this is good. The delight is good, obviously, and so is everything else. You can see his face from here, but there's distance. Further-than-kissing-distance.
It's stupid. The whole rule is stupid, but it's a rule you've engineered, and so now this a necessary precaution. It's already been agony not kissing him tonight, and you know better than to think it'll be any easier once he's inside you.
You start with a slow grind. It's slick, almost frictionless with how wet you are, which is wet enough that he almost slides in every time the head passes over your entrance. You don't last long before reaching down and lining him up, and taking him in, in one long, not-quite-patient motion.
"Okay?" he asks, like always.
"Yeah." You are jelly-limbed on top of him, so relaxed from two orgasms that you don't particularly have it in you to do anything but take him all the way to the base. "It's good. I'm good." He twitches inside you, and you take a deep, shuddery breath. "It's a lot," you admit. "It never stops being a lot. You'd think I'd be used to it by now."
"Yeah. I know," he says. Some distant part of your brain wants to point out the ridiculousness of that claim. "But you can take it."
His hand settles lower on your waist, your hips, until his thumb can reach your clit. At the touch, you let out a slow, shuddery breath, and lower yourself forward, pressing your torso flush to his. His other arm winds around your waist, hand resting on your back.
His hands on your hips follow you—not urging in any particular direction, just holding, keeping his thumb on your clit as you start to move against him.
You start slow. You cannot stay slow for long. Not after an entire evening of wanting and waiting and close but not quite. You are relieved and you are desperate, and as you properly pick up the pace he begins to meet each movement of your hips with an upstroke of his own.
You shouldn't be able to come again so soon. You shouldn't even be able to get close.
But the angle. And the length of him. The weight. The sounds he's making against the side of your head, into your hair, and the steady circles he's rubbing into your clit; and his other hand on the small of your back, where it had rested when he hugged you tonight.
"You can take it," he repeats, more quietly now that his mouth is at a level with your ear, and the softness in his voice is indirect opposition to the way he is now fucking up into you from below. "I know you can. You always take it so well for me." You make a noise into his neck—asking, pleading—and you feel him nod. "You do, you do, you know you do, you always—you feel so good."
You're close. You're close, but not tipping over, because it is too soon for that, after all. But you are on the edge, you're riding the edge for longer than you thought possible, you just can't reach it.
"Can you," you say. It's muffled into his neck; you turn your head, slightly. "I need—fuck. I need."
The hand on your back slides up to your neck, holding. Grasping. The lightest pressure. "Here?"
"Yes. Yes, but." You grab at his other arm, pulling, so that your clit is pressed against his pelvis rather than his hand, and you guide that hand to your hip, your thigh.
He grabs, letting you feel where each finger indents the softest part of your ass. "Like this?"
"Yeah. Yes. And can you." You cling to him tighter. "Can you—hit."
He hesitates only briefly. The first smack is tentative. Light. Barely enough to make a sound.
"Harder." He tries again, and you hear the snap of it, in between the slap of his hips against yours. "Harder, please, please."
The third time is a proper slap, loud. It stings just right, just enough, an anchor amidst the overwhelming pleasure, and you nod into his shoulder with a little cry, again, again, and he hears you and he does it again and you come, hard.
When you start coming down from the high, he's still driving into you. The hand on your ass is rubbing, soothing, gentle back and forth.
"Thank you," you mumble, the words half-slurred against him. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."
He's getting close too, you think. His moans are getting louder, his thrusts less controlled. You get your hands on his chest and press up to sitting, looking down at him.
His face is flushed. Rosy. Glasses fogged. His lips are parted, and he isn't bothering to censor any of the sounds coming from it, and you want so badly to lean down and swallow those sounds, and that is the one thing you cannot do, and you think you might lose your mind a little.
With what little wherewithal you have left, you reach down, covering his mouth with your hand. It doesn't actually do much to muffle him. You really don't mind. He's still looking at you. His eyes are fixed on yours, above your hand, his brows drawn. You feel something enormous in your chest. It beats at your ribs from the inside. It's too much. It's too much. You can't take him looking at you like that.
You lean down, and you press your lips against the back of your own hand.
His hips stutter. He moans, low and louder than ever, so much so that you feel it in your chest and your hips and your palm through to your lips, and he comes into you hard and long with your hand against his mouth.
-
Sixteen years ago
Anyone who ever said senior year of high school is for coasting was lying. You've never had more work in your life. It's like your teachers are assigning you more in order to ward off senioritis. Like it even matters. Except it does matter, of course, because you need to keep your grades up in order to not lose your scholarship to Berkley, which is why you are now essentially flat on your stomach, cheek to carpet, hand smushed against your mouth, trying to dig out an essay from months and months ago that your AP Lit teacher for some reason wants you to rewrite.
"Aha!" You emerge with a bulging blue D-ring binder, triumphant. You wrinkle your nose at the dust bunnies clinging to your hand. Whatever. You found what you needed to find. You drop the binder on the floor, shake off your hand, and flop back on the bed.
The phone rings. You grab it without looking. "You've reached—"
"It's me."
"Colt! It's been too long."
"Ha, ha," Ryland says dryly. "You know that joke is even funnier the hundred and fifth time."
"Don't be pissy," you say. "What's up? I can grab Josh's dorm number from the kitchen, hang on, but you seriously have to write it down this time—"
"I'm calling for you. What color is your dress?"
"What?"
"Your prom dress. What color is it."
"Uh. I don't have one yet. Why?"
"So I can make sure my tie matches. I know that's a big deal, or whatever."
"…I wasn't aware that you were coming to prom. To my prom."
"Are you going with someone else?"
You've been asked, a few times. You haven't given any of your would-be dates an answer. "No."
"Cool, so just let me know when you pick a dress. I think I need to order the corsage or whatever ahead of time."
"You're coming to prom—"
"I'm taking you, yeah. Catch up."
"Will your girlfriend mind?"
He pauses. "Why would she mind? She knows we've been friends forever."
"Right. Is school….I mean, like, how are things? Otherwise?"
Someone shouts at him from off the phone. "Fuck off," he says to them, his voice muffled—and then he's back, close in your ear. "Look, I've got to go. Just tell my mom when you find a dress."
"I will. Bye, Ryland."
You hold the phone to your ear for a few seconds after he hangs up. Then you press it to your chest. You look at yourself in the mirror, tilting your head as though the version of you on the other side will have some kind of answers to the questions you are too afraid to even ask.
"It's not a big deal," you tell yourself, out loud, as you put the phone back in its cradle.
It isn't a big deal. He has a girlfriend. It wouldn't be a big deal even if he didn't have a girlfriend, because it's just Ryland. Ryland, calling to hold up his end of a pinky promise he made you six years ago.
You flop back on the bed, reaching up to try and touch your toes as your brain continues its crusade. It's just you. It's just Ryland. It's just prom. You've been friends since before you even knew what prom or a date even were. Nothing that could happen over the course of a single night could ever change that.
-
Now
You are once again on your back, a pillow under your hips and a blanket over you. During some of your less-horizontal hookups (see: bar bathroom, office desk, car), you've been giving yourself over to gravity's whims without worrying about it too much. Since you have access to an actual bed this time, though, you feel as though you might as well at least try following r/TryingForABaby's advice.
As though reading your mind, he says, "I can't believe it took us this long to reach an actual bed."
"Hm." You look around the master bedroom, as much as you can look around. The only light is from the moon and the streetlamps outside, filtered through the curtains into a gauzy silver glow. "You know what I can't believe? I think this is the only room in your house I'd never been in before."
"Yeah?" You hear his head shift on the pillow. "Yeah. I guess you're right. It's weird, right? The master bedroom. It took me a full year or something to move all of my stuff in."
"You spent a year in the bunk beds?"
"It was nice," he says defensively. "I'd never had the top bunk before. Colt always called dibs." He pauses. "And then I rolled off my first night, and I never used it again."
"Ouch."
"Took my tailbone two weeks to recover." He nudges your hip with his hand. It's almost funny, how tentative he becomes in the immediate aftermath. He'll touch you, sure. He'll squeeze your hand, and stroke your hair; but the two of you don't really cuddle. You take it as another sign that you are on the same page about what this all is. Casual. Or, if not casual, then purposeful. Strictly business, as he'd joked the first time. "Speaking of, are your knees okay?"
"What, from being on top? I'm not actually that old, you know. You may be ancient, but some of us are still a young and sprightly thirty-four."
"No, I mean. Back at the bar." His hand twitches, down, like he's going to touch your knee and then thinks better of it. "I shouldn't have let you do that."
"Let me?"
"At least if we were here, you could have had a pillow, something—"
You wave a hand. "I've been on my knees in worse places. Don't worry about it."
"Where could possibly be worse than concrete?"
"A frat basement, for starters."
It comes out harsher than you mean. Not in tone. It's the nakedness of the words, dropped into the silence like a stone into a pond. The room swallows them whole.
I didn't mean that, you want to say—but, of course, you did. That's the problem. You meant it. You meant it a lot, and you meant a lot by it. It's accusation and absolution, all in one. It's permission. It means look at what you did to me (that's not fair, you know, because what did he do, really, except kiss you one time and then decide he didn't want to anymore?). It means you could do anything to me, anything you want, and I would still let you after all this time.
"That sounds uncomfortable," he says.
So he doesn't remember, then.
That shouldn't be disappointing. It shouldn't be. It's the kind of thing that should fade after a few years, let alone sixteen; the kind of thing you are embarrassed for still remembering after so long. And, anyway, you don't actually want to fight.
Still, it feels like swallowing something when you speak again. "I didn't mind. That's my point. Did you like it?"
"Obviously."
"Great. So did I. So it's all good." This time, you nudge his hip. "I'm pretty tough, you know. I won't break, if you're a little rough with me."
"Okay," he says. "Well, that's not the bar."
"Yeah, I know. I took the bar ages ago. Passed it my first try."
"You—" The joke makes him laugh, once, curtly, dragging a hand down over his face. Unfortunately, it doesn't derail his train of thought. "I mean, the bar for this," he says, gesturing between the two of you, "isn't I don't mind, or I won't break. That's not good enough. I can't do this if you're not getting anything out of it."
You push your lower lip into a moue. "I feel like it's pretty clear what I'm getting out of it."
"You know what I mean. If you're not going to enjoy it, then I can go out to the grocery store and pick up a turkey baster right now. That's part of the point, to me. "
"I am. Enjoying it. That's why I asked for it, all of it. And I thought you had a very strict BYOB policy."
"If you want a turkey baster, I will make sure you get a turkey baster."
"You've always tried to give me exactly what I wanted, huh?"
"Yeah, well. There were times when I could have done a better job."
“You." You roll over onto your side to look at him. "You do realize you're currently giving me a baby? A whole baby. That’s—I mean, it’s crazy I asked. It’s crazy you said yes.”
“It’s not that crazy.”
You flop back onto the mattress. You stare at the ceiling. “It’s pretty crazy."
"Maybe. But I don't mind." He goes quiet, in the way that you know means he's thinking about something. "I don't mind. Was that the bar with. Your ex. The big one. Did he—"
"Ryland."
"Yes?"
"We just."
"I know."
"Do you really want me to go into the details of my sex life with my ex-husband."
"On a personal level? No. But for research purposes of what does and doesn't work for you—"
"Okay, so Reddit doesn't count as research, but me telling you my memory verbally, off the cuff, does?" You keep your tone light. You are passing the light tone test with flying colors. "Eyewitness testimony is famously untrustworthy, you know. And, um. I don't really remember much of it, anyway."
"That sounds like a cop out."
"It's not," you say, and your tone is still light but with an undercurrent you can't control, and you know he hears it because he stops saying anything at all. "Um. I remember some things, but for the most part its fuzzy. I think I blocked a lot of it out." You laugh, quiet. Bitter. "I do remember that he wanted kids."
"That…makes sense. Seems like the kind of thing you should agree on, to get married."
"We didn't, though. Agree." The ceiling fan spins lazily overhead. "You asked me, ages ago, what caused the divorce. That's what it was."
Not the other stuff, you don't say, because you know you don't have to say it for him to hear it.
"We'd talked about it back when we were dating," you say instead. "We'd decided that we didn't want them. And then our last year together, I guess he changed his mind. Which, you know, he was allowed to do, what do you know when you're twenty, but he didn't. He didn't really tell me? It was just."
You have to think about what you say next. It's not the first time you've used the words, but it's the first time in a while, and the first time here, in the dark, with a body that was just inside you and is now an inch and a half away. You can hear him breathing. It's quiet, but you can hear it, and it's occasionally sending you back to a different bed, next to a different body, with a ring still on your finger, and it's making you lose the thread of the story.
You dig a nail into your palm. You coax yourself back.
You are here, in this room, next to the person you are next to. You find the thread of the story. You pull at it until the words unravel in the order you'd decided on several years ago, when you needed to explain this to your brother and your therapist and your journal in a way that would not make you cry.
"My birth control kept on not being where I'd left it, which I thought was just. You know. Me. Being forgetful." This was a place for people to laugh, you'd decided, when you'd practiced the telling of it. He doesn't laugh. No one ever does. "And then we had a scare, so finally I just decided to get my tubes tied, and he wouldn't sign off on it. Husbands still have to, apparently, did you know that? Like we were in the fifteen hundreds."
You sort of laugh. He doesn't.
"Anyway, he wouldn't give his permission, or whatever, and we fought about it, and I remember the next day—I mean, I'd barely slept, we were arguing all night—and I was just too exhausted to really feel angry anymore, and instead I just had this weird mixture of dread and relief, and I wasn't sure what the relief part was, until the next day I was taking the subway home and I saw this baby. A cute one. Like, Gerber baby cute. And I thought oh, maybe I do want kids one day, but not with Tyler."
The room is silent.
"Just. That easy. Just sitting on the 6 like, Astor Place is next, and also I don't want to have a baby with my husband. It was the most honest thought I'd had in years. And I knew if I went home, I wouldn't have that kind of clarity again, and my birth control would keep going missing, and the next scare wouldn't just be a scare, and I'd have to stop working, and—I don't know."
You press the heels of your hands to your eyes.
"Maybe I was being dramatic. But I got off the train at Grand Central, and instead my normal transfer I caught the Metro-North—God, I didn't even buy a ticket, just got on the train. It was so stupid, I almost cried when the conductor came up, because I didn't have enough cash on me and I didn't. I didn't want it to show up on the credit card. In case. But yeah, I showed up at Josh's door at, like, one in the morning, and. Everything after was a mess, obviously."
Your hands are still against your face. You don't say anything for what is less than two seconds, but feels like much longer, because you don't trust your voice to be steady.
Sorry," you say. Your voice isn't quite where you want it, but if you don't talk then he is going to talk, and you're not sure you're ready to hear what he may or may not say. "Sorry, none of that is what you asked, like, at all, I really just don't remember a lot of the other stuff, sex, and what I liked, or if I really like—I mean, we met when I was eighteen. All of my."
You pause. It is a short pause. It does not feel short. The room is silent. The room is roaring with the fan and the blood in your ears and the sound of him listening.
"Most of my firsts happened in that relationship," you say, carefully. "So. I don't know that I'll ever be able to parse out exactly what I would have liked, on my own, if I hadn't met him. But, um. When I started dating again, after the divorce, a while after, sometimes I would just. Go somewhere else. In the middle of it. And turns out a little bit of pain is really good for, like, reminding yourself that you have a body. It makes it easier to stay in the moment. And I do think it feels good, genuinely, but it's a little bit of a chicken-or-egg situation as to how much I just like it organically, and how much it's a matter of function, because now it's both."
He doesn't say anything.
"Apparently that's normal," you say. Reassuring him, maybe. Reassuring yourself. "Josh made me see this therapist, the year after. I was staying with him for a while, and—anyway. She said that's normal. That, and the memory gaps, too, after. Um. All of that."
There's a long, long silence.
Then he says, pleasantly, "I could kill him."
"Ryland."
"I'm not angry. I'm just stating it as fact. I really could kill him."
"Ryland."
"You wouldn't believe the stuff I have to MacGyver for labs, half the time I'm worried I'm going to accidentally make chlorine gas and poison the whole science wing. Or decapitate myself with a Rube Goldberg. Or something." You don't say anything. "Josh would help. Colt, too. I'm sure he'd have some great ideas. It's basically his job to get set on fire."
"Yeah."
"I probably shouldn't be telling you this. You should have plausible deniability, in case we need a lawyer."
"Josh is already a lawyer."
"Yeah, but he shouldn't defend himself. Not for such a grisly crime."
You crack a smile, finally. A tiny one. It feels a bit like tasting clear air after months of breathing nothing but ash. "I don't practice criminal law. You know that, right? It's important to me that you know that."
"You're smart. You'd pick it up."
"Pass." You twist your head in the direction of the wall clock. You can't make it out in the dark, but you still say, "It's late. I should get going soon."
"You know you can stay over, right?"
"Fine. But I call dibs on the top bunk," you say. You hear him chuckle. The sound, more than the joke, makes you smile. "No, look, I know you have an early start."
"Tomorrow? It's a bank holiday."
"Oh. Right. Well, I probably have to. I mean, there's always stuff in the office to." You shake your head. "Just give me ten more minutes of pillow time, and I'll be out of your hair."
Two seconds. Three. "Okay."
You chew on the inside of your cheek. "And I'm sorry for—" You press your hands back against your eyes, and are relieved to find them only a little wet. "All of that. Um. I don't know what—"
"Hey. Hey." His hand, touching the back of your wrist. Gently. Tentatively. You let him pull your hand away from your face. "It's okay. I mean, it's not okay that any of that—but you—you being here is okay. Whatever you want to talk about is okay."
Your hand curls back, out of his. Away from him. "I don't really want to talk about it anymore."
"That's okay too."
"Thanks," you say softly. It's all you can manage.
You sit in deafening silence for about a minute, and then: "If you don't want to talk, I actually." He claps—quiet—then gets up. "This is perfect."
He's only half-lit by the moon through the curtains as he hops around, trying to tug on a pair of pajama pants while he talks, and only half-succeeding at either. It shouldn't be charming. You are, regrettably, charmed.
"I found, while I was unpacking more boxes—attic boxes, not moving—the point is." He points at you. "Don't go anywhere."
"Wasn't planning on it." Even as you say it, you mentally track your shoes, on the floor; and your underwear, next to them; and your purse, abandoned on the couch on your way to the bedroom. You had your fair share of one-night stands, following the divorce, in between all the bad first dates and dead-end short-term relationships. You know how to make an exit.
He comes back holding a box before you can make an exit, and with his elbow manages to flip on the nightstand lamp. You both wince and blink furiously. When your eyes have more or less adjusted to the light, he is sitting very carefully on the edge of the bed.
"What's this?" you ask.
"Just some light reading." He takes something black and rectangular out of the box, and passes it to you. "Mom was religious about this stuff. Even when she was in the hospital, she'd have us bring these huge sterilite boxes of all of her craft stuff, and she would just go to town."
You open the scrapbook.
It starts off with baby pictures, of course. Too young for even you to tell the twins apart. Pictures of them with their mother. Not as you last saw her, but as you remember her. Pictures of them with their dad, who you never met.
Ryland—adult Ryland, real Ryland, the Ryland in the room with you—is still sitting on the edge of the bed, not touching you. You have spent most of the evening, you realize, with his hand on your waist or your wrist or your hair. The absence is strange. You gnaw on the inside of your cheek. "You look like you're about to fall off the bed," you say.
He hesitates. "You seemed like you might want some space."
You nod him over with a roll of your eyes. "Get over here."
He gets over there, sitting close enough next to you to look over your shoulder, while still leaving an inch or two of space.
"You can skip ahead," he says, reaching over. In leaning in, his other arm goes back behind you, resting across the headboard. He doesn't touch you. He also doesn't pull away when you lean against him. It isn't much a conscious decision as an inevitable one. You are tired, and he is warm and solid behind you, and you are still stubbornly clinging onto the belief that you can accept casual intimacy from him without drowning in want.
Pages flip. Photos of you. You, Ryland, Colt, Josh. Just the boys. Just you and the twins. Every possible configuration thereof. Running through sprinklers, and singing in school concerts, and holding up trick-or-treat hauls with gap-toothed triumph. Riding bikes. Falling off bikes. Graduations—yours, in addition to theirs. Elementary to middle school. Middle to high school. Wedding photos throughout—the boys in suits, you in a flower girl dress. The boys in suits, you in a puffy teal junior bridesmaid dress. The boys in suits, you in floor-length bronze satin.
Before high school graduation, there's a few of just you and Ryland. Bronze satin, again, but you're visibly younger, the both of you baby-faced in a way that, by your twenties, had already begun to fade. The living room as background. The window. The coffee table. The couch you straddled him on two and a half weeks ago.
Ryland, slipping white roses onto your wrist.
Ryland, standing behind you with hands, his and yours, clasped around your waist.
Ryland, seconds later, smiling down at you while you look into the camera.
"It makes you think," he says. "Thirty plus years. The photos make the memories more tactile, but they're just fragments. Moments of moments. There's so much stuff that happens in between that we just…forget."
"Yeah." You try to flip back to safe territory—bikes, suits, teal dress—and realize that such a thing doesn't exist. There is no safe territory. There is no part of your life, really, that he hasn't been present for, and vice versa, except for a decade in the middle that you can barely remember and would, most of the time, rather forget.
You close the book. You close your eyes.
You'll leave soon, you tell yourself. You'll go home. Sleep in your own bed. It's just that his chest is warm beneath your cheek, and his heart is steady beneath your ear, and you are so, so tired of pretending you want anything different.
"Yeah," you say. "Who even remembers that far back, anyway."
-
Twenty two years ago
Your cheek is on his chest. His arms are around your waist. He is treating the dance like it might get him seasick. It has been the most awkward minute and forty five seconds of your life.
You have never been happier.
Every other step, his chin grazes the top of your head. It's a thrill every time. Ryland hit his growth spurt late—they both did, both twins—and you're still not quite accustomed to the height difference. You're pretty sure he isn't, either. Not the way Colt is.
But then, Colt has never been anything but perfectly at home in his own body. Colt is athletic, graceful, controlled. Ryland is, physically, none of these things. Ryland's posture is so bad that even his smile is crooked. Ryland trips over his own feet about as often as Colt trips over words while reading. It's like whoever split them up in utero did it intentionally off-kilter. Yin and yang. Unbalanced-ly balanced.
All this to say: Colt was a great dance partner. Ryland has spent the past minute and forty-five seconds swaying side to side so stiffly its like he's barely moving at all, like he's being controlled by someone who has just been gifted a marionette and is trying very hard not to tangle the strings. He has also managed to step on your shiny patent leather shoes no fewer than seven times. It is not a very long song to begin with. He has been dancing with you for half of it.
You are relieved for your shoes, and otherwise disappointed, when the slow number is replaced by something upbeat. The adults around you seem excited enough. Your mother breaks out of the very long, very involved kiss she had been planting on her new husband to punch her hands up in the air and cheer, and allow the bridesmaids (Colt and Ryland's mother among them) to drag her to the center of the floor.
You and Ryland are in a corner of the dance floor, and for a few seconds he just stands there, so you also just stand there. You have spent what feels like a lifetime trying to copy Ryland Grace. What's a few more seconds?
"That wasn't even a whole song," he finally says.
You look at him. He looks and sounds neutral—bored, in that way he began affecting pretty much as soon as he turned thirteen—so it's difficult to know if he means the remark as a complaint or a statement or what.
"Maybe," you begin carefully, "we can do this again the next time my mom gets married."
"Okay," he agrees. His voice is still irritatingly level. There's a brief pause, and then, faster: "That might never happen, though. I overheard her telling my mom that this was the last time."
You'll believe that when you see it. Your mother is beautiful, and gregarious, and loving, and works as a flight attendant. She has no shortage of men interested in her, and no shortage of interest in men. But it feels disloyal to say that (even to Ryland, who has seen all of this firsthand and thus knows it to be true), so you settle for a noncommittal shrug.
"We'll dance at prom," he says.
You look up at him. He's looking very determinedly at something on his shirt sleeve. His glasses are sliding down his nose. Those are new, too; he's still figuring out how to wear them. "Prom?"
"When we're in high school."
"Yeah, but my prom or your prom? We're in different grades, genius."
"Either. Both."
"What if you have a girlfriend? She'll want you to take her to prom."
"Ew." He scrunches up his nose. His glasses take this as an opportunity to go skydiving. By some miracle (the miracle being the strap his mom makes him attach to the arms of them, ever since that time he broke two pairs in as many days), they stay more or less on-slash-around his head. "I'm never getting a girlfriend."
Your heart sinks. "Okay." You chew your bottom lip, savoring the taste of the bubble-gum lipgloss your mom let the makeup artist use on you. That's one nice thing about your mom's weddings, is getting to feel pretty for a day. You can't wait to grow up and wear lipstick. "Well, I might have a boyfriend."
"Ugh. Fine. If you don't have a boyfriend, then I’ll take you to prom.”
"Promise?" You stick out your pinky finger. It's the kind of thing that, at twelve, you're sort of too old for, and that Ryland, at thirteen, is definitely too old for. He indulges you anyway. He always indulges you. Ryland's never done anything but give you exactly what you wanted.
"Promise," he says—then immediately lets go of your hand, like the indignity of doing a pinky promise as a teenager is causing him physical pain. You half expect him to wipe it off on the leg of his dress pants. He doesn't. He still doesn't look at you, either. "I can't believe I'm coming in second place to some guy you don't even know yet."
"Third place," you say. Finally, he looks at you. It's like a family-sized pack of glitter bursts in your chest. You try to keep any of it from showing in your eyes. Instead, you tilt your head, hoping your smile reads as mischievous rather than smitten. "Colt was born first.'
And then you run. You take off running past the dance floor; past the round tables with the lavender centerpieces you picked out; past sitting adults, whose reprimands Doppler away from you at lightspeed. You know he's following close behind. You know that when he catches you (he can, if he doesn't trip first), he'll grab your hand, and the thought of it makes you so giddy that you're tempted to let a hand trail behind.
