& spend the night with a stranger like me.
Ryder had been out to a costume party the night before, deciding not to go out again since he didn’t have the money for drink or even the energy to brave another party. He loved Halloween and dressing up but he was done for this year, he’d already gotten rid of one hangover, he didn’t need another one tomorrow too. So he’d stayed in to watch scary movies and chill while Jake had gone out to who knows where. The two were practically best friends but they didn’t tend to share too many details with each other, their friendship worked on a simple basis where they were just chill with each other. It made their life easy and the rent half as cheap.
He was in the middle of Scary Movie, a comedic break considering the films he’d watched already, when he heard the buzzer go. He paused the film, dragging himself from the couch before heading across to answer it.
“Ki-“ He tried to cut her off to tell her that Jake wasn’t in before she continued ranting. He knew he’d probably never get a word in and the intercom system wasn’t exactly clear, it crackled and cut out at random moments so he just buzzed her in, deciding he’d explain it to her once she got to the door. He had no idea where Jake was, he’d figured that he’d have been with Kitty but the dude clearly had other plans.
He waited for the knock at the door that would let him know when Kitty had made it to their apartment before going to open it. “Woah.” He couldn’t help but comment as he opened the door and saw the angel costume she had on. The high heels she was wearing made her legs look impossibly long (despite her only being tiny, at least compared to him anyway) and the halo and wings definitely added to the whole look she had going on. It was a vast difference to the baggy sweats and t-shirt combo that Ryder was wearing for his film marathon on the couch.
“Jake’s not here.” He told her, not having the exact details of his whereabouts even if Kitty wanted them. “He went out to some party like an hour ago, I figured he was meeting you but obviously not since you’re here and he’s not.”
He paused, unsure of what to do now. Was Kitty just gonna leave again? Did she want to wait here for Jake? “You can come in if you like.” Ryder decided to offer, figuring he might as well give her the choice. Besides she’d made it all the way here, it seemed like a waste of effort if she was only going to turn around and go back again.
Kitty and Jake had been together for a little over a year, but sometimes it felt like longer – and not exactly in the good way. Not in the “wow, they’re so attached it’s like they’ve been together all their lives” sense. More in the, “I think we give each other a bigger headache than we’re willing to admit” way. They bickered, and tended to ignore the bickering by focusing on making out and hooking up instead. She knew it wasn’t the way to handle life’s problems, especially considering the revolving door of guys she’d witnessed her own mother wheeling through all her life, but she didn’t know what else she was supposed to do, exactly.
And so, she avoided.
Kitty Wilde was an avoider, even when she knew it wasn’t the right thing to be.
And among the things she avoided was Ryder Lynn. Not that he was, like, terrible or anything like that, it was more the fact that he was kind of, well… a nuisance.
He was Jake’s best friend, which meant that already spent more time with him than she would ever normally care to, and it seemed more and more lately than whenever Jake wasn’t around, Ryder was. There had been a divide forming between Jake and Kitty for a while now, and it was one of those instances that she couldn’t quite put her finger on – and because of that, it was yet another situation that she tended to avoid.
Some part of her, however naïve that may be, had sort of hoped that tonight could change things between the two of them. Maybe they could go out, and have fun, and actually remember for a few seconds what it had been like when they’d first started dating.
It didn’t seem like that was going to be happening any time soon, though, and that was embarrassing. Standing on Jake’s doorstep was embarrassing. Speaking into an intercom and telling Jake about how she couldn’t believe he had stood her up was embarrassing.
The door buzzed open and Kitty breathed out a sigh of relief for her moments of embarrassing finally fading out in the distance, muttering a “Thank god,” under her breath and making her way into the building. She stepped into the elevator and went up to Jake and Ryder’s floor, knocking on the door as soon as she approached, and realizing that she had spoken way too soon on that whole “embarrassment being over” thing.
Because it only got more embarrassing the moment the door opened and she found herself not face-to-face with Jake, but with Ryder.
She froze up after a moment, biting down on her lip and taking a step back when she heard Ryder informing her that Jake had gone to a party, and Jake wasn’t there. And of course he hadn’t told Kitty, because why would he? That didn’t seem to be the way he did things anymore.
“Oh,” she said, clearing her throat and brushing her hair away from her face, straightening her stance and making sure that it didn’t look like she was caught off-guard. Because she was Kitty Wilde, and she could handle this. She could handle anything. She was Kitty Wilde, damn it.
“Of course he’s not,” she added on after a second, crossing her arms over her chest and just as quickly uncrossing them. She didn’t have anything to do tonight. How could she not have anything to do tonight?
Why hadn’t she made a back-up plan?
Ryder was inviting her inside, and Kitty told herself that it was the sheer reason that she didn’t want to spend Halloween all alone that she followed him inside. “Only because the creeps are out and I don’t really feel like going back to my apartment with letches waiting to see what’s under my halo,” she muttered, because that was, of course, her excuse. There was no other reason!
“What are you doing, anyway?” she asked, stepping into the apartment and looking over her shoulder at him. “Shouldn’t you be trick-or-treating with the rest of the ten-year-old boys?”
