come home to my heart

iv. Blaze in the dark

"This is insane."

In hindsight, Ricky pacing back and forth in front of his TV set after telling him his mistakes with Gina couldn't be resolved with someone else, it constituted a normal day ending with a y. It seemed since the curly-haired beauty had danced her way into their lives last fall she'd been turning East High on its head and making Ricky completely lose his in ways that couldn't be explained. It had nearly become a new normal, at least to Red.

"Is it?" Red asks with a skeptical raised brow. The redhead skater relaxes further into his comfortable armchair while Ricky pauses in front of the screen.

"I mean of course Lily isn't Gina, she doesn't hate my guts." Ricky exhaustedly explains. Red ponders his words and winces, finding himself agreeing. "I'm pretty sure I hate her." Ricky finishes and at that, Red snorts.

"No, you don't."

Ricky bites his lip and feels his face sour in annoyance, "Fine, I don't." He admits through gritted teeth.

Red's eyes widen, "Oh."

"What?" Ricky asks suddenly nervous, his eyes flittering between looking at his best friend and his skateboard by the staircase.

"I just-" Big Red starts, "I thought that was gonna be a lot harder to get you to admit."

Ricky sits with his words for a moment before he releases a sigh. "Well...I don't exactly like her at the moment."

"What?" Red shakes his head confused. Trying to get into Ricky's head was an impossible task even after all these years. It just seemed like a never-ending meltdown with desks and file cabinets burning was the true state of his mind of the curly-haired skater.

"She lied to me. Like at the start of all this. This whole time she never wanted to be-" Ricky struggles to find the words. That seemed to always be the case when he tried to define what Gina was to him.

"Can you for once finish a sentence?" Red exhaustedly sighs, falling back into the cushion.

"The point is she had an agenda from the very beginning and I can't trust her."  Ricky adamantly states while Red shakes his head, "And she's super mean to me now which doesn't help so." Ricky tilts his head in contemplation. It seemed the two couldn't really see eye to eye at the moment. In all honesty, it had seemed pretty maddening, how Gina went from someone that almost seemed like a mirror image of him to someone he couldn't dare begin to comprehend.

"You had an agenda at the start of all this too!" Red points out.

Ricky furrows his brows, "What are you talking about I never used G-"

"Does your little scheme to join the musical to win Nini back not ring any bells?"

"That wasn't a  scheme ." Ricky defensively says, crossing his arms over his chest. "That was just like my motive to join the musical or whatever it's not the same thing."

"It totally is. You and Gina were both in the wrong." Red sits up from his relaxed position while Ricky purses his lips and shakes his head.

"Fine, so me and Gina had some not-so-great plans last year." the senior relents with wide eyes. "She still hurt me." Ricky's fingers lightly graze the ring his mother had given him two winters ago.

Red's expression softens at his friend's discontented disposition, "Did she not apologize for that?"

"Well," Ricky starts, "Yeah." he admits trying to push all the uncomfortable feelings the reminder of the painful conversation they'd had months prior. The pain in his chest swells when he remembers Gina's tearful expression, when he remembers how his heart plummeted to his stomach as he walked away.