Strictly Platonic

Seventeen Years Old

Cassie sat on the countertop while Ryan folded his clothes. He had a new load going in one of the washers behind them. The clothes wooshed around in the metal cylinder with foamy soap bubbles rising to the top of the water. It was like watching an aquarium, but the fish had been replaced with shirts and pants.

"So, how does it feel?" he asked her as he carefully arranged a pile of shirts.

They were the only ones in the laundry mat, but then again, it was rearing on eleven o'clock at night. Anyone doing laundry at this time of night was either a "night owl" or trying to squeeze in chores whenever possible. In the case of Ryan Wilton, it was a little bit of both.

"What's that?" she said, picking at the dirt beneath her fingernails.

She had taken up soccer in the past couple of months. Not necessarily for the sport, she actually hated the competitiveness part of it, but she liked the exercise and social aspects.

He looked over at her. "To be seventeen?"

"Oh, yeah, that." She shrugged. "Like I'm sixteen, except now I can get my license."

"You already have a license."

"My full license."

He sloppily folded another shirt. "Right."

The air was palpable with an unasked question, something that had been on Cassie's mind for all too long. She longed to ask, but then again, some things were inappropriate to talk about. At least, that's what her mom told her. Cassie didn't believe that existed with Ryan. He was the kind of person she could talk to about anything. There was no fear of judgement or being inappropriate. At the same time, though, she doubted that very much. She constantly thought about what she said to him and how she said and how it might be perceived by him. That was difficult to do considering Ryan was a difficult person to understand.

"How's Megan?" she eventually asked once her concerns had become internally burdensome.

His jaw tightened. "Uh...we broke up."

"Oh no," she said in a voice that almost conveyed sadness. "Why, what happened?"

"Just weren't seeing eye to eye on some things. She kept accusing me of things that I didn't do, calling me names I don't like to be called."

"Like what?"

He glanced at her for a moment before going to check the nearby dryer for some of his clothes. "Nothing."

She narrowed her eyes at him, but he pretended not to see it. "Come on, you can tell me."

A harsh sigh slipped past his lips. "She kept...uhm...calling me a 'pedophile' and stuff like that, yeah. It wasn't exactly my preference for a nickname or anything." He tried to smile, but there wasn't much for him to laugh at other than the awkwardness between them.

"Was it because of me?" Cassie asked, trying to sound as if it were an off-handed question. As if it were something she had just thought of out of the blue and not something she'd been thinking from the beginning.

"Kind of, but nothing you did or anything. It's nothing you should feel bad about." He grabbed some jeans from the dryer and started folding them to keep his hand preoccupied. "She just...uh...didn't like how much time we spent together. She wasn't a fan of me being in your company."

She nodded, going back to her fingernails even though they were picked clean. "I guess that explains the other weekend."

He just looked at her for a long time before nodding.

She leaned back against the stout ledge and looked up at the ceiling. The tiles were pale grey and cheap, almost like Styrofoam squares. Little flakes rained down when the wind was heavy or if the ceiling fans were running rapidly. The fluorescent lights made them seem duller than they actually were, and the lights flickered, the entire place seemed duller than it was. As if it could be gone one day and no one would be the wiser.