Ryder

Chapter 16

I go upstairs to my room to cool down.  I took a leaping step onto my low bed, thumping my back onto the too-hard mattress.  Deep breath in, deep breath out.  In.  Out.  I focus on the plain white ceiling.  I was being converted into a Ryder-hater.  My frustration towards her swirled and simmered inside of me, a bubbling pot of loathing.

It wasn't really the fact that she had made me look for her.  It wasn't that I was mad at her for making me run.  It was just so....I don't know.  I had began caring for her, then not caring, then caring again, then she scared me to death, then I hated her.  It was an endless cycle, and it would continue for as long as I let it.  I was so upset with her.  She put me through so many swings, so many emotional twists and turns.  She knew my issues, and had seen me break down completely.  I hated that.  I hated the idea that someone had seen me vulnerable, yet again.

 This girl would be the destruction of me.  She'd tear me limb from limb, and she already begun with my heart.  Arguably, the heart is not a limb, but it is a muscle which is vitally important to me, and I would've preferred to keep it safe for a bit.

I sucked in my neck, making it bony and tight.  I usually responded this way to anger.  I guess feeling the tenseness made me feel like I was doing something intense, which, for some reason, helped. 

I heard the front door downstairs open slowly.  I knew it had to be Ryder, because I had left the door unlocked, and there was only one pair of footsteps.  Either that, or it was a murderer.  But I would've heard Ryder scream if there was.  Besides, even if it was a murderer, that wouldn't make a difference.  I already felt dead inside.

The door closed, and it was as though I could sense her melancholy presence.  She was here, in this house, alone, with me.  My frustration grew at this realization.  This was my house, not hers.  She didn't belong here, for God's sake!  She only made things worse.  She brought back some of the feelings.  She ruined it all.  Everything.  In the past three weeks, she emotionally wrecked me.  My mind was now a nuclear bomb, and she was what would set it off. 

Her footsteps grew closer as she walked up the stairs.  Slowly, carefully.  The pitter-patter of her bare feet annoyed me.  Her coming upstairs annoyed me.  Her being in this house annoyed me.  Her breathing the same air as me annoyed me.  She reached the top of the landing, and I was so silent that I could hear her soft, shallow breaths as she stood outside my door.

"I'm sorry," Ryder said.  She didn't open the door.  She just stood outside, waiting.  In those two words, I heard many things.  Pain, sorrow, regret, tightness, weakness, pleading, guilt, and the sound of giving up.  Surrendering to my rage.  I didn't know whether or not she was crying, and I didn't particularly feel like finding out. 

There was yet another long pause.  I cleared my throat.  "Sorry," I began, "is a strange word."  She didn't respond to this, so I felt the need to continue.  "You go and do something terrible, or needy, or stupid, and when you reach the repercussions of those acts, you think you can just make it up with one word.  Sorry.  It's just a ridiculous concept to wrap your head around."

I sat up in bed.  "You think you can do this to me.  And it is not okay.  You messed with me, and I am angry."  My voice was tense, and I was having trouble keeping a nice, steady speaking voice.  I had to get this message across, and I had to let it set in.  She needed to get the idea.  "I am angry with you, Ryder.  For doing this to me.  You made things too complicated for me, when I have enough on my plate.  And saying one word cannot fix that, no matter how much we want it to."

I heard her draw in a breath, holding it out. 

"Okay."  Her footsteps lightened as she left to go back downstairs.  I felt the weight of the situation press down on my chest.  I propped my elbows onto my knees, and buried my face in my hands.  I lifted my forehead from my palms to look up at the ceiling, making a silent plea to the universe to fix all this madness. 

Music.  That would help.  I pulled out my phone, typed the passcode, and clicked the little orange music app.  I searched through my playlists, and finally settled upon one.  It was jokingly titled "Hipster Playlist", mostly because a.) I thought it was funny to imagine myself as a hipster, and b.) it was mostly music that no one really knew.  I wasn't a sort of mainstream-music person.  I didn't like the popular songs.  Take Foster The People, for instance.  Most people only know Pumped-Up Kicks.  But I know a lot of the songs on their other album, Torches, and that type of music just suited me more, especially songs like Houdini. 

And I guess that was just who I was.  I was the boy in the background.  I was the boy who the song could've been written about.  The lyrics just....described me.  It sounds so stupid, but for some reason it just wasn't.  And the upfront lyrics didn't describe me.  It was the meanings that were buried behind metaphors that described who I was.  I am Ryan Pohler, and I am the meaning that no one looks into.

Not really many people cared about me.  Sure, mum and dad and Sarah and I guess Ryder did, but not many others.  I was alone in this place.  And the one person who had seen all that pain and sorrow and anger come out was the one person who couldn't even open a door to face me.