I'm So Glad I Found You : Quintis Fic

The Thing About Trust

"So Ralph, what did Sage actually do to help you out?" Toby asked Ralph as he slid into the front seat after Sage got out for school.

"There were lots of kids that were not very accepting of a genius, especially one that didn’t talk a lot. I just usually ignored them, but I guess one day Sage saw them picking on me and understood why, so she sort of… threatened to shove their heads in a toilet if they didn’t quit.  Sage was like our size at the time and they were still terrified, it was so funny.” Ralph started laughing after remembering the puny first graders shaking in fear. He calmed himself down a little bit before he continued on with his story, “Colby was with her, so he's the one that probably scared them, cause he was basically a giant. So everyday when my mom dropped me off at school, Sage and Colby would walk me to and from class, sometimes skipping their own classes to walk me to lunch," Ralph said, intertwining his fingers that were resting in his lap.

"She's a great girl Ralph, a really good friend," Toby said, pulling out into the streets while avoiding the oncoming cars.

"Uncle Toby?" Ralph started, grabbing Toby's attention, "Sage doesn't want to tell you anything because she's scared, just like those first graders. Not only because she doesn't trust you, but because you are the person she trusts the most, besides Colby of course. She doesn't want to tell you something that might risk her losing someone she trusts. I don’t know exactly what she’s hiding, but if she is the same person I knew two years ago, then whatever she doesn’t want to share... it’s probably serious," Ralph says, looking over at Toby to catch his reaction.

"What do you mean?" Toby asks, looking at him a second, before turning his attention back to the road.

"She's afraid that if she tells you the truth and gives you what she thinks you want, then you'll just dump her somewhere and not care about her anymore since you already got what you wanted from her. She's afraid that your acting, and she doesn't want to find out if she’s right. She’d rather run away than let someone let her down again," Ralph explains.

"How do you know all this?" Toby asks, eyeing him suspiciously.

"Colby told me. I was wondering why she was acting cold and mean sometimes or why she would always leave when I asked her certain questions when I was younger. So I asked Colby what I did wrong and he explained to me that she cared about me and didn't want to loose me. Eventually though, she stopped being so secretive and calmed down a bit. So I think it goes the same for you and the rest of the team," Ralph says.

"I think I understand where you're coming from, but we both know that we won't do that to her, how can we get her to see that?" Toby asks to himself, along with Ralph since he was also in the car.

"We could just give her time. Eventually she started to trust that I was going to stick around, not like I could go anywhere, but still," Ralph said, shrugging his shoulders.

"So how long do you think it will take?" Toby asks.

"I'd say, no more than two weeks," Ralph says with a shrug of his shoulders like it was nothing.

"Two weeks! That's a long time Ralph," Toby says with wide eyes as he pulls up to his school and getting in line behind all the other cars.

"I said, ‘no more’...than two weeks" he said, getting out of the car and pulling his backpack on over his shoulders.

"Bye Toby," he called, running towards the school building so he wouldn’t miss class.

"Bye. Love ya," he yelled after him, watching him wave bye to him from the school entrance. It was kind of sad. He's always wanted to know what it was like to be a dad, and Ralph is the closest he was ever going to get probably.