Ghost Towns In The Ocean ☀︎ Ryden

10 | we'll hope for a good day

july 30th

- uhm there's like 4 days until i get to go see all time low with una and it'll be my second time seeing them and i met them back in june and im so FUCKCING excited. don't touch me.

anyways by the way the song this chapter is named after is an instrumental so i used a lyric from another song on this album (sleep by flatsound) and all the songs are really beautiful with some quality lyrics so,, yeah. the song these lyrics are from is "If You Love Me, Come Clean."

━ i can always pick up books in search of what i need, but that doesn't help me any if you're impossible to read. so if you love me, if you love me, come clean

"The somethings."

"No, shut up."

"The Shins. The Calves! Oh, The Thighs! The Thighs, how does that sound?"

"Shut up, what about MAD? Mutually assured destruction?"

"As if that doesn't already exist?"

"If I haven't heard of it, it doesn't exist."

"You sure are full of yourself."

"You know what, I think I love you."

Ryan woke up.

The dreamcatcher that he had precariously hung over his bed hadn't done shit, god, he had gone through a hippie phase that Jon had approved of where he lit incense and smoked lots of weed and meditated and fasted and ate Kosher and grew out his hair and tried making his own clothes, well, he hadn't had bad dreams about conversations that had made him the person who he was back then.

The confession of love really hadn't taken long, they had been lying entangled with each other down in the basement, eating twizzlers and microwave popcorn when William had started talking about stupid band names and it had been right then when Ryan had come to terms with his ultimate infatuation. And he had told William and then they had a done a dumb Lady and the Tramp thing where a twizzler got caught in between their lips by the end of them chewing on either end of it and then they had kissed and it had tasted like sweet things and licorice and love; sometimes Ryan tried convincing himself that he hadn't really been in love.

But it was never fair, because he had. There was no way to deny it anymore, and he just had to move on from loving William to loving something else. And so he went to love what wouldn't leave him.

Dewy mornings and hazy sunrises in the chilly yard, those wouldn't leave him. Pants soaked from the damp grass and hair stiff from the cold morning spring air, Ryan wrapped an old blanket that smelled strongly of marijuana around him, leaned against the fence built around their yard, and sunk into the overgrown grass with content.

He didn't know where Dottie was. Maybe she was asleep down with Bogart and Brendon, or maybe she would be waking up alone on the cold wooden floor of the main level. Trapped between the person who she was meant to love or the person who had a dog that she could play with and a room that was warm and a heart that was caring enough to actually take her for walks.

The sun shone a pale yellow over his sad little empire, and he curled the blanket tighter around him, feeling cold and surprisingly pleasant. He sat by himself for a while, eyes watching as the sky turned from a lazy grey to a clear blue. Ryan needed to get out of his head. Out of Seattle, somewhere else, somewhere where love couldn't die so easily.

"Morning." Ryan looked to his side to see Brendon, wearing what looked like swim trunks, holding his braceleted arm over his eyes to shield them from the rising sun. "Mind if I join you?" Ryan shrugged, not wanting to drive Brendon away right at that very moment. It definitely wasn't a bad moment, but Ryan felt a little hollow and really, really wouldn't mind feeling a little less empty. Brendon sat down next to him, his body a little tense, making everything feel sort of unnecessarily awkward.