Almost A Decade // Ryden

Chapter Eleven.

     I'm sitting in the studio now, just looking at everything. Seeing the different upgrades that have been added, how the overall aura of the room felt. I'm still in Vegas, I'm at the old studio where we recorded Fever and Pretty. Odd. I had mentioned to a friend of mine that I was in town and they invited me over to check the place out.

     I finally called Spencer on my way over here. My anger towards him seemed to disappear when my anger towards Ryan grew as we sat at that pond. It was a short time spent together once he started talking about our past relationship. Everything he was saying just shook me to the core, because he waited too long to say how he felt.

     What a pussy. He was a bitch back then and he still is now. My head is just so focused on how pissed off I am at him, I don't even hear my friend talking in the back. "Hello ... Brendon....."

     I turn around to Ryan standing behind me. "God damnit, Ryan. You followed me here, too?"

     "Well, I don't know why you left in such a hurry. I'm just trying to talk to you, B. Not upset you..." I feel my face getting hot. I immediately start biting my cheek to keep my lip from quivering. I don't even want to look at him right now.

     "How did you know I was here?" I finally push through my teeth.

     "Well, Brendon." Ryan sits down in the chair next to me, "I followed you." He shrugs, so unapologetic.

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     I shake my head, "This is so fucking weird."

     Ryan shoots a look over at me, "Why?"

     I just laugh at the irony of all of this. I have to stand up from my chair to move around, and try to control my thought process at the moment. But I just keep laughing at the reversal of roles Ryan and I are playing right now. "This is weird because ... you used to be me, and I used to be you." I laugh out loud again, it's uncontrollable. I look back at Ryan, "I used to be the one chasing you... "

      Ryan isn't laughing. In fact he's not even smiling. He's just staring at me, watching me move about the room with his chin resting in his hand. "And that's funny to you...." he scoffs and rolls his eyes, situating himself in the chair to pull a knee to his chest.

     "Yes, Ryan," my voice is now very stern, and I am no longer laughing. My face is flat, "it is funny, because you didn't give a fuck about me, or how I felt back when you left me on that beach. You didn't even look back, you didn't call to make sure I was okay, nothing. And now here you are, chasing me across state lines just to talk to me."

     Ryan is still just staring at me, and my emotions are rolling full force towards him like a tidal wave. "Eight years ago, you left me. I loved you, Ryan. God damnit, I loved you with everything I had...." My hands run down my face, "And you just fucking left me, dude." I stop pacing, and look dead into his hazel stare,

"You left me!"

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    I paused too long to recollect myself, and Ryan took full advantage of this silence to fill it with his own voice. "Do you think I wanted to leave Brendon? I had no choice!" Now we are both yelling at each other. He pinches the bridge of his nose, and then holds his hands out in front of him, "You don't think that I don't still hear your voice in the back of my head? The way you looked, crying for me, it broke my heart. It tore me to pieces, but I couldn't be the person you wanted me to be .... I wasn't ready."

      "Well, I found someone who was ready, Ryan." I snapped back.

     His voice lowers to just above a whisper, "I know." He shakes his head, "I know, Brendon. But that doesn't mean that I loved you any less. You know how much I cared about you."

     "Did I?" I'm still yelling, and I can feel my eyes getting warm, "between the sneaking around and constant need to be drunk before any type of sexual encounter made it really hard to see that." Ryan's cheeks turn red from embarrassment, "And then the way you ended it .... just validated all the doubt in my mind." A single tear slips out of my eye and I immediately turn around not to face him.

      He breathed out one word, "Brendon ...." I heard his chair squeak as he stood, and his footsteps kicking across the carpet until they came to a hault behind me. I felt body heat radiate from my back around to the front of me. Ryan has engulfed me in a hug that made my tears start flowing even more. "I did love you, Brendon." I feel his head rest in between my shoulder blades, "I still do."

     I break away from him immediately, "You don't get to say that! You can't come back here after all of this time and say things like that!" I'm pushing these words past the huge ball in my throat, viscously wiping tears from my eyes. I finally turn around to face him, "This is not fair to me."

     Ryan's eyes are flooded with tears, I can see him trying to blink through them. "Brendon, I was a different person back then! I was young as fuck, I didn't know what I wanted ..... fuck man." He stops to wipe at his eyes now. "But through all of that shit," he throws his arm to the side, "everything that we've gone through together, and separately, I have always known one thing." He steps forward grabbing onto my hand,

"I have always loved you."

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     I start to walk towards the front of the studio, to where I can get the fuck out of here. "Bren!" I can hear Ryan following behind me. I turn around quickly, he quickly stops in his place.

     "I have a wife, Ryan! A wife. Someone I vowed to love for the rest of my life." I start walking back towards him. "And now, my wife knows everything about me, EVERYTHING!" My words echo off the walls around us. "You don't know anything about me, Ryan. The boy you claim to love is long gone. I am not him, anymore!"

     "So then why are you so upset?" His words cut me like a knife. I couldn't even find anything to reply with, I was just frozen. "If you truly felt that I didn't know anything about you, or that your wife is more important, or that my love for you isn't real .... then why are you fucking crying."

     "Fuck you, Ryan."

     "Yeah, fuck me, Brendon." He scoffs and runs his hand through his hair, keeping his eyes on me. "At least I told you. AT LEAST" Now his voice is starting to echo, "I had enough fucking balls to tell you all of this. I will never, ever be able to apologize enough times for leaving you when I did. I will never be able to get the images of you that night out of my head, and for that .... I will always be sorry." He puts his hands on his hips, "But I can love you better than anyone else can for the rest of your life to make up for that."

     He starts to walk closer to me. He circles around behind me, and I can suddenly feel his warm breath on my ear, and running down my neck. "Don't think that just because I was drunk that I don't remember how it feels to be inside you." He breathed on me. My knees immediately began to wobble. Why does he have this much control over me? "The way you would say my name into the open darkness of our hotel room. All the kisses we chalked up to "stage gay" when really we couldn't go a whole show without touching each other." He takes a deep breath in, "tell me you haven't forgotten, Beebo."

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