hate // ryllon

seven

Hanging out with someone all day is very different when someone would be in my shoes. Sometimes, when we're getting up in the morning, it feels a bit like we just had a sleepover. Other times it just feels more like involuntarily babysitting a suicidal and self-destructive 20-something year old. Though, throughout the time of me being with him, I've started to get used to it and be a little more comfortable.

"I'll be fine," Ryan says again to me. "You can watch me in the window, if you want to."

I sigh and look outside. The hell am I doing? I'm not the boss of him. "Fine, yeah, that's fine."

"You sure?" he asks a bit worriedly. I nod.

"If you need me, just come back inside, okay?" I ask, and he nods, then pulls the sliding backdoor. He sits crisscrossed in the chair. My sweater lays over him like a big blanket and a part of me wants to tell him to change so my sweater doesn't smell like weed, but he just looks so dang cute in it, so I'll probably just wash it twice or something. I don't know how strong the smell is when it comes to clothes.

He looks so tiny in the chair and I feel worry hit my chest. He needs to eat more. He's always shaking and shivering. That's why I gave him the sweater, to warm him up, but it just doesn't look effective.

I watch him through the glass and he lights the joint before putting the lighter down. He looks at it, but I watch him decide against what he was about to do. Good. I don't wanna take that away from him, because then I will have to go outside with him every single time and I don't wanna come back smelling like marijuana. 

I sit and watch for about 10 minutes before I begin to grow more and more bored, and I grab my phone and pull up the app store, typing in 'sudoku' and I download the first one I see. I wanna see what's so fun about this game that Ryan loves it. A strange part of me gets a wave of anxiety and my head shoots up. It's getting windier and windier outside, and I see that Ryan's nearly done. I stand up and open the door a bit and he looks at me. He has tears in his eyes and that hurts a bit. Don't know why, but it does.

"Come inside," I say quietly, so he takes two hits before pushing it into a glass jar. We get inside and I close the door. The wind picks up and I look back at him. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he says softly. 

"Crying doesn't seem like nothing."

He instinctively wipes his eyes, but before either of us can say anything, a branch is flung into the glass doors. Ryan and I reach for each other's hands, me standing in front of him, and I wonder where we'd be if I hadn't made Ryan come in early. 

I let go of his hands as I turn to him. He nervously bites his bottom lip and he hesitates to fully let go. "Why are you crying?"

"Nothing, it's stupid," he says, and he sounds quite defensive. I won't push him. His eyes are glossy and red, but it's not from tears. He's high. "Wanna watch something?"

"Sure," I say. He nods, so we walk over to the living room, but as we go on, the lights shut off and everything goes dead silent. Ryan laughs a little bit, which turns into excessive giggling. I try to fight off a smile. The power turns on, but Ryan goes around and turns the lights off again. He turns on a record player, looks at me, then points to the center of the living room. I walk over and stand there, waiting. He puts on a record and some song begins to play. Ryan stands up, stumbles as he spins around, and he walks up to me slowly while swaying and snapping to the song. I raise an eyebrow and try not to smile, but it's adorable. 

"You're so tall," he says quietly as he gets closer to me, then looks up at me and smiles. 

"Only by about 5 inches, but I—"