Maybe your heart still stops when you see me

The Truth

NINI'S POV

Ricky sat in front of me in the tree house. "Okay.... where to start." He muttered to himself, messing with his ring. "So basically, this morning, I was super bored in Chicago so I was just laying down looking at my phone, when I suddenly got a very odd text from Zoe."

My eyes automatically widened at her name. "Zoe?  How did she see the whole situation? There was no one else in the parking lot!"

"I will get there, my dear, hold tight." Ricky patted my hand twice before continuing. "To state the obvious, she sent me the picture saying that you cheated on me. Basically I  just stared at the thing for, like, hours. I was trying to make sure it wasn't photo shopped or anything. I even used this sketchy website to check, but it was one hundred percent real. Then........ I cried. A lot as you can tell." He let out a breathy chuckle, gesturing to his face (which, even though looked like a disaster, he was still effortlessly handsome) "It was very manly crying, obviously."

"Mhmm obviously." I laughed, making a grin stretch across his face. Good, he is smiling. That's all I need. 

"Somehow, I convinced my mom to let me buy a plane ticket back here, I flew here, then came straight to your door step...... without talking to you first." He grimaced slightly. "Then I broke up with you, then went straight to Brendan and Zoe's house, where i-"

"HOLD UP!" I shouted, catching Ricky completely off guard. He jumped at least an inch off the ground and nearly hit his head on the roof of the tiny tree house. "Those two are siblings?"

"Oh, yeah." Ricky chuckled, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck. "He didn't mention that?"

"No!" I shrieked. Now it all made sense! Zoe had done this to break us up. "I swear, that little red headed uncultured mooncalf is going to get it from Kourtney when I tell her abo-"

"Nini, baby." Ricky took both of my hands in his, smiling goofily at me. "Breathe please. I need to finish the story." I sigh, frustrated, but nodded for him to continue. "So THEN!" He took a dramatic deep breath, making me laugh. "I gave Brendan this whole speech about treating you right, because you deserve the world, obviously. He was looking at me the whole time like I was a psychopath, probably because I kinda look like one right now."

I giggled, pushing back some of his unruly curls that were tangled about. "Yeah, little bit." He pouted his bottom lip, but his pout quickly turned into a smile as I leaned forward to peck his cheek. 

"But wait!" He gasped in climatic way. "There's more! He told me that the whole thing was set up by Zoe!"

"Kind of figured that out." I replied. "But continue."

"She told me that she really had no desire to hurt me, but she just wanted to hurt you, which is dumb by the way." He chuckled softly, running his fingers through his hair, which somehow just made it worse. "And she said some other stuff, but that doesn't have to be repeated. Then she just kind of left, and Greyson told me to go apologize to you."

"He did?" I asked, confused. Ricky hadn't apologized to me until I found him in the tree house. In fact, I'm pretty sure we were still broken up.

Ricky smiled nervously. "Yeah, but that didn't really happen. I totally chickened out because I figured you wouldn't want to hear from me. I didn't really let you talk, or explain yourself, which was a jerk move on my part. Sorry."

I shrugged. "It's all good."

"So, I came here, to my tree house." Ricky leaned back onto his palms, glancing around the space. "And played depressing songs on my guitar until you found me."