You're My Music - A Riker Lynch FanFiction

Colorado

“Do you ever get sick of plane rides?” I asked, staring out the window into all the clouds. Rocky shrugged.

“I guess they’re not that bad. They can be sort of peaceful sometimes. Are you excited to see your family?”  I shrugged. I actually wasn’t planning on going home, but I couldn’t refuse the ticket. Riker wanted to help, and I appreciated the gesture. If only he had known about the circumstance. I just didn’t want to explain everything, my mom was a complicated subject. I figured I’d just visit Colorado and stay with the Lynches.

“I actually don’t think I’m going home, I figured I’d just stick around and play hockey with you guys for the week.”

“Why? Don’t you want to see your Aunt Bella, or Julia?” I fidgeted a little.

“They…they want me to visit my mom.” Rocky knew about the situation with my mom, so he could understand why that was such a big issue for me.

“Oh wow…why don’t you just tell them you don’t want to?”

“My aunt Bella told me that my mom had wanted to see me this year, I just…I thought it’d be easier to tell her I was staying in California.” He shook his head understandingly.

“Ok.”

**

“Grandma!” they all cheered as they rushed over to hug their grandma. A few other family members came up and greeted us as we walked through the door. I recognized a few of them that I had seen before, but not many. “Grandma, you remember Rian?” Rydel asked introducing me. 

“Sure. Hello dear.” She reached in and gave me a hug. Their family was always so sweet. I remember always be so jealous of their amazing normal family. Something I didn’t have.

“You’ll be sharing a room with me. I’ll show you.” Rydel spoke. I followed her up a flight of white wooden stairs into a small guest room painted pale blue. She set her suitcase on the bed, and I set mine on the cot next to it. “It’ll be so fun having you here, even though I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to be with your own family I’m glad you’re here.” Rydel voiced starting to unpack her suitcase.

“Yea I was kind of missing the Colorado snow.” I admitted. I as much as possible, wanted to change the subject. I felt like I just couldn’t escape it. Riker hadn’t confronted me yet as to why I had taken the opportunity of the ticket he gave to go visit my family instead of staying here. I hoped to avoid him, and any questions he had. There was nothing I hated more than talking about my mom. It sounds completely horrible, but some days I just wanted to pretend to live in a normal life without having to think, or deal with it. 

“I’m going back downstairs, come down when you want.” Rydel smiled, and walked out of the room.  I sat down on the cot next to all of my luggage.

“Hey.” Riker muttered as he tapped on the half open door. He slowly inched his way through the doorway. I quickly rose from the cot. “I was wonder-” Riker started. I had already failed at the attempt to avoid him.

“I think I’m going to go meet the rest of your family.” I cut him off, shyly smiling. I swiftly walked past him and into the hall way that led to the stairs. Avoiding him, and his questions for a whole week wasn’t going to be easy.

**

With a few days gone by, I managed to somewhat avoid any oncoming questions. I was pretty good at that. When I was younger, and my aunt would ask me to do the dishes, or clean my room I would gradually ask her a different question. She would get on another subject and totally forgot all about the dirty dishes just sitting in the sink. It was a good strategy to be honest. I found myself using the same technique now. During dinner one day their grandma just had to ask me what I was doing with my family for Christmas. I replied with a “Not much, but you know I just love this house, it has such a nice scenery to it. How long have you lived here?” Grandma Lynch sprung off talking all about the history of her home. It was so far so good. Except now when we decided to take a break in the middle of a hockey game, Riker actually had the chance to talk to me.

“Rian, wait up.” He called chasing me as I walked off the ice.  “Rian, wait!” I kept moving ahead off of the snowy ice. He caught up to me and grabbed my jacket. “Rian!” I swiveled around.

“Sorry, I have to go to…the…bathroom.” I stuttered, making up an excuse.

“You’ve been avoiding me ever since we got here.”

“I haven’t been avoiding you.” I lied, I was avoiding him but it’s not because I was mad at him. I really just didn’t know what to say to him.

“You wouldn’t talk to me at dinner, you wouldn’t even look at me when we were opening presents this morning, and every time I try to talk to you you suddenly have to ‘go to the bathroom.’” He looked upset. “Are you mad at me again? Is this about Estella?” he urged on. I rolled my eyes.

“Ugh! No, not everything has to be about her okay.”

“Then what? Why are you avoiding me?” I shrugged my shoulders, and fidgeted a little. Maybe I could put my old plan into action.

“Don’t you think its cold outside?”

“RIAN! Stop trying to change the subject! Why won’t you talk to me?” My plan utterly failed, I didn’t know what else to say. I contemplated talking to him about it for a second, telling him all about my mom, and the reason I was so reluctant to come here. Explaining why I didn’t want to spend Christmas with my family, and that I had been avoiding his questions, not necessarily him.  I tried to start in, and say something, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. I couldn’t just give him a little piece of my story without telling him everything about my mom. Rocky skated over to us.

“What’s up guys?” I threw down my stick on the ice.

“Could you just tell Riker to back off?” I finally turned and trudged through the snow away from the boys.  Rocky peered up to Riker curiously.

“What was that about?”