“Who is this singing?” he asks, effectively breaking the awkward silence. I pick up my phone and show him my picture. The song is a ballad I did two years ago. It never went anywhere, but it’s always been one of my favorites.
“It’s me.”
“You’re very pretty.” He says this so quietly I almost didn’t hear him. His cheek turns a pleasing shade of pink. It’s a good thing I’m this far away from him because I want to run my fingers along his cheekbone. I want to feel the heat from his blush.
There is something seriously wrong with me. I tell myself to snap the hell out of it and come back down to reality. Friends, Hadley… that is all you can be. There will be no touching of any kind.
“Thank you.” I say this in hopes to open some conversation, anything to hear his voice.
“You weren’t supposed to hear that,” he mumbles his reply. Ryan mirrors my position on his chaise, turning his body to look at me. I’m lost in his beauty. I hope he doesn’t mind me staring because I don’t think I can stop.
“I think you’re handsome.” He looks away. He starts picking at the hem of his shorts and I fear I’ve said the wrong thing. Everything has come so natural to me until now. “Is that the wrong thing to say?”
Ryan shrugs. “No one has ever said that.”
“Girls don’t tell you that you’re hot?”
“No, definitely not.”
“That’s such a shame.”
Ryan looks away from me and I don’t like it. I get up and move to his chaise. I sit toward the middle, where his knees are bent. With my legs under me, I lean toward him so that we’re touching. He doesn’t pull away or shift so we aren’t touching. But he’s still not looking at me.
“I’m sorry for embarrassing you. I just call things like I see it.”
Ryan shakes his head and stalls briefly before turning back to me. His eyes are focused and in control of my beating heart. How can one person make me feel this way after only knowing him for such a short time?
“You have a very nice voice. I like listening to you.”
“I’ll take that compliment any day, especially if it’s coming from you.” I expect Ryan to look away, but he doesn’t. He holds my gaze, driving home the fact that I’m already in too deep. There is no backing away from this.
For a moment I can see myself leaning in, him meeting me half way. Just a small touch of the lips, enough to quench my desire, is all I need. I imagine him pushing his hands into my hair, capturing me with soft lips.
I can hear muffled sounds, his lips are moving, but I can’t make out the words. I clear my head of the lust-filled images. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I said, do you like what you do?”
“Oh yeah, I do actually. Performing has always been a passion for me. I started in county fairs when I was about twelve and got noticed when I was fifteen. What about you, what’s your passion?”
“To leave Brookfield,” he says with such sadness it makes me wonder why he’d want to leave.
“How long have you lived there?”
“All my life,” he says. His fingers go back to pulling on his shorts. For the first time I get a good look at him. His shorts aren’t new and the edges are frayed. He wears generic sneakers that look old. His black dress shirt is the only thing that looks new.
“Why don’t you like it?”
Ryan adjusts so he’s sitting up a bit more, but doesn’t move his leg from touching my arm. I like that he made sure we were still touching. “What’s to like? The town is divided. Half is these upper-class mansions and the other half is industrial with a working mill and small clapboard homes that were built to house the millworkers.”
Without even asking I know that is where Ryan lives and, while that would matter in my group of friends (Alex not included), it doesn’t matter to me. If he lived under a bridge I’d still want to know him.
“So what do you want to do when you graduate?”
“I’m going to leave. Get on a bus and not look back. I want my life to be different from my parents’. My dad, he expects me to start at the mill when I finish school and work my way into becoming the fourth-generation Stone crowned foreman, but that’s not me.” Ryan gets up and moves over to the wall, peering over the side. I spin so that my eyes are on him, afraid to miss a moment.
“I want to live in a place that is loud and busy. Somewhere where I can walk down the street at night and not need a flash light.”
“Like New York City?” I ask, hoping the answer is yes.