Winning Back Ryan Read online

  The door to the bathroom swung open.

  “Anne, when you get out, we need to talk.” I ignored him, continuing to shower. “Do you hear me?” I still ignored him.

  "Annie Watson," he tried again. "We need to talk about this." I said nothing, hoping that if I kept quiet, he’d just walk out of the bathroom, out of the apartment, and out of my life forever. Nothing was ever that simple, though.

  He yanked back the shower curtain as I gasped, covering myself with my hands. We’ve never showered together. I felt too uncomfortable being naked in front of him with the lights on.

  “Get out of here!” I screamed, trying to rip back the curtain.

  “No, we need to talk about this,” he insisted.

  I knew exactly what attracted me physically to him the first night we met, the same that still attracted me to him. He had shaggy, chocolate brown hair, bangs sweeping across his brow, bedroom eyes some gorgeous color between blue and green, and a strong jawline with a perpetual five o'clock shadow. He pulled off the “just got out of bed” look better than anyone else with his twenty hair products he used daily. He had a swimmer's body, spending his summers at the beach surfing and playing volleyball.

  “Get out of here!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

  He fixed his gaze on me, shaking his head. I didn’t want to leave my bubble of self-denial yet. I didn’t want to admit that this was all really happening, and Ryan forcing the issue, ruined my reality. I couldn’t handle that, though.

  I picked up a bottle of shampoo, tossing it at his head. It hit him squarely in the forehead. “What the fuck!” he shouted, rubbing his forehead.

  “Do you want another one?” I asked, picking up the bottle of conditioner.

  “Annie, we have to talk about this!” he shouted in protest.

  “I don’t feel the need to talk about you being a lying, cheating, scumbag!” I threw the bottle, hoping to hit him in the gut. He prepared for this bottle, though, knocking it to the ground, and I lost the element of surprise.

  “I’m sorry for cheating, Annie, but maybe if you put some effort into the relationship, I wouldn’t have looked elsewhere.”

  I blinked, disbelieving what he just said. He was actually blaming me?

  “Like what kind of effort?” My tone dripped with disgust.

  “Do you even own one piece of lingerie? You’re a twenty-three year old woman who wears cotton underwear like a little kid. I’m surprised they don’t have cartoon characters on them!”

  I yanked the curtain closed, placing my head back under the water to rinse out my hair conditioner. “Did you once ask me to wear lingerie? Or tell me that you like it?”

  “I’m a man. It should be pretty fucking obvious that I like lingerie,” he replied.

  “Well, nothing is pretty fucking obvious to me, okay? I didn’t know! If I knew you wanted me to wear it, my drawers would be full of it!”

  “How could you not know?” He asked, incredulity lacing his words.

  I yanked the curtain back, staring at him, furious. “You were my first, alright? You were my first everything. I never asked the guys for help or advice, because I didn’t want them to know about our intimate moments. And I don't count Brian and my kiss as being my first kiss, because he kind of stole it.”

  He stared at me stupidly like I just told him New York would be swallowed up by the ocean tomorrow. “Your first everything?”

  I was far too embarrassed to look him in the eye, so I closed the curtain again, hoping I would just burst into flames.

  “Yeah.”

  Several extremely long seconds of silence continued before he muttered, “Wow.” A few more agonizingly long seconds later he asked, “Why did you wait so long?”

  “If you ever once went with me to my parents’ house or to one of the four family weddings I invited you to, you’d know the answer already!”

  I picked up another bottle of shampoo and threw it at him, narrowly missing him. His jaw clenched and he glared at me furiously. “Well, since you’re apparently so naïve, let me clue you in on a few things.” I ran my hands through my hair at a rapid pace to make sure all the shampoo was out, anger eating away at me. “This is what guys want, but you aren’t: girls who care about their looks, not just wearing minimal make-up and throwing their hair back in a ponytail every day, girls who work out, especially who work out with their boyfriends, not just lounge on the couch in the afternoon, girls who wear lingerie and like to be adventurous in bed. If we have sex missionary style one more time, I’ll scream! Guys like girls who are secure with themselves and don’t fidget uncomfortably when they get undressed and most importantly, girls who don’t surround themselves all with male friends and only have like one female friend. That’s really fucking weird. And don’t even get me started on Brian…”

  I wanted to scream out that it was not my fault George slept with all my female friends and ruined my friendships with them, because the truth was, I always defended him, picking him over them. I sighed in defeat as the tears rolled down my face. I felt so broken inside, and he completely sideswiped me with all this information. I never knew he was this unhappy.

  “All I wanted to do was come home, take a shower, and spend some time with you. If you don’t mind, I’d like to finish showering…alone.”

  I heard him sigh out of frustration, then closed the door behind him. Once finished, I stepped out, grabbing a towel from the linen closet. After drying off, I glanced at the foggy mirror. I sighed, drawing a heart into the mirror with my index finger. This is what I wanted. Love. I wanted a love like ones I read about in romance novels that ended in a woman’s happily ever after. A love that would see me through my darkest moments and never abandon me, find me through the foggy nights. And I thought I had that. But, maybe I didn’t. What happens to love when a person loses it? Does it crumble to dust? Turn into little more than cigarette smoke puffed into the air? Or does it simply transfer from one person to another? I didn’t know, but I wanted Ryan’s love back.

  After wiping down the mirror, I took a long, hard look at myself. I pinched the fat on my belly and frowned. I tried to secure my wild mane behind my ear, but it fell out again. My crazy, corkscrew-curly, total unruly, never wanted to cooperate for even a second, brown, shoulder length hair refused to be tamed. I glanced at the mirror, my green eyes staring back at me worriedly. Ryan wanted me to be sexy. I didn’t know how. I had been called ‘cute’ more times in my life than I could count. There was a reason that he became my first boyfriend at twenty-one. No one wanted to date ‘cute’, they wanted to hang out with me, rough house with me, and asked me female advice about the sexy girl that they wanted to date (which wasn’t me).

  I walked out to our bedroom and slipped my panties on underneath the towel, shimmying them up my legs while Ryan sat on the couch, channel surfing. Funny, didn’t he just tell me how a girl shouldn’t do that in the afternoons? I threw clothes on hastily- a tank top, jean shorts, and flip flops -before I turned for the door, walking back to the bathroom. I did my song and dance with my toiletries, pulled my hair back into a low ponytail, and walked out. Grabbing my pocketbook, I headed for the door.

  "Where are you going?" he asked.

  "Out. It's Friday night," I threw the words over my shoulder before turning and saying, "We have this apartment together for another five months. You'll be sleeping on the pull out couch."

  "Let me guess," he yelled after me, bitterness in his voice, "You're going out with Brian."

  I ignored him before I closed the apartment door and made my way down the stairs.

  Chapter Two

  Walking out of the building I heard, “I told you not to go up there.”

  I turned to find Chuck, the homeless beggar, staring up at me pitifully. It was at that moment when everything that just happened finally sunk in.

  “Yeah,” I commented slowly, “You were right, Chuck.”

  “I know.” He frowned, his overexposed skin wrinkling on his face, making him loo
k a decade older than his likely age. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer girl.”

  Standing there in despair, a moment of ingenuity struck.

  “Would you like to make some money?” Calm chocolate brown eyes looked up at me. “I’ll pay you twenty dollars a day to tell me everything Ryan does, where he goes, what he’s doing, anything you can. How does that sound?”

  Chuck stared up at the starless sky for a moment before nodding. “Sure. I’ll help you out.”

  I smiled mirthlessly, said goodnight, and walked down the street. Now that I had my semi-ex-boyfriend’s movements monitored, it was time to concentrate on what to do next. I hit Brian's number on my speed dial, my hands beginning to tremble as everything started to sink in slowly.

  "Hey, Annie," the bass voice on the other end of the phone replied. If I needed to try and describe it, I would say it sounded like chocolate dripped onto rocks. Sometimes during college, when we studied together, I would talk him into reading from our textbook out loud just to hear his decadent voice. His words made Biology much more bearable.

  Brian and I had an understanding. I never abused phone privileges, calling him for ridiculous reasons like, "Do I look fat in pink?" In exchange, he never screened me, always answering my calls. It was the same for him. The only time I didn't pick up was when I had an intimate moment with Ryan, calling him back shortly afterwards.

  "Are you busy tonight? Do you have plans?" I asked, trying not to sound desperate.

  "You're not hanging out with Ryan?" he asked, surprise in his tone.

  I finally fell apart openly. His words hammered home the truth, and I began bawling in the middle of the sidewalk. I wished I had never come home. I wished I had never seen Ryan with that girl. I wished I still thought he was my faithful, wonderful, loyal boyfriend of yesterday, and that tonight I would be crawling into bed with him and everything would be just as it was. Ignorance was bliss.

  "I just caught him cheating on me with this… this…gorgeous girl!" I barely uttered the words in between my loud sobs, but he apparently understood.

  "Holy crap," he muttered, and I realized it was my thought exactly, "Where are you?”

  I had been meandering down the street, so I looked up at the street sign.

  "Walking towards your apartment. I'm halfway there," I replied, my feet having walked to his place without my brain's permission.

  "I'll wait outside for you," he said before hanging up. Knowing he was waiting for me, I started walking with purpose, quickening my step and lengthening my stride.

  Brian was one of those guys people wanted so desperately to hate, but couldn't. He came from a wealthy Connecticut family. He was an only child; his mother had trouble conceiving, so she doted on him day and night. He was good-looking, a star athlete, and wickedly smart. Brian had an athletic scholarship for track, and he deserved everything that he had. In college, he practiced so hard, one time he actually ran out a pair of running shoes in two months flat-no exaggeration. He had a job that most would kill for, and he had spent hours doing pretend interviews with me to prepare. He had incredible things in his life, but he worked hard to achieve and maintain them. It was one of his characteristics that I admired the most.

  He was the guy always there when you needed him, which was one of the many reasons why he was my best friend. I actually had a sneaking suspicion that Brian's parents helped me land my job through some connection. They always liked me, but became eternally grateful when they found out it was me who kept their son from going over the deep end our third year of college. Since then, I became the daughter they never had.

  Despite Ryan having been my boyfriend, and Brian having been my best friend (Brian being around longer), the two were not friends. They disliked each other, and I never was able to find out why. They had never been outright hostile to each other, but there had always been uneasiness. I always found the situation strange, because Brian was the most easy-going guy you've ever met. Usually nothing ruffled his feathers, and Ryan was one of the most outgoing people I had ever met. He was usually very talkative, able to easily find common ground with people for conversation. Sports, I believed, would be their ticket since both liked the same teams. Whenever I asked Brian why he didn't like Ryan, he always shrugged and gave me some non-committal answer like, "He's your boyfriend, and I respect that." Whenever I asked Ryan, it was always a shrug followed by, "I don't have to be friends with everyone that you're friends with, right?"

  So, their answers didn’t help me understand what their problem with each other was. I decided early on in my relationship that water and oil didn't mix, and I shouldn't try. I never forced hangouts between them; the only time the two were ever in the same room together was at holiday parties that I threw, or on the rare occasion that Ryan hung out with my circle of friends with me.

  I rounded the corner of Brian's block, and saw him standing outside of his apartment building. As I came into his view, I noticed that he was clearly upset, so I walked faster, anxious to close the space between us.

  "Annie," he said, his voice filled with concern, his arms out wide, and in a very uncharacteristic move, I jumped into his embrace. He pulled me close and it felt good to be held. I had a really rough day at work and was stressed before I even came home.

  He held me tightly for a while, finally letting go. When I pulled back, he wiped away a falling tear. "Let's go upstairs. Tell me everything that happened."

  I nodded, following him through the double glass doors into his apartment building. Light brown marble stone lay beneath my feet. The walls were a cream color, and potted ficus trees decorated the floor. A tan loveseat sofa and glass coffee table were tucked in the corner for visitors, whose presence needed to be confirmed by security. The foyer was expansive and in the middle sat a glass table decorated with a large floral arrangement. The flowers were real, replaced every so often. I liked coming in and seeing the different colors of flowers, or what arrangement they’ve been placed in. I had no talent for that whatsoever and I admired people with the ability to play with colors and shapes. It was the summertime: the arrangement decorated in red, white, and blue flowers. The blue and white flowers stood on the left side of the vase, the red and white were on the right to represent the American flag. It was pretty clever; I would have never thought of it.

  While we waited for the elevator, Brian watched me, concerned. The elevator doors opened, and we stepped inside, Brian hitting the button for the fifteenth floor. We stopped a few times for other passengers to enter or exit the elevator, and I held it together, not bursting into tears, and the number finally lit up, telling us we were on Brian's floor. We stepped off, and I followed my friend into his apartment. He sat down on his plush, black, leather couch, patting the seat cushion next to him. I made my way towards him and sat down. His body turned towards me, his arms out, resting on the top of the couch.

  "What happened?" he asked, and I took a deep breath beginning the story. Once I finished, he blinked, a mixture of shock and anger on his face. "He actually said that to you?" Brian asked, and I guessed he referred to the reasons why Ryan was unhappy in our relationship. I nodded, Ryan's words ringing through my head. "What are you going to do now with the apartment?" he asked, "You can move in here if you'd like."

  I shook my head. "My name is on the lease for five more months. I have to stay. I need to find a way to live with him in peace."

  "You're always welcome here. My door's always open," he replied, encouraging.

  It dawned on me then what I needed to do- a stroke of genius. I found myself suddenly thankful that Ryan told me why he was unhappy, because now I knew what needed to be fixed.

  I looked over at Brian, my athletic best friend and said, "I need a favor."

  "Shoot," he responded, waiting to hear my request.