Bittersweet Symphony (Bittersweet #4)(12)
“It’s easier to push people away; you expect failure from others. In the end, the only person you can trust is yourself. In the end, no one else will be able to pick up the pieces like you do. Allowing someone in is just asking for heartache.”
As his words rattle around in my head, I realize we’re the same kind of people fighting the inevitable.
“People have the potential to hurt you. You have the potential to hurt me, Kennedy. If I handed you the knife, would you stab it into my heart?”
“No… Because I, too, know what it’s like,” I calmly say. My mind is reeling for an answer as to who hurt him, who caused such a beautiful man horrible pain.
All he does is release me, a smile marring his face. From that moment on, I know we will always have a silent understanding of one another.
“Fish taco or shrimp taco?” he asks, not even getting me a menu.
“Definitely fish.” It scares me how he can take control of a situation so quickly. I don’t want him taking control, even if it was just to order my food.
When our food is ready, he carries the tray over to a nearby table and gestures for me to take the seat next to him. I nervously chew on the straw to my drink. This is only the second time we’ve had a meal together. I know it’s not weird to typically share a meal with others, but it’s different with Ryder. I always have a swarm of butterflies in my stomach wanting to break free and adding any type of food to that makes feel like I might puke all over him.
“What are you so nervous for?” he asks, peering up at me from his taco. A small amount of juice leaks out of the taco and onto to his fingers. The second he sucks his finger into his mouth, I lose all rational thought. I can’t remember what we’re doing and… Did he really need to keep his finger in his mouth that long? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph… I bring my eyes back up to his as he releases his finger from his mouth; a one dimpled smile reflects back at me.
“It’s not polite to stare, Kennedy.” Gosh, if he keeps talking to me like that - his voice all soft and squishy – I’m going to find a way to bottle up his voice and sell it to women worldwide.
“I wasn’t staring,” I lie. I was staring. I was more than staring; I was burning holes into his face. I look down at my taco as my appetite diminishes.
“You were staring, but that’s fine. You can lie to yourself all you want, doll face, but you can’t lie to me.” I can’t help but roll my eyes. He’s arrogant and cocky. I hate it, but at the same time I love it. He knows he is “all that and a bag of chips,” and for the first time ever, he’s starting to grow on me, kind of like those weeds you get in the backyard. Dandelions are hideous but also kind of beautiful, and you can’t get them to go away to save your life. That was Ryder: he is my dandelion and I want to keep him.
“Fine. You’re right. I was staring, but only because I was repulsed by the fact that you licked your fingers. They make napkins for a reason,” I respond, grabbing a wad of napkins and tossing them at him.
He doesn’t grab or even move them. He looks down at the napkins and up at me, his smile growing wider with every flick of his gaze on mine. Then the air filled with laughter, his laughter. It’s contagious and I can’t help the smile that forms on my face. We are two damaged people floating through time, finding happiness in the small things. The question is, will we be the answer to each other’s prayers or the downward spiral into a deeper darkness… I guess only time will tell.
Ryder has the potential to be something great in my life. The problem is me allowing him to take root, but the way things are looking, he has already started.
Ryder
When Blondie smiles, which isn’t all that often, it is marvelous. Her deep, blue eyes hold so many secrets that I want to unravel. Her creamy skin is begging to be touched by me, and every time I’m around her, I have to clench my fists together to keep myself from reaching out and tracing a path over her skin. She is beautiful in the simplest ways.
After I drop her off at the school, it takes everything in me not to follow her to her dorms. I feel this deep need to protect her; it’s different than the feelings I used to have for Jenna. I thought things with her were simple, but they were far from it. Once again, my brother had won the gold, and I had come in last. A surge of hatred pushes through me, but I don’t hate my brother. If anything, I love him more than life itself. He is my rock? and we know each other inside and out; well, except for the secrets that I constantly kept from him. It’s stupid to even think he’s to blame for my problems. It would be stupid for anyone in my situation to be angry when they didn’t speak out and tell anyone. No one can help you if you don’t ask for it.
Speaking of my brother, he will be here at any minute. I get up, done moping for the day. I need to find some clean shorts; hell, I need to do some damn laundry.
Just as I’m pulling on a pair of basketball shorts, I hear a knock at the door. I smile, knowing I will finally get some time to spend with my brother. After you spend nine months in the womb and twenty years of life together with someone who looks exactly like you, going from seeing each other every day to hardly at all is difficult.
I open the door, fully ready to grab my bro in a tight hug. What my eyes land on instead causes my breaths to come in hard. It also causes another region of my body to grow hard.