Page 15 of Perfectly Imperfect Us
“Ready to find our friends?” he asked, looking cool as a cucumber, like we hadn’t had multiple moments in that rust bucket in the sky.
I smiled and nodded, not trusting myself to speak quite yet.
Ryder Steele was a force to be reckoned with and a girl needed a second or two to right herself after bumping into his atmosphere.
* * *
Ryder brought me home around midnight, the ride back to our houses full of laughter as we discussed the various townsfolk we’d seen. Something about the summer carnival ringing in a couple months of no school and hot weather made everyone a little crazy. The gossip train would be loaded down with juicy gossip tomorrow.
“Oh, let me give you your shirt back.” I started to take it off, but Ryder came around the car and stilled my hand. Again, I froze, unable to keep moving for fear of him removing his hand from mine.
“Keep it. You can give it back to me later.” Ryder did in fact move his hand, but it was to pull me into a hug. “Thanks for a great day, Ava.”
And boy did I like the way he said my name, the words rumbling in his chest while he hugged me to him. I patted him awkwardly on the back when what I wanted to do was fist his T-shirt in my hands and beg him to keep hugging me all night.
Eventually he pulled back and I let him go, the fear of looking desperate or misreading the situation keeping me from my original plan of acting like a barnacle and affixing myself to his person for all time.
On shaky legs, I walked to my front door and entered, turning around at the last second to wave, seeing Ryder standing right where I’d left him, watching me go inside. I shut the door with a soft click and let out a huge sigh. I’d have to call an emergency meeting with my girls tomorrow to discuss the situation because I was feeling all kinds of confused and twitterpated.
Hoping not to wake my parents, I rushed off to the bathroom to get ready for bed. My phone dinged as I swiped the makeup off my face with makeup remover, the sink water turning tan as it swirled down the drain. When I finally had it all off, I dabbed my face dry with a towel and grabbed my phone. The notification telling me I had a message from Ryder made my heart lurch before I could tell myself to calm down. I clicked open my phone with a shaky thumb.
Ryder:Told you you’re beautiful.
He’d attached a picture to his simple message. One of me on the Ferris wheel, the lights shining off my hair, a shy smile making me look like a woman on a first date with a man already rocking her world. A strand of my dark brunette hair flew across my face, exactly like I’d feared. But Ryder had been right. Though the photo wasn’t picture perfect by magazine standards, it caught every single emotion I’d been feeling in the moment, making it a perfect candid shot that made you pause and look. I took a deep breath and prayed he didn’t see those emotions as clearly as I had felt them. I didn’t want him knowing I’d developed a big ol’ crush on him in a matter of a week.
A push of a button and the phone screen went black. I needed a second to think of an appropriate response. Was Ryder seriously flirting with me? Had we almost kissed on the Ferris wheel like I thought? Should I text back and try to keep the flirtation going?
I looked up to see myself in the mirror and the sight stopped me cold. What stared back at me looked nothing like what I saw in the picture Ryder took. The real Ava Mendez looked me in the face in the harsh fluorescent light of the bathroom, a pale patch of skin above her left eyebrow and another extending out from the right side of her mouth like a distorted clown face.
All the excitement I’d felt all day around Ryder and my friends fizzled in an instant. The cold crash of reality hit me full force to remind me I was nothing like Ryder thought. If he’d seen the real me, the one right here in the mirror without her armor on, he wouldn’t have taken my picture and he surely wouldn’t be telling me I was beautiful.
He flirted with a girl who didn’t exist.
I snatched my phone off the counter and spun around to turn out the lights and go to bed. It was late and my feet were dragging. I was tired from being out all day and I had work in the morning.
Flirting with Ryder couldn’t happen. I’d reached too high. Set my sights on something completely unattainable for a girl like me. Ryder went out with supermodels and Hollywood actresses, not disfigured girls who never left their small town or heaven forbid, stepped outside without a full face of makeup to hide themselves.
Who did I think I was?
7
Ryder
I pinned up another panel of the room-darkening curtains I’d bought in bulk, intending for every crack of light coming into the she-shed in the backyard to be obliterated before it could hit the table where I’d be setting up my film-developing equipment soon. I had a whole role of photos I took at the seashore yesterday that begged to be developed. If this shed could become my dark room for the pictures I took on film, I might just be able to stand living here with my parents until I found a house after all.
That and living next door to Ava.
Ava.
Dang, that girl had me tied in knots. I’d never felt this way about a woman, even after dating some well-known celebrities who should have had me turning in circles to keep them happy. No one had ever made me question every word that came out of my mouth, or if I should make a move, or gauging a woman’s interest by the intensity of their smile. I’d wanted to kiss Ava so badly at the carnival, I’d made a fool of myself touching her hair and telling her how pretty she looked. Which was why I’d forced myself to leave her alone for a few days when all I wanted was to march next door and drag her to my car so we could go somewhere together. I’d texted her that picture and she hadn’t texted me back. Her silence spoke volumes.
The door to the shed rattled. “Ryder? You in there?”
I leaned over and pushed the door open, the warped wood sticking and making the door hard to open. “Come on in, Mom.”
She propped the door open with a crumbling brick and picked her way into the shed, her lips peeled back from her teeth like she forgot she’d once loved the place. When I was a kid, she used to come out here and drink lemonade while reading a magazine. Said it was a relaxing place just for her and I’d known to steer clear. Based on the cobwebs I’d had to clear out when I first opened up the shed this morning, she now spent her relaxing time at the club house and had no use for this old shed.
“I can’t believe this thing is still standing, let alone clean enough for you to use.” She swung her head around, taking in every detail she could make out in the dim light and holding her hands up comically so she wouldn’t accidentally touch anything.
