Page 36 of When Wrecked Meets Ruined
“I don’t know.” Next door, the dogs were barking and rattling the chain-link. “Shut up!”the neighbor yelled. I hated that neighbor. He wore dirty wife beaters and used beer cans for target practice. “Somewhere quiet and remote. The mountains, I guess, where the air is cool and clean, and the sky is big. Somewhere where it snows a lot. I prefer the cold to the heat.”
“You’re a funny girl, Cherry. Odd, but in a good way.”
“What makes me so odd? Because I’m the only girl who doesn’t throw herself at you?”
He laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. You, I guess. Or me. I don’t know. I’m off my game tonight.”
“You give yourself way too much credit. Your game’s not all that good.”
“Sometimes, I think that’s all I’ve got. It’s a load of bullshit, though.”
“What is? Your game? If so, I agree.”
“My game. High school. Corporate America. Polite society. You name it, it’s all bullshit. We’re all just playing our parts. We like to pretend we’re rebels and don’t conform to society’s expectations, but that’s a load of bullshit. We all have our assigned roles, and that’s what we fall back on.”
“Yeah? And what’s yours?”
“A player. In every sense of the word. It’s how I get through life.”
That didn’t surprise me. “And how about me? What’s mine?”
My question was met with silence and I wish I hadn’t asked. It sounded like I cared what Ridge thought. “Just forget it. I don’t care.”
“That’s your role, Cherry. Right there. You do care. You care a lot. About everything.”
“I don’t care what people say about me.” It came out sounding more defensive than I’d intended.
“That’s not what I’m talking about. I know you don’t care what people say about you. But you care about the people in your life and you try to protect them from all the bad shit. But sometimes you can’t, and that just kills you, doesn’t it? So you give off this vibe like you don’t give a fuck when really you have a lot of fucks to give.”
I had no idea where he’d come up with all that. Was he just talking out of his ass, or did he know things I’d never told him? Or maybe he was talking about himself. “I’m not going to have sex with you, Ridge.”
He sighed, and I heard him flicking a lighter. “We’re not talking about sex. This is real talk, and it scares you, doesn’t it?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Yeah, pisses me off. All the bullshit.”
We were quiet for a few moments, and all I could hear was the sound of the lighter flicking and his breathing. I don’t know why I didn’t hang up. I don’t even know why I called him. Nothing he said made a lot of sense. But when I really thought about it, I guess it made perfect sense.
And yeah, it scared me, and it pissed me off too.
“I lied about something in one of my letters,” he said.
My body tensed. I held my breath and waited to hear what he’d lied about.
“My mom didn’t have cancer. That’s just what I tell people. I found her dead on a filthy old mattress in a crack den. It was funny too because she’d been good for a while. Even claimed she’d found Jesus.” He laughed, but I knew he didn’t think it was funny.
It was sad, and it was shitty that he’d had to go through something like that.
I should have said something, but I didn’t. Words were empty and never changed anything. But still, I should have said,I’m sorry. Two simple words I thought in my head but couldn’t get past my lips.
“I don’t know why I just told you that.” I heard the regret in his voice like he’d told me too much and wished he could take it back. It was the second time he’d done it.
Ridge had witnessed two deaths—a shooting and a drug overdose—before the age of seventeen, and I wish there was something I could say to make it better.
“Maybe you thought I’d understand,” I said finally.
“Yeah, I guess that’s it.” He sighed, and I wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about this version of Ridge.
