Page 37 of One Little Problem
“It’s my choice.”
“It’s a dumb choice,” he said immediately.
I rolled my eyes. “Noted.”
What a fun day. I should have turned down the free lunch.
* * *
Luke
This I recognized. This was a fight. I left my bag for practice in my car, so I went to get it before heading to the diamond. Ryan caught me there. The lot had cleared out mostly and was clearing out more by the moment.
“You could just tell me if there’s a problem,” Ryan said, face clearly annoyed, arms crossing as he stood in front of my vehicle. We were going to fight.
Okay, sending Zach and Lydia in had been a gamble. They had the potential to make things so, so, so, so much worse just due to their basic personalities. But they spoke the same snarky, sarcastic language as Ryan.
I shut my door with a little more force than I meant. Sorry car. I sat my bag down on the ground for a moment and went over to him. “Ryan, I keep trying to tell you. I don’t think this is the right decision.” Didn’t seem like me saying it was enough, so I found other people to say it too.
“We talked about it. Doesn’t mean you get to sick other people on me.”
“Thought they might be able to get through to you.” Everybody but me was a giant know-it-all and that was exactly what was needed, because me? I had no idea what the hell was going on. I was still reeling, trying to figure out how Ryan and I had gone from being disgustingly sweet and happy to whatever was going on now.
“Luke, it’s really not a big deal.”
“Yeah, which is why you didn’t tell your dad.”
It was like freshman year when I lost my copy of Lord of the Flies for English and I had to borrow Joey’s instead. I had no idea how they went from hanging out on a deserted island and having fun to killing each other with their bare hands because Joey had been eating when he paged through it and the pages stuck together and I missed the whole island madness part or whatever. Where had I been for the part where Ryan decided this was the best decision?
Ryan sighed. “I get you don’t like it. But it’s still my choice. What else is there to say about it?”
“Would you be staying if we weren’t together?” I raised myself to my full not as tall as him height, silently trying to get across that he shouldn’t even bother lying. No way he would stay otherwise.
“Who can say,” he said breezily, looking away. “We are together.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t be.” Hey, who said that? That guy should probably shut his mouth. Except, like, even though saying the words and hearing them totally sucked, I didn’t want to take them back. I didn’t know how to get through to Ryan and I couldn’t make him do anything, but I could remove myself from the situation.
Alarm flashed across Ryan’s face, but it was quickly replaced by anger. “No, you can’t just threaten me to get me to do what you want.”
“It’s not a threat.” Just had to get through this conversation, then I could go throw up. Or no, maybe I should just throw up right here, because if I never left this conversation, awful as it was, I wouldn’t be broken up with my boyfriend. No, no, he would realize, he would understand and—
“I don’t have to go just because we aren’t together anyway.” His face just kept getting angrier and angrier.
“True, but still, you should get to decide what’s best for yourself.” This was terrifying and my heart was pounding, but for once it was okay that we weren’t in sync. It was like the more pissed off he got, the calmer I felt. “Me or us as a couple shouldn’t be the big reason why you would stay. So, if that’s out of the picture, maybe then you can decide what’s best for you.”
He put his hands on his hips. “Okay,” he said, exhaling angrily. “You made your point.”
“I’m not trying to threaten you, I just, are you even going to consider what I’m saying?” Please, please, please.
“Luke, I am,” he said softly. “But I know what I want.”
Shit. “Then I do too.”
Ryan’s face did a series of things that made my heart hurt, so I couldn’t look at it anymore. I looked down and saw some mud on my car, which was really annoying, because I had just washed it. I’d never been one to fidget or nervously pick at things but all I wanted to do was attack the dried dirt near the bottom of the door, make the car clean. Every second of it not being clean, I just thought about how annoying it was that it was dirty.
All in all, that was a really nice few seconds, thinking of anything other than this conversation. When I looked at Ryan again, there was still rage and hurt on his face but when his eyes met mine, the anger faded a little, as he faltered, looked unsure. “We’re happy,” he said like maybe that was news to me. “I want to stay happy,” he almost pleaded.
“Me too.” So, so, so much. “But I don’t see why we can’t do that even if you’re in—"
