Page 83 of The Lessons

“You must be hungry. Do you want something to eat? I can make us some omelets.”

My stomach roared at the suggestion. I smiled meekly, embarrassed.

“I guess that’s a yes?”

“Ha, yeah. Sounds great.”

We wandered out to the kitchen, and he set about gathering his supplies while I sat at the breakfast bar, admiring how his jeans hung on his hips. He turned his back to me and started slicing some mushrooms. I was treated to a view of his broad shoulders and how they narrowed down to his waist.

“Thanks for picking me up last night,” I started.

Ryan barely reacted. “Don’t mention it.”

Awkward pause.

“You know, I ran in to your sister the other day.”

He stopped chopping for a second. “You did?”

“Yeah, at the library.”

He resumed chopping. “Oh, yeah, she works there.”

“So I learned. She’s an interesting kid.”

Ryan turned around and looked thoughtful. “She is. I hope she was okay with you. It takes her a while to warm up to people. She’s had a tough life.”

“You mean because of what happened with your parents?”

Ryan nodded as went back to chopping. “Yeah, but as much as I want to blame it on my dad, it didn’t even end after the asshole died. Up until then, she’d done a pretty good job hiding things from the kids at school. But then when, you know?” He made a little circle with his knife.“?shit went down, the kids at school—they became nasty. Really nasty. I wanted to protect her, but I was away at college for a lot of it.”

I wasn’t sure what to say.

He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “So, sorry if she was a little odd when you saw her. She suffers from depression, and she’s been in and out of treatment for years.” He paused and added some butter to a pan. “I thought we’d made a breakthrough with this new trial med last year, but the effects only lasted a couple of months, and then she spiraled back down.”

“She seemed okay at the library,” I tried to offer.

“That’s good. That’s really good. Working is a positive thing for her. She has good days and not-so-good days.”

He gathered the mushrooms in his hands and put them into the pan with the butter.

I tried to change the subject. “So…I saw your trophies. How long did you play soccer?”

He retrieved some eggs from the fridge. “Oh, it feels like forever. Since I was five, I think? I was on scholarship at Brown.”

“So you still play?”

“I gave up the competitive world when I transferred to UCB after my mom died…”

“Oh, sorry.” Thwarted again. Family tragedy 2, Natalie 0. I was starting to feel like a real asshole for bringing up all these bad memories.

Ryan didn’t seem too fazed, though. “But yeah, I still play a few times a month with a pickup team in Golden Gate Park.” He paused. “You should come by sometime and check it out.”

I stiffened. Wait. Had he just invited me to watch him play soccer? Like, outside of an appointment? Okay, call me crazy, but even I knew that had to be against the rules. I slowly counted the seconds, waiting for him to back out once he’d realized his error.

“I mean, since you are new in town. I could introduce you to some of the guys, and a few of them have girlfriends who will be there.”

I glanced up at him as he poured in the eggs, our eyes meeting as the pan crackled and sizzled.

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