Page 79 of The Lessons

I had to go to work. Take these and take all the time you need.

There’s food in the fridge. I’ll be back in a few hours.

Ryan

Ryan. Ryan Andrews. I was at Ryan Andrew’s house. Suddenly last night came crashing back to me in pieces. The phone call. A motorcycle. Shit, had I asked him to pick me up on his motorcycle? My face heated as uncertainty washed over me. Okay, clearly, he’d picked me up, but I wasn’t sure if I should be angry or grateful. I mean, I’d been doing just fine with Paulina.

Shit, Paulina!

Had I left her at the club to fend for herself? Oh, I was a shit friend; she was going to be pissed. I grabbed my phone, expecting to see a barrage of concerned text messages from my hard-partying friend.

Nothing.

Huh.

Oh, well, maybe I wasn’t the only one who’d gotten a ride home. She had been dancing pretty hard with some shaved head last time I’d seen her. I put the phone down.

With my head still pounding, I took a couple of Advil from the bottle and drank the entire glass of water before getting up to refill it in the bathroom sink.

In the bathroom mirror, I caught a reflection of myself. I looked like shit. I must have changed my clothes, because I was wearing a men’s T-shirt with only my panties. Dried bits of mascara were smeared over both cheeks, my hair was a matted mess, and drool was caked along one side of my mouth. I prayed Ryan hadn’t looked at me too closely before he’d left. Post-party Natalie was not a good look.

I padded into the kitchen, helping myself to some orange juice before scurrying back to the bedroom. Why? Well, to be honest, Ryan was gone, and I was going to snoop.

Hey, don’t judge. You know you’d do the same.

Once back, I confirmed that it was in fact his bedroom. How did I know? Because the giant bookshelf had a whole section dedicated to historical fiction.

Well, at least he’s consistent.

Additionally, though, he had a section for biographies and the classics. I loved biographies almost as much as mysteries.

He got points for that.

The bottom row of his shelves wasn’t taken up with books. Instead, milk crates full of records were stacked end to end. As I thumbed through them, I wasn’t surprised to see they were mostly rock, metal, alternative. But get this: the last three crates were all Motown!

Martha and the Vandellas. Stevie Wonder. The Spinners.

The fucking Spinners!

More points. I took out that record and looked around. No player. Then I remembered the music in the living room the other night and ran back out to play the record.

As the needle dropped, the whole room filled with a rich, warm sound as "Just Can't Get You Out of My Mind" started to play.

I wandered around the room as the record played, continuing my snooping. One of the shelves in the living room had a couple of trophies on it, and I reached to pick one up. It was a soccer trophy with a thick layer of dust on it, so I ran a finger over the nameplate. State Championship - Ryan Andrews. Huh. Soccer. My mind went back to what he’d said in the elevator—about leaving his soccer shoes on the living room rug, and what his dad had done to him.

I frowned and put the trophy back on the shelf and scanned the mantle. There were only photos of him and his sister. No mother, no father. I guess most people would probably find it sad, knowing his story and all, but that wasn’t my reaction. Instead, it felt familiar. Familiar and… kind of normal. It sounded odd to say, but the fact of the matter was that if I had met Ryan under other circumstances, we could’ve been a great match.

I mean, come on, The Spinners? I could be persuaded to forgive the historical fiction.

Too bad any ‘we’ was impossible.

I had picked up one of the photos and was studying it more closely when I heard my phone ringing from the bedroom. I put the photo down and ran back to the bedroom quickly, thinking it was probably Ryan calling to check in on me.

It wasn’t. It was Cathy, my boss. I couldn’t bear talking to her in my hungover state, so I sent the call to voicemail. Crawling back into bed, I pulled the covers over my head and pressed my face against Ryan’s pillow. It smelled faintly of him, and I inhaled deeply, quickly falling back asleep to the faint sounds of R&B.

I awoke a short time later to the sound of my phone buzzing again. This time it was a text message from Brad.

Call me when you get this

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