24
Ryan
I’ve been driving for half an hour without knowing where I’m going. I couldn’t go home, not after tonight. I couldn’t face the silence in my apartment, the empty loneliness. I find myself at his door without even knowing why. Surely he’s the last person I want to see?
“Ryan? What the hell are you doing here so late?” he asks me, standing in the doorway.
“I…I don’t know.”
He looks at me for a while, then stands back to let me in.
It’s the first time I’ve set foot in his apartment, and I have to say, it suits him down to a T. Elegant, luxurious, and full of stuff that he’ll never use.
“Can I get you a coffee or something?”
I shake my head and stay standing in the middle of the living room. Nick throws himself back down onto the sofa and turns off the TV.
“What’s happened?”
I take a deep breath.
“You were right.”
“Right about what?”
“That she wouldn’t have done it.”
“Ryan…”
“You warned me, you told me to think it through, not to make any rash decisions. Why?”
“I don’t get where these questions are coming from, after all these years…”
“I want to know if I was the only idiot who had no idea.”
“You’re not an idiot.”
“I am, though. I was stupid, I believed in feelings, in love – in ‘forever’.”
“She wasn’t the right woman.”
“And you knew that.”
“I didn’t know anything, Ryan. You were in love, you wanted everything right away. You were young – you both were…”
“And now, she…”
“I know.”
I slump down next to him on the sofa.
“Why not with me?”
He sighs. “I don’t have an answer for you.”
“She had everything she wanted – and all I wanted was…her.”
“Ryan, please…”
