Ryder

eight

"Everything all right?" Alyssa suddenly asked me, giving me one of my mom's favorite looks. One that made you feel like there was something heavily wrong with you.

Which it was. Something heavily wrong with me, I mean. Or why else would I be staring at the half-finished bottle of Merlot sitting on our lone kitchen counter like it was my only savior from this horrible horrible day?

"Yeah." I smiled at her, tucking my hands behind my back as I leaned against the wall beside her. "Why wouldn't it be?"

Alyssa softly nudged her shoulder with mine. "Just, you looked a bit pale in the face."

"I'm already as pale as they get, Alys."

"Yeah, right." She huffed good naturedly. "All those years of cheerleading did you wonders, Alice. You're the prettiest of the bunch here and you know it."

A small sigh left my lips as my eyes once again trailed towards the bottle of wine that seemed to be calling my name.

"I'm pretty sure I'm also the only one who looks like I just got stabbed in the stomach," I said.

Alyssa laughed and glanced down at the stain on my sweater. "Why haven't you changed out of it yet?"

Because I don't want to go up to my bedroom which I knew Mom would've changed during the time I hadn't been here. I didn't want to see how much she had changed. I didn't want to see how many things of mine she'd gotten rid of.

"I should, shouldn't I?" I looked over at the lounge entrance, grimacing when I thought of stepping in there--which also happened to be the only way up to my room.

It had been seconds, minutes, or maybe even hours since I'd introduced Mom to Ryder (who wasn't, and I had to keep reminding myself, Ryder at this moment. He was Soren, my boyfriend), and since she'd practically dragged him inside to introduce him to everyone else.

I absolutely did not want to see how Ryder was holding up. He hadn't, however, done or said anything majorly bad yet, since all I could hear were chatters and surprisingly merry laughs from my aunts and uncles.

"Yeah, go ahead." Alyssa broke me out of my miserable thoughts and I saw she was grinning rather mischievously when I looked up at her. "And you can stop worrying about your boyfriend. He's in safe hands."

Safe hands. I smiled anxiously. It wasn't his safety I was so worried about.

Still, I did as she said and practically held my breath as I entered the lounge, only managing to catch a tiny glimpse of Ryder standing by the fireplace before I quite literally dashed upstairs. Before someone could've stopped me.

As if being a bad overall girlfriend wasn't enough, I was quite possibly the worst fake girlfriend as well.

Not like it had been my idea to do this in the first place.

"Don't be so ungrateful, Alice." I reprimanded myself as I walked across the hallway and towards the last closed bedroom door. "He did save you from Mom's wrath." Which he had, because the moment I'd introduced Mom to him, all the suspicious anger had quite literally evaporated from her face. She'd looked stunned and then relieved and then a tad bit suspicious because I'm pretty sure she hadn't been expecting someone like Ryder (tall, dark-eyed, and oh so mysterious) when I'd been telling her all about my sweet boyfriend Soren.

Soren wasn't really sweet though, I reminded myself. He'd cheated on me.

Grimacing, I opened the door of my old bedroom and stepped inside. I couldn't help but look around, letting my eyes wander from one thing to another. There were a few posters that were still there while some were torn off the pastel yellow walls (probably Mom's doing). At least not all was lost, I thought as I walked to one of the two glass windows in here.