Ryder

eighteen

Ryder's POV

"Que maldito tonto." Rafael continued with the one-sided conversation he'd been having ever since I let him walk past my front doors.

Which had been massively idiotic thinking on my part. An impulsive decision that I was now fully regretting because he was making me want to hurl the nearest possible object at his face, just so he would stop rattling and wearing my ears off.

"Fuiste grosero y lo sabes, pero sigues actuando como un tonto obstinado y fingiendo ignorarme. Como si no pudieras entender lo que estoy diciendo actualmente." And if that wasn't torture enough, he kept tapping that goddamn fork in his hand on an empty glass of water and I was minutes--no, seconds--away from grabbing him by a fistful of his own hair and breaking his nose all over again.

"How is your nose, Rafael?" I faced him and leaned against the polished white marble counter behind me.

Rafael narrowed his eyes to identical and suspicious slits and rubbed the tip of his nose almost self consciously. It wasn't looking bloody like it had been when I'd sent him hurtling across the bar counter the other night, when I'd punched him in the face, but the bruise still looked fresh and that seemed enough to quieten down the spark of rage he was so hell-bent on igniting within me.

I hated when Rafael went on rambling like that and he knew it. He knew it yet he still did it anyway because the main purpose, I now knew perfectly well, was to piss me off. It lately felt like everyone's sole reason to live was to piss me off until I did unfair, stupid shit.

Like when I'd yelled at Alice and spoken all those hurtful words. Hurtful because I'd seen it in her eyes. Those same eyes that rendered me speechless most of the time--they'd flickered with an emotion that had resembled pure hurt more than anything that night, and then again last night because apparently, I was a fucking tool when it came to apologies.

"My nose will live." Rafael sniffed haughtily. "You are a menace."

"And?" I crossed my arms. "Are we crossing out every ugly adjective that describes us both? Because I don't need words to tell you how close I'm to losing it--again, Rafael--and I'm going to bash your face on this very counter you're sprawled against if you don't stop the berating and tell me what the hell I did wrong. Now."

I watched as he, very slowly, removed his upper half from the counter, staring down at it accusingly before snapping that look at me.

"You didn't apologize, you fool," he said. "Go back through everything that you said to Alice last night when you met her, everything that you told me just now, and tell me, did any of those words include 'I am sorry'?"

I blinked, gripping the edges of the counter behind me hard enough before letting go.

"No," I stated.

"No?" He raised his hands in the air. "Why the fuck did it take you so long to come to that conclusion? Octavio, your family has fucked you up so bad that you do not even know what an apology consists of!"

"I know what an apology is."

"Yes?" He laughed. "Tell me, do the words 'I am sorry' come before you tell the person they're stupid or does it come after that?"

I stared at him, scowling. "It depends."

Rafael had the decency to hold his expression for a few seconds before he was slumping back on the counter and berating me once again in his native language.

Aggravated, I tried rolling the tension off of my shoulders and went towards the huge refrigerator, pulling open one of the doors and taking out a water bottle. I was in the middle of twisting off its cap to drain every bit of the cold water when Rafael added,