Ryder

twenty five

Hidden stars and clouds the shade of a brewing storm--the dark sky carried a sense of comfort and unease with it. Comfort, because it was all so quiet and away from the bustling city streets. And unease, because the rainstorm was only getting harsher. The dark only ever started with the scariest of things and ended with the lowest of hopes.

Not like I had much hope to begin with after all that I'd heard Ryder tell me back at his penthouse. He had tried telling me something--something I wasn't able to listen to because I had stopped listening just after he confirmed the only one thing I'd been dreading the most. That Brooke was in danger in the worst way possible.

Brooke was in danger and the stranger from last night at that bar was somehow connected to it. I didn't know how or why. I didn't know how it was all connected, I didn't know why someone was after Brooke, and I didn't know why--I didn't know why she'd been begging me for forgiveness right before hanging up on me.

For good. She'd hung up for good.

I forgave her. I'd told her that I forgave her. I wasn't mad at her. But her last words to me--it sounded like she didn't believe me, couldn't believe me. She'd ended our phone call because she hadn't been listening to me. There had been that...that manic edge in her voice. She'd been shouting at me. Mad and desperate for something she thought I'd never give her.

But I had. I'd forgiven her, hadn't I?

I squeezed my eyes shut as if that would somehow banish all those thoughts from my head. As if that would somehow make this whole situation a little less scary.

I can't end up there again, I kept telling myself. Hoping, pleading, wishing. I can't see someone die again. Not Brooke. Please not Brooke.

She's going to kill herself, was what Ryder had told me. And I'd refused to listen to anything after that because I refused to even think along those lines. Brooke wouldn't do that. Brooke wouldn't ever do that, not the Brooke I knew--the one who was my roommate and my best friend and who shared morning coffees with me and who cared about her classes and always woke me up if I was ever late to my class and who would never, never do something that would ruin us. Our friendship.

But she's already done that, hasn't she? A nasty, hateful voice spat acid all inside me. She already ruined the friendship when she went behind your back just to hook up with your boyfriend.

I wasn't going to listen to that voice because I didn't even know where it was coming from. And it was hateful, awful because Brooke was in danger and I didn't hate her. She was my friend. She'd befriended me when I'd been all alone and afraid of everything new around me, when I'd been so full of paranoia and fear and dread that I just kept hiding and hiding. I didn't hate her and I'd already forgiven her.

"Alice." Ryder's voice snapped me out of my head and I blinked in surprise, a little taken aback when I noticed that I was in a car, his car, and we were going somewhere I didn't recognize. Or at first, I didn't, not until Ryder added, "Pay attention. This is where your friend's house is?"

I stared at the quiet row of suburban houses on one side of us, a few porch lights on. I didn't recognize them. I didn't because I've never been here. The rest was as dark as the choppy, slow-moving water of the silver lake. I thought I saw dark rusty railings of the street bridge but my focus once again drifted towards the houses.

"I...I think so." I tried swallowing the lump in my throat and looked down at the scrap of paper in my hand, the one that had Brooke's address scribbled on it. It wasn't very precise but that's all Soren had given me when I'd asked him over text (I didn't think I could've faced phoning him right then). Soren had sounded confused, especially since maybe he'd already expected me to have deleted his number by now.