Danny and Riley: Childhood Stories-A Baby Daddy Fanfiction

Chapter 4: Age 10 - Part 1

The sky is a gloomy shade of grey, but the clouds aren't dark enough for it to rain yet. Even the wind came to halt, leaving the world so still that it seems like time has stopped.

Riley likes to think that the weather has moods. To her sunshine means it's happy and rain means it's sad, but she can't put her finger on what the weather is feeling in this exact moment.

She ponders on the idea, thinking about different emotions. She considers the possibility of the weather being sad, scared, or even angry, but nothing fits.

Soon her mind wanders towards thoughts of her best friend. Riley can't remember the last time she laughed in school, missing the days when Danny would pass her a note with a joke on it or make a silly face from behind the window.

She looks at the window to her left, missing Danny's enormous grin and messy hair. Now, the only person she sees in the window is a lady of about fifty walking her pearly white poodle.

Riley thinks about how nothing has been the same since Danny left for junior high. She sees him less and less now, fighting to find time between school and hockey practice to see him. Sometimes she waits in the treehouse, hoping Danny will think of her and come up, but he never does.

Their adventures have become non-existent. The days of when they tried to bake cookies—but mistook oatmeal for flour—are long gone, and in the scarce time they do find for each other they're sitting on the couche in silence.

Nothing was right in the Danny and Riley universe.

The more she thinks about it, the sadder she feels. 'No,' Riley thinks, 'sad isn't the right word for this feeling.'

Sad is the feeling someone gets when their friend doesn't pick them first for their team at PE. It's the feeling when someone doesn't invite you to their birthday party. It's the feeling of tears glossing over your eyes as you wonder what's wrong with yourself to deserve what you got.

No, Riley isn't sad.

There are no tears glossing over her eyes, because it feels like she's forgotten how to cry.

Sadness doesn't begin to describe the feeling of having a part of you ripped out of your chest—which is the exact feeling that consumes Riley in this very moment.

Her and Danny are a pair—or at least they used to be. 'If we're always a pair, doesn't that make us one?' she wonders. Because, after all, a Riley without Danny seemed like and impossibility, yet there she sits, empty.

"Empty," the word rolls off her tongue.

Empty. She feels empty.

Her eyes dart to the window again and take a second look at the grey clouds in the sky, hiding the sun from her view. Her eyes search the still trees in the background and her ears try to hear the chirping of birds in the background, but they fail. It's clear to her now: the world is empty, just like her.