Hickey

Hickey || 07

HICKEY / chapter seven

"You aren't obliged to do anything for me, you know."

His eyebrows furrow together but his eyes don't leave the road. "What do you mean?"

"This whole driving me home thing?" I say, watching the blurry houses we pass by. "You don't owe me anything. And I already told you, I'm not gonna tell Elliot."

"This isn't about me feeling like I owe you," he says. "Though, I kind of do owe you. We haven't talked about it, but you know we have to at some point."

"We have talked about it," I point out.

"Not really. I want to really talk about it."

"What else is there to talk about? Ryder, we just made out. That's it, we didn't do anything more."

"Eva, I took advantage of you while you were drunk. We can't just avoid that."

"You didn't!"

"And now I'm letting you keep it from your brother!"

"For my benefit, not yours! If he finds out, you aren't the only one who's gonna have to face him."

"My point is that I should have just stayed away from you altogether."

I turn away, trying not to take what he said personally. I understand him, I do, but a small part of me thought that we could at least be friends. I guess not. I'm his worst enemy's little sister, and us making a stupid mistake doesn't change that.

"Maybe you should have," I say quietly.

Ryder lets out a frustrated sound. "Eva, I'm really am sorry."

"Okay, here's the thing: you keep insisting that you took advantage of me and maybe you did, in some way, but I need you to let this go."

"I can't just let this go."

"Yes, you can," I tell him, voice hard. "Your sorry doesn't change anything, no matter how many times you say it or no matter how much you want it to."

"I know that."

"And I don't like being told what to do, especially by some guy who's just as bad as I am. You made me feel like a kid who doesn't know shit!" He opens his mouth to protest but I hold up a hand to stop him. "But guess what, I'm not a kid! And I don't need to learn a fucking lesson, okay? I know what I'm doing so stop treating me like an idiot."

"That's not what I meant! I was just worried—"

I ignore him and continue, "I know I'm younger than you, Ryder, but just because something happened at a stupid party doesn't give you the right to treat me like I'm lower than you. And the whole rivalry between you and my brother? Leave me the fuck out of it."

With that, I get out and slam his passenger door shut. I walk around my house to the backyard, ignoring the sound of his car engine and how the neighborhood slowly turns dark, lit up only by small streetlights, as he drives away.

As I climb up the tree in our backyard and into my bedroom window, flashbacks from last night hit me.

Loud music welcomed us as Nikki and I walked into the party the Haven siblings were throwing. They had just moved in a month ago and went to Nikki's school. From what I've heard, they were getting a lot of attention since they moved into the house that used to belong to a family whose daughter had apparently killed herself. You could say they were the talk of the town at the moment, and probably for the rest of the year until something more scandalous happened in this town.