DREAM STATE // Ryder Mclaughlin EDITING

06

Guys normally aren't my specialty. After my first boy friend at fifteen who broke up with me for my then best friend I declared that from then on I no longer wanted to deal with the male species.
And when I did interact it took only about ten minutes until I scared them off from either what I said or what I didn't say. Which is why I'm surprised to wake up face to face with Ryder for the second time.
"Stop staring at me or else I'll punch you."
I grab the pillow from underneath my head and slap it onto his face.
"I wasn't even looking at you shut up." I watch Ryder shift from underneath the covers and stand up to put his pants on. Not that we did anything last night but apparently to men it's more comfortable to not wear their pants.

"Wait where are you going?" I get up following him to my window, he's still not met my front door yet and to be honest I don't think there will ever be a time for that.
"I'm leaving? What else would I be doing." Uh oh, someone got their panties in a twist.
"Ryder I was just playing around, stay."

"No, I have somewhere to be." Ryder digs into his pocket pulling out a pack of Marlboro cigarettes and placing one in between his lips. I turn and reach into my night stand grabbing out an old playboy lighter I stole from a convenient store down the road sometime last year. I walk over to him as he leans his body into the bedroom, the other half of him standing on the small section of my roof.

"Need a light?" I flick the lighter and watch as the cigarette begins to burn, the smoke beginning to make its way through my nostrils. "See you tonight?" I ask, Ryder looks away as if he's thinking about his answer but instead of replying he turns around and slides down the roof top and then drops his board and then his body to the ground. I watch him walk across the lawn and then throw his board down, skating away leaving me with no response.

I turn around and grab a cardigan from my closet and wrap it around my body to head downstairs. Right as I open my door I'm greeted with Flynn who's just about to knock on my door.

"Flynn? It's too early to deal with your shenanigans, what do you want?" Flynn rolls his eyes turning around and down the stairs.

"Breakfast is ready, idiot."
"Wow Flynn, twenty three and you're still using idiot as an insult?"

I make my way down the stairs and into the kitchen and see my dad and Kohen once again reading their newspaper like sixty year old men who don't know how to use the internet. If my mom were here she'd laugh and tell them that modern day technology is a thing they can use.

"Father, brother. What do we have today for breakfast?"
"Well, eggs, toast and hash browns. Sorry V, didn't feel like going all out this morning."

Just as I sit down at the table the home phone rings. My dad and Kohen make eye contact as if they were fighting with their minds of who has to go answer it.
Dad sets his newspaper and coffee down on the table which causes Kohen to laugh at the fact that he won the battle.

"Hello, this is Kenneth speaking."
Though I can't hear what the person on the other line is saying I can tell that he's heading something he didn't want to hear. His face goes pale and it looks like his heart dropped to the bottom of his stomach. "Yes, we'll be on our way. Thank you."
He hangs the phone up and stands in place, he's in shock I can tell. This is the same look he had when the doctors told us that my mom didn't make it.

"Dad? Who died?"
"Vera grab your shoes, let's go" He goes over to the jacket resting on his chair and pulls out his keys.

"Dad? What happened? Where are we going?"

He again doesn't answer me but starts walking to the door. I can tell that he's slowly going insane so I grab a pair of old sneakers from the coat closet and follow him out to the car.