Page 7 of With Love, Alex

“No, you’re not cheap at all. You want to move to a nicer house, and unlike Dawn, you don’t have a stepfather to buy you new cars and houses. Don’t listen to her. Damn it,” she sighed, her breath hitting the phone’s microphone. “I’ve got to go. Jack’s calling for me. I love you and let me know when you want to come.”

“Okay, thanks for everything! I love you too. We’ll make plans to see each other soon. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Not knowing what to do with myself except be sad that my best friend was over seven hundred miles away, I called Ryan to let him weigh in on Dawn.

“Hang on a second,” Ryan answered before covering it up with what I assumed was his hand. I could hear muffled noises, but that was it. After a couple of moments, he got back on the phone with me. “Hey! How are you?”

“Okay. How are you?” I asked back.

“I’m better now that I’ve heard from you. You sound kind of down. What’s up?”

“What were you doing when I called?” I asked putting off telling him about last night.

“Stalling, huh?” he chuckled. “Okay, I was fixing Amber’s car, and now I’m leaving. Heading back into town. Do you have any plans for tonight?”

“No, why do you ask?”

“Want to hang out or go to dinner?” Ryan asked with a smile in his voice. It was rare that he was ever in a bad mood and just talking to him could always put me back to rights with myself.

“I’d love to hang out. Maybe we can get some Chinese and eat it here or at your house. Whichever you prefer.”

“I need to grab a shower so how about you call in the order, and I’ll pick it up on the way home, and I’ll see you when you get there.”

“Sounds good. Hey, Ryan?” I called before he could hang up.

“Right here,” he called over the line.

“Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me. What are friends for?” As if he were right in front of me, I knew he was smiling again. Both his mouth and his eyes always smiled back at me, and I loved that about him.

“I’ll see you soon,” I replied before hanging up and calling to make our order.

Letting myself in, I took out all the food containers and placed them on the kitchen counter. I had started to make my plate when Ryan walked into the room running a towel through his wet hair.

“Are you going to tell me what’s up? You sounded kind of down on the phone,” he said as he came up and gave me a side hug. Going by looks, Ryan was my ideal man. He was tall, six feet exact, with blondish-brown hair, and blue eyes with thick arms and legs that were built from hard work. For some reason, I had a very specific type of man that I found attractive. I wasn’t one of those women would like the tall, dark, and handsome unless you were substituting dark for blond. Ryan hit all the right marks, but he’d been in the friend zone for a long time and he was never moving out of that category.

My ex-husband looked nothing like what I was attracted to and maybe that was why I had a very distinct type now. He was tall, but that was the only characteristic I could check off my list. Instead of blond his hair was black, and his eyes were almost as dark as his hair. In truth, now that we were no longer married, and he couldn’t control me the way he liked, he scared me. I wasn’t sure what he was capable of. I only knew that he wanted to ruin my life in any way that he could. If he couldn’t be happy than no one should.

“I’d just got off the phone with Taylor. I miss her and Ben. I’m going to look at my schedule and plane tickets tomorrow to see when I can go visit her. Do you want to come?”

“Let me know when you’re thinking, and I’ll see what I can do. Anything else?” he asked, knowing that wasn’t all that was bothering me, as he started placing heaping pile of food on his plate.

“Yes,” I grumbled as I took a seat on his couch. “How can you read me so well? Am I that easy?”

“Nah, I don’t think you’re easy to read. Actually, I’d say the exact opposite is true, and the only reason I can tell is that I’ve known you since you were sixteen. I’ve had plenty of practice reading you, but if you don’t want to talk about it, I’m sure I can find a movie for us to watch.” He looked over at me and smiled letting me know that no matter what I chose to do it was okay with him. Probably because he knew that I would eventually spill.

“To start off, I went out last night with Dawn and Shelli.” I paused looking over at him with noodles hanging out of his mouth.

“Did you have fun?” He asked once he didn’t have a massive amount of food preventing him from talking.

“I guess.” I shrugged. “There’s lots to tell. First, we went out to dinner, and that was fine, and then we went to Flux.”

“Fancy,” he replied before his brows furrowed and he asked, “Do I need to kick someone’s ass?”

“Not unless it’s my ass that needs to be kicked,” I half-joked.

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