Page 46 of Dirty Roulette
“I missed you,” I bit my bottom lip.
Nothing can save me now. My heart is pounding a million miles an hour. All I can do is wrap up how I feel in barbed wire, and pray it doesn’t unravel. Play it cool and pretend my heart isn’t flopping like a dead fish on the floor. But whatever this is, it feels real. All I do is smileat him and stare at his gray eyes that shouldn’t exist and wonder at the way the evening air ruffles his curly curtain hair.
“I’ve been thinking about taking you to this place for a while, but you can’t tell anyone about it.” Ryder laces his fingers into mine as we walk down the sidewalk.
“I love secrets!”
“Oh, I know you do.” He dips his head toward the Jeep. I hang onto one of his arms as we cross the street. He opens the passenger door for me, then rounds the corner and climbs in as I’m buckling up.
We take a fifteen-minute drive and pass the beach shops downtown. They’re closed for the night but still have one display light illuminating in the windows. “Where are we going?” I ask.
“I told you, it’s a secret.” He turns through some random streets I’ve never bothered to notice, and we hit a dirt road.
It’s bumpy, and the lifeless air freshener hanging on his rearview mirror violently swings back and forth. “Oh, come on, tell me. Secrets don’t make friends.”
“Let’s just say I don’t even bring friends here.” He uses a palm to turn the steering wheel. Trees tangle and twist all around the road, but clear up with a view of an old lighthouse beaming its light against a restless ocean.
Ryder parks the Jeep. He leans over the center console and grabs his football jacket hanging out in the back seat. “Here,” he hands it to me – it’s thick and warm, withHendersonstitched on the backside and his lucky number eleven stitched below. “It can be cold here once it gets dark.” The jacket is gigantic and Ryder’s woody scent saturates the inside, making me melt into it. It’s big enough to be a dress as it almost reaches my knees.
“Is that why you were asking me what I was wearing?”
“Maybe, but I didn’t want to spoil it.”
He’s brought me to the beach. That’s the number one most romantic thing a guy can do, right? Besides getting roses, writing poetry, and reciting Shakespeare. I didn’t even think this was a thing – Ryder being a romantic and all. The guy is gruff, with his muscles rippling under his shirt. He always has a fist clenched, fighting someone else, but somewhere deep inside he has a sweet spot – an actual human piece to him he doesn’t cut out and share with people.
I open the door, and I’m hit with cold salty air. The wind presses and pulls at my hair.
Ryder rounds the front end of the Jeep, lacing his fingers in mine. “Come on...” He dips his head, and he leads me through a pathway of bushes, littered with white flowers glowing bright in the moonlight. We twist and turn through the narrow path until the brush clears, and my feet meet beach sand.
Waves crash and the fizz of foam sweeps along the shore. The yellow light pulsates like a heartbeat as it spins in a circle across the ocean.
We walk a bit further through the sand where there’s a cluster of smooth large stones. “Okay... this is it.” He sits down on one of the rocks and rests his arms against his knees. I follow his lead, plopping down next to him. The sun is almost down, and it’s just a tiny bit left, but it’s the prettiest part where all the red, pink, and orange hues mesh in the sky blending into one color I can’t even describe.
He didn’t lie. The push and pull of the waves force the frigid air to prickle my skin with goosebumps. My butt is cold as ice, and the rock steals any warmth from me.
“Do you come here a lot?” I ask.
“When I want to disappear. Kinda came here a lot after Brittni, and shit with my dad.”
“What was it like?” I ask, trying to put the words into the correct order so the question doesn’t come off wrong, like I’m insecure andjust another crazy girl. “You know... dating Brittni? Sorry. You brought her up and I’m curious.”
“We only started seeing each other because of Roulette. I knew her for maybe thirty seconds before...” He stares down at his boots, tapping them against the sand.
“And you lost your virginity?”
“Yeah...” He pauses, and I stare at the way the ocean breeze pulls and tugs his hair in all directions. “I actually never told anyone before, but I was trying to wait until I found the right girl. Roulette wasn’t a part of the plotline I drew out for myself...”
“I don’t think any of us have the pen to write out our lives,” I say.
He lets out a brittle laugh. “You’re right... we don’t have an eraser to go backward, either.”
I dip my head onto his shoulder “There are still guys waiting like that?” I ask. He maneuvers his arm and wraps it around me.
“Kinda stupid, I know...” He puts his chin on my head, and his warm breath fights against the reckless cold wind.
“No, it’s not.”
“I believed whoever that person was, I would always be connected to them somehow. It was supposed to be sacred or something. So I tried to be her boyfriend, but she was always partying, and telling me I was the one cheating. Plus she liked to stalk me sometimes. Me and her were just two people always fighting, and...” He inhales a deep breath. “Fucking.”
