Page 42 of Loathing Ryan
He shook his head. “Nope, try again. I feel like that wasn’t bizarre enough.”
I furrowed my eyebrows. “What do you meanbizarreenough?”
“I want to know something Idon’tknow. I feel like I already knew that everybody works at McDonald’s.”
“Do you know who Marie Curie is?” I asked him, resorting to the last autobiography I read.
“Yeah, she was the scientist lady, right?”
I rolled my eyes, not bothering to correct him on the “scientist lady” bit–he wasn’t wrong, just uninformed. “Yes. Did you know that her notebooks are still radioactive from all her studies on radioactivity?”
“See, now that’s what I’m talking about. And, no, I didn’t know that.” He looked over at me and grinned. “You’re so smart.”
I shifted in my seat from the compliment. “I just like to know things.”
“I can tell.” Ryan got up from his position and stretched his back out with a grunt. He muttered something about needing to go inside to pee, and I rolled my eyes.
When he came back outside, he had his guitar in hand and a devilish gleam in his eye. I was thankful there had at least been a few things we found inside this little cabin to keep us busy. I had a stack of dusty old books, and Ryan had the guitar he could fiddle with.
I wasn’t too proud to admit that I loved Ryan playing the guitar. He got this adorable look of concentration on his face when he started putting together different notes and chords. He had been playing this one melody over and over that I would catch myself humming throughout the day. It wasn’t a familiar song that was popular on the radio, and it made me think that Ryan wrote it himself.
As he started strumming on the strings, I let myself daze out, listening to the music and watching the flames from the fire dance into the night sky. Every once in a while, a log would crackle, shooting sparks up. I loved watching the sparks flutter around and eventually disappear.
“What are you thinking about over there?” Ryan asked me, snapping me out of my thoughts. I glanced over at the green-eyed devil and smiled.
“How do you know I was even thinking of anything?” I teased him.
He motioned to his face. “You get this little crease between your eyebrows.”
I reached over and shoved him. “Whatever! I do not!”
Ryan laughed loudly. I gave him a good look over again. How had I never seen this side of him before? The fun, easy-going boy who would throw his head back in laughter. His amusement was infectious, and I found myself laughing along with him more times than I could count.
“What are we going to do when we get back?” I asked him. My fingers twisted together in nervousness. Ever since we had slept together, my mind kept darting to what Ryan told me about his plans for college. What were we even doing together, knowing that was the outcome in the next few weeks?
I wasn’t going to delude myself into thinking that we would be out here for the rest of our lives. We would get found and go back home to our regular lives. Would that mean that Ryan and I would go back to the way things were before? Or would we try to keep whatever this newfound relationship was going?
Even now, Ryan was beginning to mean more to me than I was willing to admit. It was daunting knowing we had a countdown to whatever we were starting to build with each other.
“You mean…with Princeton?”
“And Germany,” I added. I bit my bottom lip, curious as to how he would answer.
Ryan shrugged and gave me a wry grin. “I don’t know, Bells. I guess we’ll just figure it out when we get there.”
“How can you be so nonchalant about it?” I ask him. I couldn’t believe he was being so dismissive of something so significant looming in the near future. Meanwhile, I was strung up in knots, trying to figure out how we were going to move forward.
“’Cause it doesn’t change anything right now,” he said, putting down his guitar so he could face me. “Does what we’re doing next year change the fact that we’re out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“I guess not,” I said, frowning.
“Does it change how we act with each other, how we like to spend time together?” he pressed further.
“No,” I admitted, realizing where he was going with this.
He smiled again. “Okay, then. So that’s what I mean when I say we’ll figure it out when we get there. As far as we know, we’re never even leaving this god-forsaken cabin anyway.”
I grimaced. “I really hope you’re wrong on that one.”
