Page 8 of Loathing Ryan
I didn’t stick around to witness his buddies congratulate him on the first perfectly executed prank of the summer. I heard him cough as he came to the surface, and Juliet screeched at him, “Ryan Miller, you asshole, that dress cost me seventy dollars!”
4
RYAN
Once I draggedmyself out of the lake, I shot Todd a dark glare. “What the fuck?”
He was too busy laughing his ass off to really notice I was legitimately pissed. Liam watched our other friend with a wary expression, his eyes darting between me and Todd. My irritation continued to rise as my idiot friend laughed harder.
“Todd!” I shouted at him, finally pulling the bastard from his laughter.
“What?” he fired back.
“What thefuck?” I repeated. “What was that for?”
At last, Todd sobered, realizing that I wasn’t playing around anymore. “What do you mean?”
“Why did you do that?” I asked, trying not to growl.
He shrugged noncommittally. “I thought it would be funny. Sorry, Ryan, I didn’t realize she was going to push you into the lake.”
I scowled at him. Of course he didn’t, because he had no idea that Izabel was slowly warming to me. I could see it in her eyes—she wanted to hear what I had to say. And secretly, with that small surrender of hers, I had hoped that maybe that would be the turning point and we could overcome the last few years.
Then Todd had to go and be a shithead.
I saw the moment she thought she had pieced it all together, and I couldn’t lie—it stung a bit. It was written clear as day all across her face. She had thought I tricked her. She thought I was pretending to be genuine, only to have one of my henchmen come out of nowhere and take advantage of her lowering her walls for a moment.
Honestly, I couldn’t care less about Izabel pushing me into the lake. To be fair, I probably deserved a whole lot worse. I was now soaking wet, but truly, I didn’t care.
It ended up being the excuse I needed to get out of being at the bonfire. After I yelled at Todd a little more, I was able to go back to the dorms under the guise of needing to shower and get new clothes. I did do all of that, but I didn’t go back to the bonfire, instead choosing to hole up in my bunk for the rest of the night.
Izabel’s expression of betrayal and anger burned into my brain as I replayed the incident over and over in my head. The feeling of remorse was not something I had often contributed to the shenanigans surrounding Izabel, but that was where I was at this moment. My chest ached with the realization that I had met every expectation Izabel had of me, in the worst way possible.
I was thoroughly pissed, and I wished my friends would mind their own damn business instead of feeling the need to get involved with mine. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day. Maybe I would get a chance to apologize to her for ruining her dress.
Fuck, that dress.
She really did look nice. I don’t think I’d ever been affected by a girl in a simple dress the way I was when I laid eyes on her. There was something about the way it hugged her curves so perfectly that had my mouth drying and my stomach clenching. I had given her the compliment hoping that maybe she’d believe me, that she’d know she was beautiful. I knew she didn’t trust me, but maybe someday I could convince her that I wasn’t the terrible person she thought I was.
Still picturing Izabel’s look of fury, I was able to fall asleep before my friends made it back to the dorm.
The following day was solely focused on icebreaker games as if we hadn’t already spent years together at this point. They broke us into groups to play a few, and then we were instructed to get into our group and play ‘Two Truths and a Lie.’
Much to my amusement, that afternoon, I got put in a group with Liam, Todd, Nahla, and Izabel herself. Izabel looked incredibly uncomfortable with this setup. Her face was twisted up as though she just drank a glass of sour milk. And though I wished she didn’t have such a strong, negative reaction to me, a sick side of me liked that she had a reaction to me at all. The minute she became indifferent to me, I’d know it was all over, but until then, I’d take anything I could get, even if that meant that she had to hate me. We’d been in that same boat for pretty much the entirety of our acquaintance, so if that’s all I got, then so be it.
Even though, these days, I wasn’t sure her hatred toward me would be my first choice. But I didn’t know what to do to change the direction of her feelings.
She watched me warily as our small group settled into a circle on the floor, making an effort to sit as far away from me as possible, as if I might bite her.
We were given the instructions for the game, though I was sure we all knew how to play it. It was pretty self-explanatory. Todd decided that he would go first and made a big show of tapping his chin with his finger as he thought about his two truths and a lie.
“Okay, let’s see. I got straight As this semester, my dad flies fighter jets, and I have a pet snake,” he said as he eyed us all with a straight poker face.
I rolled my eyes as everyone in our group started calling out what they thought the lie was. I stayed silent. I knew Todd way too well. There was no doubt in my mind that he didnotget straight As this semester.
With a Cheshire Cat grin, he announced his lies—he ended up with two Bs in two classes.
Izabel took a deep breath, realizing she was up next. I watched her intently as her cheeks warmed under everyone’s scrutinizing gaze. My chest felt tight as I realized just how cute she looked with that rosy blush. She fiddled with her fingers as she said, “I love to read biographies and non-fiction. I went to Bali last summer after camp. And I really hate to swim, ’cause I don’t like water.”
