“We agreed we’d be talking to people about this.” Might as well in the off chance the input from other people would be helpful. It hadn’t been but hopefully it didn’t make things too much worse.
“Still, your dad, that was who you told?” His face expressed a lot of judgement.
“No, he heard me and Lydia talking.” I tried not to be annoyed, how did Ryan not remember that? Wait, did I tell him that before? Crap. “Should I have told you that sooner?” I wondered.
He thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know. Maybe?”
“Sorry. Didn’t do it on purpose.” We needed to talk through our problems right now, but the bad thing about having a problem when he was away was that there was other stuff we needed to talk about too. I hadn’t even known Ryan was kicking ass at his science thing. I assumed, but it was another thing to hear that was the case and that made me really happy, then really sad because he hadn’t told me.
I wasn’t mad at him for not telling me sooner though. Just like he wasn’t mad at me now.
“Yeah, I believe you.” He sounded sincere but the words didn’t make me feel better.
I told him what I was thinking. “Just. I don’t wanna keep stuff from you, but it feels like, I don’t know, things just slip through the cracks.” I had work, he had his science program. There was only so much time we could talk and text. And when we were, we were either talking about our sex life or Alicia and Lydia’s… not sex life.
“We can handle this and all, but it doesn’t just suck,” Ryan said. “It’s hard.”
Ryan and I were totally different people. I liked that normally. It meant I never got set in my ways, I wasn’t complacent. He always made me think different, exposed me to things I never would have seen otherwise. I was athletic and he could probably break his foot just trying to walk across the street. He was smart and the nicest thing my math teacher ever said to me was ‘good effort.’ We came from different worlds, but it was like when it was just the two of us, we created our own world. A place for just him and me where everything was wonderful.
I still liked that we weren’t the same but maybe a relationship needed some common ground. Somewhere to start, a place to build off. Instead, we weren’t on the same page, maybe not even in the same book. And how could we ever fit together like that?
“Are you upset?” I asked Ryan. About me not being able to visit but also about anything.
“No.” Huh. I was mainly asking, what thing are you most upset about so we could talk about it?
He totally was upset. I was about to call him on it. We already didn’t get to see each other in person, and it was hard keeping the other person informed, we couldn’t not be honest on top of that. But before I could speak, Ryan continued with, “You are not my father.”
Thank god for that since incest doesn’t turn me on. I managed not to say that. “What?”
“I wanted to admit that I was upset after I said no, but you were going to call me out on it first and say my name in that I’m-not-angry-I’m-just-disappointed almost parental way.”
“Ah. I have that in common with your dad?” Totally sexy. To no one ever.
“No, it’s not really the same. With him it’s crossed arms and stern face and with you it’s pleading eyes and pouty lips. I prefer your way but it’s not the same over video.” My face probably pouted more at that, so he sighed.
“I am a little upset,” Ryan admitted. “Not really at you or because of something you did, just at the situation, that you’re not coming to visit. The distance just feels far sometimes.”
I nodded. “We can handle it.” That was our motto. We fell into silence.
I couldn’t keep looking at him all sad and disappointed, so I looked at his walls. He had a bunch of posters. There were some of people I didn’t recognize, in stylish posters like they were movie stars even though they were science geniuses no one had ever heard of, and I think I saw the periodic table, and there were a bunch of posters and pictures that were, like, sentences.
It seemed weird to have posters of random sentences, until I realized they weren’t random. They were jokes, I just didn’t get them at all, so they read like a series of sentences that made no sense. The only thing I recognized was a picture of a cat, squished up to fit in a small space. Okay, funny cat pictures. I got that. Except the text said something about cats being a liquid?
Yeah, Ryan gets better grades than me. Still, cats aren’t a liquid. You can’t drink cats. I wanted to tell him that but this didn’t seem like the time. All I’d do was point out how I didn’t get the joke, how we were two people that had nothing in common and maybe it was miraculous we even managed to get this far.
Shit.
Okay, none of these thoughts were great. I had to remember one thing. Of all the things we didn’t have in common, there was one thing we did. We both loved each other. I didn’t know if that was enough, but I hoped so. I wanted it to be. I didn’t have to tell myself to love Ryan. That was just something I did automatically. Even now. It just sucked that I could love him so much and things could still go wrong.
What if love wasn’t enough? Stupid honesty. I asked Ryan, “Are you worried that we can’t handle this?” At least it was okay to not love this now when it was being all heavy.
Ryan glared and it looked so like the Ryan I knew. That was a weird thought. He was still the same person. Just farther away. How could that make so much of a difference? Like distance wise, he was around eight hours away. But metaphorically, he felt even farther. “Babe, this whole honesty thing, I wanna abide by it, but it’s really hard when you go and ask the question.”
“I’m worried too,” I told Ryan. “We can be worried together.” He should be happy, now was the time to worry. He wanted to do that all along.
“Oh, okay.” He tried to smile, but he was also kind of grimacing. Because I was trying not to be worried before. I was trying to stay calm. And I guess I just admitted that now was the time to worry.
“That’s something we have in common,” I explained. That’s why I asked the question. It was obvious we both felt that way. We were in the same boat. That should be comforting.
