“For your intellect, your style,” he listed things immediately. “The way you say soda instead of pop unlike everyone else in the Midwest, your taste in boyfriends—"
“You had a crush on Ryan once,” I pointed out.
“No, pretty sure that never happened,” Zach said, showing off his impressive lying skills. “And if so, must have been a carbon monoxide leak.” He became serious again. “You let me down for a lot of reasons. But never because of your heart.” He frowned at the words but kept going. “You’re a good person or whatever. You care, I don’t. That’s why we make a good team.”
Zach put a hand on my shoulder, looking me in the eye. “Time to do something difficult,” he instructed. “And at the risk of actually being let down, I believe you can do it.”
10.Ups and Downs
Stupid downs.
My boyfriend loved telling me what to do. Underneath all the sarcasm and insanity, he had a really big heart. People weren’t always nice to him, so he didn’t show it to everyone. Even though I hadn’t always been the best to him, he’d still found the courage to let me in. This was one of the many reasons I thought he was the most awesome person in the world.
We were in my room.
Having Ryan in here instead of Zach was better for so many reasons. One, though he could be just as insulting, Ryan’s insults also came with kisses so that made them much more bearable. Two, we could both sit on my bed and it wasn’t weird because dating.
We’d ended up with me closest to the wall and Ryan on the outside. We were both lying on my bed, soft music playing in the background that I surprisingly didn’t hate even though he chose what to listen to. We weren’t cuddling.
This was just resting on the bed next to each other. Yep. Maybe we were leaning into each other a little, but no cuddling was involved at all.
“My choices are pretty simple,” I told Ryan as I stared up at the ceiling. Pretty boring view.
“Sometimes those are the hardest kind of all,” he said while reaching for my hand.
“What? I’m not sure what that means.” The blank white space above me provided no clues.
“I don’t know, I was trying to be philosophical.” He wasn’t looking at me, so he kept blindly grabbing at the air near me.
“I mean, I guess you’re right.” I brought my hand up to grab his.
Hearing my words, he immediately unlinked our hands and pumped his fist in the air. He was wearing this dumb ring that looked a child’s prize in a cereal box. Could be from one of those machines where you didn’t have to win a game or eat all the cereal, you just paid the 50 cents and got something dumb. I grabbed his hand again, looking at the ring.
“Because I know my options,” I continued. “And they don’t require, like, calculus or something. I just don’t want either one.” I turned the plastic jewelry over his finger. “I show the guys I still deserve to be captain. Get over it, I guess, but I don’t want them to think how they’re acting is okay.” I took the ring off his finger and he actually let me. “Or I could just let someone else be in charge… and then I don’t have as much control and what if we lose, and I could have stopped it? I’d hate that.”
The ring didn’t fit on my finger as well. I didn’t want to jam it on there and be unable to get it off, that would be super embarrassing, so I put it back on my boyfriend’s hand while I waited for his input.
“Your hair is softer than normal,” he said, shifting a bit so that he was in a better position to run a hand through my hair. “And it smells like koala bears.” Eucalyptus. When would he have smelled koala bears? “New shampoo?” He played with a few strands of my hair.
“Yeah.” I waited.
He kept playing with my hair, and I couldn’t complain because it felt good.
Seemed like that was all the input he had to offer.
Okay then.
Our sides were touching, and his presence was comforting even if he wasn’t helping, so I guess he was being helpful anyway.
“I do like being captain,” I told Ryan. “It’s not like I do it just to get credit, and sometimes it’s hard but still feels worth it.” I sighed. “But now, is it even worth it to also get trouble in addition to no credit?”
Ryan made a noise of consideration. “It’s like how humanity has forgotten about the Crystal Gems, but they still save the world anyway.” He turned and propped himself up on an elbow so he could look at me seriously. “It’s the right thing to do, Luke, and it’s their home.”
“Okay.” I said that a lot when I didn’t get what the heck Ryan was talking about.
“It takes a special kind of person to fight giant, superpowered women,” he continued. “It takes other giant, superpowered women.”
Oh. “That’s why you like them?” They fought the other giant ladies away. “Because giant women are the scariest?”
