The Night with Ryan

Chapter 6 – The Night With Ryan

Ryan was quiet for a long time after the second pair of bottles arrived. Not the kind of quiet that comes from having nothing to say. The kind that comes from a man rearranging everything he thought he knew about a woman and realizing none of it was true.

I watched him put the pieces together. His eyes kept drifting to my wrists, where the diamond bracelets caught the low candlelight every time I moved. Then to the gown, the way it fit me like it had been sewn onto my body. Then to the four bottles on the table, each one worth more than most people's rent for a year. I could almost hear the gears turning inside his skull.

"Nathan told me you clipped coupons." His voice came out softer now, the smooth confidence from earlier replaced with something closer to disbelief. His jaw was slightly open and his eyes kept blinking like he was trying to wake up from something.

"I did. For eleven years."

"And now you're sitting here spending more in one night than most people spend in a decade."

"Funny how things change."

He leaned forward, both elbows on the table, his face only a couple of feet from mine. The grin was gone. What replaced it was something rawer, more honest, and a lot more dangerous.

"He was hiding you." Ryan's voice dropped low, almost a whisper, like he was saying something he wasn't supposed to. "That's what this was. Every time Nathan called you boring, every time he told the guys you were just some tired housewife who didn't know how to have fun, he was keeping other men from looking at you. He knew exactly what he had and he buried it."

I took a slow sip of wine and let the warmth of it spread through my chest before I answered. "Maybe he did."

"There's no maybe about it." Ryan shook his head slowly, his eyes locked on mine. "I've known Nathan for fifteen years and he's never once talked about you the way a man talks about a woman he's proud of. Now I'm sitting across from you and I can't figure out which one of us was the bigger fool. Him for hiding you, or me for believing him."

Something flickered inside my chest when he said that. Not love. Not even attraction, really. More like the satisfaction of watching a lock click open that someone tried very hard to keep shut. Nathan spent years making sure nobody looked at me twice. And here was his own friend, staring at me like I was the first real thing he had seen in months.

"Pour me another glass," I told him, sliding my empty one across the table.

His fingers brushed mine when he reached for the bottle. He didn't pull back. Neither did I.

We drank through the rest of the night. The bar filled up and emptied out around us, but I barely noticed. Ryan talked and talked, the way men do when they drink too much and stop trying to be careful. He told me about his apartment in Chelsea that he could barely afford. About the consulting firm he worked at that was slowly going under. About the nights he went out with Nathan and watched him flirt with other women at bars while bragging about keeping his wife at home.

"He doesn't deserve you," Ryan murmured, his words starting to blur together at the edges. His eyes were glassy and his head kept tilting forward like gravity was winning. "He never did."

"I know."

"Do you, though?" He reached across the table and his fingertips touched the back of my hand, light and warm. "Because the way you're sitting there, all calm and perfect, drinking wine that costs more than my car, I feel like you've known that for a lot longer than tonight."

I turned my hand over so his fingers fell into my palm. His breath caught and his pupils went wide, and for a second the whole bar disappeared and it was just the two of us sitting in the glow of candlelight with four empty bottles between us.

"You're very pretty when you're trying to be honest, Ryan."

His whole face flushed red. Not from the wine. From something deeper than that.

"I'm not trying to be anything."

"Yes you are. But that's okay. I don't mind."

By the time the last bottle was empty, Ryan could barely stand. His body swayed when he pushed himself up from the booth, and he laughed at himself in that loose, careless way that drunk people do when they've given up pretending to be sober.

"I should probably get home," he mumbled, but his eyes were saying something completely different. They kept dropping to my lips and then snapping back up, like he was fighting a war with himself and losing.

"Where do you live?"

He didn't answer right away. Instead he turned his head and looked through the front window of the bar. Across the street, lit up in gold light against the dark sky, was a boutique hotel with a black awning and a doorman in a long coat.

"There," he whispered, nodding toward the hotel with a crooked smile. "I live right there tonight."

I knew exactly what he was doing. And I knew exactly what I was doing when I stood up, took his arm, and walked him across the street.

This wasn't about feelings. It wasn't about loneliness or heartbreak or needing someone to hold me. It was about Nathan. Everything was about Nathan right now, and Ryan was the sharpest knife I could push into his back. His own friend. His own buddy who played basketball with him on weekends and drank beer on his couch. The betrayal would cut deeper coming from someone Nathan trusted, and that was worth more to me than any amount of wine.

We crossed the lobby without speaking. The elevator doors closed and Ryan leaned against the wall, looking at me through half closed eyes.

"You're not what he told me you were."

"I never was."

The room was small but clean, white sheets, city lights through the window, a quiet hum from the air conditioning. Ryan pulled me close before I even set my clutch down, and for a moment I let myself feel it. The heat. The want. The strange thrill of being touched by someone who actually wanted to be near me, even if his reasons were as selfish as mine.

I didn't love him. I didn't even like him that much. But I needed him, and tonight that was enough.

The morning came with sunlight pouring through curtains neither of us remembered closing.

I woke up first. My body felt completely fine, no headache, no heaviness, no fog. The upgraded system had burned through the alcohol like it was water. I sat up in the white sheets and looked at Ryan sleeping beside me, mouth open, one arm hanging off the side of the bed, dead to the world.

My old phone sat on the nightstand where I left it. When I picked it up and turned it on, the screen filled with notifications so fast it froze for a second before catching up.

Thirty seven messages from Nathan.

I scrolled through them slowly, one by one, and felt nothing but a deep, cold amusement. The first few were angry. Then they got threatening. Then they got desperate. Then they looped back to angry again.

"You think you can lock me out of my own house? I'll have a lawyer on you by Monday."

"Answer your phone, Olivia. I'm not playing."

"My mother is losing her mind over this. Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted?"

"Fine. Don't answer. But when I get home I'm taking everything. The car. The accounts. Everything."

I read every single one with a smile on my face. The kind of smile that would have scared me if I saw it on someone else. Then I selected all thirty seven messages and deleted them at once. The screen went blank and clean, and I felt lighter than I had in years.

Behind me, Ryan stirred. The mattress shifted and I heard him groan softly, then suck in a breath like the hangover had just hit him all at once.

"Olivia?"

"Get dressed."

He sat up slowly, squinting against the light, his hair sticking up in every direction. "About last night..."

"Forget it."

His face crumpled. Not all at once, but in stages. First the confusion. Then the disbelief. Then something that looked almost like hurt, though I wasn't sure a man like Ryan was capable of real hurt or just the performance of it.

"Forget it? Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"You can't be serious." He pulled the sheet up around his waist and turned his whole body toward me, his voice climbing, his eyebrows pinching together. "You can't just walk away from this like it was nothing. Last night meant something."

"Last night meant exactly what it was."

"Olivia, wait." He reached for my arm but I was already standing, already slipping my shoes on, already pulling my hair back with steady hands. "You can't just do this. You can't just walk away like none of it happened."

I looked at him over my shoulder. His face was flushed and his eyes were wide and wounded, and for a second, just one second, I almost felt bad.

Almost.

"Watch me."