Right As Rain | ✓

9| Choices: Part 1

"Until she met Keaton," Mom answers, angling her fork at him. Keaton throws up his hands in mock surrender, a grin smeared all over his long face.

"That's not true, I did a lot of fun things by myself!" I answered indignantly, shocked by the two of them ganging up on me.

"Yeah?" Keaton asks, "Like what?" He's places his fork down on his plate and crosses his hand patiently on top of the wooden dining table like a school child, waiting as I think of a good enough scenario to conjure up.

"The time I broke into old Shamus's house!" I offer, my arms crossed in satisfaction, not giving a crap about the fact that my mother was sitting across from me.

Keaton laughs and shakes his head, "That was with me, who do you think opened the window for you?" I sigh and he laughs again, "Besides, we were allowed in there."

"So you mean to say that I climbed through a window just for the sake of it?" He nods proudly and I let a small smile slip through my pretend angry exterior. I look at Ryan who's smiling awkwardly down at his food.

Keaton looks down at Mable who's trying to cut her sliver of steak into an even smaller piece, he smiles when she does it successfully and gives her a high five. "Good job!" He whispers enthusiastically. Mable gives him one of her goofy smiles, the one that shows the few teeth she had forming in her mouth.

"I take it you guys have been friends for a long time?" Ryan asks, after chewing and then taking a sip of water. The gulp was loud enough to make me cringe, the sheer amount of force needed to produce the sound was unimaginable.

"You could say that," Keaton answers smugly, trying to annoy Ryan who does not seem fazed in the slightest. That doesn't stop me from kicking Keaton from under the table again. His knee smashes the underside of the table and everyone turns to look at him startled. "The food is so good, I just bit my tongue," he mumbles, trying not to make a scene. My mother grins happily and looks between the two of us.

Once dinner is finished I walk Keaton to his car, for a long time we both stand there silent, waiting for the other to speak. He climbs into his truck and shuts the door. "Of course I remember the ranch house." He says out of the blue. I look up at him and he's grinning, the dimples in his cheek standing at attention. He gives me one last look and drives away. My heart flutters with excitement long after he's gone, and carries over to when I'm sitting on the sofa beside Ryan.

"So what have you been up to?" He asks me, throwing his arm around the back of the sofa and angling himself slightly to face me.

"Nothing much, helping around the house, seeing old friends..." I trail off and he lowers his head to meet my gaze.

"That was Mable's father wasn't it?" He asks nonchalantly, picking up the remote to change the channel on the television.

"Yeah." I breathe out. He nods his head.

"He didn't know about her did he?" He asks further, not even needing to see my face to know the answer. "It must have been my hair." He throws in, trying to alleviate the building tension in the room.

I however, wasn't ready to let go of the tension, "We've never talked about it." I say, staring blankly at the tv in front of me, "You've never told me how you felt about the whole situation."

"What is there to say?" He asks as he places the remote back on the coffee table separating the entertainment station from the couches. "In a perfect world I would have met you first but it's not a perfect world." He shrugged.

"You can't be this nice all the time," I mutter, irritated by his coolness in the situation. There was not a chance he was just going to accept our circumstance like he always pretended to, and there was certainly no way I was going to marry him if we didn't air out our dirty laundry and sweep out our closets.

"You want to do this here?" He asks, placing his hands neatly folded on his lap.

"Where else would we do this?" I retort, now standing with my hands on either side of my waist. I was ready for the brutal argument that I foresaw happening here in this living room. I was just glad that my mother had taken Mable up to watch cartoons with her.

"Why didn't you tell me Keaton still lived here?" He asked, throwing his hands up in frustration.

"I didn't know he was still in town remember?" I point out. How was I to know that in the span of the three years I had been gone, Keaton had up and decided to move back? I hadn't kept in touch with anyone besides my mom when I left, and even that communication was spotty.

"You could have called to let me know!" He suggested, raising his eyebrows as if he'd won.

"Why does it bother you that he's here anyway?" I asked, waiting to hear the answer I desperately wanted him to give. The one that proved he was jealous.

"You never told me how you guys broke up," He answered, "I didn't know if it was mutual."

"He left me, Ryan," I whispered, my voice cracking at the end. Suddenly, the entire argument seemed stupid. Nobody was gaining anything, it was just causing more hurt feelings. I plopped back down on the couch. "You don't just forget something like that."

"And I've never forced you to choose Bea," He explains, his voice sounding strained as he spoke, "the two years I've known you, I have never once asked you to choose." There was a certain way he said the last sentence that made me sit up straighter.

"You want me to choose," I whisper not even bothering to phrase it as a question. It was obvious he'd been hoarding his feelings about this for a long time. I closed my eyes, focusing on my breathing and trying to slow down the wave of hurt I felt was coming over me.

"I guess now I do." He answers running a hand through his hair. The room was dead silent, the crickets in the grass outside were probably louder than any noise that could have come from this room.

Edit Summary

May 19, 2020 - Fixed up a few things that bothered me aesthetic wise, o major edits took place.

June 8, 2020 - Added the banners made for me by Belle

July 19, 2020 - Early Morning Edit Gang :|