The Lies We Tell

Chapter 4

Walking home from my father's funeral, the last thing I expected was to find Ryan following me. I would think he was at the burial site with the rest of my friends and classmates that came. But here he was. Waving at me.

I stopped and he pulled up next to me. He put the passenger window down. "Hey," he said. Despite everything, my heart did a little flip. "Evelyn, right?" I nodded. "Want a ride? Walking barefoot isn't a good idea, you know."

Honestly, I didn't want to go home. I wanted to stay away from there for as long as possible. Did I want to ride around town with Ryan? Absolutely. "Sure." He reached across the cab and opened the door for me. "Thanks," I said as I climbed in.

He gave me a grin as I got situated. "Don't mention it. Now, where's home?" Blushing, I gave him my address. It wasn't as upscale a neighborhood as he lived in, which probably surprised him. He didn't let it show on his face if he was. He just started driving. After a couple of blocks he stole a glace at me. "Why were you out here, walking around barefoot all by yourself? You weren't going all the way home like that, were you?" he asked, turning right.

"I don't want to go home just yet." He glanced at me, surprised. But I knew he wasn't more surprised at my words than I was. It wasn't something I'd told my friends, and I didn't have any intentions to do so. I took a deep breath to try to calm the panic that tried to take over. After all, it was pretty natural to feel this way, right?

"Why not?"

"I don't want the silence." Again, why was my mouth ahead of my brain? I didn't want him to pity me. That was the last thing I needed or wanted.

He looked over at me as we came to a stop. I was scared to look at his face. I didn't want to see the look I knew had to be there. Instead, I stared at the red light in front of us. "I get that," he said. Those words shook me. I never expected him to say that. I looked at him and saw he was looking back at the road. He didn't have a trace of pity. Instead, it looked like understanding. 

"You do?"

He nodded as we began moving. "I do. Silence is always the worst part. You're used to hearing their sounds. Like them walking around, or doing something. Then, suddenly, it's not there. You can be having a good day, realize how silent it is, and then you get sad all over again." He glanced at me and saw the questioning look. "I lost my mom a few years ago," he said quietly.

"I'm sorry," I said. I hated myself for saying that, but I couldn't think of anything else. I hated people saying that to me. It was like, you didn't hit him, did you? Stop apologizing. It had been longer for him, so he had to really hate hearing that. "What happened? If you don't mind me asking, though."

He gave me a wry smile. "I don't mind. She died in a car wreck. It was snowing and she hit a patch of black ice. Her car ended up in some trees and she died in the hospital from her injuries." He ran a hand through his hair. "I can say that it gets better. You're gonna hear this a lot, but it actually does. That first month, I thought I was doing okay but every day I'd come home from school expecting her to be waiting for me, but she wasn't. I would be confused for a moment and then it would hit me all over again. At first it felt like a punch in the chest and I'd go down to my knees and feel like I couldn't breathe. The silence until Dad came home was the worst." He smiled slightly to himself. "At least my grades went up. I would get lost in studying so couldn't think about what I wasn't hearing."

I nodded. "I can see it being that way for me, too. But it's not going to be not seeing him when I get home. It's more-" I cut myself off. That wasn't something I was ready to tell anyone. Not my friends, not my classmates. That was a part of my life that had always felt private. "I need to get home, though. I just remembered I had promised my followers a live show today."