L'été Dans B

Thank you again. :)

By the time Ryan had pulled himself together enough to walk back inside, the mail had gone damp in his sweating palms. His legs were shaky as he sought out his mother, but he was determined to stop this silly reaction.

He paused in the door way, taking a few deep breaths before he entered into the room; there was no plausible reason for him to be this way. No reason to feel like a nauseous, shaken, wreck.

She hadn’t even spoken a word too him, didn’t call him out for being intrusive. If anything he should be feeling embarrassed that he was caught encroaching on other peoples' private moments.

But no, it was that simple look of what could be mistaken as disinterest that sent him over the proverbial edge.

He entered the kitchen with a sense of what he considered indifference, but his mother, who either through a mother's intuition or divine intervention, sensed that something was off about her only son. When he made no move to talk, she didn't either, simply accepted the mail calmly from his out stretched hands. It may have been the way his fingers lingered a little too long in the air once the paper envelopes were taken from them, or the way his ears were pink, something he never noticed about himself, and the way his gaze lingered on the floor or out the window, but he had most defiantly been...perturbed.

And Sandra could only think of one that that could make her normally nonchalant son act disoriented.

"Ryan...did you meet a girl?"

------

It was a few days later that Ryan found himself back in the same chair, in the same situation. Only this time it was Sunday and there was no mail to go and retrieve. Read: no houses to ride by suspiciously slow.

That whole week he had watched the house across the street with an interest akin to stalking, in the hopes that it would betray the young, decidedly female, presence inside.

Much to his dismay, the house lay silent, with no one leaving or coming or going at all.

It was strange, he thought to himself, turning a page in his book, The Great Gatsby this time, shouldn’t people go to work, get groceries, or get haircuts? His thoughts wandered to the increasingly growing larger list his mother was working on in the sofa across from him.

He snorted lightly and turned back to his summer reading.

Sandra, who had been making a shopping list, looked pointedly at her son.

"Ryan, what do you gift do you approve of for an expectant mother?" When Ryan raised an eyebrow at her she continued.

"Our neighbors down the street," she jerked her thumb to her left, indicating some unseen house Ryan had never been too. "Are expecting and having a baby shower. I wanted too get them something that you would approve of as well."

Ryan stared blankly at her for a moment.

"Baby shower?" Sandra nodded her head enthusiastically and pulled out a pink envelope from her little stack of papers.

"Here's the invitation and the sonogram." He came around after carefully putting down his reading and came to look over her shoulder.

The invitation was pink and white, pastel he noted with distaste, as was deemed acceptable and appropriate for a baby shower. Ryan frowned absentmindedly at the obviously girly-ness of the card over his mother's shoulder as she cooed at the enclosed sonogram.

He shook his head in disbelief, it wasn’t even a "real" baby yet. The child, the girl, looked more like a deranged alien. He squinted at the blurry picture. People got excited over this shit?

"We have to go to this dumb party?" he questioned, chin still resting on his mother shoulder. Her glare, which he could not see because of his angle, but could feel, burned with murderous intent and he quickly shut the hell up.

"Get her something a baby girl would need. You would know more than I would, seeing as you are a mother and a girl." He called to her, picking up his discarded book. He turned to walk out of the room.

"Sign my name on the card and tell the mom I said 'congrats'." He made his way towards the stairs.

"Ryan, you're going too." She called to his retreating form.

A pause. Then the sound of a paperback novel hitting the floor.

Sandra decided to ignore the quiet "Damnit" that emitted from the top of the stairwell.

-----------

Ryan cast a habitual glance through the glass panels in the front door, gazing out to the stoic house across the street as his mother straitened some of her flyaway curls in the mirror before turning back to her son and handing him a wrapped gift.

The gift was wrapped in pink and white stripes, the contents of which Ryan had no clue. He had signed the card not ten minutes ago before throwing on his least offensive pair of pants and a shirt that didn’t have a band name or skateboard brand splashed across it.

No belt, no skate shoes, no hat, no wrist bands. The only thing that felt remotely like him was his hair, which, despite Sandra's attempts, stood strait up. The sprigs of hair even defied natural law, which was; mother's spit glues all. He grinned in silent triumph.

Ryan zipped the plain black hoodie, the only plain one he owned, over the blue v-neck, again, the only one he owned, with one hand while his mother appraised him.

"That looks nice on you. None of those silly studs or shoes that look too big for your feet."

Ryan looked down at his black converse.

"They're skate-shoes, mom." He said quietly, following her out the door.

"Well you don’t skateboard anymore, Ryan." She shot back at him, shutting the door with a snap and locking it.

Touché.

The air was cold, as it always was before noon in California, the real heat of summer wouldn’t set in until then. He was comfortable in his long-sleeves and the two set off down the sidewalk towards the house with the pink balloons around the mailbox, visible even from the end of the street.

--------

Ryan groaned internally, wishing he brought some ear phones and an ipod as the sounds of ladies high-pitched giggling reached his ears. He had found refuge in the kitchen, which, while it was still contained pink and all the other pastel colors babies seem to have associated with them, was filled with food. And Ryan, like any other red-blooded male, preferred food over giggly female company.

He swung back and forth in the barstool, penning some mismatched lyrics on a white napkin with a stolen pen, trying not to spill red fruit punch on his nice jeans, keeping low and quiet lest he be brought to the mercy of his mother's neighbors.

His mother shattered his treasured solitude.

"Ryan! I want you to come here. I want you to meet somebody." There was a certain glint in his mother's eyes that he couldn’t quite place, and frankly, it made him slightly worried.

He began to fear for his pride, but was yanked after his mother's lissome form into the belly of the beast before the thoughts could fully form. Instantly, his ears went pink and he felt out of place in the presence of the pregnant woman whose party this was. But it wasn’t her that Ryan's mother was dragging him to come see.

They approached a corner of the large room, where a few women were standing around talking and Sandra pulled Ryan up to an elegant elderly women that he at once recognized.

Shit.

Actually, shit didn't even begin to describe it as Ryan felt the blood in his face instantly drain. She wouldn’t know who she was, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel embarrassed.

"Ryan, this is our neighbor from across the street. Mrs. Olivia Herbert." She said the name with a certain amount of uncertainty that someone has when they encounter a last name that is foreign. He greeted her easily, identifying himself as George Ross, called Ryan, in that quiet sure voice of his, mouth stumbling over the "A-bear". (No really, that's how it's pronounced, I swear.)

The old woman smiled down at him, for she was really quite tall, and said with an accent that left her undeniably French, "You remind me of my petite-fille. She sounds painfully shy, just like you."

The woman looked up at Ryan's mother with hazel eyes that Ryan immediately recognized and still without releasing his hand said to her, "She should meet 'im. They might get along well, no? They both enjoy music?"

She looked back at Ryan's face, oblivious to his discomfort at her grip on his hand.

"Do you like music, Ryan?" She said his name strange, the French influence clouding up her speech. She didn’t wait for an answer, just turned back to his mother.

"She should be back." With a nod, she dropped Ryan's hand and then noticed something over Ryan's shoulder that she smiled too.

'There, now you see? My granddaughter, Robin." She gestured with a hand and it was then that Ryan felt the presence approach behind him.

The blood rushed into his ears and he actually felt them burn. His feet were rooted too the wooden flooring beneath his shoes, he couldn’t feel anything from the knees down.

His mother made a face at him, trying to tell him without words that he was going to get his ass kicked if he didn’t turn around and be polite. So, with shaky knees and arms that felt like limp noodles, he turned around.

She was an awkward little thing, a mismatch of angles and sharp points, thrown together to form a waif with too skinny limbs and a thick mane of black hair. She looked like a Tim Burton character, with stick thin appendages that looked like they couldn’t hold the body parts they were supposed too and were threatening to snap at the slightest prodding.

Ryan didn’t hear a word of the French Mrs. Herbert spoke to this girl, and when she extended her hand to greet him, her fingers were long and gangly.

She looked like someone had, at a very young age, grabbed her by the finger tips and ankles and pulled. Pulled until she was stretched and thin and it looked like her body had stayed that way.

Perhaps it always would.

At his mother's finger jab into his back, he stopped his mental tirade and tore his eyes away from her little white shoes and turned his gaze instead to her outstretched hand.

Realizing what he had to do, he placed his embarrassingly sweaty palm into hers.

He felt every bone in her hand.

When her eyes finally snapped up to meet his, the mental picture was complete and he saw her.

And, when she introduced herself in a voice that was almost the female counterpart to his, he lost his nerve and did something he regretted to this day.

He ran.