The Ugly Truth

Days passed, full of summer heat and that magical feeling there is in the air in the season. I hung out with lots of different people, but not once with the person I longed to see the most. Luckily, I had a perfect chance to be with him. When I saw my phone ring and his name on the screen, my heart did all sorts of flips and turns. He kept his promise and invited me to go to the Coldplay concert with him.

The night of the concert, I was frantically staring at my closet. I had no idea what to wear and Riley would be picking me up in fifteen minutes. I tried on outfit after outfit but none of them convinced me. I had to get dressed, but I couldn’t bring myself to put on something that I didn’t like one hundred percent.

My phone started ringing, and I looked at the time in horror. Riley was probably already waiting in front of my house.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted into the phone right after answering it.

“Don’t worry about it.”

I ran towards my closet and in my hurry, tripped over a belt which had fallen from my bed onto the floor.

“Are you okay?” Riley asked, sounding worried.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? You’re acting a little strange.”

“It’s just that, I…”

“You what?”

“I don’t know what to wear,” I said, blushing.

“Well, why didn’t you just ask me? I know I'm not an expert on fashion, but you are probably the worst decision maker ever," he teased, "I think you should wear a skirt, they look nice on you.”

I went over to my closet and picked out a few skirts, smiling like an idiot the whole time. He paid attention to my clothes, otherwise he wouldn’t have said that.

“Any color preference?” I asked.

“Do you have a dark blue one?”

“Yeah,” I replied, pulling out a navy one.

“Well, there you go. I think you can figure out the rest better than I can.”

“Don't worry, I’ll hurry up.”

“Take your time. I don’t mind waiting.”

I pulled on my clothes as fast as I could. Thinking of Riley waiting for me in his car all alone broke my heart. As I climbed into his car several minutes later, he smiled widely, which pretty much made my night.

The concert was amazing. We both yelled out all the songs and could barely talk when we walked back to his car.

“That was so awesome!” I said, still euphoric.

“Yeah, it really was.”

Riley was never one to verbally express strong feelings, but you could just see it in his face. And that's why I noticed something was wrong. There was something different about him that night, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. He accompanied me to the passenger seat door and opened it for me. As I was getting in, he grabbed my hand and pressed it gently before closing the door and heading to his seat.

In the meantime, I tried calming myself down, but I just couldn’t. He had held my hand, for goodness sake! How was I supposed to think straight after that? When he entered the car, I managed to appear like I wasn’t internally oozing with love for him.

“Can we talk for a second?” he said after a few moments of silence.

“Sure. What’s up?”

A little voice in my head thought he would declare his undying love for me and we would live happily ever after. For the first time in my life I was so desperate to be right it was scary.

“I don’t know how to tell you this. It’s just… my parents will probably get divorced.”

“What?!”

“Yeah, they’ve been arguing a lot lately and I overheard them talking about getting divorced.”

I was shocked. Of all the things I thought he would tell me, this had not been an option in my mind.

“I’m sorry,” I said, reaching out and putting a hand on his arm.

“I just never thought this would happen to me,” he said, looking anywhere but at me.

“I know but it’s better than them fighting all the time, right?”

I didn't know what else to say, since I had never had a close friend that was going through a divorce.

I slid my hand so it was in his again. I don’t know why I did it. It was more of an instinctive gesture to comfort him than anything else. He didn’t pull away.

“I guess. I wish everything could be fine again, like when we were in high school.”

I wouldn’t exactly call my high school experience fine, but we were talking about his parents, so it was fitting.

“Remember when we used to stay up late on the phone studying together?” he said, looking at me for the first time since the conversation had started and smiling.

“Yeah. And remember what we did for Halloween when we were juniors?”

It had been a spur of the moment thing. Some girls from my class had invited me to go trick or treating with them, however lame that may sound. Little did I know that that was just what they were all telling their parents. We were actually going to a party, but I was too clueless to get it. So I put on my native American costume and went out with them. Everyone from school was at that party, including Riley. The girls left me alone to fend, so I spent the rest of my time at the party, which wasn’t much, with him.

“Yeah, you and your Pocahontas costume.”

“I probably looked awful in it,” I laughed.

“I liked it. And plus, I was the one with the awful costume. I don’t even know if I really looked like one of these little green toy soldiers.”

“You did! It was really cool.”

“We must have been a funny sight, a toy soldier and a native American hanging out on a rooftop,” Riley said, grinning.

We had left the party shortly after and had gone to his house, where we had access to the rooftop via his bedroom window. It was our secret hang out.

My eyes wandered down to our hands, still intertwined. He cleared his throat and we both slowly let go.

“We should get going, I don’t want to get home too late,” I said trying to sound as unattached as possible.

“Right.”

And just like that, I had killed the moment. Another item to add to my list of things I ruined and had no reason to. He started the car and we didn’t say much on the ride home.

“Everything will be okay,” I told him before getting out of his car.

Riley smiled sadly and only held me gaze a few seconds before staring straight ahead at the road once again. As I reached my door, I turned around and saw he had momentarily put his head down over the steering wheel. As soon as he saw me at my door, he drove away. I couldn’t see his face because of the lack of light in his car but he didn’t wave or honk or anything. He just drove away.