Maybe Someday(22)

I smile, step aside, and motion her into my bedroom. She looks around. The only place to sit is my bed, so I point to it, then take a seat and pull my laptop onto my lap. She sits on the other side of the bed and does the same.

“Thanks,” she says with a smile. She opens her laptop and drops her eyes to the screen.

I tried not to take Warren’s advice this morning about admiring the dress she had on today, but it was hard not to look, especially when he so blatantly pointed it out. I’m not sure what kind of weird thing he and Bridgette have going on, but it rubs me the wrong way that he and Sydney seem to have hit it off so well.

And it really rubs me the wrong way that it rubs me the wrong way. I don’t look at her like that, so I don’t understand why I’m sitting here thinking about it. And if she were standing next to Maggie, there wouldn’t be a doubt in my mind that Maggie is more physically my type. Maggie is petite, with dark eyes and straight black hair. Sydney is the complete opposite. She’s taller than Maggie—pretty average height—but her body is a lot more defined and curvy than Maggie’s. Sydney definitely fills out the dress well, which is why Warren liked it. At least she changed into shorts before showing up at my bedroom door. That helps a little. The tops she wears are usually way too big for her, and they hang off her shoulders, which makes me think she took a lot of Hunter’s T-shirts with her when she packed her bags.

Maggie’s hair is always straight, whereas Sydney’s is hard to figure out. It seems to change with the weather, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The first time I saw her sitting on her balcony, I thought she had brown hair, but it turns out her hair was just wet. After playing guitar for about an hour that night, I looked at her as she was walking back inside her apartment, and her hair had dried completely and was in piles of blond waves that fell past her shoulders. Today it’s curly and pulled up into a messy knot on top of her head.

Sydney: Stop staring at me.

Shit.

I laugh and attempt to brush away whatever the hell that internal detour was I just took.

Me: You look sad.

The first night she showed up here, she seemed happier than she does right now. Maybe it just took time for reality to sink in.

Sydney: Is there a way we can chat on the computer? It’s a lot easier for me than texting.

Me: Sure. What’s your last name? I’ll friend you on Facebook.

Sydney: Blake.

I open my laptop and search her name. When I find her profile, I send her a friend request. She accepts it almost instantly, then shoots me a message.

Sydney: Hello, Ridge Lawson.

Me: Hello, Sydney Blake. Better?

She nods.

Sydney: You’re a computer programmer?

Me: Already stalking my profile? And yes. I work from home. Graduated two years ago with a degree in computer engineering.

Sydney: How old are you?

Me: 24.

Sydney: Please tell me 24 is a lot better than 22.

Me: 22 will be good for you. Maybe not this week or next week, but it’ll get better.

She sighs and puts one of her hands up to the back of her neck and rubs it, then begins typing again.

Sydney: I miss him. Is that crazy? I miss Tori, too. I still hate them and want to see them suffer, but I miss what I had with him. It’s really starting to hurt. When it first happened, I thought maybe I was better off without him, but now I just feel lost.

I don’t want to be harsh in my response, but at the same time, I’m not a girl, so I’m not about to tell her that what she’s feeling is normal. Because to me, it’s not normal.

Me: You only miss the idea of him. You weren’t happy with him even before you found out he was cheating. You were only with him because it was comfortable. You just miss the relationship, but you don’t miss Hunter.

She looks up at me and cocks her head, narrowing her eyes in my direction for a few seconds before dropping them back to the computer.

Sydney: How can you say I wasn’t happy with him? I was. Until I found out what he was doing, I honestly thought he was the one.

Me: No. You didn’t. You wanted him to be, but that’s not how you really felt.

Sydney: You’re kind of being a jerk right now, you know that?

I set my laptop beside me and walk to my desk. I pick up my notebook and a pen and go back to the bed and take a seat next to her. I flip open my notebook to the first set of lyrics she sent me.

Read these, I write at the top of the page. I set the notebook in her lap.

She looks down at the lyrics, then takes the pen. I don’t need to read them, she writes. I wrote them.

I scoot closer to her and put the notebook in my lap, then circle a few lines of her chorus. I point to them again. Read these as if you weren’t the one who wrote them.