Page 36 of Not a Strong Enough Word

My hand flies to my chest as I stumble back a step. “Fucking hell,” I breathe, pressing myself against the wall and trying to catch my breath.

“Did I scare you?” Ryan smirks. He’s leaning against my counter, and he takes a smug sip of what I really hope is coffee from a mug out of my eclectic collection. This one has a classic, intricate, blue-and-white design on it, but when you look closer, there are little dinosaurs chasing people among the detailed blue houses.

“Yes, you fucking scared me. I thought you had left.” My heart is still racing, though I can’t tell if it’s from lingering adrenaline or from the fact that he’s still here, looking fresh as a daisy even in yesterday’s clothes.

Still smirking, he hands me a mug. This one says I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me. He had bought this for me years ago as a joke about how late I tend to work, but I can’t help but wonder if he was in my head this morning.

“Sleep well?” he asks as if it’s totally normal for him to be standing in my kitchen at eight in the morning wearing clothes he must have slept in and handing me a warm mug as the early-morning light casts the whole scene in a glow.

I eye him over my mug as I take a slow sip. It is, indeed, coffee. A little, appreciative moan escapes me, and I could swear Ryan’s eyes flash. It’s gone too fast to be sure.

“I did, actually. Why are you still here?” As if I hadn’t been bemoaning the fact that he was gone not two minutes ago.

“You were out of coffee, so I went to get some.” That’s not really an answer to my question, and it occurs to me to wonder how he’s been getting up to my apartment without being buzzed in. Because he did leave, apparently, and came back with this nectar of the gods that is currently warming my cold hands.

Narrowing my eyes at him, I try to put on an irritated expression, but if I didn’t notice this until now, I don’t know how concerned I really am about it. “How are you getting in and out of here?”

Ryan has the good sense to look sheepish. He sets his coffee mug down on the counter and clears his throat. “Well, I—”

“Are you stalking the door and waiting for people to open it? I swear to god, Ryan. That could get me in trouble with the super.”

“It’s not my fault Midwesterners are nice and hold the door open for people. They should know better in this day and age. That’s a definite security risk.” He levels me with a pointed look. “There are a lot of people in and out of this building, Scarlett.”

“Don’t deflect blame on me for choosing the most nondescript building I could. I wasn’t in my right mind when I moved here. Last time I checked, you still have your sanity. You shouldn’t be sneaking up here. Use the buzzer like a gentleman.”

He tilts his head and is silent for a moment. His throat works against a hard swallow. “Would you have buzzed me up?”

My gaze falls to his hand resting on the side of his mug where it sits on the counter. The light clinking of his ring tapping against the side of the mug fills the silence between us like a metronome. No, like a clock, ticking the seconds away. Or like the timer on a bomb, counting down to my response.

But like a bomb, there’s no avoiding the inevitable answer.

“I’d always buzz you up, Ryan,” I say to his hand, barely audible.

That finger stops clinking against the mug. The resulting silence is deafening.

“Scarlett,” he says, his voice strained.

“I was never mad at you,” I choke out, still not looking at him. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see you specifically. I couldn’t see anyone. It wasn’t anger or shame or anything like that. It was a physical inability to have a conversation. A mental block. And by the time I sorted it out…” I shrug. “I guess I figured you all were better off without me after I ruined everything.”

The vague awareness of his body leaning closer to mine pokes through the watery haze that’s developing at the corners of my eyes. I don’t know if I realized how bad off I was five years ago until I said it aloud just now. But I know it’s true in the way I know it when my words are hitting right on the page; it’s a gut feeling, and I’m not deleting any of it.

“I wasn’t,” Ryan whispers. He clears his throat, then speaks louder. “I wasn’t better off without you.”

The blue fabric of his sweater blocks my view of the counter as he steps in front of me. His hand comes up to cup the side of my face, the warmth of his palm incongruous with the cold metal of his ring lightly scraping against my skin.

“Look at me, Scarlett.”

I take in a deep breath before I do, the aroma of vanilla and almond and coffee working its way into my senses. Slowly, I drag my eyes up his chest, letting my gaze linger on the brown stubble that speckles his usually clean-shaven skin before I meet those dark eyes, framed by even darker glasses.

He’s everywhere. He takes up so much space that it’s hard to breathe.

“You are more important than the sum of all your words.” There’s an intense seriousness in his voice that’s matched in his eyes. The press of his palm won’t let me look away.

“I’m not suicidal, Ryan. I’ve been depressed. There’s a difference.” I don’t know why, but it’s important to me that he knows that.

Those brown eyes assess me for a moment before he nods once. “Right. But you’re not really living like this, either, are you?”

My gaze falls again, even as he holds my face in his hand. I had thought I was doing okay. And maybe I was, though I can see how he, as an outsider, doesn’t think so. But is okay really something to strive for? Is that the kind of existence I want?