I WANT YOU TO WANT ME
CHEAP TRICK
THE SUGARTREE SUMMER SUNSHINE FESTIVAL…
“What did you think you were doin’, Ryan Hood?!” Ginny shouted down the vine-covered alleyway tucked between Duke’s BBQ and Patti’s Pancake House. Two food groups she did not want to ever think about again after eating her weight in pies then being held on her brother’s shoulders and celebratorily jostled around town for the last ten minutes. She was completely sick, but had zero regrets.
Ryan froze where he’d been pacing back and forth alone between the two buildings, still shirtless and looking uncharacteristically green. Ginny marched down the cobblestones to him, shoving the shirt he’d tossed to the ground—in the most ridiculous display of macho manhood she’d ever seen—at his bare and notably chiseled chest.
“You owe me an apology!” she yelled again. “I can’t believe you.”
“Ginny,” he sighed, staring Ginny down with the green eyes she’d studied more times than Ryan would ever know. He ranhis hand through his strawberry blonde hair, leaving it in a tousled, sweaty mess.
Ginny crossed her arms and jutted her hip, feeling a suspicious churning in her stomach. A trickle of sweat dripped down her flushed face. She wanted to fan herself and lie down a while, but that would have to wait.
“Ginny, I…” Ryan started again, “You shouldn’t have come with that guy.”
She threw her hands up, raising her voice a pitch higher. “Are you serious? This is not about Danger!”
He let out a short, sardonic laugh. “Yeah. Like his name is really Danger. And will you lower your voice? The whole town is gonna hear you.”
“No, I won’t. And who cares what his name is?!” she yelled. Her first, and likely last, date with a decent man who’d shown interest in her and had been nothing but charming the entire afternoon, had ended with Danger throwing up hand-made pies in a trashcan somewhere on Main Street and Ginny hunting down Ryan—not her date—for a sound lashing.
“He’s a buffoon!” Ryan yelled back, his green eyes flaring as he took a step into her space. “You’re too good for him.”
“You know zero about him. Try again.”
“You’re… you.”
“What does that mean?” Ginny coaxed, trying her best to concentrate against the brilliance of Ryan's bare torso and feeling more sickened by the second. “Could you put on a shirt? You’re…” she waved a hand at him, “you.”
Ryan whipped his shirt over his head then invaded her space again as he adjusted it over his waist. He reached a hand up to her curly blonde hair and wrapped a ringlet around his finger.
Ginny sucked in a breath as the air around grew thin.
Ryan had never come this close. Had never allowed himself. Though she suspected he’d wanted to for a while now, everytime his eyes found her in a room then flicked away in the next moment like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.
She grasped his wrist, her hair falling from his finger but his hand still close to her face. “Ryan, can we just talk…?”
“No. Ginny, please don’t,” he quietly pleaded, eyes avoiding hers. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
She stood on her tiptoes, forcing him to look at her. “You won’t hurt me. Just be honest with me. If you’d just stop bein’ so stubborn we could—”
“I’m not…” he began, but at the worst possible moment the hot summer sun seemed to intensify, rushing over Ginny from head to toe. Her hands suddenly felt too sweaty. Her body, consumed by weak shakes.
Ginny felt that earlier churning moving its way from her gut up her esophagus and brought a shaking, pallid hand to her mouth, turning just in time to run to the trash can and empty the contents of the pie-eating competition she’d won—soundly—into the bin.
A strong, gentle hand pulled her hair from her face and the other carefully slipped the scrunchie from around her wrist, over her hand, and then used it to tie her hair back.
“You’re okay,” Ryan said in a hushed, soothing timbre. “I’ve got you, Gin. It’s okay.”
She held her head there in possibly the most humiliating moment of her life, yet she felt Ryan come closer. Felt his presence at her side. Felt the warmth of his hand pressed against her head and her neck, then tracing its way softly down her spine.
But all too quickly that heat vanished, and Ryan took a resounding step away.
Ginny breathed in deep through her nose and wiped away the tears from her face with her forearm before standing upright, finding Ryan with his hands shoved in his pockets. As if thatwas the only way to make them behave. His stern jaw was set, tightening as he swallowed and took another step back.
“You okay?”
