She wants me to stay! “Sure, I’d love to,” I say, with what is probably a little too much excitement considering the look she gives, but whatever. I’m happy that she wants me here.
I grab both plates and one bowl, gesturing for her to grab the other bowl, and I walk into the living room. After I put everything down on the coffee table, I run back to the kitchen and grab the Gatorade I got for Denise. I want to make sure she at least drinks that. I pour it into a glass with ice and a straw and place it on the coffee table. I grab my soup as I sit beside her on the couch and I start eating.
“What’s this?” she asks as she grabs the drink. She’s already started the movie over for us, again.
“It’s Gatorade. You threw up quite a bit. I heard it’s good to drink after you get sick, to balance your electrolytes. Or something like that anyway.” She’s staring at me now, and I feel a little embarrassed. I don’t want her thinking that I don’t trust her to take care of herself. I know that she’s more than capable, but I wanted to be the one to take care of her this time.
“That’s so unbelievably thoughtful.” There’s a slight quaver in her voice. It’s so slight I’m not sure I actually heard it. I put my bowl down and look at her. Her eyes look shiny, and she’s looking up at the ceiling like she’s trying not to cry. “Thank you,” she whispers.
“Hey, hey. It’s OK.” I take her plate from her and put it on the coffee table so I can pull her into a hug. “I just wanted to make sure you were OK, and comfortable. I don’t want you to be sad.”
“Oh, I’m not sad,” she says, looking at me again. “No one has ever taken care of me like this. It’s so nice.”
“Not even your parents?” I know she grew up with both of her parents. “When you were sick as a kid?”
She shrugs. “My parents worked a lot. They were very busy and had lots to do. When I got to be about nine years old, I just stayed home alone when I was sick. They left me food that I could heat in the microwave and I would just lie on the couch and watch TV.”
That’s… just so sad. Even though I only had my dad when I was a kid, he always took a day off work to stay home with us whenever my brother or I were sick. And we didn’t have the money to spare for that. I can’t imagine being a kid and having to stay home alone while sick.
“I’m sorry that you had to do that,” I tell her, handing her soup to her. “From now on, I am going to be your nanny when you’re sick. Whenever you need to be taken care of, you just call Nanny Ryder, and I will come and look after you until you feel better. Now eat up. You need to get some food in your belly.”
She smiles as she takes a spoonful of soup. “You say that now, but when I’m calling you in the middle of the night interrupting one of your hook-ups, asking you to come look after me, you’re going to be pissed.”
I choke on my soup. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Oh?” she questions. “Yeah, I suppose you just wouldn’t answer in that case.”
Fuck, I hate she thinks I’m still like that. It’s not like I don’t deserve it, though. The first few years after we met, I didn’t want to be in love with her, and I did everything I could to distract myself from it. And by that I mean, I did every willing woman I could find. Here we are, fifteen years later, and I’m more in love than ever, so obviouslythatdidn’t work.
“No.” It’s time for me to come clean, which is hilarious. For who else would ‘come clean’ mean confessing that you’renotsleeping with a bunch of random women? My life is nothing if not fucked up. “I’ve been pretty much celibate for years. I put on a show, and let everyone think I take all these women home, but I usually just send them home in a cab if we ever get to my place. They never even make it inside. More often than not, I just leave them at the club, or bar, or wherever. I go home alone.”
It’s her turn to choke on her food now. She coughs a little more than I did, though, so I pat her on the back while I grab her a tissue. She dabs at her mouth once she has the coughing under control, but then she laughs. When she notices I don’t join in, her smile drops.
“You’re serious?” she asks. “You always have women around you. You’re the playboy of the band. Everyone knows that if a groupie wants one of the guys from Sleeping Dogs they should go for you because it’s a sure thing.”
“Yeah, and you’d be surprised at how tricky it is to keep up that act. The ladies get pretty upset when the ‘sure thing’ turns out to be a ‘no way’. Let’s just say I have a lot of respect for how women have to deal with men who don’t want to hear the word no. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no saint; I’ve had a few hook-ups, but nowhere near as many as I’ve let everyone believe.”
I’ve never been drugged like Connor was, but I’ve had a lot of women try to talk me into sleeping with them, or try to just go ahead and get started without me. That groupie who was trying to get her mouth on me before the last show of our last tour comes to mind. It’s really hard to maintain that playboy image when you’re trying to say no in front of a bunch of other people. I was so glad when Connor stormed in and shut that down.
“I don’t even know what to say to that, Ryder. We’ve all been under the impression that you sleep with every woman who offers.” She looks thoughtful for a minute, then she grabs my hand and looks into my eyes. “I’m truly sorry, Ryder. You didn’t deserve that.”
“Of course I did.” I take my hand back. I don’t want her to feel bad. I did it to myself, on purpose. I totally deserved it. “The first couple of years Iwaslike that. And I just let everyone keep believing it even after I lost interest in that life. It’s my fault you all didn’t know any different. I acted that way to ensure you all still kept believing it. But…”
“But what?”
“But I want it to stop now.” I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. I wasn’t planning on having this conversation now. In fact, I’ve tried to talk myself out of it more than once today already, but here we go. “I let everyone think that because I thought it would be best if you thought that, Denise. When we first met, I knew you were amazing, and I wanted you. But then you became the band’s manager, and I knew it would be best if I stayed away, kept things professional. I was so young and dumb back then, I thought sleeping with other women would make me forget those feelings. But it didn’t. I never forgot them.”
She looks at me, mouth open wide, eyes open even wider; I don’t even think she’s breathing. She just stares quietly for what must be an entire minute before I say something.
“Are you… are you OK?”
She shakes herself a little and stands up. Bending down, she picks up the trash can she was using earlier when she was throwing up. “I need to clean this,” she says before scurrying away.
Well. That went about as well as can be expected. Good job, Ryder.
