I felt the attention of everyone in the room like a blinding spotlight. I hated questions like this, and Ryder stayed so still and quiet next to me I realized he was just as interested in what I was going to say as his dad. If not more interested…. he was no help at all.

“Um, I’m not sure what to say,” I admitted. “I go to school with Ryder at um, Central. And I’m a junior…. I’ve never had a breakfast like this before, it’s really incredible. I can’t believe you eat like this every Saturday.”

Deflecting the attention from myself to the food worked and everyone laughed at the insane amount of food on the table.

“Well, it’s not always like this,” Matt spoke up. “Ryder begged for the works this morning though. I think he was trying to make a good impression.”

Ryder jerked at his uncle’s words and gave me a sheepish, embarrassed smile, “I just wanted to make sure there was something you liked. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Oh, no it wasn’t a big deal,” Matt covered, realizing he had said something that made Ryder and me uncomfortable. “I’m just giving Ryder a hard time.” His easy grin was one I had seen on Ryder’s face probably a hundred times in our short friendship and I didn’t even think about it, I just returned it.

Nate cut back in, probably hoping to take the awkward attention off his son, “So you play the piano well, Ivy. Are your parents musical?”

“It’s just my mom,” I offered casually. “And she does play. It’s kind of a tradition in our family. She made me start when I was really young.”

“That’s great,” Nate nodded along. “I always appreciate when a parent takes solid interest in their children’s musical educations. She probably loves the band then? A practical use for all that talent, it’s got to make her proud.”

Unease filtered over my skin and I dropped my eyes to the plate of food I hardly touched. “Actually, my mom doesn’t really understand anything but the classics. I was classically trained with Bach and Mozart, she hates anything composed beyond the nineteenth century, save maybe for Sibelius.”

“Really?” Nate practically choked on his breakfast. “So she never let you play anything jazz? Blues? Contemporary?”

I hid a smile and shook my head. “Nothing current. And especially nothing jazz.”

“Just for the piano though, right?” Nate pressed and he seemed more like Ryder than ever before. “You’ve heard Gershwin? Duke Ellington?”

I gave him a blank look although I had heard the names before and his entire body sagged with the news. Ryder chuckled next to me and put a reassuring hand on my knee under the table. My heart started pounding double time at the small contact, but he simply squeezed my knee cap and then removed his hand like it was no big deal. Because it wasn’t a big deal- at all.

“You’ll have to forgive my brother,” Matt interrupted. “He’s a bit of a fanatic when it comes to contemporary music.”

“No kidding,” Ryder groaned.

All three men broke out into big smiles then. I shot Ryder a questioning look and he rolled his eyes before explaining, “I’m named after a Van Morrison song.”

“Oh,” I said like that explained everything. “What song?”

“Rough God Goes Riding,” Ryder tried to pretend like the song was annoying, but I caught the reverent tone to his voice as he spoke the title carefully.

“I’ve never heard of it,” I confessed.

“But you’ve heard of Van Morrison before, yeah?” Nate asked while his hands gripped at the table nervously.

“I mean sure,” I laughed at his reaction, “I’ve heard the name before.” Even though I didn’t even know if Van Morrison was one man or a full band.

Nate winced dramatically. And Matt burst into good natured laughter. “It’s alright big brother. Look, Ivy’s managed to escape the regurgitated pop bullshit culture her whole life and she seems to have turned out just fine.”

I turned to Ryder for some clarification. “Where my father obsesses over everything current and cool to the point he can karaoke to Gaga, my uncle shuns society as the harrying work of the devil,” Ryder paused dramatically and then finished with, “Except Tarantino films. We all find common ground with Tarantino.”

“Well, that’s the good Lord’s work, right there,” Matt grunted in approval and then shot me another wink.

“And I don’t obsess,” Nate defended. “I am just fascinated by the constant evolution of society. Music is continuously changing, growing…. moving, even if some think backwards. Human creativity is so interesting. And take your mother and me for a moment, how different our tastes are, our values. There is something in that, something worth studying.”

I sat spellbound, loving every word as it fell out of his mouth. He was so opposite of my world, so different and rebellious from anything I had been taught. In the circle you like the same thing everyone else likes, the same thing everyone else has liked forever. There are no individual opinions or tastes, there’s just what we always did, what was expected of us, what was commanded of us. Nix decided. Or our mothers decreed.

“I had no idea these guys were such hippies, I swear,” Ryder laughed and then pushed away from his plate. His arm went around the back of my chair and his fingers tapped out an unheard rhythm against the metal.

“Don’t let him fool you, Ivy,” Nate’s silver eyes twinkled at me from behind his glasses. “He’s proud of his old man.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ryder rolled his eyes. “Now please enough questions. I brought Ivy here to eat, let her eat.”

Nate and Matt grinned at each other sharing some secret that didn’t need to be said out loud. I chose to ignore them and Ryder’s hand as his fingers accidentally brushed across the top of my shoulder. I looked down at my plate and dug in.

Everything was amazing. I sighed happily as I shoveled the food into my mouth, not caring if I looked like a pig. My mother would have been so proud.

Or probably the opposite of proud.

Nate and Matt included Ryder in their conversation that seemed to jump all over the place without any clear direction. They talked about Matt’s classes this semester and I learned that he was older than most to be going to traditional university. But he had spent four years after high school traveling the world and then another two years after that working in Colorado just so he could afford to have a place to sleep, eat and snowboard as often as he wanted to. He finally moved here when Nate accepted the position at UNO and decided to start taking his life seriously. This was all shared in casual clips and phrases that I pieced together myself. I also learned that Nate’s dad not only taught music but also shared his love for soccer and he and Matt played in an indoor league together. Nate hated Omaha in the winter, but loved it summer through fall. He was disgustingly proud of both his brother and his son and had long ago decided that wherever Ryder wanted to go to college, he would just apply for a job there to both take care of tuition and stay close to Ryder. There was also a healthy mix of politics, upcoming plans for the week and a discussion about Batman versus Iron Man weaved in there.

By the time Matt stood up to start clearing the dishes I had never laughed so hard in my life. I hopped up to help with the dishes, but Ryder reached for my hand and tugged me back down. I landed half of my chair, my legs pressed into Ryder’s, his hand still gripping mine.

“This is always my job,” he explained in a soft voice. “If Matt’s offering, let him do it.”

“Ok,” I agreed. This close to Ryder, with so much of our bodies touching, I felt breathless, disoriented.

“Do you have time for a walk?” he asked, his thumb brushed a line across the palm of my hand and his knee pressed harder against my thigh. I felt slightly jostled as his knee bounced furiously up and down connected so tightly to me.

“Yes,” I answered before I actually looked at the time.

A crooked smile broke across his too handsome face and he met my eyes and held them for several moments. Neither of us said anything, or moved, and then everything quieted around us, or at least I felt like it did. The sounds of dishes clinking together in the sink ceased, his father and uncles voices faded away and then there was only my breathing and his as our chests lifted and fell in harmony.

“Ok, let’s go,” he breathed and then tugged me to my feet.

“Ok,” I heard myself say. And then I was following him out the door and ignoring every single rational protest that was screaming inside my head.

Chapter Thirty

We didn’t walk far, just up the last flight of stairs and to the roof of the building. The cement ceiling was flat and littered with gravel. The wind whipped, chilly and crisp across our faces. The sun was bright and warm this morning, in constant battle with the dropping temperatures of autumn.

Ryder let go of my hand when we were alone on the roof and walked to the far side. I followed. I didn’t have a choice but to follow. I was in way deeper than I wanted to be- than I should be.

He turned around once he reached the shoulder high wall barricade of the brick building. The tall wall kept us from having a great view of downtown but over the top of it I could see the trees from the mall all turned brilliant fall shades of orange and red and yellow and I could see the tops of all the biggest buildings, First National, the Holland Center, The Double Tree Hotel.

“I want to know, Ivy,” Ryder said simply in a way that seemed relaxed but sincere.

Tears pricked my eyes immediately. Whatever I said about Ryder, whatever I wanted to believe…. I liked his friendship, I valued it. And I liked him. This conversation was the beginning of the end. The death of everything beautiful between us.

“No you don’t,” I whispered. “I promise you, you don’t.”

“Tell me,” he demanded, taking a step forward and gripping my hands in his.

“Tell you what?” I turned my head, afraid to meet his eyes.

“Ivy, don’t,” his voice grated against my heartstrings, rough and violent, demanding and authoritative. And it was like my entire being responded to him, like my soul sat up straight and my blood buzzed attentively in my veins. He pulled at me.

And that terrified me.

“Ryder I can’t…. there is nothing to tell,” I argued.

He took a step forward. “I want to help you. I want to be your friend, but you have to let me.”

This did not feel like friendship.

I turned my head away and avoided his eyes some more. This tactic wasn’t really working, but I wasn’t strong enough to leave him so it would have to do.

“Ok, then start with Sam. Will you tell me about Sam?” That damn voice. I regretfully looked up at the soft, pleading tone of his voice and he trapped me. Paralyzed me. And then bewitched me. “Please, Ivy. Help me understand.”

I hesitated for as long as I could, for an entire two minutes, and then I caved, “Sam Evans…. we dated last year. He was a senior and I was a sophomore. But, um, he was on the basketball team and I was kind of working my way through dating them all.” A blush flooded my face and for the first time what my life represented and the expectations Nix and my mother had on me humiliated me.

“Ivy, it’s Ok, you can trust me,” he swore in a way that I had no choice but to believe him.

I pulled some courage from places I didn’t think I had, and cleared my throat. “By the time Sam and I started dating, I had already been through the point guard, the center and some of the second string. I was tired of dating…. tired of, just tired of it all. And I really liked Sam. He was nicer than some of the other guys, more laid back. He didn’t… he wasn’t always pushing me.” I cleared my throat again; a little surprised I admitted that much. I couldn’t bear to look at Ryder, I was too embarrassed but I felt his body tense until he was rigid and every muscle was hard. “Um, anyway, Sam and I clicked in a way that I hadn’t ever clicked with anybody before and I don’t know. When it was time to break up with him, I just couldn’t. I liked him, like really liked him. So we dated for a while, almost four months. But things started to get serious and I wasn’t ready for that. He wasn’t really ready for that either, you know? But he thought he was. And then, it was spring and he had this scholarship to play basketball out of state, but he started talking about staying here and giving it up, just to be close to me. I didn’t mean to do that to him, to ruin his life. I just liked being around him, I just wanted a little bit of a break from the constant wannabe date rapists and…. I just…. For the first time, Sam saw me, really me, not the pretty package I’m wrapped in and I was selfish with that.” A tear slipped down my cheek but I was too wrapped up in the ugly memories to wipe it away. “But I couldn’t let him give up his scholarship. Or stay here for me. He needed to live his life, and he wouldn’t…. couldn’t see that. So I broke up with him. I had to, I mean it was time. But he took it really, really hard. And then we were at this party. We didn’t go together, but we ran into each other there. And he was drunk, like really, really drunk. But when he saw me…. He just broke. I broke him. And then he stormed out of the party, so I chased after him; I mean I couldn’t let him drive like that. But he was bigger than me and I called for help, but everyone there was pretty much toasted. And anyway, I jumped in the car with him, thinking I could, I don’t know, convince him to stop, or pull over or something. But he was pissed, and so…. hurt. He just took off and before I knew it we were on the wrong side of the road going like seventy-five and then…. and the next thing I knew I was in the hospital. I had buckled my seatbelt, but Sam had not. No one else was hurt, he crashed into the median and the car flipped and rolled eventually into a light pole, but it was late enough that there weren’t any other cars on the road. Sam was thrown from the car on the first roll, but the car landed on top of him. He’s in a wheelchair now, and he won’t be able to talk ever again, or walk again. He’ll never be able to play basketball again.” The tears were streaming now, huge, messy rivers of tears that mixed with snot and ran down my face. I wiped at my face with my sleeves and makeup and wetness stained the white fabric.