Stuck on Vacation with Ryan Rupert (Ryan Rupert #1) [PUBLISHED]

CHAPTER FIVE - Wrong Room

After my phone call with Mom, I hadn't been willing to go back to the room, so I decided to take a walk along the beach. Now alone with my thoughts once more, my mind kept replaying what Ryan had said to me.

What had he meant by his words? Why had they left me so uncomfortable? Why was the idea of "some other girl not being me" making me feel things I most definitely shouldn't be feeling? It wasn't like he was confessing to loving me or anything. But the meaning behind his words and the actual words he'd used, out of all the words he could have used . . . they left me incredibly confused.

As I dug my toes into the sand I thought about it further. He could have just meant that I was his favourite victim. That probably was what he meant. After all, he hated me. He always had. We'd grown up hating each other.

I didn't even remember how it all started, but, for as long as I could remember he'd gone out of his way to make my life harder. Pulling pranks. Calling me names. Ganging up on me with his friends. I'd learned to ignore it.

Still, it wasn't long before I started retaliating a little. I began to develop a wider, and possibly not very ladylike vocabulary for those oh so lovely moments when he'd ride by on his bike and call me something insulting or throw something at me. For a long time I thought it was because of my hair colour, because a lot of the time his comments seemed to be directed at that.

I hadn't seen anything wrong with having red hair—personally, I thought it was a gorgeous colour. But it didn't seem so strange for Ryan to have issues with red hair when so many other people I'd grown up with seemed to have issues with it, too.

One thing I'd learned very early on is that people love to make fun of people who are different. Being a natural born redhead is actually quite rare.

There's so much nonsense surrounding the stereotypical personality of someone with red hair—something I'd never listened to, myself. And watching kids like me grow up getting bullied gave a sense of normality to the idea. At the very least, it gave me a reason to suspect why Ryan disliked me. It also gave me more reason to dislike him. I mean, why would somebody—of all things—pick on someone for the colour of their hair? It was so stupid!

When Ryan became more creative with his insults and pranks, I realised that maybe it didn't have anything to do with me having red hair. Maybe he just genuinely disliked me for existing. And let me tell you—that wasn't so far-fetched, either. I could name a number of people who hadn't done anything to me, but whose presence I couldn't stand all the same. Don't ask me why—I just knew better than to bully them about it.

I guess my retaliation had led Ryan to believe that I hated him as much as he hated me. (Which, quite honestly, was pretty true. He hadn't given me any reason not to hate him.) Our complicated relationship had grown worse and worse over the years—and now, we had to share a room.

Oh, the joy.

I was wandering past Reception when I spotted Savannah. I called out to her and headed her way.

"Hey!" she greeted me. "Ooh, you're looking much better now!"

"That's because the sea is way over there." I pointed behind me and she giggled.

"Aubany, my room is amazing!" she said excitedly. "It has a private balcony which looks over the sea, and a jacuzzi tub! Oh, and it has the softest king bed with yellow and orange sheets! Yellow is my favourite colour!"

"What? We didn't get a jacuzzi tub!" I grumbled. I pretended to sulk, and we both laughed.

"So, let me guess. You have a fear of the sea or something, don't you?" she said. I nodded.