♫ I've never fallen from quite this high
Falling into your ocean eyes ♪
(Billie Eilish—Ocean Eyes)
Coralie Amber Watson: ☺ wow, thank you RyRy. Hope you're doing well!
Coralie stared at her response for what felt like hours before she fell asleep. But even when she slept, his image haunted her. So did the sound of that boyish, wide-mouthed laugh she'd always loved. She saw that bright, toothy grin that always made her heart skip a beat. She stared into the depths of his stunning, tropical eyes and got lost in his hugs—he gave the best hugs.
In her sixth form days, how often had she thwarted friends who claimed she devoted more time to thinking of Ryan than Benjamin? How many afternoons had she and Ryan hung out while drinking coffee, discussing their relationships and sex lives? How many instances had she thought of their goodbyes, twelve years prior, when he'd wished her luck in her journeys overseas, and she'd implored him to keep in touch?
Once she sensed the sun seeping through her blinds, caressing her skin, lulling her to wake and check her phone, she tossed her covers off and gave in.
Her heart stopped, then took off at a million miles a minute when she saw the little Facebook messenger bubble and the flashing green light.
Ryan Bennett: I mean it. And I'm doing great. How have you been? How's life treating you in America?
It was simple and yet reading his words—after years of not speaking—jumpstarted a collection of tiny tremors down Coralie's arms. How often had she fantasized over him contacting her, breaking their unwanted silence, rekindling their friendship?
She smiled, ruffling her messy curls as she stood up and stretched. But the smile faded as she yanked down on her t-shirt to cover her belly button, cringing at her darkened reflection in the mirror across the room.
Ignoring the criticism in her mind, she pressed her fingers to the screen to respond; but a "..." popped up at the bottom of the chat, signifying Ryan was typing.
"Not even gonna give me a chance to answer, huh?" She chuckled as she dragged herself out of her room and into the kitchen.
Ryan Bennett: I hope you're well. I miss you.
Coralie was halfway into opening the cupboard to snatch her favorite mug when she read the last part. She gasped, bringing the phone closer to her eyes, as if gawking at the words up close would change them, or as if they'd scream at her, wake her up.
"He misses me?" Letting out a squeal, she finished retrieving her cup and poured in the coffee she'd put on a timer the night before. "He misses me. Wow. Fuck."
Fingers shaking, she hurried to send back some sort of reply.
Coralie Amber Watson: I'm good! Working and writing, as always.
She paused, fingertips hovering over the letters, wondering if she should be honest; if she should admit she'd thought of him a million times since she'd left, that she'd more than once imagined their reunion.
Coralie Amber Watson: I miss you too, RyRy. What are you up to? How's your beautiful family?
She winced. Beautiful family wasn't something she was happy to type. Though she'd never said it aloud—except to Bella and Delilah—it always pinched her heartstrings to realize how well Ryan's life turned out to be. He was a successful executive working for a burgeoning luxury brand, a fine wine connoisseur, a restaurant snob, and loaded with money. Ryan had grown from the smart-ass, back-of-the-classroom comedian to a well-known, respected businessman.
With a perfect wife and perfect children.
Looking at her own life—failed relationships, a near-rape in her early twenties, mental abuse, working an exhausting bartending job in a crazy busy neighborhood of San Francisco, striving to be discovered on YouTube and become famous—Coralie felt intimidated by her peers. Most of her friends had married, had several kids, and lived in exotic places like Barcelona or Athens, or had huge condos in London; but not her.
She'd had her shot at the home-life with three different men, and she'd blown it. And every time she traveled home, she had to remind everyone that she was fine, that this was the way she'd envisioned her existence. Wild and free, unattached, never projecting herself too far into the future.
Which reminded her that every time she went home, Ryan wasn't around to see her. He wasn't around to listen to her actual issues, like how she wasn't as spontaneous as she pretended to be, that in fact she spent her days planning and organizing until her head ached. He was the only person she used to tell such things to.
Ryan Bennett: The fam is wonderful, so happy. I wish you and I talked more.
Coralie scoffed, nearly spitting out her gulp of java. "Ha! You ghosted me, buddy." She almost typed that, but refrained; first conversation in four or five years? She couldn't mess that up.
Coralie Amber Watson: I agree. We should catch up!
Delilah's bedroom door creaked open. "Ugh, why are you so loud?"
Coralie blinked as she slanted against the oven, watching her roommate and best friend saunter barefoot into the living room. She had on the same burgundy top from the night before, ruffled and tucked into her boy-short pajama bottoms.
"You're home? Weren't you staying with... ah, I never remember his name."
"Lionel," said Delilah, prodding over and shoving Coralie aside to grab her own mug of coffee. "And I was, but his roommate was there and he was annoying. What are you bitching about?"
Waving her phone, Coralie moved over to the opposite counter and heaved herself atop it. "Ryan, remember? He messaged me last night?"
Delilah snickered—she despised it when Coralie sat on the counter. "Ryan." Her chocolate eyes widened as her jaw dropped. "Ryan, yes. RyRy. Is he still talking to you?" She tipped a few swigs of coffee into her mouth and let out a long sigh of pleasure. "What else did he say?"
"Nothing." Coralie yawned and set her phone down beside her. "He said he missed me."
"Missed you? Sure, he misses you so much he only sends quick messages on your birthday and likes one in a thousand pictures that you post." Delilah flipped her hair as she slithered to the couch and lounged on it as if posing for a photographer. Even in her waking hours, with mascara lining under her eyes and marks on her legs from her tight jeans, Delilah embodied a perfect Filipino diva straight out of a magazine. "What else?"
After refilling her cup, Coralie—in her baggy shorts and oversized t-shirt, looking like more of a tired junkie than a runway model—joined Delilah on the sofa.
"Well..." she peered at her screen, seeing no new notifications, "nothing else, yet." She threw her phone onto the cushions, and Delilah turned on the TV to their habitual Sunday binge-watching of Netflix shows.
Coralie had trouble focusing on today's show—their third round of "The Tudors"—as flashes of Ryan flew through her mind.
How had they grown so far apart? After she moved, in late two-thousand-and-eight, they'd maintained steady contact; more contact than she had with her boyfriend at the time, Benjamin. They spoke regularly, complaining about college, about their significant others, about their families.
After a month or two, they even started getting deeper, confessing their mutual attraction for one another, sending each other sweet, then racy pictures to awaken each other's appetite. She'd developed feelings for him, but never dared to confess them. And he'd said he'd visit her, and she'd made it clear he didn't need an invitation; yet years and years had gone by and he never came.
She aimed to visit London every two to three years—mainly to see her grandmother—and each time, she'd hoped and hoped he'd be there. He had no reason to claim he didn't know she was coming; she posted daily count-downs to her arrival on her social media outlets, shared the bars where she'd be meeting up with former classmates, revealed her entire schedule for her week-long trips. He saw the posts—he liked them, every time. And every time, she'd imagined him showing up unannounced at whatever locale she was hanging with friends at, dapper as ever in a dark suit, dazzling every woman he walked by. But he'd only have eyes for her, and would smirk in delight. He'd sweep her off her feet and spin her around and around and kiss her cheek, and later he'd admit that he'd been in love with her for years. She'd cry, she'd say she had been, too, and they'd live happily ever after.
But that was never how it happened. Instead, Bella would pick her up from the airport and change her itinerary. She'd sleep off her time-delay, go shopping and spend too much money, and end up alone with Bella in some dive-bar, drowning their sorrows in cosmopolitans and mojitos until they could barely walk home.
She had an upcoming trip to London the following month, but things would be different this time—Delilah was coming along. And wherever Delilah went, craziness and catastrophes ensued. Would Delilah's presence somehow be a luck charm and draw Ryan to her at last?
Ha, fat chance.
***
A week and a half passed, and Ryan never answered Coralie's last message. She hated to say it didn't surprise her—even back in the day, when they chatted weekly, he tended to disappear for a few days before replying. But this time, she didn't expect he'd reply at all. Why would he bother? He had much better things to do than catch up with her, his long-lost best friend. And besides, she had her own fair share of duties, between her shifts at the bar and videos of her new songs to record and hours of re-watching TV shows she'd seen five-hundred times.
Michael sent her a few texts, though all were cryptic and hard to understand. Sometimes he seemed flirty, swearing that he never found another assistant as attentive to details as her. And then he'd send half-sentence answers with random emojis that made no sense, and post obscure collages on his Instagram.
"Men," she said, popping a cherry tomato into her mouth. "All the same. Confusing and filled with mixed signals."
Delilah, who was concocting some new dish she'd seen on the Food Channel, smacked Coralie's hand. "Stop eating the tomatoes." She snatched the bowl and placed it on the opposite end of the kitchen.
Thursdays were their "roommate late-lunch" days, after which Coralie would have to hustle over to The Swirled Lady to prepare for Thirsty Thursday—a messy work-night that she dreaded.
"But it's true, right? Are they all like that? Or do I attract the ones that have no idea how to communicate?"
"Both," said Delilah, lifting onto her tip-toes to dig for plates in the cupboard. At five-foot-three, she was fierce and independent, and if ever she struggled to reach something on the top shelf, she shrugged on a pair of her highest heels and figured it out.
Luckily, the plates weren't hard to access, and she set two of them on the counter, next to the opened bottle of Merlot.
"Men are idiots, which is why I have the privilege of switching to ladies, if I feel like it. And you," she swirled around, her shiny locks swishing in slow-motion as if she were in some shampoo commercial, "are unlucky, yes. But your luck will turn. Because this Michael guy likes you, I'm sure of it."
"How can you be sure?" Coralie snuck a sip of Delilah's wine—she refused to pour herself a full glass before work—and wrinkled her nose. "All he talks about is where he likes to skateboard and which crooked streets he's taken the most pictures of."
"Yes, but," Delilah returned to her pan and stuffed the spatula into her spicy-smelling mixture, "he keeps your attention, right? Like, he's not boring?"
Coralie's phone pinged, and she absent-mindedly grabbed it. "He isn't boring, no. He asks questions and seems to genuinely—whoa." She almost dropped the phone and fumbled to keep it in her grip. "Fuck. Fuck." Her heart raced, her cheeks inflamed. "Fuck!"
"What, what, what?" Delilah shimmied over, holding the potato-covered spatula in one hand, a salt shaker in the other. "Is it Michael? Did we summon him by talking about him?"
"No, it's..." Coralie gulped. "It's RyRy. Responding to my video I posted earlier, the one promoting the new song." She couldn't remove her gaze from the ten words flashing on her screen, and something foreign fluttered to life in her core.
Ryan Bennett: I usually hate American accents, but yours is so sexy.
Delilah leaned over and read, her mouth popping open. "Whoa, that's... direct. Is he always like that?" She skidded back to her skillet and shook it back and forth a few times.
"No, I... well actually, I'm not sure. He hasn't said anything that daring in years." Coralie took a large swig of Delilah's wine, ignoring her no-drinking rule. "My accent? Sexy? I... don't even know what to say."
She'd never imagined herself as sexy; not with her half-assed, somewhat American with hints of English accent.
Delilah swished around and flipped the spatula at her. "Listen here, lady. We may not know what Michael was doing, but this boy is flirting. So you better flirt back!"
Flirt? Me?
Coralie chortled as she took the wineglass and carried it over to the couch. She sighed; she was terrible at flirting, at least in conversation. Most guys she'd hooked up with said her flirting language was her body, not her words. Words were for song-writing—why would she bother when she could bat her lashes, lick her lips, and dance up against someone?
But this was different. Ryan was on the other side of the world, and she didn't have the option to try her usual tactics.
"Fine." She tried to think of what verbiage she'd use for a song about flirting and let her fingers slide across the screen.
Coralie Amber Watson: ☺ stop it! Honestly, I miss my English accent. And I miss yours.
She wasn't even sure when her voice had shifted to that of a Californian. Maybe during college, or maybe during her countless nights of drinking and pretending to be American. Eventually, it stuck, and her British only showed when she was severely intoxicated or pissed.
Almost immediately, another message came through—but this was a vocal one. She squirmed about and sipped on wine as she pressed play.
"Oh, you mean this one? I'm sure your American friends mock it all the time, don't they?" Velvety, London-like, like raspberries dipped in dark chocolate—Ryan's voice always hit the mark.
"Holy shit," said Delilah, wandering over, her sculpted brows slinking upwards. "Was that him? Fuck, he sounds hot."
Shivers crawled up and down Coralie's sides. "Um... yeah, yeah that's him." She shooed Delilah off and touched the record button to respond to him. "Yes, that one. Wow, it's so good to hear you, RyRy."
Delilah winked as shefluttered back to the kitchen, leaving Coralie to cradle the phone against herchest and bite her lip in anticipation as she internally begged Ryan to not cutoff their conversation this time. It was two pm—meaning ten pm for him—and shewasn't done listening to him. She wasn't done melting from the melody of hisdeep, sultry tone. Sure, she'd heard it in videos he posted, and she'd neverforgotten it from their years at school—but to hear it now, for her alone,provoked a whole new set of sensations in her gut.
♥♥♥