FicWad

Chapter Two: The Choice is Yours

"Anna, holy shit!" Ryan bounded from the bed and grabbed Anna into a huge embrace. She tightly hugged him back and tried not to beam from ear to ear. "Oh my God," he turned back to the girl sitting on his bed. "Lacy this is Anna, an old friend from Newport. Anna this is Lacy my girlfriend."
"Hi Lacy," she coyly pushed a few strands of hair behind her ears and smiled at the girl.
"Anna and I haven't seen each other since...." He paused trying to remember the exact time they'd last met.
"Thanksgiving of freshmen year. You couldn't go home because of your job, so you came to Pittsburgh and stayed with us."
"That's right... I almost forgot. Anyway Lace, Anna goes to Penn State, she and Seth dated for a bit... We've got a long history."
"Not too long though." She grinned a bit.
"Well Anna, it's nice to meet someone else from Ryan's past. I haven't heard too much about you, but being that he seems to hide his history from me, it's nice to see another piece of it. The only other person I've meet has been Summer and... well..." Lacy squinted her face together in a disapproving manner.
"Hey," Ryan took a gruff and reprimanding tone.
"Yea, hey..." Anna repeated him. "Speaking of Summer she's kind of why I'm here."
"Huh? She's ok right... I mean if anything had happened to her or anything, Seth would have called."
"Calm down, Summer's fine. It's just..." She paused and lanced around the room trying not to look directly at Lacy. She didn't want to seem rude but some manners shouldn't be discussed in front of other people. Even if the other person in the room was his girlfriend. "Ryan could we talk in private?"
Lacy stood from the bed and straightened her clothes out. "I get it, that's my cue to leave. I'll catch up with you later though. We're still having dinner right baby?"
"Yea definitely."
"Ok good then. It was nice to meet you Anna, I guess I'll see you at dinner."
"No actually you won't. I can't stay but this is really important. It was nice to meet you though."
"Ok then." Lacy leaned in and gave Ryan a quick kiss on the cheek and quickly made her exit.
Ryan sat down in his desk chair facing Anna and waited a few moments after the door had closed before he spoke. "Ok what the hell's going on... I haven't seen you in ages. Haven't talk to you in months and you show up out of the blue, and tell me you're here because of Summer?"
"Well, it's more like I'm hear on Summer's behave. See she wanted to come herself but she has this deal with Seth..."
"What kind of deal with Seth?"
"The kind of deal where she can't come here and drag you back to Newport. Everyone really really wants you to go home for the holiday."
"That's what this is about? Look Anna, no offense but you're wasting your time. Everyone's already asked me if I'm coming home and I've told them all the same thing, I can't I have to work. Besides it's too awkward, Marissa's gonna be there and last time I saw her it just went badly... And I'm really happy with Lacy and it just hurts to even think about Marissa."
"Ryan, I believe you're happy with Lacy. And I believe that you're really happy here. I can see it for myself. There's something in you eyes; it's like the same thing that was there the night of the kick-off carnival. But listen... I don't know what exactly is going on but I know it's something. Summer called and told me that you were really really needed at home. And that she and Seth had this deal and look I can't tell you why but honestly I wouldn't be here if it was just a matter of Summer and Seth wanting you at home. You need to go home, trust me on this one and you'll thank me for it later I promise."
Conversation came to a halt and a stare down between the two came about. Ryan had questions and he knew Anna had some of the answers, so he stared. Looking deep into her eyes that pleaded to him to listen to her. But her pleading covered up the answers he was searching for. In those short seconds of eye to eye contact weariness overcame him. This was all so suddenly unexpected, all causing so much confusion. He realized that the answers he needed weren't going to be hiding in Anna's eyes, they were in Newport, now the questions in his mind were all directed to himself.

"Baby you ok?" Lacy took her eyes off the road for a split second and glanced over to Ryan, who'd been almost completely silent through dinner. Not that it was unusual for him to be silent; he truly was a man of few words. However with his old friend stopping out of nowhere and the mention of Summer, she wondered if maybe something was wrong at home.
"Yea I'm fine." His eyes remained forward focusing on the lines of the road. He tried to keep his mind blank, blank was better than racing, which is what it had been doing ever since Anna left and all through dinner.
"Ok... just checking." She gave him a soft smile and turned the radio up a bit. The song made her smile, she turned the dial up a bit more and began to softly sing at Ryan, "You showed be how to be something now I'm so lad that now you're mine cause I'm better with you."
Ryan smiled for the first time all night. He was happy with Lacy. For the longest time it felt like he kept telling himself that to convince himself. But lately there had just been moments where he could feel it. The way she smiled at him, or sang off key to him in the car like she was now. Still sometimes he had the toughest time shaking the what might have been from his mind. He guessed all those cheesy things said about never really getting over your first true love were really true.
"So I know we didn't talk about it much at dinner, but my parents were kind of hoping we could come down the day before Christmas Eve this year. You know help them get some stuff ready before all the other family.
"Yea about that..." His sentence was abruptly cut off.
"Well if you'd rather wait and just go for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, that's fine with me. I know you're not exactly into holidays."
"Actually, ummm I think I'm... gonna.... Go.... Home... to Newport... f-for the whole break."
"Wow," her were as wide as baseballs. "Well that's something new. I thought you had to work..."
"Well I'm going to go tomorrow and talk to Mr. Tolcher and tell him I'm going home. He's actually been trying to force me to go home for the holidays for as long as I've been working at the firm, so I can't see him having a problem with it. And I took my last final yesterday, so... I'm thinking I'm gonna leave on Thursday."
"Thursday. hmmm... well my last final is tomorrow so Thursday works for me."
"Huh?"
"For us to leave and go to Newport, Thursday works, my last exams tomorrow so I won't be holding us up. I'll just call my parents and tell them I'm going home with you, they won't exactly be thrilled since they're expecting us to be at their house for Christmas, but they'll understand and maybe we can fly out Christmas Eve so we can spend Christmas day with them. I mean doesn't your family do some type of weird holiday instead Hannamas or something?"
"Chrismukkah."
"Yea that's it, so they won't mind if we leave early."
"Lacy hold on a second, I don't quiet think you're understanding me... When I said I was going home to Newport for the break... I mean I was going home to Newport for the break alone." Ryan blew out a breath, he knew this wasn't going to be pretty. Lacy had been asking about meeting his family for at least the past six months. And he wasn't against it or anything, it's just he never had time to go home. Or at least he made it to where he never had time to go home, and now that he was making time, there was an overwhelming feeling in his stomach that it wasn't the best time to bring her with him.
"Look Ryan, we've been together for almost a year and a half now, you can't hide me from your family forever."
"I'm not hiding you from anyone."
"Then why does it feel like you are? Apparently you don't want me to go with you and that hurts just a bit. It's like there's this whole part of you that I know nothing about, that I'm not a part of."
Ryan flinched at her words. He heard them all before under almost the same circumstances. That time he'd given in and taken the girl with him only to have it turn out badly. He wondered if he was willing to take that chance again. He continued to reflect of that thought so deeply that he hadn't noticed Lacy pulling the car to a stop in front of his Hall.
"I'll call you tomorrow," he opened the door and got out, knowing better than to try and kiss her right now. Silently he began to walk door the entryway when he heard his name called.
"Ryan I love you and I'm not going to force you or even try to force you to do anything you don't want to do, I know you far too well to try and do that. But if you go home to Newport by yourself, I can't promise that I'll be here waiting for you when you get home."