Confused
SARAH
“Is this about what happened to you with Ronan? The drowning. That trauma you carried? Is that why you want to study this course?” he asks.
My lips part, but nothing comes out. I didn’t expect him to say that. I didn’t expect him to see that. Not in me. Not in this. I feel my chest rise and fall, and suddenly I’m hyper-aware of the space between us, of how quiet the room is, of how loud my thoughts are.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I guess maybe.... Maybe it is.”
He nods slowly, still not looking at me. “Then write that.”
I blink. “What?”
“Write that,” he repeats. “That’s your reason. Don’t sugarcoat it. If that’s the truth, say it. Say you’ve been through something, and music is the only thing that made you feel okay. Say you want to help others feel okay too.”
“But I haven’t... I haven’t healed from it,” I say, quieter than I intended.
He finally looks at me. “You don’t have to be healed to want to help someone. Sometimes the best kind of help comes from people who still feel the ache.”
I’m silent. Because again, I don’t know what to say. Because what if he’s right?
What if… I wonder. He turns back towards the screen and pushes it towards me. Right in my face. I look at him, unsure.
He nods his head in a comforting way and I pull the laptop towards me.
“Go on,” he says. “Your voice. Pour your heart out. Just make sure you don't say anything about the Sullivans, okay?”
His face looks like stone. It makes me laugh.
“I don't know anything about the family business.”
“Still, you can’t say that Ronan tried to drown you when you were a baby. You just have to write how it made you feel and how you struggled with it.”
That sobered me up. “Yes, of course."
"Just be vague about it. Say you had a near-death experience or something like that.”
“Thanks,” I say.
He nods and turns his head towards the windows. I guess he's giving me privacy.
I place my fingers on the keyboard, exhale slowly, and try to let the words come. I try to write the truth, without drowning in it.
When I am done, I push the screen towards him.
“What do you think?”
He doesn’t even look at it. He just saves it, goes back toward the application, and adds it.
“Wait,” I say. “You didn’t even read it.”
“I don’t have to,” he says.
I raise an eyebrow, but it’s not like he’s looking at me. I wonder what he meant. He doesn’t need to? Is it that it doesn’t matter what I write?
Why do I even care what Ryan thinks? I think to myself.
Fifteen minutes later, my father walks into the study.
“How’s everything going?”
“Just about to finish up,” Ryan says, his eyes back toward the screen.
“All right. When you’re done, meet us in the dining room.”
Ryan nods. I answer, “Okay, Dad.”
My father looks at me, almost like he’s taking inventory of me, to make sure that Ryan didn’t pluck a hair from my head. Nods to himself. He seems satisfied with whatever he’s seeing here. And then he goes out of the room.
I turn back to look at Ryan and find him smiling. I almost want to ask him what’s so funny, but I hold it in. Five seconds later, he’s the one who breaks the silence.
“He’s scared for you,” Ryan says.
I frown, trying to look at him, but he’s not looking at me. He’s still focused on the screen in front of him. But I really want to know what he means. So I ask, after a while,
“What do you mean?”
He smiles, turns to look at me, and says, “You know exactly what I mean.”
And then he goes back toward the screen again. Like that was the end of that. I feel mixed emotions, but luckily, he’s already done.
He says, “Done,” closes the screen, and says, “Dad told me that you wanted to have a tour of the university before classes. So just get ready.”
He pulls out his phone.
“I’ll have time on Monday, next week. Is that cool with you?”
“Yeah, I guess, it’s not like I’m doing anything,” I say. I start laughing.
He raises his eyes from his phone and gives me a confused look.
“Yeah, fine. Okay then. I’ll pick you up. Or you can come with Dad, whatever you want. I don’t care.”
He’s already heading out the door.
I kept standing there when he reached the door and then came back and said, “Just so you know, not cool if you come with Dad. I would hate to run around with the two of you and a bunch of bodyguards going through the place. You're gonna kill my mood, my morale, and my standing. So, if you can make it there on your own, I would be immensely grateful.”
“I can't come without my guard,” I point out.
“I can be your guard. I can protect you more than ten of your bodyguards. It's the reason why Dad wants you to even go there in the first place,” he says.
And I think he nearly rolls his eyes at me as he leaves for real this time.
I stood there a few seconds after he left, staring at the open door. I had a lot of questions in my head. Because I didn't know how to describe Ryan or what to make of him. He was always the quiet, cold one who never spoke. But today, it’s not like he was chit-chatting but he had to talk to me. And he didn’t sound so bad. If you're going to compare him to Ronan, I mean. But he also left me... so confused.
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