*budoooop*
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*budooooop*
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*budoooooop*
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*budooooop*
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*budoooooop*
….
Each ring of the phone seemed longer than the one before it. Rose tapped her left heel against the hardwood floor, gazing out of the doorway window into the well-lit cove. Honestly, she didn’t know if he was going to answer his phone or not. When she finally heard the beginning of Ryan’s unoriginal ‘fake answer’ voicemail, Rose closed her phone, placed it back into her purse, and turned to walk back to the couch. As she walked, she thought of what he had told her nearly half an hour ago – “I’ll be there in five minutes, hun, I swear!”
“Five minutes, thirty minutes ago” Aly said, already clearing a space on the couch for her friend. “You see, Rose? This is why I always tell you that he’s not worth your time. He always drops the ball on the worst possible night!”
As she sat on the couch, Rose pulled down on her new, navy blue dress so it wouldn’t wrinkle. She had to agree with Aly. Ryan seemed to be late at the most unnerving times: her father’s movie premier, their first double-date (how embarrassing was that… playing third wheel with his friends she didn’t even know), and now tonight. She set down her purse, crossed her legs, and smiled at Aly.
The smile wasn’t enough. Aly sighed, “I always wanted to spend my senior prom sitting on my living room couch.”
“I’m sure he’ll be here soon, really.” Once again, Aly refused to give Ryan the benefit of the doubt. Scenarios listed themselves off in Rose’s head: he could have gotten a flat tire, there could have been bad traffic…
Aly’s boyfriend Max walked back into the room, putting away his phone. “Well, there’s some good news. I called Grille 83 and I was able to bump our reservations back an hour.” He sat down on the couch and wrapped his arm around his obviously impatient girlfriend. “Don’t worry about it. Tonight is going to be so much fun, I promise. I’m sure Ryan just wanted to talk his Dad into letting him drive us all in the BMW, that’s all.”
“The sounds just like him,” replied Aly, still unconvinced, “he would make us wait two hours just so he could drive us around in a convertible. It’s not really that much of a thrill for us, in dresses.”
“Always the pessimist,” Max teased as he rubbed her shoulders. “These things happen every now and then; you have to take the good and the bad. Ryan might be late, but he did get the nice reservations.”
Aly rolled her eyes. “You mean the ones were not even going to make?”
Max wasn’t able to calm Aly down, but he did have a point. Rose loved Ryan, and she always believed he was great. Sure, he might make he wait every now and then, but he was always so nice to her, wasn’t he? He always offered to pay for everything, even though Rose always insisted that they would each pull their own weight. And he always valued the little things – the small bag of candy after a hard day or a cute stuffed animal to add to her ‘Army’, as he liked to call it.
*grurrrwarlll*
Her stomach pulled her back to reality. In all the frantic of tonight, she had completely forgotten how hungry she was. She had skipped breakfast and lunch so that she could look her best, and now she – and apparently Aly too, by the consoling face she was giving – knew the effect of the late dinner.
“That’s awful. You know that we have some fruit and bread right in the kitchen, right?” Aly suggested. “I just can’t believe he’s making us wait this long.” Rose didn’t know what to say, so she looked to Max.
“It’s not like he’s deliberately making you wait, Aly. I’m sure he has a reason.”
“But we’ve actually tried to call him like every ten minutes, and he won’t answer our calls! If he’s running late, he should at least man up and tell us, instead of ignoring us and leaving us out of the loop!”
“It’ll be fine” is all Max could say to try and calm her down. Aly was fervently upset, but as she knew Max wouldn’t argue with her, she turned back to Rose. “We might still have our reservations, but if he takes too long, we’re going to be too late for the dance.”
She was right. Even though the dance was four hours long, they stopped letting people into the ballroom halfway through, and they had already organized the dinner reservations so that they could be fashionably late. Where could Ryan possibly be?! Rose was beginning to feel frustrated.
More scenarios began to run through Rose’s mind. What would she say when Ryan finally got here? She wouldn’t yell at him – that would ruin the whole night. If he were mad at her, he might just be a prick about it and ignore her all night. But if she didn’t let him know how they all felt, then he wouldn’t think he did anything wrong. She felt like a pushover parent, organizing her life around a spoiled child. Ryan had even told her that tonight meant a lot to him. If it actually did mean so much to him, he wouldn’t be running late, she decided.
The silence was broken when Aly put her hand on Rose’s crossed knee. “I’m going to go to the bathroom mirror and rework my hair. If Ryan gets here while I’m still gone, tell Satan I’d like a snow cone.” She stood up and left, and when she was finally out of sight, Max leaned forward.
“It’s not his fault, but Aly has never really liked Ryan. Aly is overreacting, like always. So don’t let her ruin your night.” Max paused for a moment, seemingly reaching for the right words to say. After a while, he just said, “When Ryan gets here, we should all just make the best of it, m’kay?”
Not m’kay. “That won’t be good enough for Aly, and frankly, I’m a little pissed at him myself. I don’t think she’s overreacting anymore; I think Aly has a good point. If we just act like nothing’s wrong, then he will think that nothing’s wrong. And then all of this is just going to happen again. I don’t want to be treated like crap. When he gets here, I’m going to pull Ryan aside and ask him why he was so late. If his answer… excuse rather, isn’t good enough, then I don’t know what I’m going to do, but he won’t get off that easily.
Rose could tell that her response wasn’t really what Max had expected, but it’s what has to be done, right? She felt like she had to prove her point to Max. “I mean, it’s not like Ryan made one giant mistake. He made a bunch of little ones, and this one is pretty big. It’s like the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
Max sighed as he leaned back into the couch again. “I just think you’re being a little too hard on him, that’s all.”
“Well, I don’t think I am. And neither does Aly, I’m sure. Maybe if you had been on the receiving end of all his negligence, you would see what I mean.”
Max made a motion like he was going to respond, but then exhaled and looked away. Aly was walking back into the room, and stopped at the doorway to look out. When she saw no fancy BMW convertibles parked in the cove, she let out a slight humph.
“We should just leave without him and go to Grille 83. If he ever decides to actually get in touch with us, we can just tell him where we are.”
Rose agreed, there needed to be an ultimatum. Max and Aly argued a bit, but in the end it was Rose’s date, Rose’s decision. And she had made one. She picked up her purse, stood up, and turned to the others.
“Aly is right, this is ridiculous. We’ve been sitting here for almost an hour, and not only is he a no-show, but he’s completely out of contact as well. I even tried calling him. If he wanted to talk to me, he would have talked to me by now. He doesn’t care, and there’s nothing we can do about it. If he realizes he’s made a mistake, we’ll be at dinner. He can join us, but I don’t think he’ll have a good time.”
Max sighed, “If that’s what you want, then I’ll drive.” He looked at her once more, but Rose wouldn’t budge. “Let’s go.”
As Max ushered them out of the door, Rose heard the home phone ring. She stopped for less than a second, instinctively wanting to answer. But she knew it couldn’t be Ryan. They all made their way to Max’s Jeep, and not ten steps from the door, they all heard the voice of Rose’s mom calling to them from the doorway.
“Wait, Rose!” She sounded worried. “Rose, please come here. The phone is for you.”
Rose looked at Aly, both wielding expressions of disbelief. Why did he call now, of all times? And why did he call the home phone? Rose didn’t know what to think as she pulled the legs of her dress up and made her way to the phone. All she knew was that she wasn’t going to let Ryan just blow this off. She took the phone from her mother, who remained outside by her.
“Ryan?” she answered.
A female voice responded. “No, Rosemary dear, it’s me.” Ryan’s mom had never called Rose by her full name before.
The line was silent, and Rose didn’t know what was going on. “Have you heard from Ryan lately? He should have been here.”
“Rosemary, there’s been an accident.” Apprehension instantly became anxiety. “Ryan’s car was hit by another that was speeding through the supermarket parking lot. He was hit pretty hard, left unconscious. The ambulances had already picked him up before they contacted me. They say it was a concussion, and they say the other man was drunk. Rose… I didn’t know what to say, so I called you immediately.”
Rose didn’t know what to say, either. The first thing that came to mind, surprisingly, was rude. “Why was he at the supermarket and not here with us?” Rose demanded.
“Honey, he left an hour ago. All he said was that he had to buy you flowers and that they couldn’t be roses.”
Rose was no longer rude, no longer angry. She was wrong. She felt horrible. She just stood in the open doorway and began to cry. She didn’t even know how Ryan knew.
Rose didn’t like roses.
I thought it was pretty good. 
