Chapter Text
Chapter 1
“The movers should be here within an hour. Miss Jenkins is going to let them in. We need to get going so we don’t miss this plane,” Jada said as she walked into her daughter's room, which was currently filled with large brown boxes and a bed that had been stripped down to nothing but the mattress and the frame. Ryan was sitting on the edge of her bed.
“Are you excited?” she asked.
When they initially moved to Baltimore, it wasn’t really a choice. Ryan’s father had been convicted of Money Laundering, along with two of his business associates. He was sentenced to 5 years and, because of his actions, Ryan and her mom had been receiving threats from victims that lost money thanks to him. Ryan was getting bullied by kids in school because of hardships their parents were now facing from doing business with him.
Her mother even lost her job at the bank because of his activities. Jada wanted to give them a fresh start, so she packed up and moved closer to family to protect her daughter.
Now, 3 years later, they were packed up and would be returning to Houston in a matter of hours. Ryan is a high school senior and will be coming in the middle of the fall semester. She would also be attending college at TSU after she graduated. Jada wanted to move back in order to be closer to her daughter while she was at school. They originally were not going to be moving until at the end of the school year, but there was a house that was put on the market that Jada fell in love with, and she was offered a new job that she had to take immediately if she wanted it.
It seemed as if all the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place for their return, sooner than they planned but they were ready. A lot had changed over the past 3 years. Ryan was a lot tougher and more confident than she was when she left. She’d definitely developed a thicker skin, and no longer cared about the judgment or looks from others because of her father.
“Yeah, I’m just ready to get this school year over with, so I can get to TSU!” She smiled.
“I know you are, baby, and maybe you and Sophie can finally reconnect…” Her mom suggested.
The mention of her name caused Ryan to groan and roll her eyes. “Maa, why do you keep bringing her up?”
“Because you two were best friends, and I know how hurt you were that you drifted apart…”
“We didn’t drift apart. She forgot all about me, and started acting like I didn’t exist...I’m just returning the favor.”
She stood up. Jada sighed. Ryan was so devastated when she had to leave her best friend but, not long after, Sophie became distant and it just made Ryan angry. That was a part of the reason why she now had a tendency to keep people at a distance. If her very best friend could totally switch up on her, then who could she really trust? She had friends, and she even dated, but nobody had been able to get passed the wall that she had now put up.
Two of the most important relationships in her life, her father and her best friend, she felt as if they turned out to be complete lies. The people that she thought she knew, she really didn’t, and now she just didn’t want to risk being let down like that again. The only person who had never switched up on her was her mom, and as far as she was concerned, that was all she needed.
“Did you say goodbye to Monet?”
Monet was a girl that Ryan had been dating for the past couple of months. They weren’t exclusive, but she had been over to the house often enough that Jada had managed to remember her name. That was more than she could say for the other girls that had briefly caught Ryan’s attention.
“Yeah, we said goodbye yesterday…”
“Is she still thinking about going to TSU?”
“Yeah, she’s supposed to be coming down for the college tour, so we’re supposed to see each other then.”
“Awe, well that’s nice! I like her and you seem to as well, since she’s the only one I’ve really gotten the chance to get to know,” she teased her.
Ryan shrugged. “She doesn’t cause me stress.”
Jada laughed. “Girl, you ain’t even started life yet. You haven’t even began to be stressed out by your romantic partners...buckle up baby girl.”
She put her arm around her daughter's shoulder. “Speaking of being stressed out, are you going to see him when we get back?” The “him” that she was referring to was her father, Richard.
“Probably, and I think it would be a good idea for you to come with me.”
Jada knew that Ryan still held a lot of anger toward her father after the way he turned their lives upside down but, at the same time, outside of his business dealings, he had always been a good father, and she didn’t want her to abandon that relationship completely because of a bad decision that he made and that he was paying for.
“I’ll pass,” she said before releasing herself from her mother's grasp and grabbing her bags to carry them downstairs. Jada followed her and completed a last minute check to make sure they weren’t leaving anything behind that they would need immediately. Soon, the Uber arrived to carry them to the airport.
On the Plane
As Ryan sat on the plane, her black Apple Airpods blasting the newest Kehlani in her ears and her attention focused on the clouds just outside her window. Her mind started to travel to a place it hadn’t been in a long time.
“Where’s your mom?” Ryan asked Sophie as she walked into her room and sat on the bed.
“She’s working a double at the hospital, so she won’t be home until late.”
Sophie walked over and took a seat next to Ryan. She sat close to her and placed her hand on her best friend's leg, palm up. Ryan rested her hand on Sophie’s and clasped her fingers, so they were holding hands. They just looked at each other.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving.”
She sighed.
“I know, my dad ruined everything.”
Ryan groaned. Although they had never really had a conversation about the relationship they had, they both knew that their relationship wasn’t just your everyday best friend relationship. There were feelings there that neither of them understood, and didn’t really know how to talk about, but at the same time it was obvious that whatever they both felt was mutual.
“Let’s make a promise,” Sophie proposed. “No matter what, we’ll talk all the time, and we can have other friends, but you can’t have another best friend. We have to keep that title for each other. I’ll never let anyone else take your spot, you have to promise the same."
“I promise,” Ryan agreed. Sophie rested her head on Ryan’s shoulder.
“I love you Ry.”
The sadness that she felt, knowing Ryan was going to be thousands of miIes away, was overwhelming. She looked to Ryan. For a moment they held a sad gaze, but then Ryan started to lean in. Softly she kissed Sophie on the lips. She wasn’t sure when she was going to see her again, and it’s something she had wanted to do ever since she started realizing that her feelings for her best friend had grown past just a normal friendship.
“I love you too,” she told her. They didn’t need to talk about it. They knew what it meant and why she did it. It was an unspoken pact between the two of them that whatever this was that they shared would never be shared with anyone else.
It just made her angry at this point because she felt like it didn’t take any time for Sophie to break her promise. At first they talked and texted all the time, but then it went from Sophie barely talking, to acting like she was so busy all the time and never calling her back, to not answering her call or text at all. She felt like she was chasing her, so she just stopped. They hadn’t spoken since, and even though she was now coming back to Texas, she planned on keeping the same energy.
Sophie
“Bro, what the fuck does she have on?” she laughed with her girls as they stood on the bleachers watching the boys conditioning for try-outs for the upcoming football season. School would be starting in a month and a half, and try outs were usually held over the summer to have the team in play to start practice for the fall.
“I don’t know, but she needs to take her ass back home and try again!” her friend Iris said. She was also a member of the cheerleading squad along with Sophie.
Ryan wasn’t the only one that had changed a lot over the past 3 years. Ryan wasn’t the only one that had to deal with the fallout from her dad's actions, she was just the only one that was able to get away from them.
With kids talking about her, and Sophie feeling the need to defend her, it put a target on her back. They would try and fight her just because they couldn’t get to Ryan. She was guilty by association, and it made school hard for a while, until she decided that she wasn’t going to take it anymore. She had to switch up her entire personality just to make sure that everyone knew that she wasn’t the one to mess with anymore, and if you tried to pick a fight with her, she would destroy you.
Now, going into her senior year at McKinnley High, she was known as the QB of the school. She humiliated and bullied the weak on a regular basis, as a reminder to never test her again, and so far her plan was working to perfection. Although Ryan had no choice in the matter, she felt like she had to distance and harden herself in order to deal with the kids at school, and she was angry about that and she blamed Ryan.
“Tyler is looking good, Sophie!” Iris said.
“Yeah, he definitely shouldn’t have any issues reclaiming his captain spot this year….GO TY!!” she yelled out. He looked up after completing a dash down the field. He pointed up to her and blew her a kiss.
“Girl this year is about to be so fire!”
Thinking about everything that they had to look forward to during senior year, all the girls were so excited.
“No cap! We gotta make sure we close this shit out with a bang!” Sophie said as she checked her phone. Her mom was texting her about making sure she was home in time enough for dinner. Her school life wasn’t the only place her life had gotten a dramatic makeover. Her mom remarried 2 years ago, and she now had an 8 year old step sister, Jordan and she wasn’t happy about it at all. Her step-father was a nice guy, but she felt like an outsider in her own family now. Her mother's last name was now Black, along with her step-father and step sister, while she was the lone Moore wolf in her house.
“You gotta go?” Iris asked.
“Nah, my mom is just nagging me about dinner,” she said, dropping her phone in her hand bag.
“I still can’t believe your step-dad got you a damn Telfar bag,” Iris said, picking up the new recent gift from Michael. It was a red Telfar bag that he got her for her birthday.
“That’s because he thinks it’s going to make me like him.” She shook her head.
“Shit, as fine as he is, he wouldn’t even have to do all that.”
One of the other cheerleaders commented. Sophie made a face as if there was a stench in the air and rolled her eyes. There was another text from her mom.
“Oh my god!” She reached for her phone again.
Mom: By the way, I got a message from Jada on Facebook. She and Ryan are moving back to Houston this week.
Sophie’s fingers hovered above the keypad on her phone, but didn’t move because she didn’t know how to respond. Clearly she wasn’t expecting to read that. When her mom realized she wasn’t going to respond, she texted her again.
Mom: I know you two haven’t spoken in a long time, but she just thought you might like to know, seeing how you were so close.
Just like Ryan’s mom, Sophie’s mom noticed the change in her daughter after Ryan left, and if maybe their reconnecting could bring her back to her old self, she wanted that for her daughter. Despite what it appeared, her mother knew she wasn’t happy with this new persona that she had taken on. Instead of responding with words, she just responded with a shoulder shrugging GIF.
“Are your parents still out of town until tomorrow?” she asked Iris.
“Yeah, why?”
“We should have a little get together at your place. I’ll get Tyler to raid his dads bar.”
“Oh, okay. I'll tell Luke to bring over some edibles, too.”
She nodded and texted her boyfriend their new plans for the night. Whenever she felt like she was about to start getting too heavy into something she didn’t want to think about, her first solution was to party until she couldn’t think straight. She had accepted the fact that she would never see Ryan again, and all those feelings that surrounded her, she would never have to face. Sophie had spent years stuffing that down, and she wasn’t going to let Ryan and her reappearance ruin the reputation she had built for herself. Even if it was all built on lies.