I love Ronnie

I love Ronnie. I really do. But the man snores. As in snores. As in, I have nightmares about Rachel starting an elephant stampede and wake up and it's Ronnie snoring.

Yeah. Like that.

On this particular morning, I woke up at eight-fifteen in the morning to the sound of—guess what?—snoring. I stayed there for a few minutes, lying on my back and making pictures on the ceiling, before deciding that, seeing as I would never be able to go back to sleep, I was going to get up.

Ronnie and I live in a condo on the beach. It's a beautiful little place, modest enough, but big enough (as Ronnie has often pointed out) to start a family in. We live very comfortably.

Another thing about Ronnie? He hates, hates, hates doing dishes. So I get stuck with doing them. It's not like I mind, really. I just start humming to myself and then I'm suddenly done.

Apparently, Ronnie had consumed a slice of cold pizza (his favorite) at about eleven o'clock at night the night before. So, of course, there were dishes in the sink.

I did them, smiling.

It was a beautiful day. How could I not be smiling? The curtains were flung open to let the sunlight pour over the window seat where I read. The cool light of the morning lit up the kitchen, made its every surface glittery and clean-looking.

I poured myself a mug of creamer with a dash of coffee and sat on our leather sofa, thinking about my life. I loved it. I worked with the Hork-Bajirs and with Ronnie, live in a comfy little condo with a killer view, I have a boyfriend that loves me and treats me right, and great friends.

I was happy. But there was something missing, deep, deep down. Or maybe I had just imagined the feeling.

Ronnie woke up around eleven and made us both chocolate-chip pancakes (three four me and seven four himself; nine for leftovers).

I sipped my cranberry juice and he read his Time. We were holding hands across the table. The peace was split in two, however, when the phone buzzed. I made a jump for it—the ringtone told me it was Rachel—but Ronnie got their first.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Cassie?" I heard Rachel say.

"No, this is Ronnie."

"Oh. Ronnie, I need to talk to Cassie," Rachel said, and I could hear her trying to restrain her impatience.

"She's eating breakfast. Leave her alone."

"Give me Cassie or I will effing stomp your face in with my elephant feet, you bastard."

Ronnie said something that was even ruder than Rachel's comment.

I feel the need to tell you something that you have probably already inferred: Rachel and Ronnie have never gotten on well.

I threw my hands up in the air.

"Just give me the phone, both of you, and stop being venomous," I said loudly enough for them both to hear.

I could hear Rachel throaty growl.

I took the phone from a very unhappy Ronnie.

"Can you get someplace where we can talk without him overhearing?" Rachel demanded as soon as I was on the line. "Rachel, you're so rude to him."

She gave no response.

"Oh, fine then," I cried, exasperated and more than a little irritated at the both of them and their unending impassiveness. I went into the guest room and shut the door heavily behind me.

"What is it?"

"We found the Time Matrix."

"So?" I demanded meanly.

"So," Rachel explained to me with more patience than she had ever had with Ronnie, "we can change time if we've got it! Cassie, hello? Do you know what that means? Do you know what we could do?"

"I'm not interested," I told her flatly.

"Cassie…" her voice was almost pleading.

"Why the hell do you need me? Why do you even need the Matrix. Everything turned out okay for us."

I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth.

"No, Cassie," Rachel told me, her voice turning stormy, "everything turned out okay for you. You have a happy home and a happy life and a happy lover. But what about me? With a mother whose taking depression pills and a father who's always drinking to bore it all out? What about Tobias, a hawk with the mind of a man that can change shape for only two hours at a time? How am I supposed to have a decent relationship with him if he can't even turn human for more than two hours? What about Jake? Do you see how sad he is? Do you even give a damn?"

Rachel paused to breathe. She had hit her mark: I felt like a scumbag. She continued.

"My sisters are dead. Jake's brother is dead. Maybe Sara and Jordan and Tom don't mean anything to you, but they're my family. I want them back. We don't know what we're up against. We're taking a wild gamble here. What if Tobias and Jake and Marco and me can't do it on our own? What if we need you, and you're sitting in your living room watching I Love Lucy reruns?"

Her voice was like fire, like a hurricane. It had risen in volume as she had spoken. But now all of the rage and energy left her and there was only sadness, despair, even.

"I miss them, Cassie."

Silence.

"Where do I sign up?"

Rachel did not brighten.

"The old woods. Tomorrow at 5 in the morning." I was too eager for her forgiveness to gawk at the early hour.

"I'll be there," I promised before hanging up the phone and going out to tell Ronnie.

Ronnie wasn't too excited about my going to help with the Animorph mission. I hadn't given him all the fine details in case it might endanger him somehow (old habits die hard) but he had heard enough after three and a half seconds.
"Lemme get this straight. You are being summoned—"

"Not summoned, asked to come—"

"To the woods where you and your friends met up and plotted against the Yeerks?"

"Pretty much."

Ronnie looked a degree passed pissed.

"Ronnie, please…they need me. I need to go help them."
"Why?"

"So we can save Rachel's sisters. For Jake's brother."

If he had looked unhappy at the prospect of my leaving him to aid Rachel, the look that crossed his face when I mentioned Jake was hellish.

"Jake needs you, then?" he asked darkly.

"Yes, Ronnie, he does!"

Jake was a threat. Jake was always a threat. Jake, who I had loved so many lifetimes ago, was always Ronnie's chief rival. Jake had everything a woman could possibly want, so I could see Ronnie's point of view. But it annoyed me anyway.

"Now don't get defensive! I love you, you know that! What do you think this is, a plot to get me to fall in love with him?"

Ronnie and I packed his dirty green Honda with two large suitcases with enough clothes for two weeks. Ronnie was coming with me, he had informed me at the last minute. I had sighed and agreed wearily.

"Is that everything?" he called out, grunting with the effort of shoving one last briefcase into the too-small trunk. "Think so," I replied, not really paying attention as I climbed into the shotgun.

The drive there was painfully awkward. Ronnie made bizarre small talk, which I responded two with equally random and pointless comments. Usually it wouldn't have been this way. But the three and a half hours it took to get to my old home were different. This involved Jake.

This was an assault to Ronnie's manhood.

"Where're we gonna stay?" Ronnie asked me conversationally as we turned down one of many twisting, empty country roads under the warm California sun.

"I thought at my parents'," I told him, "because its so close to where we need to be."
He gave a masculine grunt and said nothing.

The drive was agonizingly quiet the rest of the way. A flicker of doubt flashed in front of my mind. Why was it that, the moment one my oldest friends was mentioned, my relationship with my lover crumbled, and so quickly and needlessly? How could I live a life with a person that barely trusted me with a person that was admittedly dear to me, that had been my sweetheart years before? There was nothing going on between Jake and me.

Maybe I did doubt my relationship with Ronnie after all.

We pulled into Mom and Dad's driveway as the clock on the dashboard turned from 4:13 to 4:15. Ronnie turned to me and looked deep into my eyes. Obviously he had followed my train of thought.

"It's just a bad day, Cass," he told me sincerely. "We're in a very temporary rut. We'll be fine. We love each other, don't we?"