Chapter 20
I listened to my big brother whisper rant for a while.
"It's stupid! Why do they have to be such ingrates?! We're terrible?! They practically called my fiancé worthless! She's a rocket scientist! They want me to be successful, is that not good enough?! Who am I kidding? Nothing's good enough! Wanted us to be doctors so bad maybe you should have gotten us a puppy!"
"Okay! Ryan and I are going to go check on Kim!" I pulled Ryan out of his seat and dragged him up the stairs. "Ryan! Ryan look at me! I know you're mad, but you're really starting to worry me. I need you to calm down!"
"Ye-yeah, sorry, Tommy."
"Are you ok?" I asked, ignoring his apology.
Ryan nodded sadly. "Forget about it. Lead the way."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I'll be fine… So… um… you're ex, right? Kimberly Hart?"
I nodded solemnly, leading the way to the room I had moved her to once she had fallen asleep. Her wounds had definitely become infected, they had started to puss while she was asleep, and were red and swollen. I stared at her sadly. This was my fault. I left Ryan to take care of Kim, and checked on things down stairs… bad idea. Hayley's head shot up immediately.
"What aren't you guys telling me?!" She asked. "What happened?!"
"I don't know," I admitted, "I didn't pry, but I do know that it didn't go well. Hayley, Ryan's just really upset right now. He always did everything he could to please them… they're never content… never happy with anything. He's having a hard time coping with the rejection he gets met with every time he gets excited about something. He just… he just needs some time…"
"I want him to know he can talk to me…"
"Hayles… he knows that getting their approval meant a lot to you… he doesn't want you to be upset. He's upset himself. He doesn't want to have to tell you. He knows he can talk to you Hayley. He just needs some time to deal with this on his own. Trust me, he'll be back to his old self in no time."
"I shouldn't have pushed him to go talk to them. I just wanted him to try. Tommy, I didn't want their approval, I couldn't care less about that, but I knew, whether he'd admit it or not, he wanted them to approve of something,anything he did. He wanted to feel acceptance for once. I just wanted to help."
Speechless. How does one respond to something like that? Ah yes, like this… "If you'll excuse me, Hayles… I lost something, and I need to go find it."
"Oh?"
"Yes… Sadly… I've lost my ability to read people."
Hayley smirked, "You've probably just been sitting in that basement with nothing to do for too long. In a couple hours you can order some Pizza, go get some Dr. Pepper or something, and we can all have dinner and try to make sense of everything that's going on right now." She patted my head as she walked past me, toward the stairs. "That should get your brain juices flowing… right?"
I smiled, she's gonna be my little sister. I have a big brother and a little sister, and we're all looking out for each other. That's not even mentioning my students, whom I grew fond of, very quickly. I finally had a real family! The kids didn't even really know Kim or Ryan that well, but they seemed to be warming up to them nonetheless. Kim… I don't know the whole story… I honestly don't care if I ever do. I just want to know for sure that she still loves me. I want to fix this… but first I want to know that she wants that too. Somehow we broke the relationship that everyone thought would last… like the Titanic. Wow… that was dark… where did that come from? Anyway… maybe we could salvage some of it… maybe even all of it. The pain will never go away, the pain I felt when I lost her, but we can still have a future, because we're rangers, and if there's one thing rangers are good at, it's getting back up…