Read Before Ryan Was Mine (The Remembrance Trilogy - Prequel) for Free Online Page A

the fuck to classify our relationship, or what we were to each other. But one thing was for sure, I liked the way that sounded. To say we were friends was the fucking understatement of the century.
    “Thank you, Ryan.”
    “For what?”
    “Getting sick with me,” she said sleepily. Yeah, I probably would get sick as a dog and in that moment, I didn’t give a rat’s ass.
    I smiled. As long as anything was with Julia, whatever it was, I was in. All in.

~2~
Uncomfortably Close

    “Julia, are you coming?” Ellie asked, impatience growing on her face.
    “Er…” I hesitated. I didn’t know what I was doing. I hadn’t heard from Ryan this afternoon. We’d talked about going to see the new Spiderman movie and grabbing some curry at the tandoori restaurant near the theater. “I’m not sure.”
    “Well, we’re leaving in thirty minutes!” Ellie seemed exasperated. “Chris is picking us up. I thought you wanted to go? We have to get in line early if we expect to get a table near the dance floor.” She stared at my state of dress, and her face twisted in disdain. “You can’t go like that! Why haven’t you changed?”
    Ellie, and a couple of her other friends, were going to a new dance bar. Supposedly, it would be the hottest thing in the Stanford club circuit, with the added hook of free Wi-Fi. It had been heavily promoted since the beginning of the semester in the Stanford News, and signs were tacked up all over campus, so we’d talked about it a lot and were both excited for it to open. Tonight was the official grand opening.
    “I’m not sure I’m going.” I cringed as I waited for her to blow a gasket. I was sitting on her bed while she was in the bathroom. Ellie paused putting on her mascara and looked around the corner, still holding the black tube in her hand.
    “What? Why?” Her brow wrinkled into a displeased frown.
    Afraid she would be pissed with my answer, I plowed forward. “Ryan and I might do something.”
    She stared at me with wide eyes; her expression hardening further and her lips pursing. “Ryan?”
    “Yeah.” My shoulders lifted in a small shrug and I cast her a brief glance, unable to meet her eyes.
    “But, we planned on this!” she huffed. “What? Are you guys dating now? I thought you were just friends.”
    One leg was curled in front of me and the other foot was flat on the mattress as I leaned one elbow on my bent knee and one hand played with a strand of hair. I sighed. “We are.”
    “You’d blow off the grand opening of HotSpot for a guy who’s just a friend ?” She stared hard at me and waited for me to answer. “A friend , who, let me remind you, is the hottest guy either of us knows,” she said knowingly. I still couldn’t meet her eyes. “Super-hot friend , Ryan.”
    She made quote symbols with two fingers of each hand lost her grip on the mascara in her right hand. “Shit!” she said as it went tumbling to clatter on the linoleum floor of her bathroom. “Why don’t you just bring him along?” She bent to pick it up and threw it in the sink, muttering obscenities.
    “We haven’t really had much time to talk this week and he wanted to see that new Spiderman movie.”
    “How much talking can you get done in a movie?”
    “Yeah, we’ve thought of that. We’re going to the midnight movie so we can have a late dinner first.”
    “Does it have to be tonight, Julia? We planned this for almost two months,” Ellie lamented.
    She was right, but my heart sank. I wasn’t being a great friend, and I hadn’t heard from Ryan, in any case. He did tell me he had a study group for his chem lab, so maybe it was running late. My phone was sitting on the bed next to me, and I looked at the screen. Blank. He hadn’t texted or called.
    “Maybe Ryan and I can go out tomorrow night,” I admitted. I wanted to tell Ellie I needed to text Ryan before I committed, but that would sound silly. I was already committed to going with her, and I should have told Ryan so this