章 2: Blurred Lines
Three long years had gone by, after the first one, Vanessa eventually stopped trying to reach him and accepted him as dead. Rylie's aunt passed away from breast cancer, and all they had in their little world was each other. Vanessa pushed people away, while Rylie coped by sleeping with every frat boy that looked twice at her. While Rylie was...to put it delicately, an open house, Vanessa put up walls.
One night while Rylie was out partying, Vanessa's phone rang. It was a blocked number, and usually Vanessa ignored those. It was most likely about an extended car warranty. But something inside the pit of her stomach urged her to answer the call. Her heart pounded as she debated with herself, but at the last ring, she answered.
"Hello?" she asked in a cold tone.
"Hey Little V..."
Her heart nearly levitated into her throat. She dropped her phone on the hard wood floor and stood by the counter, white as a ghost. Rylie walked into the dorm, her hair saying it all.
"V? You okay?"
Byron's voice projected from the little speaker, "Vanessa? Vanessa, are you there?"
Rylie looked down at her phone and though she never met Byron, she knew enough about him and what he had just put Vanessa through the past three years and picked up the phone. "Who is this?" she sneered. Rylie was a redhead and her baby blue eyes projected nothing short of innocence. Her temper was just as sensitive as her freckled skin in the sun.
"Vanessa?"
"This is Rylie, her best friend and sole protector of my little introvert. If this is who I think it is, she is currently in shock, hence why she wouldn't be answering at the moment."
Byron stood there, deserving every chastising word that came from the other end of the line. He was ready for something like this. On their parent's death anniversary, he called his little sister and let her know she'd never see her only family ever again. After all this time, he should be ripped apart. It also pleased him to know that Rylie deemed herself sole protector of Vanessa. God knows she needed someone she could lean on, and it eased his conscience that Rylie became that person.
"Hello Rylie, may I please speak to my sister?"
Rylie looked at Vanessa who heard what Byron was saying. She quietly nodded and Rylie passed the phone to her.
"I'm here." Vanessa could barely get the words out.
"How you been?"
"How am I supposed to believe it's really you?"
The line disconnected, but then a facetime call was coming in from the private number. With a shaky hand, Vanessa accepted the call. There he was. After all this time, after all the nights she cried herself to sleep, there was Byron, staring at her through the other line. He looked every bit of a mess as she did. Tears began pouring out her eyes, and her and Byron sat there on facetime, silently gazing at each other, both crying silently.
"I can finally see you Little V. I want you to come to New York."
Vanessa took a moment to process his invitation, "What about you coming here?"
Byron shook his head, "I can't...But you can come here and I'm asking you to please consider spending your summer break here."
The conversation was more difficult to get through than the one they had with the police, telling them their parents had gotten into a fatal accident. Byron was there to hold her while she cried and processed. That Byron wasn't there for her for this conversation. The Byron that told her he was never coming back and dropped off the face of the earth was all she had in that moment and despite Rylie's fierce support, she'd never felt more alone.
"Check your email. I've sent you and Rylie tickets."
Vanessa pulled up her email and sure enough, an email showed up containing itinerary. This was all so sudden. But what could she do or say? Byron had mysteriously showed back up just as he mysteriously left.
"You'll really be there?"
Byron looked her in the eye from the other line, "I swear on our parent's graves I will be there to come get you. We can catch up and start over if you want."
She wanted to say no, but the girl who cried herself to sleep every night for an entire year demanded she accept and go. And the next day, they were packing up.
"You okay?" Rylie asked as she pulled some blouses from her closet.
"I don't know. I've spent so much time grieving over the years. Byron's disappearance was worse than my parent's death. And now he comes out of nowhere and wants me to come see him." Vanessa sighed as she rolled up a pair of magenta athletic pants.
"You don't have to go through with this you know."
"Yes I do, that girl who lost him, I owe this to her."
Rylie sat down next to Vanessa and rubbed her arm soothingly. "You speak of that girl as if she's dead."
"She is dead. I buried her behind too many walls. At some point I stopped crying. If it wasn't for you, I think I would be dead too."
"I'll always be here for you. Hell, if it wasn't for you when my Aunt Jenny lost her battle to breast cancer, I probably would've ran away with some Sugar Daddy and drank myself to death."
Both the girls laughed. "You know his name would've been Ricardo and he owns some mansion in Southern California." Vanessa mused.
"I'll have sixteen kids due to multiple pregnancies." Rylie groaned at the mere thought.
"Your cute little freckles will be compensating for all those stretch marks."
They joked and laughed as they finished packing their bags. The flight was leaving late that night and for a short flight, Vanessa wasn't sure why it had to be so late at night, but this was Byron and he reached out. Above everything, it was shocking to hear from him. What he did was cold and cruel, but when she remembered the sweet boy who dropped out of college to take care of her after their parents died so she wouldn't go into the foster system, worked two jobs every day to give her what she needed, that's the one that reached out. The one she told herself she was going to see.
Vanessa and Rylie stepped off the plane around midnight. Rylie slept the entire hour on the flight, but Vanessa was extremely restless and anxious. Something about seeing Byron again felt odd, and it wasn't because of the three year span of not seeing or hearing from him. They went to baggage claim where Byron stood in a black leather jacket, an electric blue tee shirt, and jeans. He was the Byron she remembered. The tee shirt and black leather jacket hottie that all the girls in Alexandria would've died for. Her brother hadn't changed a bit. And she was too focused on why this felt off. She couldn't even hear Rylie expressing that her lady parts were fluttering at the sight of him.
It wasn't until Byron wrapped his arms around her that it hit her. Byron had changed. What once was warm and comforting now felt cold and deadly.
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