Walking home from my father's funeral, the last thing I expected was to find Ryan following me. I would think he was at the burial site with the rest of my friends and classmates that came. But here he was. Waving at me.

I stopped and he pulled up next to me. He put the passenger window down. "Hey," he said. Despite everything, my heart did a little flip. "Evelyn, right?" I nodded. "Want a ride? Walking barefoot isn't a good idea, you know."

Honestly, I didn't want to go home. I wanted to stay away from there for as long as possible. Did I want to ride around town with Ryan? Absolutely. "Sure." He reached across the cab and opened the door for me. "Thanks," I said as I climbed in.

He gave me a grin as I got situated. "Don't mention it. Now, where's home?" Blushing, I gave him my address. It wasn't as upscale a neighborhood as he lived in, which probably surprised him. He didn't let it show on his face if he was. He just started driving. After a couple of blocks he stole a glace at me. "Why were you out here, walking around barefoot all by yourself? You weren't going all the way home like that, were you?" he asked, turning right.

"I don't want to go home just yet." He glanced at me, surprised. But I knew he wasn't more surprised at my words than I was. It wasn't something I'd told my friends, and I didn't have any intentions to do so. I took a deep breath to try to calm the panic that tried to take over. After all, it was pretty natural to feel this way, right?

"Why not?"

"I don't want the silence." Again, why was my mouth ahead of my brain? I didn't want him to pity me. That was the last thing I needed or wanted.

He looked over at me as we came to a stop. I was scared to look at his face. I didn't want to see the look I knew had to be there. Instead, I stared at the red light in front of us. "I get that," he said. Those words shook me. I never expected him to say that. I looked at him and saw he was looking back at the road. He didn't have a trace of pity. Instead, it looked like understanding. 

"You do?"

He nodded as we began moving. "I do. Silence is always the worst part. You're used to hearing their sounds. Like them walking around, or doing something. Then, suddenly, it's not there. You can be having a good day, realize how silent it is, and then you get sad all over again." He glanced at me and saw the questioning look. "I lost my mom a few years ago," he said quietly.

"I'm sorry," I said. I hated myself for saying that, but I couldn't think of anything else. I hated people saying that to me. It was like, you didn't hit him, did you? Stop apologizing. It had been longer for him, so he had to really hate hearing that. "What happened? If you don't mind me asking, though."

He gave me a wry smile. "I don't mind. She died in a car wreck. It was snowing and she hit a patch of black ice. Her car ended up in some trees and she died in the hospital from her injuries." He ran a hand through his hair. "I can say that it gets better. You're gonna hear this a lot, but it actually does. That first month, I thought I was doing okay but every day I'd come home from school expecting her to be waiting for me, but she wasn't. I would be confused for a moment and then it would hit me all over again. At first it felt like a punch in the chest and I'd go down to my knees and feel like I couldn't breathe. The silence until Dad came home was the worst." He smiled slightly to himself. "At least my grades went up. I would get lost in studying so couldn't think about what I wasn't hearing."

I nodded. "I can see it being that way for me, too. But it's not going to be not seeing him when I get home. It's more-" I cut myself off. That wasn't something I was ready to tell anyone. Not my friends, not my classmates. That was a part of my life that had always felt private. "I need to get home, though. I just remembered I had promised my followers a live show today."

"Followers? You mean, like, Twitter followers?"

I shook my head. "YouTube. I make videos and post them to YouTube. I'm a content creator. I've been doing it for a year. I didn't upload this week for obvious reasons, so I told them I'd do a live show instead."

"Are you going to use YouNow or YouTube?"

"YouTube. They always say they prefer it." I rubbed my hands together, feeling anxious. What would I even say to them? This wasn't something I had told them. I just said in my post that I had something happen suddenly and I couldn't finish the video I was working on. "Would you like to watch?"

"I'd love to," he said with a smile.

---

"Hey guys," I said, staring at my phone's camera. Ryan was sitting on my desk chair in my room while I sat on my bed, feeling self-conscious. I knew I had to look weird talking to my phone like this.

Comments began streaming in and I said hi to a few people and reacted to a few of them before ignoring them. It was time to go ahead and start talking about my week, I supposed.

"There's a lot of questions about why I'm doing a live stream. I know, I know. You guys wanted a video. But isn't this better? You get to see me live and uncut!" I gave them a sad smile and saw a few people mention it. "But I do have a reason. Most of you don't know, but I had a loss in my family. My dad was in a car wreck earlier this week and he . . . passed away. His funeral was today and I just got home a little while ago."

People began saying all the same thing. It blurred into one long "I'm sorry" and I couldn't take it. I relaxed on my bed, frowning. "Why is everyone apologizing to me? I doubt any of you were the person that hit him. That guy's in custody. So stop saying you're sorry for something you didn't do. Just say you're sad to hear it, or something like that." I gave them a sad smile and forgot about Ryan being in the room. "But thank you, guys. I know what you mean. It's been about four days and it's just starting to hit me. Is that weird? Am I weird?" I was watching the comments. A lot of people were saying no and one person... "One of you said I am weird because I'm having a live stream. Fair enough."

I kept the video going for a little while longer. After about half an hour, people  began asking me about my dad. I could feel the tears forming and I knew I couldn't take it much longer. "I need to head off now, guys. I still have a lot to do today. Thank you all for watching and I promise there will be a video next week." I told them bye, ignoring the comments now. That wasn't the best place to look for very long.

Ryan was watching me when I finally put down my phone. "You handled that pretty well," he said. "It couldn't have been easy to talk about."

I shrugged with a sad smile. "It wasn't, but I felt they deserved to know why I'm not posting. But, when you can't see the other person, it's easier to talk about hard things. When I make a video, it feels almost like I'm writing in a journal. Except this journal is going to be read by an average of 80,000 people so I need to watch what I say."

His eyebrows rose. "That many?" I nodded, feeling proud at his surprise. "How many subscribers do you have?"

"About 100,000." He nodded, impressed. "Have you seen any of my videos?" He shook his head. "Would you like to?"

"Sure!"

I crossed over to him and moved the mouse on my still humming computer. I scrolled through, pulled up a video I thought he'd like, and played it.

As he watched, he seemed to be really into it. I couldn't help studying his face while he wasn't paying me any mind. The way he was laughing and smiling drew me in. I got so lost in watching him that I didn't realize the video had ended. After all, I never got to do this at school. He sat so far away and he had a girlfriend. I was never able to see just how beautiful he was up close.

"What?" he asked quietly. It startled me and I straightened up.

My face felt like it was on fire. I'd been caught. "What?" I asked reflexively. I mentally kicked myself. That comeback was so lame.

He gave a breathy laugh as he stood, a knowing look on his face. We were much closer than I thought he would be and I could feel his breath on my nose and mouth. He tucked my hair behind my ear and leaned closer. My heart felt like it was about to pound its way out of my chest and my eyes wanted to close, but I forced them to stay open.

His finger trailed a light line down my jaw that felt like it was sparking. When he reached my chin he tipped my face up to his. My lips parted and he leaned close enough I could feel his body heat on my mouth. The look in his eyes was enough to make me feel breathless. His eyes closed and he began to close the distance.