Thank you to @corvums for the cover!

In my life I had had better ideas than the one that landed me in my best friend's brother's car at midnight on an unfortunate Saturday night. That isn't to say that I hadn't been compelled to act by my fair share of badly planned and executed idea but this one takes the cake. How I ended up in this college town with said best friend, now drunk and passed out is a story for another day. The plan of action for the moment is to figure out how to prevent her brother from abandoning us in the woods only to eaten alive by a grizzly.

Are bears native to this area? Don't ask me, Nat's the one who watches National Geographic religiously.

But sadly she's started lightly snoring by my side and her elder brother, who I might add I have known since pre-school looks at me like I'm the devil corrupting his innocent little Natalie.

Okay so he's probably right, in this case only but I have a genuine reason as to why we found ourselves at a frat party we were definitely not supposed to be at, in a town our parents definitely didn't know we'd be visiting this weekend.

Ryder's piercing blue eyes glare at me through the rear view mirror, "Can you make sure she keeps breathing until I get you guys home?"

I mutter something about him being overdramatic under my breath which he undoubtedly catches.

"Madison you don't even want to know how mad I am at you two for showing up here alone. Do you even realise what could've happened if I hadn't...forget it. I'll talk to Sam when I drop you off. Now do me a favour and keep an eye on her. She's not a heavy drinker."

Unlike you, is what he omits.

What a condescending jerk! He acted as though I'd been drinking straight up vodka from the bottle since infancy. I'd have him know that I was very much a lightweight who couldn't even handle her beer. I'd told Nat to lay off the booze, repeatedly. But she'd seen a guy who'd graduated from our high school last year, someone she'd dated and had her heart broken by so of course she'd taken to the 'punch' like LA native to flavoured water.

I tried to stop her, I really did.

Little did we know we'd run into Ryder Shaw, her older brother who very much wasn't supposed to be on campus this weekend.

Busted.

I know better than to argue with him, especially when he's this angry. For reference, I've known the Shaws my entire life. Ever since I met Natalie on the first day of pre-school and we hit it off, our moms knew it'd be a great idea to stick us together for any and all activities. It'd reduce the time they would each have to parent and the two of us wouldn't be deprived of each other's company. We each had siblings that were slightly older and not interested in spending any length of time with us. My sister, Sam was only a year older than Ryder and had just moved back home to attend grad school. Ryder was four years older than us and a senior at one of the most prestigious colleges in the country, about to graduate in the summer. He'd been a constant in my life for as long as I'd known him, filling the annoying elder brother void that it lacked. For the most part he treated Natalie and I like one would treat a piece of gum stuck under your shoe. You know its there and you tolerate it because removing it would just be annoying. But he's definitely not indifferent right now, nope Ryder is radiating with more anger than I've ever seen before and I shrink into the back seat of his car next to an oblivious Nat.

"Please don't tell Mom." I whisper, half an hour into the journey. He's not said a single word to me.

He laughs, not an ounce of humour in his voice.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't rat you out the second we get home. You two, who are both underage might snuck into a frat party, got drunk, had some asshole jocks try and take advantage of you and you want me to help you?"

So when he puts it that way...

"I...we didn't mean to Ryder, I swear. I didn't know that they had a party tonight. Ethan told me to me him there and when we got to the house things just got out of hand."

He scoffed, the car speeding up to match the aggression rolling off of him. I would be scared if I didn't trust him with my life.

"So what? He texts you after a month and you follow him here like a lovesick puppy? And then what? Did you find him or did he forget you were coming like last time?"

My cheeks flame as heat crawls up my neck. I don't often like to admit that I'm wrong, especially in front of Ryder but even I can't hide my embarrassment. I'm such an idiot, I should've known that Ethan would do what he did best when he called me here tonight, bail on me at the last moment. But I had a point to prove to everyone, I wanted to let them know that my older, cooler college going boyfriend hadn't forgotten about me. Ethan was a freshman at the same school as Ryder and he'd promised me before leaving that he'd wait for me to join him there the next year. I hadn't asked that of him. In fact, I had no unrealistic expectations of high school relationships and I never thought that Ethan felt anything for me other than a welcome distraction. But he'd pleasantly surprised me by not being a scumbag and seemingly thinking of me while being surrounded by college girls.

I should have know he just wanted to keep his options open.

Now I'm stuck with Mr. Judgemental and his deafening silence, knowing fully well he's going to hold this over my head for the foreseeable future. That's the problem with having a best friend with an overprotective older brother, by default he feels the need to be as responsible for you as he is for his sister. I never asked that of him, I never asked him to look out for me that way that he does but somehow, by some stroke of bad luck Ryder Shaw always finds me whenever I'm about to get myself into trouble.

"I'm going to drop you off at Sam's. Let Nat sleep if off, make sure she's hydrated and takes some painkillers when she wakes up. Don't let her go home with a hangover, you know what George's going to do to her."

Right, of course. Here comes the guilt trip. How could I have been so irresponsible? How I have let Natalie lie for me and sneak out when I know what kind of a controlling jerk her stepfather is. In hindsight, I know has every right to be angry at me for potentially getting his sister in trouble. But that doesn't mean that I like it or have to acknowledge it.

"I made sure to cover all my bases. They won't even know she left town." I mutter but he hears me, shaking his head.
"One of these days your little half baked ideas are going to go all wrong and you're going to get yourself in big trouble." His eyes met mine in the rear view mirror and I felt a zap of something go through me at the intensity in them, probably mild annoyance.

"Okay grandpa, you'll be there to bail me out won't you."

"I might not always be."

The roads were quiet, barely any traffic as we manoeuvred the narrow lanes leading up to our tiny countryside town. It was a chilly October night, most of the tourists had gone home last month leaving the roads deserted and fall would quickly transition into the deadening quiet of winter with very little footfall. In the silence, Ryder's words echoed loudly around us, disrupted only by Nat's snores.

"And where might you go?"

For a second, I'm hit with something akin to panic at the thought of Ryder not being here after the summer. He's never mentioned anything about moving away. No, he's always been the one constant in my life and even though its stupid to imagine why he'd want to stay trapped forever in our shitty hometown population 7000, he's never said anything about not coming back at all.

But that's just the alcohol making me feel sentimental, really. Like I said, I'm a lightweight. That one beer I had is making me feel all sorts of things that I shouldn't. Why would I feel an ounce of sadness over the idea of Ryder Shaw moving away? I should rejoice, throw a party, hire strippers. When Nat and I won't have the threat of him looming over our heads ever waking minute, we could finally go to one of the Sanderson twins' bonfires!

"Don't throw the farewell party just yet Brooks, you're not getting rid of me that easily." I can feel him smirking.

"I should be so lucky."

"You know if you and Nat weren't attached at the hip, I would've left you there, just to see if that pre-pubescent asshole that's leading you on actually showed up."

"Hey!" I kick his seat, "No one's leading me on. Ethan and I are casual, we both know that."

I duck my head so that he doesn't see how splotchy my neck and cheeks are getting. It's the downside of having pale skin and being too lazy to tan. I tug at the neck of my sweater hoping it covers it but realise that unless Ryder can see in the dark, I'm out of the woods. It's a force of habit, I hate when he sees me being vulnerable.

"You're so casual that you just happened to hitch a ride to a school two hours over, sneak into a frat house, get nearly assaulted by football players nearly twice your size and potentially give your best friend alcohol poisoning?"

"What do you want to me say Ry? I'm an idiot, I shouldn't have gone there in the first place and I'm going to tear Ethan a new one first thing in the morning. There, you happy?"

Of course he is. He's made it more than obvious in the year or so that I've been 'seeing' Ethan that he loathes him. His disdain for my soon to be ex-boyfriend is so obvious that the poor guy has taken to being extra nice to Nat, just to win Ryder over. The one time he came to pick me up for a date from Nat's house and Ryder just happened to be home that weekend, I could've sworn the two guys almost had a brawl at the doorstep and it wasn't our high school wrestling team's reigning champion that came out looking better.

So...of course Ryder's gloating and I'll let him have this one. The night's been one big disaster and I can't wait for it to end one way or the other.

The rest of the car ride from hell passes in blissful silence, with Natalie passed out on my shoulder. I shoot my sister a text warning her of the incoming tornado headed her way in the shape of my best friend's brother and promise to do her laundry for a month if she doesn't tell our parents.

We park in front of her quaint two bedroom bungalow on the outskirts of town, as far away from my parents as Sam could get while technically still living within the limits of Ashville, New York.

Ryder turns back for the first time, looking over his shoulder at me and I hate that I notice the very inconvenient fact that he's gorgeous.

"I'm only trying to look out for you Maddie." He sounds bone tired and weary, his broad shoulders slumped in defeat, his thick brown hair in disarray from shoving his hands in it one too many times. It happened when he was yelling at me at the frat house and I was mouthing off, being stubborn at usual.

"You don't have to. I can take care of myself, I would've gotten us a ride home. Nobody asked you to come play saviour. It's not my fault you don't have a life."

He grits his teeth and even in the dark, I know that his piercing blue eyes are glowering at me, turning nearly black with just how angry he is.

"Next time you feel like becoming jailbait for a bunch of horny jocks, leave my baby sister out of it. This is the last time I'll be bothering with you Madison."

Ouch, I may have truly gone a bit too far this time. 

***

Hellooo my friends, it's me back from the dead *waves frantically* 

I like to call this piece my little self-isolation special. These times are unprecedented and difficult. I know we're all struggling in some way or the other and I wanted to play a small part in entertaining you guys while we go through this together. I'm thinking of you all and I hope that we're able to overcome however big this current situation seems together.