.Brendon. Good good now we're making some progress .Ryan. 30 (NOT SLASH!!)

These past 2 weeks have been really odd. Tonight was my first day of freedom (Well, at least to go out of the house with Faith) once the bell rings signaling after school. However, Faith had to still catch the train to Vegas, so it wasn't completely true.

It was now halfway through P.E, so there was still a while to go yet.

A lot of things had changed since when I first moved here, last school year. For one, I caught earlier buses. I used to get to school JUST on time, so any small delays and I would be late. I catch buses 15 minutes earlier, which gives me plenty of time to go to my locker, and get my books without a huge rush.

The second, was I packed my own lunch. It was a lot healthier, and a lot cheaper too.

The third was a sort of lame tradition. On Thursdays, I'd grab a cup of coffee to go. At my second bus stop, a few metres away from my school there was a cafe. Students from my school always bought coffee from there, and I decided to on Thursdays, because that's when you really need the kick.

As I heard the coach blow his whistle, starting the hockey match I was missing out on, I saw Ryan's car park in the lower car park of the school oval. Making sure the coach wasn't watching, or the 2 other girls not participating weren't going to dob me in, I made my way over.

As I got closer, I checked out the number plate to definitely check if it were Ryan (it was) I gave a small wave and jumped into his passenger side.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, after exchanging hi's and a short romantic kiss.

"Well, I have nothing better to do so I decided I'd come pick you up, due to the short amount of time we have together." He smiled.

"Oh okay. I got out of gym." I said, changing the topic randomly.

"How did you manage that?" He asked.

"We do really physical sports in this class, so it's filled with meatheads. Anyway I really couldn't be bothered doing gym today, so I sat on the sidelines and he comes up to me and asked what I was doing, and I was all 'I'm a spectator sir! The spectators are just as important as the players. If not more. The players get sponsors, because sponsors like to advertise due to the spectators attention. We fund them, without the spectators sport wouldn't be as alive' and then he broke into applause and said I could have the lesson off, but it would only work once." I said.

"That's great." Ryan said, grinning sheepishly.

"Anyway, my freedom starts in about 20 minutes," I grinned "Want to do something tonight?"
"Sure, but didn't your Mom say after 2 weeks you could do things with Faith, after a month it can be anyone, but you're never allowed to see me again?" Ryan asked, cocking up an eyebrow.

"Well yeah, but Faith texted me this morning and asked if we could do something tonight, but her boyfriend might be coming. Therefore it's a win-win. I'm not the third wheel, and we get to hang out." I explained.

"That would be great," He said, and side hugged me "What were you thinking about doing?"
"Roller skating." I grinned.

"Wow, that's different...sounds good though." He smiled.

"Well I better get back, so um, do you want to swing by mine at about 7 or so? Mom goes out on Friday nights so she won't know." I said regretfully.

I enjoyed the little time we spent together, and it felt bad that we had to part. Oh god, someone call up Shakespeare's living relatives, I'm pretty much plagiarising.

"Sounds good, so uh, Seeya later?" Ryan asked, and leaned in.

"This is so lame." I laughed, but leaned in as we had a dragged out kiss.

I opened the door to get out, but I remembered something in my pocket.

"Oh, just in case I forget later. In my art class for our major project we have to research totem poles, then make one out of clay. I couldn't think of any ideas so instead I made you something. It was made really quickly, and hasn't been fired or painted, but I hope you like it." I said, digging out the clay shaped heart out of my pocket and placing it in his hand.

I gave him a peck on the cheek, and dashed back up to the part of the oval where the hockey game was taking place, not wanting to look suspicious to the coach.

***

I heard a knock on the window. Our doorbell was busted, and had been for quite some time. The only visitors we ever really got were Brendon, and his mom coming for something. We felt we didn't really need to fix it.

I ran to the door and answered it, and saw Ryan standing there.

"Hey, come in." I said nervously.

"Ok." Ryan said, and awkwardly stepped in.

"I rang my Mom up at work, she said it was fine if I went out with 'Faith' but I had to finish a few chores first. I was MySpacing and lost track of time. I'm sorry." I apologised to Ryan.

"That's cool, that's cool. What do you have to do?" He asked.

"Feed the dog, put it outside then stack the dishwasher and turn it on. Simple enough." I smiled and began walking to the kitchen, Ryan following.

"Uh, Modesty?" He said, stopping in his tracks.

"What?" I asked, and turned around and saw Ryan sniggering, pointing at something.

"Oh great." I whined, when I saw 'doggy doo' in the corner of the lounge room.

I quickly opened up all the windows, making the house cold. I'd have to put up with it, because I couldn't leave them open once we left. I also got Chas (the dog) outside and fed it.

15 minutes later, after a lot of 'ewing' toilet paper, disinfectant, air freshener and furiously washing my hands, Ryan and I were finally stacking the dishwasher.

"Even after spending 3 minutes washing my hands, and barely even touching...that, this feels so wrong." I giggled, as I put in all the cutlery.

Ryan just smirked in response, as we finished up. I closed the door with my hips, put on the power button, and started up the dishwasher.

"Done! Now we can finally leave. Let's just hope it doesn't overflow or anything." I said, on the way out after I had locked all the windows and the doors.

***

10 minutes later, we met up with Faith and her new boyfriend.

"Sorry we're late," I apologised "SOMEONE had a bit of an accident."
Faith and her new boyfriend's eyes diverted to Ryan, and her new boyfriend sniggered.

"What?! No!" Ryan said, going red faced "Her dog took a dump in the house."

I coughed awkwardly, to break the air.

"Oh! Yeah. By the way, Matt this is Modesty my sister, and Ryan her boyfriend. Mod, Ryan, this is Matt my new boyfriend." Faith said, introducing us and we all exchanged greetings.

"Shall we go in?" Matt asked, and we all made our way inside.

We did the boring thing of paying, getting rollerblade hire, and then a few quick minutes of skating around to relearn before we got onto the rink, all of us were pretty rusty.

But in no time at all we were on the rink. Faith and Matt split up from Ryan and I. Faith was nervously latching onto the edge and Matt was trying to coach her away and skate properly.

Ryan and I were taking it slowly, and staying very close to the edge but we were skating properly.

After a few trips around of Ryan slightly in the lead of me, he stopped and grabbed my hand.

"Couple skate?" He asked, and I grinned and shyly nodded.

So we went around the rink about 5 times couple skating. A lot of people looked on and 'awwed' and Faith and Matt finally started to skate properly.

Ryan let go of my hand once we reached the part where the cafeteria was, and left the rink.

"Want anything?" He asked me.

I shook my head.

"Sure?" He asked, and I said I was.

While I was waiting for him to collect his greasy substitute for food, I saw a girl near him giggling. Her friend was ushering her to go speak to him, but she would giggle whenever she'd go up to him.

Now, I might be saying this because she looked about 16, which made me feel secure but I had no problem with girls speaking to Ryan. I'll admit he is good looking, which obviously makes girls want to talk/flirt with him. I had long accepted this would happen. However, I have a "If you can get him, you can have him" thing going on. I would never feel jealous if a girl flirts with him, or feel jeopardized and go up and show my ground. If Ryan feels faithful to me, he would brush her off. If not, he isn't worth it.

Her friend finally dragged her up to Ryan, who tapped his shoulder and he turned around. They exchanged a brief conversation, and hugged which gave me the impression they know each other.

It looked as if Ryan was trying to brush her off, and did so when he got his food. The 2 girls skated off and he made his way to me.

"Here, I got you some water and a cookie." He smiled, and placed them in front of me.

"Oh, thanks." I said, and waited to see if he'd mention the girls. He didn't.

"I feel kind of bad eating the cookie," I said, quickly gulping down my mouthful "I didn't even do PE today."

"But roller skating is pretty energetic, you're making up for that." Ryan explained to me, shoving a mouthful of fries into his mouth.

"Attractive." I said while wrinkling my nose in disgust.

He grinned, and leaned in to kiss me (Thankfully after finishing the mouthful) but we were interrupted by the girl before, who must have developed a sudden burst of confidence.

"Hi again." She said innocently, and sat next to Ryan.
She even had the cheek to put her arm around Ryan, albeit in a 'friendly' way.

I really disliked her already. She was obviously one of those girls that wasn't going to back down even if she found out the guy she was flirting with had a girlfriend. This made me confused, because she definitely did know Ryan from somewhere. How could she not know?
I decided not to be rude though, after all, I could be reading things wrong.

"Hi." Ryan said bluntly.

"Who's your little friend?" The 16 year old asked, averting her gaze to me.

"Oh, this is Modesty. Modesty, this is Rachel." Ryan said, apathetically introducing us.

"Yeah, I'm his call girl." She winked, and put her arm closer to him.

I couldn't help myself.

"Oh, cool. I'll definitely use that against him if I ever want to dump him. I'm his girlfriend."

"You know, Ryan never told me he had a girlfriend." She said, breaking a semi-glare with me to look at Ryan.

I didn't know how to reply. This was stupid, and immature. I didn't want to fight with a 16 year old girl over Ryan. I had the guy, why would I be so pathetic to start a fight with her? Luckily, Ryan noticed this was getting out of hand.

"Rachel, look. I really like this girl, so can you please not be nasty to her?" He said.

"I'm not. I just want to know why you fucking heavily flirt with me, yet you have a girlfriend." She spat at him.

Ryan looked at me nervously, but I averted my eyes to the floor.

"I'm sorry if you read signs like that, but whatever I said I didn't mean to flirt with you." He said sternly.

"You know what? FUCK YOU RYAN." She screamed at him, catching the attention of people nearby and her and her friend skated off angrily.

"Um, I'll just g-go to the bathroom shall I?" I stuttered nervously, and skated in before he could say anything. Faith followed me in.

"What was that?" Faith asked, as I pushed my hands into the wall, my hands supporting my body weight.

"I don't know, I really don't know." I sighed, not facing her.

"All I saw was some chick screaming." Faith said, and I turned to face her (Which was quite hard, due to wearing the rollerblades)

"This 16 year old girl knew him from somewhere, and then went up to flirt with him, and Ryan rejected her. She then blew up saying he always flirts with her and stuff." I explained.

"Well that's good isn't it? This girl is obviously into Ryan, and he chose you over her. Then again, you were there. For all you know, he could have flirted with her." Faith said.

"That's exactly what I thought." I told her.

"Modesty, you do know guys will sometimes flirt, even if they do have a girlfriend? If they go further than that it's obviously dumping time, but it's not uncommon for them to still flirt." Faith explained to me.

"I know, I know. I have no problem that girls will flirt with Ryan, really. This is just so new to me. Sure, Brendon was the outgoing type. But he was Brendon, that geeky guy with un neat hair. Ryan is the shy attractive type. Girls will go up and ask if he's single. This is only my second relationship, so I'm still learning." I said.

"Okay, you're being a great girlfriend to him for understanding all of this. A lot of girls wouldn't put up with that sort of stuff. Especially a newbie to relationships, or dating a sort of wanted guy. I know in my second relationship I wouldn't have." Faith said, patting my back.

"Let's go back out." I said, and she nodded and we left.

As we skated back out, Ryan was in the same position I was in the bathroom. His hands on the wall, a frustrated look on his face.

"Actually Modesty, maybe you won't have to put up with him flirting with other girls, if he's still that annoyed over the whole ordeal." Faith said.

Matt then came up and took her onto the rink, leaving me to skate over to Ryan.

"Hey." I replied, nervously playing with my fingers.

"Oh, hey." He said, turning around and sitting down on the seat.

I followed suit.

"I'm really sorry about her. She's one of my friends on MySpace who added me randomly one day. We used to talk a few times a week through comments, but the conversation never last long. I never even gave her my aim. The only time she could have said I was flirting was once when I picture commented her. I said something like 'you look real nice here' and I didn't even mean anything of it. I only picture commented her so she'd picture comment me back." He said, and I grinned.

"No one can accuse you of flirting with them. You flirt with MySpace too much." I giggled, and he smiled.

"Thanks for understanding." He smiled.

"No problem, want to go to your car and make out?" I asked, and he looked shocked.

Not as shocked as me. This was so unlike me. Was I trying to grab his attention because of the 'flirtscare' before? Was I starting to grow up?

He then got a cheeky look on his face and agreed, and I sent a quick text to Faith as we made our way to his car.