Only With You (29 page)

“I don’t like this,” he said, and for a second I was afraid he was talking about what dating me was putting him through. “I don’t like them following you and taking your picture. It’s creepy as hell.”

“Ry, they’re just pictures. It’s okay, really.”

“No, it’s not, but I know there’s nothing you can do to stop them. Just promise me you’ll always take Bert or Pablo with you when you go anywhere from now on.”

“Ryder,” I said, trying to reason with him. “It’s fine. I’ve been dealing with this for four years. I’m used to it.”

“No,” he said, eyes flashing. “I had no idea it was like this all the time, that they stake you out and follow you. It’s dangerous, and I don’t like the fact that I won’t be here. I’m gonna go nuts from halfway across the country, Syd.”

He had no idea how bad it could get. He’d just gotten a small taste, but I wasn’t going to tell him some of the things other celebrities I knew had dealt with. It would only succeed in freaking him out.
And he didn’t want to know about how unpredictable the fans could be.

I went over and sat next to him, taking his hands in mine. “I love you for being so concerned, and I promise I’ll bring security with me. Usually it’s not this crazy. They like to get pictures of me to sell to the fashion magazines, and when there’s something going on – usually a relationship something – they’re more intense. It’s nothing for you to worry about.”

“I just didn’t realize,” he said, shaking his head. “God, Syd. I don’t want to go.”

He looked over at me, and I saw real pain in his eyes. “I don’t want you to go either,” I told him honestly, because the thought of saying goodbye in thirty-six
hours made me sick to my stomach. “But you have to go. You have classes starting on Monday.”

“Fuck,” he said, pulling his hands back and running them through his hair. “I have always put school first, always, but for the first time in my life, I feel like I have something that’s more important.”

I smiled. “So you want to be my bodyguard?”

He looked up and met my gaze. “Tempting thought, but no. I was more so just thinking about
how much I’m going to miss you. This is going to suck.”

“I know, but it’ll just suck for a little while. Then you’ll get into a rhythm of classes and studying and hanging out with your friends. It’ll be just like before.”

I was lying through my teeth, but I felt like I needed to for his sake.

“No, it actually won’t be the same. Before when we were friends, but I wanted to be more, sometimes it was easier to be away from you because it made me forget how much I wanted to be with you. It made it more manageable, but now knowing what we have, this is going to be harder than anything I’ve ever done.”

I had a hard time disagreeing with him.

“We’ll get through it. If we love each other, what’s two years of long distance?”

“Two years,” he echoed. “It seems like forever.”

I did sound like forever.

“You forget that when I’m done touring, I’ll have all the time in the world to spend with you.”

He nodded. “Yeah, that’s true.”

“Maybe I’ll even move to Florida. I can buy a house near the university, and it can be our little love nest when I’m not traveling.”

I’d said it on a whim, but suddenly that didn’t seem like th
e worst idea.

“I’d never ask you to do that,” he said softly, cupping my cheek. “But I love you for offering.”

“Kind of like you offered to transfer to UCLA?”

He smiled. “Yeah, I guess.”

“We’ll figure it out. I promise,” I told him, while I fully intended to look into real estate near Gainesville. It might not solve all of our problems, but it would solve some of them.

Chapter Twenty- Two

Ryder

“You’re back! Hell yeah!” Jake exclaimed when I walked into our room on Sunday night.

He was leaning back against the couch battling Trey in the new
Tomb Raider.
Sitting next to Trey’s leg was an open pizza box with two slices left.

Mine.

“Ryder, what’s up man?” Trey asked, briefly glancing at me before focusing his attention back on the video game.

I dropped my duffel bag on the floor and hopped up on
to the platform. I was exhausted from a whirlwind week and an almost full day of traveling, so I collapsed behind them on the sofa and helped myself to their leftovers.

“Not much,” I said around a mouthful of food, not really wanting to get into how much was up. I was still trying to wrap my head around it all.

“Dude, you’re famous!” Jake exclaimed.

I rolled my eyes and stuffed another huge bite in my mouth.
There it was. The rumors of what was going on with Sydney and me and how I was trying to cause a rift between her and Dillon were all over the Internet, especially on her fan sites and Twitter. The pictures the asshole photographer had taken of us in the elevator, along with a few cell phone shots we figured people at the restaurant had taken, had been making headlines for two days.

I realized
my reaction to the photographer had probably made things worse. And Syd and I – okay, mostly me – had gotten a lecture the next day from Laurie about how to act in public if we didn’t want anyone to know we were dating, since one of the cell phone pictures from the restaurant had featured me holding Syd’s hand across the table. I hadn’t even remembered doing that, but I’d probably been lost in the moment and not thinking.

Elisa and I
had talked while Syd was at her meet-and-greet before her concert in Cleveland the night before, and she’d broken down the list of things Laurie had gone over with me into simple do’s and don’ts. I knew Syd and I would just have to be more careful in the future.

Laurie’s
team was also doing damage control to the effect that on her next day off, Sydney was flying to Washington D.C. to publically see Dillon for a few hours, and then she was flying to Chicago for her concert the next night. I knew doing that extra traveling was adding stress to her life, and I hated that.

I
f she was flying anywhere, I wished she was flying to see me, but I wasn’t that lucky. I missed her already, and I’d only just seen her eight hours earlier when she’d kissed me goodbye before I got into the car to go to the airport. I’d talked to her during my hour layover in Atlanta, but we’d only texted a few times since I’d landed in Gainesville since she was getting ready for her concert that night in Indianapolis. I knew that was what I’d have to get used to since it was going to be our reality until I had a break in between semesters.

We’d been given a choice as to how we wanted our situation to be handled, which I thought was cool.
After lecturing us, Laurie had asked us how we wanted to handle everything and the rumors that were rapidly flying around. We both knew that the buzz of our supposed relationship would tapper off once I went back to school, but we also knew that if it was announced that Syd and Dillon were no longer together, then it would look like I really was the reason. So we had two choices.

One, they could ‘break up’, and I’d probably get hounded by the press about my
supposed involvement, and she would be bad-mouthed for cheating on her boyfriend. I definitely didn’t want either of those things, especially negative press for Sydney. She didn’t deserve that. She’d done a nice thing for Dillon, and I wouldn’t let them crucify her for it.

Option two, Dillon and Syd
could ‘stay together’ for a few more weeks until it seemed they were stable, thereby pushing off the break-up. I wasn’t going to see Syd again for six weeks because of her schedule and mine, and after this one ‘date’ on Tuesday night, she and Dillon wouldn’t see each other either. But her team would spread enough positive buzz about them that it would seem like everything was okay. Sydney and Dillon would also send semi-flirty messages to each other on Twitter, and hopefully the press and the fans would calm down.

Syd and I had talked about it at length, and in the end, I told her
it didn’t really matter what the outside world thought as long as it didn’t affect us. I wasn’t planning on telling anyone except Jake and my parents that I was dating her anyway. I knew that if word got out around the fraternity house that someone would unintentionally leak it to someone else, and it would probably blow up in my face. My friends definitely did not have the same level of discretion that hers did.

And
I had no desire to deal with photographers taking my picture and fan girls begging me for autographs or chances to meet Sydney as I walked to class. So in the end, we chose the less invasive option. I’d tell my brothers who I was dating once Syd and I decided to go public, which would probably be at the Teen Choice Awards in August. She wanted me to go with her. We had time, and I wanted that time for it to be just us. I didn’t want our relationship on display to be over-analyzed and scrutinized and ridiculed. I hated that it would come to that, but if I wanted to be with her, it was what I had to put up with.

“Yeah, man, we saw the pictures
online,” Trey said. “How in the hell did you ever score a girl as hot as Sydney Chase?”

“I told you. He’s her best friend,” Jake said, elbowing Trey in the ribs.

I knew I could count on him to keep his mouth shut. In two years he’d never told anyone how I felt about Sydney.

Trey laughed. “I always thought that was bullshit and you just thought she was hot.”

“Dude, there’s a picture of us right there,” I said, pointing to the shelf above the desk I used for studying and Jake used for storage of the books he bought but rarely cracked open.

Trey shrugged, his eyes still glued to the game as he battled his way through a tunnel. “I figured you met her at some event. You know, like how Jeff is always stalking celebrities and shit.”

I rolled my eyes again. “Don’t compare me to that creeper. I don’t go to award shows hoping to meet celebrities and get their autograph or steal the mail from their mailboxes just so I can say I go
t Steven Tyler’s water bill.”

Trey and Jake laughed at what we all teased one of our brothers for
on a regular basis. He was notorious for his collection of celebrity autographs, and he had a particular affinity for Aerosmith for some odd reason. I thought he was going to kiss me when I gave him an autographed picture of Sydney the year before after her last tour. And I knew he might be an issue if I ever chose to bring Sydney by the house as my girlfriend. Of course we were a long way off from that.

“How come I
’ve never had a best friend who was as hot as her?” Trey asked, his eyes darting toward the picture of Syd and me at her concert the previous year.

Yeah, okay, so I could see
from that picture how he would think I’d met her at some fan meet-and-greet. She was dressed to go on-stage. But I had a hundred other pictures of us from over the years, from before she’d made it big, and now I had a hundred more on my phone from the past week. There were ones of us together that we’d taken, ones of just her when she didn’t think I was looking, and my favorite, one of us kissing in bed just that morning.

“Because you screw every girl you meet,” Jake said
to Trey, like it was the most rational reason in the world.

“You’re one to talk
ass– aww, damn! I died,” Trey said, throwing his controller across the platform. The carpet stopped it from going too far.

Jake just laughed as he continued forward without his partner.

“And I’ll thank you very much for the hot blond you screwed last night who had a hot blond friend just for me,” Jake said, and Trey threw up a lazy high-five that Jake paused long enough to smack before he took out three wolves who were trying to kill him in quick succession.

“Did you even learn her name, dude?” I asked him, swallowing the last bite of pizza from my first slice.

“Uh, Lisa?” Jake questioned, giving me an answer he didn’t sound too confident about.

“I don’t think that was it,” Trey said, laughing at Jake.

They had issues.

Trey turned
back to me then. “So, did you really not hook up with her at all?”

Hell yeah, I did. And it was fan-tastic!

“Naw, man. I’ve known her for twelve years. We’re just friends.”

“How can you be just friends with her? She’s so hot!”

I know. And I’ve seen her naked. #happyface

I fought the smile that wanted to burst onto my face. “It’s not like that with us,” I told him.

He shook his head and then stopped mid-shake. Then he started nodding. “I get it. She doesn’t think of you that way,” he said, echoing what I’d thought was my reality for so many years. “It’s probably because you’re all nice and shit.”

Jake nodded, as if he
didn’t know just how wrong Trey was. “This is true.”

“Girls don’t like nice guys. It’s why
I get laid so much,” Trey continued.

“Me too,” Jake piped in.

“They want guys who’ll treat them like shit,” Trey told me, as if I didn’t understand where his train of thought was headed. “You should treat her like shit. Then you could get laid.”

Such an idiot.

I rolled my eyes for a third time, realizing that I did that a lot when Trey was around. It was like he and Jake made each other dumber. Alone I could handle either one of them, but they fed off each other when they spent too much time together, and when that happened, I always felt myself actually losing brain cells.

“Aww,
fuck! I died,” Jake called out as his game ended. He turned to Trey. “Let’s go get beer.” He looked back at me. “You in, playboy?”

I shook my head. “Nah, I’m good. I have class at eight, so I’ll probably go to bed early.”

“Such a good little student,” he teased like he always did when I told him I was going to study or go to class.

J
ake was one of those people who, for as dumb as he seemed, he was actually really smart, but he didn’t study. He got mostly Bs and Cs, but he didn’t care, because he was just going to work for his dad’s medical supply company when he graduated. If he actually studied, he could probably give me a run for my money, but he didn’t have the drive to actually apply himself.

“Some of us don’t have the luxury of riding on Daddy’s coattails, and we have to actually get an education that’ll help us not have to clean toilets when we grow up,” I said sarcastically, and that made Trey laugh.

He actually studied and legitimately cared about school, but he’d never scheduled a class before noon, so if he stayed up late drinking, it didn’t matter.

“Well said, bro,” he said as he hopped down from the platform. “Tell your girlfriend I said hi when you’re jerking off to her picture later.”

I shot him the finger, and he just laughed as the two of them left the room.

* * *

Four weeks into the summer semester I was about to lose my mind. My girlfriend was in Oklahoma, and I was in hell. Saying that I missed her was an understatement, and without talking to her first, I went ahead and made an appointment with an advisor.

I sat down to talk to him on a Friday afternoon where the temperature outside was two degrees away from one hundred, and the humidity was about on par with that. And having
trekked halfway across campus from Turlington Hall, my polo was soaked through, and I was freezing from the ice cold air conditioning by the time he called me into his office.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Thompson,” he asked, closing the door to the small box
he called an office on the second floor of the building overlooking one of the entrances to campus.

I was looking out the window at the cars driving by on thirteenth street, remembering when I’d first come to the university for freshman orientation. My mom had come with me, and she’d gushed about how beautiful the campus was, how warm it was in Florida and how much fun she knew I’d have going to school there. She’d done two years at a community college in Washington to get the degree she needed to be a dental hygienist, so she’d missed out on the collegiate experience.
I had a feeling she might have been living vicariously through me just a bit, or at the very least she just wanted me to have the opportunities she never did.

In fact, she was the one who initially told me I should rush a frat. I
’d never had any inclination to do that, but she got me thinking. I convinced Jake to check out rush with me to see if it was something he wanted to do too. We’d gone to two houses, and neither of us was overly impressed, but then when we’d walked into the third house, and the guys were really cool, we’d just kind of stayed.

I had a lot of good friends in the house
, and I’d never regretted rushing. Transferring would mean giving up the guys I’d grown close with, especially my pledge brothers. But it also meant possibly changing majors. One of the reasons I’d decided to go to Florida in the first place was because of the university’s reputation for undergraduate programs in the varying science fields. I was excited about the courses I’d get to take in the next two years. I also knew a lot of the professors, and I already had one who’d offered to write me a letter of recommendation for law school.