Since Forever Ago (7 page)

Riley numbly nodded in agreement to no one in particular as she and Audrey scampered after her, feeling extremely nauseous as they pushed through the sweaty crowd. Without a doubt, she had honestly never felt sicker in her entire life.

––––––––

“S
o I put my hands up, they’re playing my song! The butterflies fly away!”

“Shut the fuck up, Max!”

“I’m nodding my head like ‘yeah,’ moving my hips like ‘yeah’!”

“How the fuck do you even remember the lyrics to this song?” Riley grumbled.

“Got my hands up, they’re playing my song, and now I’m gonna be okay,” Max continued, ignoring his miserable friend in the passenger seat.

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Yeeeeeeeah, it’s a party in the USA!” he wailed out, looking over and grinning maniacally at Riley as she shot him a death glare. 

“Yeaaaaaaah! It’s a party in the USA!”

With an annoyed groan, Riley slammed the palm of her hand against the volume button, effectively shutting off the blaring music and rendering the car silent. 

“Rude,” Max said with a theatrical scoff, shooting her a judgmental glance before turning his eyes back to the road. 

“I’m not in the mood, okay?” Riley snapped, sulking in her seat with her arms tightly crossed in front of her chest. She was well aware that Max had just been trying to lighten the atmosphere, but all of his obnoxious screaming was making her feel even more on edge.  

“Look,” Max began in a soft voice. “Everything’s going to be all right. Let’s just get your results so you can stop freaking out.”

Riley let out a long sigh. “I hope so,” she muttered under her breath. “Thanks... Thanks for coming with me again, by the way.”

“I’m your spirit guide, remember?” he reminded her, turning to give her a small smile.

Forcing a weak smile onto her own face, Riley let out a shaky sigh. “Well, let’s hope you won’t be having to guide me to the pharmacy after this.”

“Don’t say shit like that,” he quietly replied as he pulled into the parking lot behind the health center and shut off the engine. “Besides, I went through this entire process with you, remember? ‘We’re totes twinsies.’”

Riley couldn’t help but let out a tiny snort of laughter at his lame impersonation of Audrey before unbuckling her seatbelt and pushing the car door open. “Totes,” she repeated in a hollow voice, a feeling of dread washing over her as she stared at the clinic’s unassuming front door.

Max noticed her quiet demeanor and reassuredly wrapped his arm around her shoulders, trying not to blush as he did. “I know he’s my friend and everything,” he began, clearing his throat uncomfortably before continuing. “But I really hate him for putting you through all of this.”

Riley shot him a grateful smile before taking a deep breath. “Let’s just get this over with,” she muttered as he led her towards the entrance.

The morning after that fateful night at the club, Riley had bombarded Max with a series of texts, demanding that he relay any information that he might have had on the sexual habits that Noah had employed with his army of sluts. Despite Max’s insistence that, no, he did not know if Noah had used protection during his dalliances, Riley continued to harass him well into the early afternoon. Fed up with her nagging and anxiety-fueled outbursts, Max had driven over to the distraught girl’s apartment and dragged her to the local health clinic for a comprehensive exam.

“I don’t want to,” Riley had whined in protest. “I’m scared!”

“I’ll get tested with you,” Max had offered, as he would have been willing to do anything to get her to stop whimpering. “We’ll do this together.”

Sitting under the fluorescent lighting in the waiting room had been absolutely agonizing for the both of them, with Riley nervously wringing her hands as she stared off into the distance and Max flipping through a pile of precautionary pamphlets with a horrified expression on his face. Chronicling their respective sexual histories to the clinic workers had made them feel cheap and slightly petrified, prompting them to carefully observe their interviewers’ faces for any signs of judgment or disapproval. The poking and prodding that occurred within the sterile exam rooms had been somewhat humiliating, and the two had barely spoken a word to each other as they made their way back to Max’s car.

The next few days had been torture for Riley, with her jumping at the mere trilling of her text message ringtone. The receptionist had informed them that the clinic would call in the event that there were any positive results, but that no call would be made if the findings were negative. When the provided time frame of 3-5 days had passed with no fateful call making an appearance, Riley had assumed that the silence simply meant that the clinic lost her phone number. And so, she had explained her theory to Max, who had rolled his eyes and begrudgingly picked her up for another trip to the health center so that she could receive an in-person confirmation of her results, whatever they might be.

“All clear,” the nurse confirmed with a warm smile after flipping through the chart in her hands.

“Are you sure?” Riley slowly asked, trying to peer at what was written on the lab paperwork. “Like, those are definitely my results?”

“Definitely your results,” the nurse repeated before letting out a small chuckle. “You’re good to go!”

After thanking the nurse profusely and even pulling the unsuspecting woman in for a hug, Riley practically skipped back out to the reception area, where Max was waiting for her with an amused smirk on his face. “To the pharmacy?” he joked, causing Riley to let out a relieved laugh as they headed towards the exit.

“In celebration of our cleanliness, I’m going to buy you the greasiest, messiest, most disgusting pizza that we can find,” Max announced once he had started the car, looking over at her with a grin. “Sounds good?”

“It’s a date,” Riley agreed with a giggle, leaning back in her seat and closing her eyes blissfully as Max’s cheeks quickly reddened at her response. “Hey, what’s with the air?” she added with a frown, holding up a hand to block the vent in front of her as a stream of lukewarm air proceeded to blow out of it. “It’s freaking cold outside.”

“Really?” Max choked out, turning away slightly so that she wouldn’t notice his flustered expression. “It, er, feels so, uh, stuffy in here.”

“Weirdo,” she muttered under her breath before directing the air flow in his direction. “Anyway, I’m really glad I have you, Max. Thanks for... everything.”

“Don’t even worry about it,” he quietly replied, glancing over to find her smiling at him.

Just go ahead and fucking tell her, you idiot,
he urged himself.
This is literally the hundredth time that she’s left herself wide open for it. Just grow some balls and tell her how you really feel. It’s not that fuckin diff
—

“At least now I can go back to dating without worrying about all of this,” Riley said happily. “Imagine what a wreck I would’ve been if I still didn’t know my results!”

Great fucking job, you useless sack of shit,
Max silently berated himself, fighting the urge to repeatedly slam his forehead against the steering wheel.
You really
do
deserve to be in the friend zone, jackass.

“You’re really going to go back to dating?” Max asked, letting out a tired sigh. “What happened to ‘all guys are assholes’? You said that no member of the male species could be trusted!”

“Sure, guys like Noah and Henry can’t be trusted,” Riley replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. “But I’m sure there are nice guys out there too! After all,
you
exist!”

So date me
, the voice inside Max’s head pleaded.
Oh wait, that’s impossible, because this motherfucker right here is a complete pussy who hasn’t been able to tell you how he’s felt for the past fifteen fucking years!

“Anyway, I can’t believe that Liz
still
hasn’t confronted that loser yet,” Riley continued, wrinkling her nose in disappointment. “She’s just been avoiding him this entire time! He thinks she has the flu!”

“Really?” Max asked with a frown. He knew very well how uptight and downright hostile Liz was, so he was more than a little surprised that she hadn’t authored an exposé on his adulterous ways or set fire to the guy’s car yet.

“Yea, she’s being really weird about it,” Riley told him with a shrug. “But whatever. I’m going to drag her out tonight to meet some new guys. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky,” she added, letting out an incredulous laugh.

Max looked over curiously, only to find that Riley was holding up an entire handful of the condoms that had been shoved into her bag. “Can you believe that the nurse gave me so many of these?” she asked with another cackle. “I bet I have, like, a hundred of them in here!”

Max’s face immediately clouded over as she said this, his mind racing with unpleasant thoughts as he turned his eyes back to the road.
What the fuck? What kind of irresponsible nurse hands off a year’s supply of condoms to
one
patient? I’m going to have to write a letter of complaint to the clinic’s director.

“At least I’ll have a partner in crime now,” Riley babbled on as Max began to silently draft the angry letter in his head. “Get some double dates ready for us, okay? It’s going to be so much fun,” she concluded with another laugh, lazily flinging one of her billion condoms at Max. “I bet it’s going to be like
Sex and the City
!”

Did I say letter?
he grumbled to himself, glaring down at the condom that had landed in his lap.
I meant a fucking fifty-page report.

––––––––

“P
ass the fucking bag.”

Riley let out a grunt of acknowledgement as she lazily kicked the bag of Kettle Corn across the sofa in Liz’s direction, shoveling a palmful of tortilla chips into her mouth as she cocked her head to the side and stared at the television screen. “Do you think we’ll ever meet genuinely good guys?”

“No such thing,” Liz bitterly replied, glaring at the flustered couple sharing an awkwardly cute moment onscreen.

Riley’s grand plan to have a wild night out on the town with her best friend had pretty much gone to shit the moment that she had entered through the front door. After Max had dropped her back off at home, she had been left alone with her own thoughts for a good ten minutes, which was apparently long enough for her to start missing Noah again.

After all, it wasn’t like he had
purposefully
tried to gift her with a sexually transmitted disease. And he had said in his own words that he was just confused about
everything
. That didn’t mean that he no longer loved her. He could come crawling back at any time, for all she knew!

Oh my God, he’s going to come back to me
, Riley had decided as she changed into a pair of leggings and her trusty sweatshirt.
I can feel it. He’s
definitely
coming back
, she had convinced herself before proceeding to curl up on the couch next to an equally shabbily dressed Liz and a bottle of Patrón.

“I mean, there
has
to be at least
one
male who isn’t a complete asshole in all of Los Angeles, right?”

“Nope.”

Riley let out a long groan as she poured out more tequila for the two of them, handing Liz one of the shot glasses before clinking it with her own. “To perpetual singledom.”

“To perpetual singledom,” Liz repeated in a saccharine voice before tossing the lukewarm liquid back without so much as a grimace. “So much for being comfy, confident and cool, hm?”

“My face is numb,” Riley mumbled, gingerly shaking the almost-empty bottle of liquor before settling back into her seat with a sigh.

“As are our hearts,” Liz mused sarcastically, sprinkling a handful of popcorn onto the carton of strawberry ice cream in her lap and taking a hefty scoop.

“How long do you think it’ll take for us to move on?” Riley wondered aloud as she stared off into space.

“Half the length of the relationship,” Liz replied with a tiny nod. “Or that’s what everyone says.”

“So I’m going to be stuck in a rut for three years,” Riley said in a gravelly voice before reaching over to pour herself another shot of tequila. “Holy shit.”

“Well, technically a year and a half,” Liz offered with a shrug. “After all, you hate Noah half of the time and cry over him for the other half.”

“True,” Riley muttered dejectedly. “But that just makes it sound like I’m some bipolar schizophrenic freak.”

“I hate them for doing this to us,” Liz groaned. “How is it that one person has the power to completely ruin someone else’s life? Like, how is that even fair? I bet they both don’t even give a shit, either.”

“Do you think those two are doing exactly what we’re doing and thinking about us right at this very moment?” Riley asked, turning to Liz with squinted eyes.

“Wallowing on the couch, finishing a bottle of Mexican liquor and watching
Love Actually
in the dead of March?” Liz began as she let out a scoff. “I highly doubt it.”

“You’re right,” Riley said as she frowned at her glowing phone screen. “Noah’s at some lounge in Hollywood. At some
girl’s
birthday party!”

“What the fuck,” Liz blurted out, leaning over to grab Riley’s phone from her hands. “Are you seriously Facebook stalking him right now? After everything that he put you through?”

“Not
stalking
,” Riley replied defensively, lunging for her phone just as Liz jerked it away. “
Observing
. And some stupid bitch wrote that she’d see them tonight on his wall!”

“You’re never going to get over him if you keep watching his every move,” Liz warned, holding the phone high above her head as Riley crawled closer. “You’re just going to drive yourself crazy!”

“I’m
already
crazy!” Riley shrieked, desperately reaching her arm out for her iPhone. “Give it back, Liz!”

“Riley, this is self-destructive behavior,” Liz scolded, stretching her arm behind her, away from Riley’s reach. “Nothing good can come from tracking his exact coordinates at any given time!”