All Riding on One Thing

All riding on one thing

          If there was one thing Jake loved more than superhero comics, it was Tammy. Tammy was Jake’s first real friend when he got to college, other than Ryan, his best friend from high school.
         Jake could never stop smiling when he was around Tammy, she would always ask why he was smiling so much, and he would always use some bullshit excuse because even he didn’t know why he smiled so much around her. He knew, to an extent, but it’s one of those things you just let happen and don’t question it until you have to.  That’s something Jake and Ryan had different views on. Jake felt like he couldn’t admit anything so soon, as if sophomore year is soon, having known her for a year and half. Ryan, on the other hand, thought Jake was stalling because he was just too chicken to say it to her, and if he didn’t admit it to himself, he wouldn’t have to worry about admitting it her, whether on purpose or by accident.

         Jake was always very emotionally cold, for several reasons. Besides having a scattered past with few real relationships, romantic or otherwise, he was mainly cold because it was what he was taught from comics. The characters in his comics were always so fearless, and Jake figured that if he didn’t show much emotion, and wasn’t vulnerable, that he could be as fearless as his favorite superheroes. Growing up he always looked to his comics to cheer him up, or to inspire him to be better in life. Jake had a massive collection of Amazzon Comics, which was the second most popular comic book company when he was young, far before comics became made by everyone on the internet. His favorite heroes were: Jericho, a man who could increase or decrease himself to the size of anything, Iris, a woman who could see the future, and his personal favorite, The Lone Rider, a man whose superpower was his sheer bravery. The Lone Rider was a hero whose only weapons were the 3-gear bike on which he rode, and the helmet which he wore upon his head. His uniform was custom made in Green and Black to match his helmet and bike. In later issues The Lone Rider spruced up his bike with rockets and a better frame to be able to better combat the new enemies which he made. The Lone Rider was always so brave, because no one could see his emotion, even when his helmet was off, because he had no face. His face was burned off in an industrial accident, and ever since, he gained courage, since no one could see how he really felt.

         Comics were his childhood and he loved them so much, which made it so much more meaningful that his love for Tammy overshadowed his love for comics.

          One night Ryan just got sick of hearing Jake blather on about Tammy, and still not admitting the truth that was starring him in the face, and he told Jake off.

         “Ah man did you see her today, when we had lunch? That gorgeous amber hair, those eyes that look into your heart, as if trying to melt it, and that mesmerizing smile. Oh that smile” Jake said as he sighed

         “Fuck man! If you just sit around making up new excuses for why you can’t stop smiling around her, instead of telling her all of what you just said, then someone else is gonna sweep her off her feet and you’ll be left in the dust and I know you don’t want that. You have to open up sometime.”

         Ryan stormed out of Jake’s hall lounge and went into Jake’s room to get his keys and coat that he had left there.

         “Wow, guy without a face huh?” Ryan mumbled from Jake’s room “Hey Jake!”

          “Yeah?!?”

         “Can I borrow one of your comics? I just opened one, and it looks really interesting”

         “Sure. Just bring it back when you’re no longer pissed at me.”

         “Ok” Ryan said as he started to leave Jake’s hall “If that’s the case, you may not see it for a while.”

         Jake chuckled at Ryan’s sarcasm as Ryan slammed the door behind him. Jake knew Ryan couldn’t stay mad at him, and even if he did, he’d be too good of a friend to let Jake know, even though he was more open with his emotions than Jake was, and that made him think.
         “I guess that’s the difference between me and Ryan, he’s more blunt about things, and I wrestle with my emotions for a while before revealing them to anyone. I wonder if I really disappointed Ryan too much this time…”

         Weeks went by, and Ryan stayed mad at Jake, and Jake stayed in his own head. Jake only had one thing that made him smile now, and that was Tammy. He cursed Ryan, wherever he was, for making him retreat into his own head and only having one outlet, Tammy. He couldn’t help but thank him a little bit as well, because since he wasn’t talking to Jake, Jake was talking to Tammy a lot more and hung out with her more. Jake told her that Ryan was mad at him, so Tammy was even there for him a lot more now, and Jake couldn’t argue that that was a good thing. Ryan may have not intended for things to turn out this way, but he probably would have been glad they did, to help Jake come to terms with his own feelings. For Jake, that was torture, he had no idea how his time with Tammy could feel so enjoyable and so depressing at the same time. That’s what Jake got for bottling up his emotions for so long, pressure.

         Jake did come to terms with things soon, and he was gaining confidence in himself, and in his friendship with her enough to tell her. That’s when the unexpected happened, Jake saw something that deeply distracted him.

         He was walking back from hanging with Tammy one day, when all of a sudden he saw a green and black bike, rode by a man in a green and black uniform, with a big green and black helmet on.

         “What?!? There’s no way!” Jake thought.

         Jake ran in the direction he saw the bike go into, but when he got there and looked into the distance, it was gone. He thought he was going crazy. He ran straight back to his dorm and dug through his comic collection.

         “Where is it?!?” said Jake as he practically dove into his box comics trying to find what he was looking for.

         "Finally!” Jake exclaimed as he pulled out a pile of Amazzon comics held together by a rubber band. He took out half of the comics in the pile, those of which that were about one superhero, The Lone Rider.

         Jake spent countless hours sitting there looking through these comic books, looking at his backstory online, looking up some of his possible aliases to see if they attended his school, or were at least his Facebook friends. Nothing. He found nothing. It’s as if what he saw was some kind of hallucination or ghost. He just shook it off as something he ate messing with his head, or maybe he was hallucinating from heat stroke because it all of a sudden got warm in the beginning of March.

         “Yeah that was it, heat stroke.” He thought, as he called it a night and passed out on his bed.

         He woke up sweating, and not just cause of this heat wave, he still had portions of his dream flashing through his head and he was panicking. The Lone Rider was there in his dream, and so was Tammy. Then he realized in the dream that The Lone Rider was trying to win over Tammy, and was successful at it. Jake remembered it was a dream and calmed himself down, then slowly drifted back into a more peaceful sleep. Some dream about him having some super power, the usual.

         He got up to go to class and he couldn’t shake that feeling. The dream was still bothering him.

         “What if I really did see him? What if he really is trying to sweep Tammy off her feet?” He thought

         When he saw Tammy later that day, he wasn’t smiling, he felt betrayed, even though Tammy never actually wronged him. He managed to get through lunch with Tammy before making up some assignment that he had to do at the last minute, and bailing.

         Jake needed to calm down, so he took a walk around campus and tried to relax. Sometime on his way back to his dorm he saw it, the worst thing imaginable for him right now. There he was, The Lone Rider, or whatever he was, talking with Tammy, and she was actually having a good time. Jake needed to pinch himself a few times to make sure this was actually real, although he still didn’t understand why his favorite superhero seemed to have hopped off the page and into the real world.

         That was it for Jake; he sulked back to his dorm and put his head into his comics. He did this for a few days when he wasn’t at class. He would occasionally look out his window to see Tammy walking beside The Lone Rider as he slowly rode his bike so he could talk to her. He couldn’t believe this was still a thing; it’s like his nightmare come true. Then he had an idea, he grabbed the pile of The Lone Rider comics and started flipping through their pages again.

         “A weakness” He thought “Every superhero has one. I just need to remember what The Lone Rider’s is.”
Jake had gone mad in a way, this whole situation had taken his head far out of reality, he was acting like a super villain at this point.

         Eventually he found the weakness he was looking for, loud noises. The Lone Rider’s only sense left on his head was hearing, so any loud noises would seriously impair his riding, and he would surely fall off his bike, and that’s when Jake would strike.

         It was 5 O’clock the next day, and Jake saw The Lone Rider riding toward his building, he ran downstairs with a pot and its pan in hand, attempting to cut him off at the pass. When Jake got into the courtyard, he could hear the gears on The Lone Rider’s bike and he leapt out in front of the hero, and smacked the pan across The Rider’s helmet sending him careening off his bike which was still moving forward.

         “This is it Rider, your girl charming days are up!” Said Jake villainously

         “What the hell was that?!?...I mean A Ha! Your puny pan is no match for me!” Said The Lone Rider as he stood up and donned a heroic pose.

         “B-but, loud noises are your weakness!?!”

         “Loud noises are anyone’s weakness Jake. What’s gotten into you?”

         “H-how do you know my name?” said Jake as he dropped the pot and pan which then clambered on the ground.

         “Ah crap…Look I can show you” He said reaching for his helmet

         “No, don’t, I know you don’t have a face it—”

         “He doesn’t…but I do” he said as he lifted his helmet off his head to reveal that it was actual Ryan.

         “Ryan? You’re The Lone Rider?!?”

         “What?!? No! I-ugh, I was just posing as him so I could make you jealous for your own sake”

         “Well it worked Ryan! Good F–”

         “Well, it didn’t go exactly as I planned”

         “What do you mean? what happened?”

         “Well, ya never did admit anything to yourself, you just kinda…reacted, so I uh…”

         “Yah what?!?” Asked Jake impatiently

         “I kinda...told Tammy everything” Ryan said quickly

         “What?!?”

         “Bye!” said Ryan riding off without the helmet “And good luck!”

         “Good luck with wha—?” Said Jake interrupted by a tap on his shoulder 

         “Ya know” Said Tammy behind Jake, “Iris would have totally seen this coming”
Turns out Tammy was a bit of an Amazzon Comics fan herself

         “Oh wow, I love ya, no, I mean…oh who I am I kidding, I love you Tammy”

         “Yeah, I know, Ryan told me everything, and well, I can’t say that I love you too, at least not yet, but I can get there.” Said Tammy before she romantically kissed Jake…

         And Ryan rode off into the sunset…

THE END

Afterword:
         Jake’s story is a perfect example of real life, despite the fact that it portrays fictional characters possibly coming out of comic books. Jake is a romantic, who all he wants at this point in his life is Tammy, because to him, and most likely no one else, she is as close to perfect as possible, even with her flaws. He doesn’t care about them, simply because he cares about her, as odd as that sounds. As in real life, nothing goes as planned, and in the end of his story, Jake isn’t the hero that he strived to be, but to Tammy he is just because he tried, for her. To Jake it wasn’t just her gorgeous amber hair that attracted him, or her mesmerizing smile, it was all of her, even her flaws that he loved. As with everything in life, it was the little things. It was the little things that took him from being simply attracted to her, to loving her. It was the little things that Jake did, that made his impression on Tammy really count in the end. So if you take anything from this story, it should be to appreciate the little things in life, because when everything comes down to it, that’s all that really matters. Even though Jake messed up, and yet still ended up with the girl, that isn’t a happily ever after, those don’t exist, relationships are hard, and so is life. The end isn’t really the end; it’s just where I stopped writing.
-Samuel Wells