“Sure you can, Pi,” I gasped between laughter.
“Well, at least one of us has a date,” Bree sounded dejected as we sat down at our usual lunch table, shooting a frustrated glance Tristan’s way.
I followed her glance and forced myself to unclench my fist from the lunch table before I broke off a piece with my super Star strength. Tristan didn’t even acknowledge her though as we situated ourselves across from the boys, me taking my usual seat next to Seth. For my entire life participating in the Mead public school system, boys sat on one side of the table and girls sat on the other. Seth was disrupting our carefully drawn cootie line, but it kind of made me happy.
Seth smiled down at me, completely oblivious to the way the entire length of the table looked at his barrier breaking with a mixture of awe and disapproval.
“Hey,” I smiled at him, noticing how his hair curled delicately while it was still damp from his after-weight-training-shower.
“Hey,” he smiled back. “Is she talking about you?” he nodded his chin to Bree, and I blushed realizing the majority of our group caught his meaning.
“You have a date to what?” Tristan asked his voice cutting through the air like a punch in the throat.
“The Valentine’s Dance,” I smiled warmly at him, cocking my head to the side in confusion.
Tristan’s green eyes flashed with undisguised anger, and he set his sandwich down on the table very, very carefully. I knew that gesture from watching him play years of contact sports; Tristan didn’t become careful until controlling every single one of his movements became essential to his temper.
“You’re going to the Valentine’s Dance with him?” he asked as if even referencing Seth took concentrated effort.
“Yes,” I replied, forcing my voice to sound like it was no big deal. Silence fell heavily on our table as the rest of us were left to wonder at Tristan’s reaction. I felt Seth stiffen next to me, ready to defend some honor that had been questioned, but I put my hand on his arm casually, hoping no one else would notice and squeezed. He caught my hint and let it go, but I felt how his skin heated beneath my fingers. He was letting this go, but only for me.
“You and Seth are going together? You should have told me! When did this happen?” Piper squealed happily.
I turned my head so that all I could see was Piper, completely ignoring Tristan in my peripheral. He picked up his sandwich like he was going to take a bite and then set it back down as if he couldn’t stomach it. I could feel his stare boring into me from across the table but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why.
Tristan had never, not in our entire lives, not once…. asked me to a dance. He didn’t ask me in sixth grade when we only had one dance and I had been a frantic mess about finding a date for months. He didn’t ask me ever in junior high when dances became more frequently and I had to endure trying out nearly every boy in our class just to be polite. And he had not once asked me to a dance in high school, even though he had made his rounds through all of the prettiest girls from our class and the surrounding classes. In fact, when a dance was on the horizon he avoided me like I was a tumor to his effortless charm that made any and every girl in school immediately agree to be his date.
I had been snubbed more times than I liked to remember.
And now he was mad because I had a date?
Oh… no.
“Yes, Seth asked me this morning!” I forced as much excitement into my voice as possible, hoping I would get a chance to explain to Seth later. I knew it just made sense for Seth and I to go together. He certainly wasn’t going to ask anyone else; he didn’t even really know anyone else. And I probably was obligated to be his date from this dance on until the rest of eternity anyway.
My enthusiasm dropped as I thought that all the way through. Was this the beginning of the rest of my life with Seth?
“Well, won’t you guys cute,” Bree offered snidely from the other side of Piper.
A grunt of frustrated anger tore through the air from across the table, and I snapped my head in Tristan’s direction surprised at his outburst. Apparently he was just as surprised, because heat turned his neck a shade darker and he mumbled something about a charley horse in his calf before shooting me a look. A look that displayed a sharp mixture of hurt and betrayal that I in no way understood.
“Who are you going with?” Piper asked Tristan innocently, as if his mood wasn’t quieting the entire table.
“I don’t have a date yet,” he admitted, giving me another pointed look. I shot him back one out of confusion, but he wasn’t offering any explanations.
“Well, you should get on that before all the pretty girls are taken,” Piper continued, lecturing him sternly. “Or maybe you’re more of a sit back and let it come to you kind of guy,” she finished with a certain amount of hatred in her voice she reserved only for the worst disagreements between her and Tristan. “The problem is, the good things in life don’t just fall in your lap, Tristan. You have to work for those.”
And with that, Piper stood up and walked out of the cafeteria. I stared after her with my mouth slightly ajar, feeling more confused than ever. I looked over at Tristan who seemed even more pissed off, if that was even possible. After two more seconds of pained silence, he too got up and stormed out of the cafeteria in the opposite direction.
I slumped down in the bench, realizing I had been at the root of both my friends’ issues, but not understanding one better than the other.
“Lunch can be really intense here,” Seth mumbled, nudging me with his shoulder.
“That’s one way of putting it,” Rigley agreed, shaking his head in disbelief.
I stayed silent, having no idea what set Piper off, even though I had a pretty good idea of what had Tristan all upset and it had to do with the betrothed Angel that was sitting right next to me. I looked up at Seth as he dove into the school provided chicken and noodles. His jaw flexed as if he could still acutely feel the tension floating over our table, but without pausing from taking a bite he put his arm around me, squeezing my shoulder comfortingly.
Seth was my future, my whole future. And at some point my present would melt into that future. I wouldn’t be able to have this simplified existence of friends and small town life forever. Things were already changing for me…. I was already changing.
----
I saw the truck before I heard it, ambling down our long gravel drive, banks of snow rising on either side, blurring the lines of his white truck with the horizon. I watched him out my bedroom window, suddenly more nervous to be near him than I felt before I went into battle.
We both had the rare afternoon off, no basketball practice, no training, absolutely nothing to do after school. Before…. before things got weird, Tristan and I would have taken the opportunity to plan something exciting like a trip into Omaha for a movie or dinner at a chain restaurant, or pulling each other on sleds behind his four-wheelers.
But after lunch today Tristan had avoided me, leaving his mystery anger all that more of a mystery. I stayed in my bedroom, still watching as he parked his truck and hesitated for a good three minutes before climbing down from the cab and walking to the kitchen door. I heard the doorbell ring and my mom move to the door, but something held my feet frozen to the carpet.
Fear.
It felt like he was coming to break up with me.
Break up our friendship.
“Stella,” my mom called from downstairs. “Tristan’s here!”
“Be right down,” I hollered back and then forced my feet to move. They didn’t go where I told them to immediately. First they stopped, without my permission, in front of my vanity so that I could check out my makeup and fix my hair until it fell in golden waves just so over my shoulder. I reached for my lip gloss before making myself stop and take a breath to steady my shaking hands.
It was just Tristan.
My best friend.
My oldest friend.
I was acting crazy.
Well…. mo
re crazy than even normal-crazy these days.
He was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, making comfortable conversation with my mom as she started pulling together dinner. Tonight it looked like we were having…. spaghetti…. again. Ooh… with frozen meatballs. This was definitely a step up as far as family dinners went around here.
“Hey,” I interrupted once I reached the last stair. Tristan’s eyes had been watching me as I made my way down the stairs, but now that I stood before him they floated over me as if gently caressing me in the most intimate way. Eventually the emerald depth of his gaze found mine again and I nearly took a step back from the intensity of it.
Lifting his shoulder in an attempt at humility he offered a quiet, “Hey,” back. “Can we talk?”
I nodded, a little taken back by how sweet I found him right now. There was this almost desperate ache that started in the deepest part of me and spread rapidly over every single one of my bones. I moved toward him, not conscious of my decision until my arms were around his neck and my head was buried against his chest.
“Hey….” he soothed gently, wrapping his arms tightly around my waist. “Hey, it’s Ok. Don’t be upset. I’m so sorry, Stella, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad, Ok? It’s all my fault, I was such a jerk today.”
A shudder ran over my back at the intimacy of our closeness. We hugged all the time, so when Tristan’s body responded to mine, pulling me impossibly closer to him and molding me against his chest, I was surprised at the tender affection he seemed to wrap around me. One of his hands held me tightly against my waist, his hand slid under my shirt and splayed against my hot flesh. His other hand had pressed itself against the nape of my neck, his thumb was moving up and down in the softest way.
“You were a jerk,” I mumbled against his skin. I picked up my head just a little bit. “I seriously don’t even understand why, either. You’ve never cared who I’ve gone to a dance with before….” I said pathetically, feeling ridiculous for taking this so seriously. It was just that we never fought. Ever. And he never got mad at me.
“Well, you’ve never been asked to a school dance before by your future husband,” he explained, acid painting the word “husband” as if it were the dirtiest word in the English language.
“You’re jealous?” I gasped, taking a step back and putting space in between us. Talking about Tristan’s feelings for me, while I was wrapped up in his arms seemed like a very bad idea, said the sudden voice of reason in my head.
“I like to think I’m looking out for your best interest,” he said confidently, but his eyes refused to look at me.
“Well, I’m pretty sure since my relationship with Seth was ordained by Heaven itself that I’m pretty safe to go with him to a Valentine’s Dance,” I laughed, noticing for the first time my mom had slipped out of the kitchen.
Tristan winced in response, pulling me back against his body. I could feel how every one of his muscles had tensed and coiled, the quiet desperation in which he held me.
“Don’t remind me,” he sighed, tangling his hand through my hair.
“Did you want to go with me?” I ventured, my voice sounding small and not at all like me.
“It doesn’t matter what I want, Stella. I can’t go with you. Isn’t that right? I can’t go with you to dances. I can’t ask you out on dates. I can’t….” he trailed off, running his thumb down the nape of my neck. His mouth had turned into a serious, straight line and I felt the muscles in his chest tighten. “We are just friends,” he stated, bitterness seeping into his every syllable. “I know I don’t get an opinion about who takes you to the dance…. I just…. I just thought you and Seth weren’t like that yet.” His tone had softened and the brokenness behind his words nearly shattered me.
There were things between Tristan and I that had hovered in the air between us unspoken for years. At some point during our long history together we had mutually decided those secret things could never be said, never be spoken out loud. Tristan was dangerously close to saying things now, which he could never take back, never unsay and I couldn’t let him break the silent truce between us.
“We’re not,” I defended myself, stepping out of Tristan’s arms and crossing to the other side of the kitchen. “We’re not like that. How could we be? We just met. But I am one of the only people he knows, and I didn’t have a date, so it just made sense.”
Tristan made a grunting sound, rubbing one hand over his closely shaven head. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and then broke into a smile, his dimples adorably impressed next to his smile. A husky laugh followed and his shoulders relaxed into the guy I knew so well.
“I’m not going to make it through this,” he laughed again in a seemingly self-deprecating way.
“Make it through what?” I asked, leaning back against the counter. I stirred my mom’s spaghetti sauce that had started to bubble over, shooting drops of red sauce all over the white stove surface.
“High school,” Tristan mumbled. Although neither one of us believed that’s what he meant, but I let it go. I had to let it go….
“So, no more weirdness between us, yeah?” I looked up at him from under my lashes and hoped he would just agree.
“No more weirdness,” he met my gaze and I wanted to believe him…. I wanted to believe that we had this thing under control, but his piercing eyes held too much of the unsaid, too much of what we weren’t allowed to say that they practically overflowed with it.
My breath caught in the base of my throat and I knew I had to navigate us out of these dangerous waters before we were both drowning.
“So who are you going to take to the dance?” I asked carefully.
“Don’t hate me,” he smiled, his charming Tristan smile and I immediately knew I was not going to like where this was going.
“Why?” I demanded, straightening my back and chewing on my bottom lip aggressively.
“Well, first of all, this is a funny dance because most of the eligible girls already have dates. My options were limited. No, worse than that! I didn’t even really have options!” he rambled on, gesturing a lot with his hands, which I knew was a terrible sign of things to come.
“Spit it out, Tristan,” I growled.
“Bree,” he said simply and my jaw dropped, literally it dropped as if it were on hinges.
“No you are not,” I laughed at the irony. And he was made about Seth? Ha!
“She was the only girl I felt comfortable asking,” he explained, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he told me she held a gun to his head and kidnapped his family. I couldn’t believe he was actually going with Bree.
He knew better.
He had picked his way through most of the high school, but never asked Bree.
“Oh really? You’re not doing this out of spite?” I pressed, digging my heels into this argument and refusing to back down.
“Spite? Come one, Stel, you know me better than that. She didn’t have a date and either did I. It just made sense. You know she is a good friend of ours,” Tristan tried to remind me, but this he really did know better.
“She’s a good friend of yours,” I muttered, afraid my parents would hear. I reminded myself of Bree’s humanity and that she was one of the billions of reasons I resided on this planet to begin with, trying without success to get over her now rightful claim of Tristan. At least for the dance.
But it shouldn’t matter anyway.
I had Seth.
“You’re not really mad, are you?” Tristan had walked up next to me while I stewed about Bree. He placed a hand on my lower back, hoping for forgiveness. My head inclined immediately toward him, as if I was a sunflower and he was my sun. I felt each of his fingers as they widened across my back and felt his blood pulsing beneath his skin, the pads of his fingertips as they burned their mark into my flesh.
“Do you want to stay for dinner? My mom is changing it up a bit by adding meatballs to our spaghetti,” I turned to face him, forcing myself to keep some distance betwe
en us. I needed to change the subject; I needed to balance our relationship back in the realm of normal.
“Meatballs? Is this a special occasion?” he asked and we both laughed.
But he did stay, and he laughed and talked and enjoyed my family just like he always had. We would be fine. Things were changing in my life, but Tristan and I could survive the change. Things could stay the same.
No, I was determined. Things would stay the same.
Chapter Fourteen
“Stella,” mom stood in my doorway, that look on her face…. the one that promised me I was in for an important parental lecture. “We should talk, sweet pea.”
“Sure, come on in,” I gestured to my desk chair with a confident sweep of my arm, even though internally my insides had twisted tightly together in anticipation for whatever this was about.
She walked inside my room, wringing her hands together. I sat up from my reclined position where I had been studying for a government test the next day and waited for her to continue. Some of my anxiety was relieved when I realized how nervous she was.
And then it was instantly replaced when nightmarish thoughts of an impending birds and bees discussion echoed in my head.
“Mom, you’re not here to talk to me about-“
“Your dad and I are sorry!” my mom blurted out suddenly, plopping heavily into my desk chair and twisting her long, platinum blonde hair into a knot at the base of her neck. Her ice blue eyes were wide with intensity and her flawless skin glowed naturally as her sincerity seeped through her.
“Mom, what are you sorry for?” I laughed, knowing her fears were unfounded.
She was definitely not comforted by my candor though. Her brows knitted together in an expression I had only ever seen her wear when she was preparing for a mission. “We didn’t know, Stel. We didn’t know you and Tristan would develop feelings for each other…. Honestly, we didn’t even know you could develop feelings for anyone other than Seth.”
“Mom, what are you talking about?” I breathed in a voice I could barely hear. My hands were suddenly shaking and I gripped the quilt Annabelle had made me as a little girl tightly in my fists.