by J. Lynn
If anyone but Tressa showed up out of the blue, I’d haul ass the other direction. I’d think they were crazy, maybe dangerous, but she’s just Tressa. Unpredictable. Impulsive.
Beautiful.
“I think she just wants to talk,” Wade finishes lamely.
My older brother, James, sees Tressa and waves. He’d always liked us together, too. His smile drops when he sees my face, which I imagine in an impressive shade of pasty. “Just talk to her, Noel. Don’t you owe her that much?”
Indignation pulls my eyes from her, and I fix James with an incredulous look. “I don’t owe her anything. Nothing. That girl scrambled my head and broke my heart too many times to count, and it took me a long, long time to put her behind me.”
“Sure, but she never lied to you, man. She was a mess to begin with.”
His words remind me of everything I know and more I don’t, and my heart softens, as it always does. My feet find the sticky floor of the bar, and the terror tightening Tressa’s cheeks eases at my approach. The piano man starts a ballad, one familiar and so poignant that it must be a joke played by the cosmos—a song that never fails to remind me of Tressa. It’s the only song we ever danced to, one that hadn’t seemed apropos in the moment, but in the days that followed, snapped into place.
The stunned pain that shoots through her gold-threaded eyes tells me she remembers too.
“Noel.”
Her soft voice curls around my name, pummels the walls around my heart erected to keep her out. It reminds me of a night long ago and the only real confession I’d ever gotten from her—that she’d missed me when I went away.
“Tressa.”
We stare for a moment too long, until discomfort wriggles under the warmth of being in her presence again, and I say the first thing that comes out of my mouth. “Do you want to dance?”
It seems best to have this conversation out of earshot of my friends, so we join the other couples on the noisy wooden floor. I settle a hand at her waist and use the other to keep us at arm’s length. The familiar charge when our skin meets, the loose heat spilling through my muscles, raises my guard. It’s too easy to slip into the past with Tressa, and things are different now. Alice is at home, and in two days, she’ll be my wife. I’d beaten the temptation the last time Tressa showed up, and this could be no different.
Nothing but wasteland lay at the path that ended in her bed. Not for me.
“What are you doing here?”
Her fingers tighten on the back of my neck. Her touch makes it hard to breathe, but I manage.
“I . . . how are you?”
“I’m great.”
Her eyes fill with concern, with trepidation, as they rake my face. I wonder if she sees her effect on me, or my love for Alice, or if Tressa ever bothers to see me at all.
I’m playing the tormented emo guy, an inclination that left me when she did. My gut had sworn that she’d cared for me back then, but her words continually contradicted my instincts. It had been impossible to be sure enough to push her. I hadn’t wanted to push her farther away.
“I heard you were getting married.”
“I am. The day after tomorrow.”
“And you’re happy?”
“I’m happy, Tressa.” Or I was until she walked into this bar. Wasn’t I? “You didn’t drive all the way to Iowa City, unannounced, to ask if I’m happy. If you really wanted to know, Sammie or Wade would have told you. Or you could have called.”
“I wanted to see your face when you answered. And . . . well, I was hoping we could talk.”
Those six words shore up the cracks in my defenses. The last time she’d wanted to talk, I had refused to hear her confession, and I don’t want to hear it now. Too little, too late.
Her eyes fill with tears, and my heart aches with every beat. Hurting Tressa has never been easy for me—even that night, drunk off my ass with Al at my side, it had been agony. I had felt every blow as though they’d somehow boomeranged and assaulted me with double the force.
But Tressa doesn’t understand that life doesn’t wait. Not for me, not for her.
Not for us.
“We are talking.”
“Later. Maybe in the morning, over coffee? Or late night at Steak and Shake?”
My brain hands down an unequivocal no in response, but the heartbreaking expression of sorrow and hope in her eyes stalls my tongue. The smell of her skin and her hair takes me back to the days when denying her anything never entered my mind. What will it hurt, to hear her out?
It won’t change anything. I can resist her. I taught myself how, practiced, and after a while, it became a learned behavior that doesn’t feel impossible anymore.
“Okay.” We finish the dance and stop moving. “Do you want to join us? I know James would love to say hi.”
“Sure.” A tentative smile curls her full lips as her eyes cut to our table. “Just for a minute. Do you want to hit late night or talk in the morning?”
“Tonight.” Alice expects me out late, but shirking any day-before-the-wedding activities will be impossible, unless I turn into Batman overnight.
The air at the table shifts with her appearance, fills with apprehension. They all know her—Wade and James, of course, and Braden, another of my brothers, and two other friends who have been around since college—and despite how things ended, they all like her. We have more good memories than bad. I think.
She says hi and then we lapse into silence. Her trademark jumpiness infects me in the space of a breath, tightening my own stomach into a twisted ball. Strange, how the two of us spent so much time incapacitated by anxiety, but when pretenses and expectations dropped away, we didn’t need words at all.
“It’s nice to see you guys again, but I think I’ll go back to the hotel and talk to Sammie.”
“She’s with Al and the girls at the spa,” I supplied.
“Oh.”
“Let me text Miranda,” Wade offers. “She can ask Sammie to run back to the hotel.”
“Thanks.” Tressa twists her fingers together, her face green and a little sweaty. This can’t all be over seeing me.
Or maybe it is. How many times did I work myself into a sickened, nauseous state while preparing to push her into another discussion about us, about the future that never materialized?
She reaches over and takes a swig of my beer without asking, then grimaces. “You and your fucking Budweiser. Ugh.”
The comment breaks the tension, and everyone laughs. We’re all carefree again, playing games on the porch, Tressa warm at my side, always at my side. No matter how hard we fought it, we had something people wanted. Something they could sense and see, and treated with a strange reverence.
“It’s better than Keystone or Natty,” Wade argues.
“Keystone, yes. That shit tastes like wet charcoal. Natty, I don’t mind. It reminds me of college.” She cringes again. “Budweiser is gross.”
“Snob,” I tease, finding the remnants of our ease underneath my stunned, slightly numb reaction to her surprise appearance. I would say it was the remnants of friendship, except Tressa and I had never been friends. Could never be friends. The connection that crackled between us was innate, like breathing. Even now, little magnets flick on under my skin, urging my arm to wrap around her waist. It takes all of my willpower not to lean over and see if she still smells like summer.
After I marry Alice, I know I’ll never see Tressa again. It would be too hard, but more than that, too pointless. Too much of a reminder of what might have been.
What I might have had, before it fell apart. Before I knocked it down, truth be told.
“You call it snobbery, I call it taste.”
“Okay,” Wade interrupts. “Miranda says Sammie will be back in the room in ten, and she’s very curious.”
“You could have prepped her.” Tressa’s disquiet returns in a flash.
“Nah. More fun this way.”
“Always helpful, Wade.” She hitches her purse onto her shoulde
r and smiles, lighting up the table. “Nice to see you all again.”
She turns, making for the door, and we all watch her go.
“Man, this is fucked up,” my friend Phil comments.
Fucked up, indeed.
Five
Tressa
“TRESSA?” SAMMIE’S WIDE eyes take me in where I slump against the door to her room. I could have gone in, but I’d been presumptuous enough earlier this afternoon, and I’m going for endearing.
“Hey, Sammie. Long time no see.”
Nothing about her expression encourages me. If anything, it makes me want to turn tail and run.
At least I’m sober.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“You know, people keep asking me that?”
“I can’t imagine why.” She holds a hand down and hauls me off my ass, then unlocks the door. “I assume you’d like to come in?”
“I’d like to stay. I have seven dollars to my name.”
She stares at my bag, then turns and gives me a sly smile. “It’s fine. I can’t toss an insane person out on the street.”
“Thank you.”
“Now, tell me what you’re doing here.”
“I heard Noel was getting married and . . . I don’t know. I wanted to talk to him. Before.”
“Talk to him.”
“Yes. And I’ve heard the lectures, Sammie, so spare me. I’m being selfish, I’m ruining his big day, I’m acting like a borderline stalker—”
“Um, no on the last one. That border has been breached.” She smiles, softening the comment, then shrugs. “You have to do what you have to do, Tress. I saw you two when you were together—I wouldn’t have called you happy, but you were in love. I saw you apart. Watched Noel bury himself in schoolwork, like if he stuffed enough knowledge in his head there wouldn’t be any room for you.”
“But?”
She sits on the couch, slipping out of her wedges. “But maybe love isn’t always meant to last. You guys fell hard but it didn’t work.”
“You really think it works with Alice?” I try to keep the skepticism from my voice. My feelings make me a poor judge.
“I don’t know. They’re good together. Not angsty and passionate, but stable.”
“He’s settling, Sammie.”
“Listen. Say what you came to say, if it’s that important to you, but I’m telling you . . . he’ll choose her. Again.”
Again.
My cell phone beeps, and I glance down to check the text. It’s from Noel.
I can’t meet you later. I just don’t think it’s a good idea.
SAMMIE WENT BACK to join the girls and doesn’t come home—they’re having some kind of lame bridal slumber party. The night drags, every memory of every time Noel wanted to talk to me about our relationship dancing behind my eyes. All the nights when he’d asked me what we were doing, what I wanted, how I felt, and I ignored him. I shrugged, I rolled my eyes. I ran away.
Most often, my snotty, stupid reply was I just want to have fun.
Fun. I had been an idiot for three months of my life, and it had cost me the one thing I’ve ever been a hundred percent sure I wanted.
I give up sleep around three and call Ashlee until she picks up.
“What?”
“He won’t talk to me.”
Sheets and blankets rustle, and Ash sighs. “I’m not going to say I told you so.”
“I saw him, he said we could talk, but then he texted that it’s not a good idea. That could mean so many things—that he thinks I’m a batshit stalker and is afraid to be alone with me, that he hates me, or that he knows Alice would hit the fucking roof. Or it could mean he doesn’t trust himself with me.”
Ash doesn’t say anything in reply.
“Did you fall asleep?”
“No. You covered it, is all. It could be any of those things, and I know you’re hoping it’s the last one, but he might be over it. Or it might be Alice.”
“I just wanted to have a burger.” I sigh. “What am I supposed to do now?”
“Come home, Tressa. Figure out how to let go.”
I know she’s right. It’s time to move on, to leave the summer I turned nineteen in the past, where it belongs. Not say I’m letting go, but truly let Noel out of my heart.
He’s not mine to hold on to. Maybe I’ve been fooling myself to believe that he ever was, but I’m not ready. I’ve got another twenty-four hours, and I’m already the crazy chick.
Might as well go for broke.
Six
Noel
IT WASN’T FAIR of Tressa to come here, to put these thoughts in my head the day before my wedding. I can’t stop thinking about her, about what she would have said if we’d met or what might have happened. I wanted to see her too badly, which is why I canceled. Alice would have melted down had she found out, too, but it’s mostly that I don’t trust myself. Not where Tressa’s concerned.
It shouldn’t surprise me to come home and find her on my front step, but it does—as though our time apart has dimmed my recollection of how damn stubborn she is. When Tressa digs her heels in, everyone else can go home.
Except I am home, and so is Alice. Which complicates things.
“Can’t you ever just take no for an answer?”
“You didn’t.” She pauses. “Until you did.”
I sink down next to her. We’re going to talk, whether I want to or not—that much is clear.
“I’m going to say something that’s going to piss you off,” she starts, “because it sounds like it’s about Alice, but it’s not.”
Knee-jerk defensiveness rolled through me like thunderheads. “Maybe you can just say what you came to say and leave her out of it?” For all her brains, Tressa had no idea what she’d done to me. Finding Alice, her kindness and stability, had showed me a future without loneliness. I’m aware—too aware—of all the things Tressa brings to the table that Alice can’t, but it doesn’t mean I don’t love my fiancée.
“I love you, Noel. Still.”
Even though I expect them, the words affect me. They race through my arteries and into my thudding heart, dump into my veins, and come back for more. No matter what, they’re going to be a part of me forever. I manage, “Still?” I manage.
“Yes. Do you want to know when I first knew I was in love with you?”
I don’t want to know. I want to know worse than I’ve ever wanted anything. Eventually, she continues, as I knew she would before she finished the question. It’s hard to figure this new Tressa out—the one who wants to talk about her feelings, about her and me—but her essence is familiar.
“When you went on vacation with your family. So about five weeks into our disaster of a relationship. I didn’t admit it to myself until six months later, right after I visited for that football game?”
“But you never said anything. I thought nothing had changed.” We’d never broken up because, according to her, we’d never been officially together. We’d gone back to our respective colleges, and she’d visited when she’d felt like it, until finally, I hadn’t been able to do it anymore.
“I know. I’d never been in love before, Noel, and it terrified me.”
Silence wraps around us. The night is quiet, the sounds of crickets and cicadas gone with summer. Tressa reaches out like she wants to touch me but doesn’t. I want her to but am glad she doesn’t. Electricity and confusion are the two most constant things between us, and somehow, with her confession, the second has eased.
Not the first. Sparks sizzle, infusing the space with a heat, making me too aware of every curve of her body, the way she smells . . . all of it.
“What’s changed?”
She drags a shaking hand through her chestnut hair and laughs. “I’m still scared. But now of living the rest of my life with the words inside of me. I know it’s not fair to do this to you now, and it wasn’t fair to do it two years ago, after I found out you’d moved on . . .” Tressa trails off, biting her full lower lip in
a way that makes me want to do the same, and I look away. “You’re settling, Noel. Even if it’s too late for us, I hate that for you.”
Settling. The word feels like poison in my ears, like oil trying to mix with water. It’s not Tressa’s place to make that kind of comment, but I’d be angrier if I hadn’t wondered the same thing.
“I’m going to say this once, as your . . . well, not friend, but as someone who loves you. I was a hot mess, and I never gave you any of the reassurances you needed. Shit, I spent every night with you for almost eight weeks and insisted we weren’t serious.”
Almost every night. There was that one, when she’d been with Micah Blake.
“But Alice is too far the other direction. She might be the perfect doctor’s wife. She wears the cardigans and I’m sure never misses an opportunity to say how lucky she is to have you—because she fucking is, Noel. But she doesn’t challenge you.”
“Maybe I outgrew that, Tress. You . . . the way we were, it was like a drug. An amazing, beautiful, addictive high but with lows so deep it took me days to climb out of them. That’s not how adult relationships are supposed to work.”
She looks down the street. The girls’ soft voices waft down from the windows upstairs, and nerves tightens my chest. I should make her go before Alice gets hurt.
Except it feels good, talking to Tressa about feelings, about life.
“Maybe that’s a lie we believe, so we stop looking.”
“What’s a lie?”
She turns toward me, golden flecks in her hazel eyes blazing with determination. “That we outgrow passion. Noel . . . I love you so much it makes me feel out of my mind, sometimes. You loved me so much that you wanted to punch the wall with frustration daily. We screamed and fought and hurt each other. When we made up, the intensity was there, too. All of it made me sure I was alive. I feel that way now, for the first time since I last saw you—alive.”
“Love.”
“What?”
“You said, I loved you so much. I still love you, Tressa. You’re right. All of it . . . It left the kind of mark that won’t ever go away. But that’s not how I want to live anymore.”
The words cost me. They ripped off a part of my heart, maybe my soul, that belonged to Tressa. It’s like I’ve been holding it for her all this time, and now, when she leaves, it will go with her. It feels a little bit like dying, but Alice is my life now.
