“I didn’t. She did,” he says.
“What?” I ask. That’s hard to believe. Tea was really smitten with him. Why would she do this?
“She said that she didn’t want to be in an ill-defined relationship. She wanted more. Either we were together, exclusive, or we weren’t. And I couldn’t give her that.”
I ask him why even though I know the answer.
We stop at the light. He turns all the way toward me in his seat. Looks straight into my eyes. I see an image of the red stop light in his eyes, and wonder if he can see them in mine.
“You’re a hard act to follow, Alice,” Tristan says quietly.
Shivers run down my spine. The tips of my fingers get cold. Then go numb. I don’t know what he means. No, that’s not true. I do. I have my suspicions, but I don’t dare assume. I don’t want to know.
“What,” I start. My throat is raspy and the word comes out broken in half. “What are you talking about?” I try again.
The light turns green. He drives out of the intersection and pulls over to the side of the road.
“What are you doing? Why are you stopping?” I ask quickly. I feel myself going into a panic over what might happen and over what might not.
“I want to tell you something,” Tristan says quietly.
I don’t look away from the front windshield even as Tristan turns to face me again.
“Alice? Turn to me. Please,” he says, touching my hand. I recoil from his touch. I take a deep breath. Quiet my pounding heart. And turn to face him.
“I love you,” he says, slowly allowing each word its time and space.
“What?” I mumble.
“I love you, Alice,” he says again. I try to read his face. It’s blank. All I see is how much his sun-kissed skin has faded in the bleakness of a New York fall.
“I love you, too,” I say a little too quickly.
It’s not a lie, but it’s not the truth either. I’m not sure what he meant for his ‘I love you.’ I love you as a friend. I love you like I used to. I love you and want to get back together. I love you and I want to be friends. We sit there in silence for a bit. It seems like we should kiss, but the moment isn’t right. There’s a distance between us. Filled with all the things that have been unsaid. All the things that should be explained.
Slowly, Tristan starts the car again and puts it in drive. We drive the rest of the way to the train station as strangers.
43
The parking lot is empty and Tristan parks right up front near the handicapped sign.
“I’ll walk you inside,” he says as I get out.
“No need,” I say, but he ignores me. I don’t stop him. We walk together into the train station. It’s small and deserted. There are only a few chairs arranged in a circle along the walls. There’s no one at the ticket counter. I check the large electronic schedule board behind the counter. A train going back to the city will come in twenty-five minutes.
I go to the ticket machine and buy a one-way ticket.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come back with me?” he asks as I press ‘buy.’ I shake my head, no.
“I’ll just meet you there,” I say. “Thanks for coming out, though. Really. I really appreciate it.”
Tristan stares down at his shoes. They’re an old pair of sneakers with no shoelaces that he has had for years. He doesn’t wear them often. I know that they’re his go-to shoe when he needs to be comfortable.
“How long have you had those shoes?” I smile. “Since tenth grade, at least.”
“Ninth.” He nods his head. When our eyes meet, his sparkle under the harsh fluorescence in the room.
“Are you ever going to get rid of them?” I ask.
“Are you ever going to get rid of Bear?”
My breath gets lodged in my throat and I cough. Bear is an old teddy bear that I’ve had since I was a little girl. I don’t play with him anymore. He’s too old and fragile, but he sits on top of my dresser and I hold him whenever I feel lost or confused or lonely.
“No, of course not!” I gasp.
“Ever hear that a pot shouldn’t be calling a kettle black?” he jokes.
“Fair enough,” I smile.
I’m suddenly at ease. I know that Tristan and I are going to be okay. Friends. For real this time. I know that he wasn’t lying when he said that he loved me. And I definitely wasn’t. What happens to love after love? I wonder. Maybe this. This friendship that’s a little bit more than just friendship. Something a little bit deeper. Closer. More unusual.
“Oh hey, you said that you wanted to talk to me about something. Back in the car. What did you want to talk to me about?” I ask.
“Just about us. About how I miss you.”
“You miss me?”
He nods. I feel his gaze on my lips. He takes a step closer to me. I feel his soft breath on my cheek. We’re standing so close to one another that it would require more energy to pull away than to pull closer together. Suddenly, he catches himself.
“You know, I miss being friends. I’m sorry about the masquerade ball. I should’ve told you the truth. I was an asshole for not wanting to take her. That’s why I’m not rushing the frat. I don’t want to be that guy.”
I nod.
The moment passes. I take a step back. The magnetic force pulling us close together, into a kiss, vanishes.
“Okay, I’ll see you at home,” I say and turn to walk to the ticket counter.
Tristan grabs my hand. He pulls me close to him.
His eyes search mine.
He pushes my hair out of my face and kisses me.
Tristan presses his lips onto mine. Softly at first. As if he’s asking permission. It takes me a moment to realize what’s going on. When I do, I kiss him back.
The fire between us gets stronger.
He runs his tongue across mine.
I bury my hands in his hair.
He wraps his arms around my waist. He searches for the place where my shirt ends and then grabs my back with his hand. The touch of his skin on mine exhilarating. Shivers run down my whole body. I feel like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me. I kiss him harder and he breathes air into my lungs.
“Please don’t take the train,” he whispers. “Come home with me.”
We kiss for a few more moments. It isn’t awkward like most first kisses. Tristan knows just how to kiss me. He knows that I love feeling his breath on my neck. He knows that I love when he nibbles at my earlobes. He knows that I love it when he buries his hands in my hair and pulls on it lightly. And he knows a lot more things than this. A lot more than what we can do in a public train station, even if it is deserted.
* * *
We hold hands and kiss all the way back to the car. I don’t remember agreeing to not take the train, but that hardly matters. He opens the car door for me and continues to kiss me as I get into the seat. I watch him run around the car and hop in the driver’s side.
“I forgot how good you smell,” he says, inhaling the air.
I laugh. He hasn’t spoken to me like this in a long time. I look at him. It’s as if he’s enchanted.
“It’s probably just my shampoo.” I shrug and touch my hair instinctively.
Tristan looks me over up and down, as if he’s performing some sort of complicated analysis in his head. Then he grabs my head and pulls me toward his nose. Gently.
“Hey!” I pull away, but not before he inhales me.
“Your hair smells nice; raspberry, right?”
I nod.
“But no, that’s not it.” Tristan shakes his head.
“There’s this powerful smell of vanilla and something else,” he adds.
Finally, I give in. I smile and admit that it’s my perfume. Victoria Secret’s Noir Tease.
“Noir Tease? Really? Alice Summer, oh my!” he jokes.
I point to the source of the scent. My wrists. He picks up my hands with his and brings them to his mouth. Carefully, he kisses one wrist and then the other.
/>
“And when did you start wearing perfume?” he asks.
“About a month ago.” I shrug. “It smelled nice. Plus, it comes with this little pump. I hate to admit it, but I feel like a real woman using the little pump to put on perfume.”
“I love it,” he says.
He kisses me on the mouth again, parting my lips with his tongue. At first, the kiss is reserved. Chaste. Nice. But it quickly starts morphing into something else. A fire starts to build somewhere deep within me. I want to rip off his clothes and press his body against mine. Tristan’s breathing quickens. When my hand brushes against his leg, I can tell that he’s getting really excited.
His hands run down my shirt and then go underneath. Flesh to flesh. My breaths speed up along with my heartbeat. With one quick motion, he unfastens my bra and my breasts are freed. His hand brushes along my belly button and then goes up. Higher and higher.
“Wait,” I whisper. He doesn’t stop immediately.
“Wait, wait,” I say louder and pull away.
“What’s wrong?” he asked with a deeply disappointed look on his face.
“Nothing.” I shake my head. “Not a thing. Except that I don’t want to do it here. We’re not in high school anymore. We have our own place.”
I wait for him to get mad, but he just shrugs. Nods.
“Are you sure? How about for old times’ sake?” he asks.
I shake my head no, trying to fit the clasps of my bra back together.
In high school, we used to do it all the time in cars. His car. My car. Our friends’ cars. There were many discreet places where teenagers had sex late at night, in cars. Our high school’s parking lot. Other high schools’ parking lots. Elementary and middle school parking lots. The library parking lot. Empty office buildings’ parking lot.
We’ve spent many hours in empty parking lots. Sometimes with friends. Drinking if one of us was able to score some beer or wine. Sometimes with our significant others.
“Hey do you remember that library parking lot near my house?” Tristan asks.
“Which time?” I ask.
We spent many long evenings there. Unlike the office and the school parking lots, the library was almost never patrolled. It was Tristan’s and mine little secret, too. We didn’t dare share it with any of our friends out of fear that word would get out and our private spot would become public knowledge.
“Hey, remember what happened to Rachel Prince?” he asks.
“How could I forget?” I laugh. “Whenever I think about having sex in a car, I think about her.”
“Really?” he scrunches up his face in disgust. “And how often do you think about having sex in cars?”
“Okay, that came out wrong.” I smile. “You know what I mean.”
Rachel Prince was in our grade and we were all close friends in 11th grade. A cop caught her and her boyfriend at the time having sex in an empty office park. But instead of just letting them go with a warning or giving them a citation, he made them get out of the car and stand next to it completely naked while he looked through their identification. When it was 20 degrees outside!
“At least they were still wearing their shoes,” Tristan jokes.
Rachel’s incident went around school like a scary story intended only for teenagers. Almost everyone, it seemed, stopped messing around for a couple of weeks. Long enough for the shock to wear off and the hormones to kick in, I guess.
“I can’t believe that he actually took them to the station and made them wait there for their parents to pick them up. What an asshole.” Tristan shakes his head.
“At least they got to put their clothes back on,” I say.
“I didn’t give it much thought at the time. But I think what that cop did was probably illegal. I mean, he can’t just make a 16-year-old girl stand naked outside and look at her without breaking some sort of law. Right?”
I have no idea. It does sound like it should be illegal.
“Don’t you think we were lucky?” I ask. “That nothing like that ever happened to us?”
He nods. “Really lucky. We didn’t even have any close calls!”
“Oh my God.” Tristan takes his eyes off the road and turns to me.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh my God, I want to have you right now, Alice. It’s been way too long.”
“Watch the road!” I say turning his face back away from me.
“Are you sure we can’t pull over somewhere? It’ll be fun,” he pleads.
I want him too. I want to kiss again. I want to bury my hands in his hair. Kiss his belly button. And more. But I stay firm.
“No.” I shake my head. “It’s cold. We have two great beds to choose from. And I want to take a shower. Wash Simon and this whole night off me.”
Then I give it another thought. That’s not right. The night has actually ended way better than I’d expected.
“Well, not the whole night,” I add.
“Fine.” He shrugs. “You’re right. It’ll be more special at home.”
44
We are still more than an hour and a half away from home. I try to quench the anticipation building in the pit of my stomach with something fun to think about it. I ask him about his family. I haven’t heard anything about them for a long time. As we start to talk and laugh, I discover that there’s so much that we hadn’t talked about. And it all suddenly floods in.
For instance, Tristan thinks that his little brother, Cayden, is gay. Gay and doesn’t know it.
“How can he not know it?” I ask. “He’s 15! Maybe he’s just not gay.”
“Well, in that case, he’s in denial or something. I’m pretty certain that he is.”
“Maybe he’s just afraid to come out?” I ask.
“Why would he be? He knows that my parents won’t care. They’ll probably be happy!” he says.
“It takes a while to be comfortable in your own skin,” I say. “You have to be patient. I mean, I still can’t come out to most people about being a writer.”
But we don’t just talk about serious things. We also talk about funny, heartfelt things. Like last Christmas.
“Do you remember when you chased me around the house for my candy cane?” I ask.
“No!” he says imperatively. “It wasn’t yours. You got it as a gift, yes, but you hate candy canes! And by the way, who the hell hates candy canes anyway? They’re peppermint and sugar! I know for a fact that you love peppermint tea.”
“That’s not at all the same thing,” I shake my head, smiling. “What’s important is that that was my candy cane. And you just expected me to give it over!”
“Because you weren’t going to eat it!”
“You didn’t know that.”
“Oh yes, I did.” He nods furiously. “I found that stash of candy canes in your closet from the year before. You didn’t eat one! You just kept them all away from people who actually like them. You greedy, greedy girl!”
We crack up laughing. I laugh so hard, my eyes tear up. When he catches his breath, Tristan turns to me.
“I’ve missed you, Alice,” he says as we pull up to our building. He’s planning on returning the rental car tomorrow. After parking, we head straight up to our dorm.
“I’ve missed you, too,” I say in the elevator.
A flood of emotions starts to sweep through my body the higher we climb. If I don’t do something, tears will flow out of my eyes and I won’t be able to stop them. I lean up to Tristan and kiss him.
In the middle of that passionate and explosive kiss, as he tears at my clothes and messes up my hair, I suddenly realize that I don’t need an apology from him over the break up. And I don’t want to think for a second about what this all means. I don’t even want to know if I want him back. I just want to be with him.
We kiss furiously until the elevator beeps and the doors open. We stumble out, almost forgetting our bags inside. At the last minute, Tristan shoves his hand in between the doors to keep it from leaving. Reluctan
tly, the elevator opens.
When we get to our dorm, I head straight to the bathroom.
“Okay, I’m going to hop in the shower and I’ll meet you in your room?” I say.
“Unless you want me to join you?” he winks.
I roll my eyes and shake my head.
* * *
When I get out of the shower, I reapply my makeup just a bit. I brush my hair, flip it over to give it some life, and leave it damp. I look in the mirror. Is this really happening?
“Just breathe,” I say to myself. Suddenly, I wish that I had one of those tattoos on my wrist that says ‘just breathe.’ I’ve made fun of those on many occasions. I mean, when do you really forget to breathe? But at this point, I could use one. A visual reminder to relax. Take a break. Breathe in and out.
My heart beats so hard, it feels like it’s going to jump out of my chest. I knock on his door. No one answers. I knock harder. When he doesn’t answer again, I push it open.
Tristan’s sitting on his bed with his laptop. He barely looks up. He has a despondent look on his face. When he looks up at me, he doesn’t look at me so much as through me. Somewhere far away.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
He shakes his head. But just a little bit. It looks so much like a nod, but different. I wait for him to speak. A minute passes. It feels like a century.
“I...I…lost the money,” he finally says. His voice shakes.
“What money?”
“The money I invested with Dylan’s guy,” he says slowly. There’s a difficulty in each word, it’s as if to say it, he has to move a car singlehandedly from one side of the street to another.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I wrap my arms around him. He doesn’t push me away. Just continues to sit there. Lost in a world that I can’t reach.
“I lost $15,000,” he whispers, burying his head in his hands. “How could I be so stupid?”
“I’m so so sorry.” I embrace him.
I don’t know what to do to make him feel better. I wish there was something, but I feel utterly helpless. Just be here for him, I say to myself. Just sit here and listen.
Auctioned to Him 7: The Contract Page 120
