A police officer came over to talk to them both, and they gave all the details they remembered from the accident. Tessa's face still looked too pale, but the sooner they got this over with, the sooner he could get her home. A tow truck arrived and prepared to haul both vehicles off of the road. Logan came over, the top button of his shirt undone and blood on his hands and arms. "I got a ticket. Can you believe that?"
The Logan who had cared for all of those people tirelessly and confidently was gone, and in his place was the entitled person Henry was used to.
"You ran a red light."
"Because you were texting," Tessa added.
Logan looked down at the offending phone again when it beeped. "It was yellow when I entered the intersection."
It hadn't been. Henry had seen the whole thing happen, but didn't want to argue. "Let me give you both a ride home," Henry said, exhaustion hitting him all at once. His car still sat in the middle of the road, and now that the police officers were leaving, he needed to move it.
"I've got a buddy picking me up," Logan replied absently while typing something into his phone. "Could you take Tessa home? I've got to get straight over to the hospital."
"But you're all bloody," Tessa said.
Logan looked down at himself as if realizing for the first time how much blood he had on him. "I'll shower and change at the hospital."
Henry stood and Tessa followed, still holding on to his arm for balance. Logan finally seemed to notice how ill she appeared and stepped closer. He raised his arm as if to wrap it around her waist, but she recoiled. Logan looked as shocked as if she'd slapped him.
"I'll call you when I get off shift," Logan said to Tessa, but looked at Henry, a clear reminder that even though Henry was holding Tessa close and driving her home, she was dating Logan.
Message received, loud and clear.
Chapter 37
Tessa rested her head against the window of Henry's car and watched the trees and bushes at the curb fly past her window. She wished her humiliation at being so useless could fly by as quickly. Even now that she was almost home, she still felt light-headed when she recalled the scene of the accident.
Henry's hand squeezed hers where it rested in her lap. He had placed his hand over hers after he started driving, and she hadn't pulled away. Instead she grasped the warmth and comfort he offered. Waiting for her at home was more homework for a degree she was increasingly worried about her competence in. When she'd left for the night, there had been three messages about the road show and another from Jenkins wanting to go on a double date with her and Logan.
Her apartment complex came into sight.
"I'm not ready to go home," she said.
Henry's fingers twitched over hers like she'd startled him by speaking. "Where would you like to go?"
"I don't know," she whispered. Henry had already told Chelsea, who was apparently the love of his life, that he couldn't go to the movies because he had too much work to do. She couldn't ask him to blow everything off because she wasn't ready to face real life. "Never mind. I shouldn't have said anything."
He glanced over at her, worry evident in the lines near his eyes. He drove past her apartment complex, and she made a protest sound in the back of her throat.
"You need to eat something," he said.
"Henry. You have things to do tonight. I'll be okay."
He didn't respond, but a tiny smile curled up the side of his mouth. A shadow of stubble grew across his cheeks and chin. Most days his facial hair was a lot shaggier, except for Sundays when he appeared clean-shaven.
"How often do you shave?" she asked, regretting the words the moment they came out of her mouth. His responding laughter was warm and smooth like honey.
"Depends. If I let this go I'll have a full beard in about a week." His grin was wide like he was highly amused. "I always shave on Sunday mornings. Otherwise it's just when I remember or if it gets too itchy."
They pulled up to Beyond Bread, a local bakery Tessa loved, and went inside. Henry insisted that Tessa order something despite her churning stomach, so she got a bowl of chicken noodle soup with bread, while he ordered a piece of strawberry cheesecake and an oatmeal raisin cookie.
"Dessert is not dessert without chocolate," she teased him when they sat at their table.
"Chocolate is overrated."
She rested her chin in her hands. "You’re even stranger than I thought."
"How strange did you think I was?" He leaned closer.
"You ate a bug the first day I met you."
They levelled challenging stares at each other until Henry broke down and laughed. "If I could relive that moment, I totally would. The look on your faces. Ava almost killed me when I told her."
Tessa fought her laughter for as long as she could, which was only a few seconds. "You can change the hair and clothes, but you can't change the guy inside."
"Would you want to?" Henry stuck his fork into the cheesecake, studiously focusing on it and not her.
"Not even a little bit," she replied. He smiled so quickly that she would have missed it if she hadn't been looking at his mouth.
Which she was doing more often than she should.
She blew on her soup and took the first bite, glad they'd come here. It took eating most of the soup before her stomach settled. They talked about nothing important, but it added up to a lot of somethings while they laughed over stupid stuff they'd done as kids, or the fact that Henry had belonged to the stock market club, while Tessa had been active in choir and a student body class representative.
After they finished their meal, they walked next door to the bookstore. Henry led her to a nook in the art section where a couple of leather chairs sat. "This is one of my favorite places to come and read or think.”
"Admit it. This is the famous Henry make-out spot.” Tessa waggled her eyebrows.
Henry's neck flushed, but he grinned. "You got me. Speaking, of, I think I need to practice that kissing scene from the play again, make sure I get it right."
"Ha ha." Her heart sped up despite herself. She picked up the book sitting on her leather chair and smacked Henry in the arm with it. "You stay in your chair, I'll stay in mine, and no one gets hurt."
They sat in silence for a few comfortable minutes, watching as the occasional person walked past their nook on the way to other sections. The art section garnered very little interest. She glanced down at the book in her lap, the one she'd hit Henry with. Satanic Rituals Visualized. The red and orange hued cover depicted an unclothed woman being sacrificed on an altar by a demon. "Ugh!" She threw the book on the floor and kicked it away.
"Just noticed that?" Henry said with a smirk.
"You let me hold that in my lap for like five minutes and didn't say anything?"
"I thought you might be interested in that kind of art."
"Oh, you thought that, right?" She shook her head but had to laugh. She laughed with Henry more than she did with anyone else. Her entire life, every planned piece of it, was falling apart, and she could sit in a bookstore with Henry with a stupid grin on her face. All of her problems, though still there and very real, didn't seem quite as important right then.
"How are you feeling?" Henry asked. "You look a lot better. Not as pale."
She stared down at her hands. "I'm okay." She hoped he'd drop it, but of course he didn't.
"What happened back there?" He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his legs. "You said the fainting thing wasn't from the accident. Was it from being sick for the past week?"
She thought about lying. She could tell him it was because she had been sick, or because she hadn't eaten her dinner. All those things contributed to her fainting. But it wasn't the whole reason, and it was getting more and more difficult to hide it from everyone.
"Seeingbloodmakesmesick," she squeezed out in one breath.
Henry's eyebrows scrunched together in an adorable way. "Excuse me?"
She exhaled then repeated her humiliating words. "Seeing
blood makes me sick. Like light-headed, sometimes I faint, sick."
It was the first time she'd ever admitted it out loud to anyone. She'd known that blood made her queasy from the time she was in high school. One of her cast mates fell into the open orchestra pit and hit his head on a music stand. He'd been okay overall, but had required thirteen stitches and the blood stains never did come out of the carpet. Everyone had assumed she'd fainted because she'd seen the whole thing and it had been scary, but she knew it was the blood. She thought she'd grow out of it in college, and for sure while in med school, but even hearing her family or Logan talk about medical procedures was enough to make her see black sparks in her vision.
He ingested her confession slowly, finally coming to the conclusion she knew he would eventually reach. "But you want to be a doctor."
"It's complicated."
"What's complicated? You want to be a doctor, right?"
She buried her face in her hands. "I don't want my parents to be disappointed in me. I don't want Jenkins to be right about me. I don't want to be the black sheep."
After a moment, his hands came around her wrists as he pulled her hands away from her face. He'd dragged his chair right beside hers. "I'm hearing a lot about what you don't want, but nothing about what you do."
"Wanting is a luxury," she said, hating how bitter she sounded. Tessa knew she had a great life. Her parents loved her and she wanted to prove she could meet their high expectations. She was going to a great school on a scholarship. Even if she lost it for poor grades that semester, her parents had enough money in her college savings fund to cover several more years of school. She loved the gospel. She had great friends. Yet, she felt trapped.
Trapped by her family's hopes and Jenkins' perceptions of her. Trapped by her sham of a relationship with Logan and the future she'd constructed for herself as a doctor. And trapped when she looked in the mirror and saw the same face every day, one that people said was pretty, but she couldn't ever look past the weight she wanted to lose, the way her nose rounded at the end, or a million other little flaws she picked herself apart for every day.
It was exhausting trying to be who everyone else wanted her to be. And still it was never good enough.
Henry's voice broke into her thoughts. "What if money and time and family didn't matter and you could do anything. What would it be?"
She shifted in her seat. "I can't even imagine--"
"Try it. For fun."
She let out a breath and tried to think of something she'd love to do. "It would be great to travel around with Broadway, but I don't have the talent or looks for that—"
"Qualifications are not a part of dreaming." His arm brushed hers when he leaned closer, sending a jolt across her skin. "Besides, you're gorgeous, so that wouldn't keep you from the stage."
Her cheeks warmed, giving away what his words had meant to her. "Fine. Broadway. Or off-Broadway, maybe. Some kind of production." She paused, imagining herself on the stage. Or behind the scenes, in the rush and energy of helping put on an amazing show. "But, that would be difficult with a family. I want children more than anything else."
Another truth she'd never spoken out loud before. She would have to wait until after medical school and her residency before getting married and having children. Two at most, one if she was smart. That would be almost eight years from now. An ache filled her at the idea of waiting so long to start her own family Did she want to spend that many years alone with the bodies that made her nearly pass out when she thought about doing any sort of procedure on them?
"What else?" Henry prompted her.
"Drama," she said. "I'd love to teach drama. Doing this road show has reminded me of how much I loved being on stage in high school. For my senior project I wrote and directed a play. It was one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done."
"I'd have loved to see it."
She looked at him quickly, expecting to see a mocking glint in his eye, but he was sincere.
"It was awful," she said. "The plot meandered, I had these crazy multiple page monologues on the meaning of life when I had no life experience to back up my prose. Plus the entire third act was ripped off from the book of Helaman."
Henry’s laugh came from deep in his stomach and washed over her like a warm shower. "Okay. I seriously want to see that."
“Not happening.”
"So do it," he said, surprising her.
"Do what?"
"Be a drama teacher. Get married. Have kids."
She sat back in the chair, deflated. "I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because of all the reasons I've already said.” Frustration filled her up. "I know you don't understand because you have this amazingly supportive, laid back dad and you and Ava are super close, but my family would flip out."
"So, they flip out." Henry shrugged like her family realizing they’d been right about her being a screw-up all along wasn't the worst thing in the world. "They're not living your life. You are." He reached over and took her hand, a casual, friendly movement that took her breath away. "And at some point, you need to figure out what kind of life you want to live."
Chapter 38
Tessa wrote down the results from her testing in the Chemistry lab. Usually this was her favorite class, which wasn't saying much since she dreaded every class she went to. At least in the Chem lab, there wasn't any chance she'd come across a picture or diagram of a severed body part.
But what in the world was she doing?
Henry's words had been ringing through her thoughts for days. He'd asked her what she wanted like it was so easy for her to separate her wants when they went against each other. She wanted to make her family proud. She wanted them to believe in her.
She wanted out of this major.
What kind of life do I want to live? The question sat in the forefront of her mind at every moment: while in class, while hanging out with Addison and Layla, while trying to sleep at night. Being friends with Henry had been killer on her ability to fall asleep. If she wasn't obsessing about their kiss, she was thinking about everything he'd asked her last Friday night.
It had been five days and she'd been praying for answers, waiting to hear something. One thought continued to plague her: If I keep doing what I'm doing, will I be happy?
She wasn't even happy now and didn't know if staying on this path would make any difference. When she pinpointed the moments that made her happy, it was doing the road show, watching the kids play in the day care, hanging out with Henry.
Never this, and an entire future of things like this made her want to stop walking, lie down in the corner, and wait for life to pass her by. That wasn't living.
Maybe she’d finally found her answer. And it wasn’t in this room.
She took her half-finished worksheet up to the T.A. and left the lab. Lightness spread over her when she walked into the sunlight. Like she was doing the right thing for herself for the first time in a while. There was something else she needed to do before she lost her nerve.
She brought up Logan's number on her phone. He answered after a couple of rings. His voice was warm and familiar and as gorgeous as he was, and she found herself wavering before she'd even begun. "I'm at work, but I have a few minutes," he said by way of hello. "I haven't seen you since Friday. Does your head still hurt?"
She steeled up all of the resolve she had, knowing this conversation would be easy compared to the one she was going to have to have with her parents. And Jenkins. If she could convince her mom and dad not to tell him, maybe he'd never have to know she dropped out of pre-med. She'd invest in various colored scrubs and try to stomach watching one of those medical dramas on television so she could steal horror stories to tell. Jenkins always loved a good horror story.
“Tessa? You there?” Logan asked.
"I want to break up with you." She cringed after she spoke, but didn't say anything else. The silence on the other line was heavy.
"What?" he said.
She d
idn't know if she could say it a second time. Panic raced through her at what she was doing. She was Tessa Alexander. Pathetic girl who had never dated a guy for longer than a few months, who managed to go on a ton of first and second dates but rarely more, who had snagged the most sought after guy in the ward by some marvelous miracle. What was she thinking?
She wouldn’t be happy with Logan. Not with his winking and flirting and kissing other girls and texting every spare moment they were together. Not with the long, stretched silences between them because they had nothing to say, and how he reminded her of her bother.
She took a deep breath and her heartbeat slowed to a normal pace. "I tried to be okay with what happened with Dawn. But I’m not.”
The silence on his end was long and heavy. She continued. "I’ll give you back all of your gifts.”
He let out a frustrated growl. “I don’t want my gifts back, Tessa.”
She had to hold tight to her resolve. “I’m sorry, Logan. I like you. But I don't love you. And you don't love me."
"Some people can't fall in love in a few months," he said. "This isn't a fairytale."
"I'm not looking for a fairy tale." No, she wanted something real and deep with someone she trusted completely.
“Is there anything I can say to convince you?”
“No.”
"This is because of Henry, isn't it?"
She stopped walking, startled. “Of course not.” Maybe in a roundabout way, because of the questions he’d made her ask herself, but not in the way Logan implied. “Why would you say that?”
He let out a short, humorless laugh. "The flirting. The phone calls and texts and practices and the wedding. Even cutting his hair. It's clear he's in love with you."
She made a choking noise he must have interpreted as an assent to his claim.
"Henry's a loser. We both know this. He studies bugs. He's going to make maybe sixty thousand a year, if he's lucky. I'll make ten times that that my first year out."
"This isn't about money," she said, her anger rising. "And Henry is not a loser!"
One Little Kiss (Christian Romance) Page 20
