Starbright (The Starbright Series) (34 page)

             
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 m
ore
of a sit back and let it come to you kind of guy,” she finished with a certain amount of hatred in her voice s
he 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 w
ith 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 si
lent, 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
A
ngel 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 wou
ld melt into that future.
I wouldn’t be able to ha
ve 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 opportun
ity 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…. more 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 n
ever fought. E
ver. 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 wer
e 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
H
eaven 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 sound
ing 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 o
ur 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 han
d 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.