Starbright (The Starbright Series) (38 page)

             
“Nevermind, I’m being a douche,” he ran a hand over his shaved head and glanced around the hallway impatiently. “I better find Bree before Piper takes all the credit for
tonight’s
planning.” He stalked down the hallway with my wide eyes watching after him.

             
“I’m sorry,” I sighed, leaning against Seth. I felt exhausted by Tristan. There were way too many emotions flooding my consciousness to make sense of and I hated that irritation and confusion seemed to overpower all the others. “I don’t know what his problem is.”

             
“I think I can guess,” Seth mumbled before his eyes softened back into their natural friendly gold. “But anyway, are you Ok with all this? I mean going on a date and having your friends think we are together?”

             
“Sure, I mean, they were going to come up wi
th their own assumptions anyway,” I replied lightly, and then I ignored the twisting in the pit of my stomach that shouted I was anything but Ok with this. I needed to be. I wanted to be…. but, well, this just wasn’t supposed to be how things worked out. High school was supposed to be mine. Destiny and fate and supernatural callings and all that other weird crap was supposed to happen later…. much later.

             
“Stella?” Seth said my name softly, reverently and when I turned to face him it was like my entire being tuned into him. He stared down at me with the softest, gentlest expression, the hard lines of his face at extreme odds with the tender
tilt of his eyes. My breath caught in my throat and I nodded in response because I couldn’t find words to answer. “We are just friends,” he promised, sincerity coating each word. “I know that this is weird…. this whole future between us. But we are just friends until there’s more and right now there just hasn’t been enough time for more to develop. Don’t let me freak you out, we do this in your time, nobody is pressuring you into anything, especially me.” He lifted his fingers to brush against my jaw, his rough, calloused skin against the soft, feminine skin of my face and I swallowed to fortify myself.

             
“Thank you,” I whispered, feeling relief wash over me. I should have promised him I didn’t feel pressure, or that it wasn’t him that was freaking me out but the unknown part of our future relationship, but I couldn’t bring myself to utter those words. And if I was honest with myself, truly honest, part of my nervousness
was
Seth, his presence, his nearness, the way he stirred feelings and emotions that didn’t even make sense to me yet.

             
Yep, he definitely freaked me out.

             
Except for right now.

             
Because right now he was saying exactly what I needed to hear and in the hottest way possible.

             
There were worse fates to have to come to terms with.

             
“Ok,” I smiled brighter, forcing myself back to confidence. “We better go home and tell Jupiter that there’s been a change of plans. Do you think we can somehow convince him there is an attack on the city and they need our help?”

             
“Probably not,” Seth laughed. “But we can for sure blame it on your friends and the fact that we have to keep our cover up.”

             
“I better let you do the talking,” I agreed, already nervous.

             
“Probably a good idea.”

----

             
I was still cringing in the dressing room as I struggled to reach the zipper of the floor length red ball gown Piper had insisted I try on. Jupiter had not been happy that Seth and I were blowing off what in his mind was the training that would determine the entire future of the human race for dress shopping and bad chain-restaurant food. He had made us promise to double up sessions tomorrow, which drained my entire Saturday of anything fun and replaced it with sword movement repetitions and strength training.

             
Ugh strength training.

             
I flexed my
velvety
arms in the dressing room mirror and swallowed back the yelp of horror. Way too much muscle definition. It was one thing to be toned and fit. It was another thing entirely to look like I belonged in a body builder competition, wearing a skimpy bikini and a gallon of baby oil.

             
Or was that too vain?

             
“Let’s see it Stel!” Piper called from the other side of the door
. I took one more minute to adjust the long sleeve, blood red velvet number she had demanded I tr
y
on. The sleeves swallowed my hands, opening up at the end in extra fabric that reminded me of something a witch would wear. The too big dress had enough fabric to spread out in a long train behind me and the color completely washed out my complexion.

             
I tromped out to the hallway, trying to suppress my laughter. Piper stood waiting for me, impatiently tapping her foot. She looked as equally ridiculous as I did in a white, chiffon
ruffled di
saster. The tight bodice fit
her awkwardly and ma
de
her look like she had the chest of a little boy, while the ruffles tumbl
ed
in messy, gaudy waves from her waist to the floor
and
gave her the hips of a
woman
who
could claim giving birth to
at least twelve children.

             
“Are those feathers?” I burst into laughter at the realization Piper looked like a partially plucked chicken.

             
She gave me a stern
glare
and then burst into her own hysterical giggles. “You look like Valentine’s Day threw up on you!” she wheezed, clutching at her stomach.

             
“I’m not coming out there if you two are just going to laugh at me!” Bree hollered from behind the fitting room door. “I already feel ridiculous enough!”

             
“We promise not to laugh,” Piper
swore stoically. She swatted my hand away as I tried to pull on one of her shredded, dilapidated feathers, poking out from where her belly button might be.

             
A fore
shadowing
giggle escaped Piper as Bree opened the slatted wood door and stepped tenuously through the narrow doorway. Piper and I held our breath for three whole seconds before exploding in laughter, tears streaming from the corners of our eyes. We leaned on each other for support, sucking oxygen in through laughter that had become completely silent as it racked our bodies in hysteria.

             
Bree stood before us in a vintage, as in eighties,
Pepto-B
ismo
l pink taffeta gown, the sleeves ballooning into giant puffs that sat unevenly on her shoulder blades, the sweetheart neckline, dipping crassly into her cleavage, the skirt swallowed her body in folds of wrinkled fabric and the apron of lace both seemed to domesticate the outfit and tie the whole awful look together. Under her wounded scowl
,
Piper and I tried to pull ourselves together, but then she turned to get a better look at herself in the three fold mirror and her gigantic skirt swooped around and whipped Piper in the side. Piper took an exaggerated side step and we dissolved into more laughter, this time with Bree taking part.

             
“This was such a terrible idea,” Bree whined when we had come back to ourselves and the sales clerk ha
d stopped to check on us twice, not understanding our sense of humor.

             
“Sometimes you get lucky
and find something amazing
,” Piper defended her thrift-store idea, although she was still laughing so neither Bree nor I took her seriously. Suddenly she stood up straight and cocked her head to the side examining us all over again. “This could work….”

             
“What could work?” I asked, feeling the flare of panic at the look in Piper’s eyes.

             
“This,” she gestured to the three of us. “We could splash black pain
t
over all of the dresses and then wear like
corsages
with dead flowers in them as like a statement against the greeting-card holiday that defines the awfulness that is Valentine’s Day.” Piper proclaimed, growing passionate at the end of a speech that fell on Bree’s deaf ears and my vain ones.

             
“Absolutely not!” Bree shrieked, immediately trying to rip off her dress before Piper could pull out some hidden black paint to splash it on her. “Go right ahead and protest consumerism all you want, but
I
want to look pretty!”

             
“Are you saying Piper wouldn’t look pretty
covered in
black paint, carrying dead flowers?” I gasped. “For the record, Pi, I think you look gorgeous in any color of death.”

             
“I’m not worried about what will look good on Piper! I’m trying to get Tristan to notice
me
!
” Bree lectured and I suddenly had to quell the unfurling of a very angry, desperate beast that seemed to take hold of my insides. I clutched against my stomach that was determined to make me sick. A darkness settled
on my shoulders
, one that refused to let Bree claim what belonged to me, what I could never have but wanted ferociously anyway. I
swallowed against the
hole in my chest, the pit dug out by irrational jealousy. Tristan wasn’t mine. Could never be mine.

             
“Well, he’ll definitely notice you in that,” Piper gave her a suggestive look and
we all burst into laughter
. And just like that I found myself again.

             
“Ladies, what is going on here?” the sales attendant poked her head in for the third time and we knew our time was up. We offered apologetic smiles and ducked back into our
separate
fitting rooms to change back into the clothes we came in and the clothes we were thankfully leaving in.

             
Two hours later, shopping bags stored in the
t
runk of Piper’s parents Durango, we met back up with the guys at a city based pizza chain. We had
ridden
together into the city, since Piper’s SUV had three rows of seating and was big enough to hold us all, but we had dropped the guys off
at an arcade to kill the time while we shopped. When we met back up at the restaurant all of them looked a little worse for wear and definitely on edge, even Lincoln.

             
We ordered at the counter, the boys respectfully paying, even Seth, and then went to the back to find a table big enough to fit us all. Unlike at our designate
d lunch table, where we sat
definitively segregated, we mingled together here so we could sit by our dates. I was thankful the petty immaturity of Mead did not follow us into our Friday night.
So we sat boy, girl, boy, girl around a large circular table.

             
“Did you ladies get your dresses picked out?” Tristan asked, breaking what had turned into an uncomfortable silence.

             
“Yes,” Piper sighed, sounding sorely disappointed.

             
“Do you not like yours?” Lincoln asked quietly, picking up on her tone. She leaned into him, making him squirm just a little before he relaxed too and put his arm around her.

             
“No, I like it, I mean…. I’m definitely going to look hot,” she bragged and I hid my smile behind my napkin. “It’s just I had this great idea
for
really sticking it to Valentine’s Day, but they didn’t want anything to do with it.” She pursed her lips and shot both Bree and I a look promising her future wrath.

             
I giggled.

             
“Piper, we loved your idea, seriously, it’s just that
personally, I
don’t have anything against Valentine’s Day,” Bree explained, giving Tristan a look that made me thankful I hadn’t eaten yet.

             
Tristan pretended not to notice.

             
I giggled again.

             
He elbowed me in the ribs discretely.

             
“I thought you wanted to go to the dance?” Lincoln asked Piper in a quiet, shy voice.

             
She let out a long, exasperated sigh before admitting, “I’m a complicated woman.”

             
“That’s an understatement,” I laughed. She shot me another warning glare before tipping her head up to Lincoln and whispering something reassuring before kissing him.

             
The rest of us averted our eyes as she made it clear to Lincoln just how excited she was to go to the dance.
A little making out in front of your friends was Ok, but Piper was officially taking things into a situation where it was entirely and not at all annoyingly appropriate to yell “Get a room!”