Chapter 18
Jesse
I have to admit that I didn’t mind one bit when Alex practically threw me out once I’d finished helping him clean up the lunch dishes, all the while fending off his ongoing barrage of questions about every last detail he’d felt like I’d left out of my account of last night and this morning.
Not that I’d really minded, or that I hadn’t loved my time watching and laughing and snapping pictures with him and Ellie as the twins stumbled around in the snow, or the cozy, family-feeling comfort of lunch with them afterwards.
Even so, not for one solid minute did thoughts of Tristan leave my mind.
Now, despite the fact that my right leg is stiff and starting to get that bone-deep ache no amount of half-hearted PT seems to be able to rid me of, probably from the cold and all the standing around in Alex’s yard, I pick up my pace, walking as briskly as the deep, now slightly sloppy snow will allow.
True to most Seattle snowstorms, the freeze is already lifting.
Instead of the dry bite of cold from earlier this morning, the air feels cool and damp, like the weather’s remembered suddenly that the year’s supposed to be moving on toward spring.
The roads are worse than ever now, slushy and marked with uncertain tire tracks packed down to wet, slick ice, but at this rate, they’ll be clear by tomorrow.
Which means someone will probably be able to come out to fix Tristan’s heater.
It’s totally selfish, but I can’t help the small punch of disappointment that thought brings.
Nor can I help hoping that Tristan being able to return to his apartment doesn’t have to mean the end of things between us. I can’t deny that, by some baffling miracle, he wants me. How and why, I have no clue, and yet, I’ve been forced to accept it.
Beyond that though, Jesus, maybe it’s stupid and ridiculous, but I’m starting to let myself hope (maybe even believe) that I’m not the only one feeling the possibility blooming between the two of us.
It’s probably only wishful thinking, and most likely all just in my head, but I can’t seem to stop myself from thinking it isn’t.
One thing that most definitely isn’t just in my head though was his clear and undeniable invitation this morning.
I’ve gotten thoroughly ahead of myself by the time I reach the steps to my apartment.
Nerves at last pushed aside, I’m sunk deeply into a fantasy of doing precisely what Tristan had said, of picking things up exactly where we left off before I had to go.
And not just that; more. Maybe more than I’m ready for yet, but everything I want with him, so badly that I can hardly see straight.
I’m mentally peeling him out of his clothes to let my hands roam his hot, firm, smooth skin as he shifts and squirms under my touch, arching up from the mattress to grind against me, when the sight of footprints—not just my heavy boot marks, but the smaller, lighter track of what looks like sneakers—leading away from the base of my stairs, dumps a metaphorical bucket of ice water over the scene.
It’s not like Tristan can’t leave my apartment, or that his doing that means anything remotely fatal about the situation.
My knee-jerk reaction of foreboding is nothing more than my own insecurities and I damn well know it.
Besides, there, next to and crisscrossing the departing step marks are the same shoe prints heading back up the stairs.
The uncalled for tightening of disappointment in my chest eases enough for me to mentally laugh at myself for the paranoid pessimist that I am.
However long I’m lucky enough to have it, I have a feeling Tristan’s particular brand of sunshine and virtually irresistible temptation to give in and let go are precisely what I need.
I’m struggling to keep my thoughts from drifting back into the tug of war of nerves and completely distracting fantasies sufficiently to be able to stay functional enough to make sure we really are on the same page (at least in the short term) when I push through the door.
Only belatedly do I wonder if I should knock, which might have been weird, considering it’s my apartment, so maybe it’s best I—
There’s no sign of him.
A few lights are on, the heater’s humming softly in the background, but the space is empty.
And because I’m me, my first thought is naturally dismal.
He’s left after all. Realized there’s no way in hell someone like him should give a second though to someone like me when he could have any man he wants with just a twitch of that damn one-dimpled smile of his.
He’s changed his mind, plain and simple.
So much for optimism, apparently…
And then I catch sight of a folded piece of paper resting on my surprisingly clear looking counter. The word Sunshine is scrawled across it in handwriting so perky and smooth and Tristan that I can’t help thinking I’d know it was his even if that weren’t the only possibility.
Just reading that word in Tristan’s half-cursive script is enough to send a warm flicker of excitement through my chest. And not just because I’m guessing he wouldn’t call me that if the note were about how he’s come to his senses and won’t be coming back.
Goddammit, Alex is right. There’s something about this man that’s gone straight to my heart.
The quick once-over my eyes can’t help making of the note as I unfold it gives me enough to calm my stubbornly persistent pessimistic thoughts so that I can slow down and actually read what he’s said.
For such a short note, the grin it sends spreading across my face is probably ridiculous, and yet, I can’t help it.
Like the idiot I am, I brush my finger over the pair of x’s, not even trying to dampen down the absurd delight I’m feeling or the slightly nervous rush of heated anticipation that pulls tight in my middle at his reminder of our morning in my bed.
If I want to pick back up with him where we left off is definitely not the question. But am I ready?
In the light of day, after talking with Alex and my attempt at thinking things through on my walks to and from his house, I’ve somewhat come to terms with the fact that a majority of my reluctance to jump into anything physical with Tristan has less to do with my (still very real) need to be sure that he’ll be open about communicating his needs and boundaries, and more to do with my own complicated feelings about what it would mean for me to start something new with someone.
Since Stephen died, without anyone to make me want to break out of my reluctance to try a new relationship, I haven’t felt any motivation to do anything about it.
Hadn’t felt.
Because, in one short week, Tristan’s changed everything.
Motivation is now decidedly not the problem.
Apprehension and a panicked impulse to protect myself from heartbreak? Most definitely.
Guilt? In overwhelming measure. Worse than I’d ever imagined it would be.
Because I can’t hide from the glaring reality that I’ve never wanted anyone as badly as I want Tristan. And, probably the worst contributor to the sick knot in my stomach, I can’t deny to myself that that includes Stephen.
Alex and Stephen were roommates the year the three of us were freshman. I met Alex in a psych class where the two of us were assigned to be partners on a project, and he introduced me to Stephen.
For the rest of that year and the next, the three of us were inseparable. In a completely platonic way. At least, I thought so.
Alex was straight, there was no question about that, and, though Stephen and I were both out and unattached, I never thought about him any differently than I did about Alex.
At least not until the night at the end of our sophomore year that Alex talked us both into sneaking up onto the roof of our dorm building and getting obscenely drunk.
My memories of that night are extremely fuzzy.
One thing I do vividly recall is, around midnight, Alex, wrapped in not one but two of the three blankets we’d carried up to the rooftop, stumbling off toward the door to the maintenance stairs to go get some sleep.
That and the way he’d shot us a grinning thumbs up just before letting the door fall shut, leaving Stephen and me alone under the starry May sky.
As far as I remember, nothing more than some fumbling, sloppy kisses happened that night.
The next morning, after I was able to get my head to stop spinning long enough to string two semi-coherent thoughts together, I was ready to chalk those kisses up as the result of the quarter of a bottle of rum each of us had consumed and hopefully laugh the whole thing off.
The look on Stephen’s face though when I’d literally crashed into him later that afternoon on my way out of my dorm room made it instantly clear that laughing the event off was most definitely not an option.
He had these enormous brown eyes that always seemed to announce exactly what he was thinking, and when he looked up at me, there’d been no way not to tell that, whether it had started out as the result of too much cheap rum or not, whatever had happened between us the night before had not just been some drunk one-off for him.
I feel like an absolute asshole for admitting it, even in my own head, but it was far more the fact that no one had ever looked at me like that—with all that nervous hope and cautious excitement—than any true feelings I had for him that made me lean in and kiss him there in that dingy hallway.
That and the fact that I just absolutely could not stand to disappoint him.
He was Stephen though. He was my best friend, and that made everything so comfortable and sweet and easy that it didn’t matter that things between us always felt like just that to me. Comfortable and sweet and easy.
The familiar surge of guilt rises in my chest, strong and strangling and, for a moment, nearly unbearable.
Because if I had only just done what I should have and told him from the beginning that he deserved someone who returned his feelings fully, wouldn’t he still be alive today?
If I’d just had the courage to tell him that we weren’t right together, no matter how much it hurt us both, he would never have been in the car with me that night.
I never could though, because I was too selfish.
And I did love him. I loved him so much that, for four years, it had made up for the fact that I think I always knew I was never in love with him.
Made up for it enough that together, we’d laid out plans.
A future and a family that I knew I wanted and could gladly share with him.
When I lost him, I never thought I could want those things again.
Now though?
For the first time, I don’t just want to try to move forward with my life. I want to do it.
Rationally, I know I’ve been growing toward this for the last couple years.
Even so, I can’t get over the feeling that Tristan is the unequivocal tipping point.
That, without his one-dimpled smiles and teasing and barely hidden vulnerability, I could have continued to dance around this moment forever.