Chapter 22 Nocturne #2
If I hurry, I can be there in five minutes.
I can't say why I’m so worked up, but I am. I run red lights, I blow through stop signs, I drive too fast, but I get there. Seven minutes have passed since Tristan hung up the phone.
I hear them yelling as I rush up the walkway and leap over the steps. I pound on the door.
From inside Connor shouts, “Did you fucking call him?”
“You were just at his house acting like a psycho. I didn’t need to call him. Fuck.” Tristan’s voice is coming closer, and he pulls open the door. He’s in his underwear. My point in mentioning that is if he were dressed, I would yank him out of the house right now.
“Get out, Archer. You’ve got no business here.”
I look over at my brother who just spoke.
Two lamps are on in the living room, so I can see his face better now.
His dark hair is a quarter of an inch long, if that.
His eyes are heavily rimmed in black liner, and some of it is smeared on his temple.
He glares at me from across the room. He’s standing in front of the kitchen in a wide, defensive stance.
I move when Tristan does, staying close to him.
“He's worried about you.” Tristan says to my brother.
“You don't even know him. After everything I've told you, and all the shit he's done? How could you? He hates me!”
“Nobody hates anybody, okay? Let's take this down a notch and be rational,” Tristan says.
Tears erupt from my brother’s eyes, and he swipes at them, smearing his make-up even more, making him look more unhinged than ever. “You've been lying to me for—for forever.”
“You had no right to read my journals. Why would you do that?”
“You were gone for two nights in a row. You lied to me about where you went, you've been lying over and over again. Do you know what that feels like?”
“I didn't want to add anything to your—to what you've been dealing with. I was trying to be considerate—”
“By lying?”
“I thought I was doing the right thing—for all of us.”
“For him,” Connor spits out with pure disgust. “You know what?
You fucking deserve each other. I thought he wasn't good enough for you, but I was wrong. You’re perfect for each other.
Neither one of you has the first fucking clue about love, or friendship or anything.
Why don't you both go ride off into your beautiful sunset and stay the fuck away from me. I'm done.”
“Connor—”
“Fuck you, Tristan, get out of my house.”
Now Tristan looks like he might start crying.
His body has a fine tremor from head to toe.
He’s vibrating. I rest my hand on the small of his back, and his body presses into it.
I feel like an interloper, seeing things I have no business seeing.
The inner-workings of their friendship has always been a mystery to me, and now it’s turning itself inside out before my eyes.
I want to look away, but I can’t. I’m in it now.
Tristan tries again. “Connor, I'm sorry. I should have told you—”
“I don't want to hear it!” he screams. “GET OUT!”
Tristan jumps at the sudden volume and menace in my brother’s voice. “Fine.” He stalks across the living room and disappears into a hall.
I step toward my unraveling brother, but I maintain a healthy distance. “Don’t do this, Connor. He’s your best friend. He—”
“You think you're winning? You haven't won. He’ll hate you for this. Maybe even more than I do.”
“I'm not the one he's running from.”
“You will be,” he says, his hard gaze pushing into mine.
“Archer?” Tristan asks from the hallway.
“Mark my words, brother. He'll run.”
That clown in It has nothing on my brother right now, but I’ve reached my horror quota for the night, so I turn to leave with Tristan.
He has clothes and shoes on, a backpack slung over his shoulder, and a face wet with tears, but he’s ready to go.
I’ve never been so grateful to see him wearing pants.
I don’t waste another second. I hold out my hand for his. He crosses the room and takes it, casting a final glance at Connor on the way out. It’s anyone’s guess what he sees when he looks back, but I feel him shudder.
He finally wipes away the rest of his tears when I turn onto my street and sniffs loudly. An oppressive silence descends, and I reach over to take his hand.
He allows it, gripping mine tightly. “Sorry about that.”
“Whatever that was, hopefully he’ll sleep it off.”
“Yeah,” Tristan says, but it sounds more like he’s trying to shut me up than agree with me.
“I can take you back in the morning,” I offer.
“No. No. Fuck him. I am so fucking tired. It didn’t have to be like this, but he went there, and so here we are. He made his bed. I’m done.”
That’s hard to believe. I turn into my driveway and shut off the car. Tristan lets go of my hand, and we both get out.
“You want a drink?” I ask as we come in through the kitchen door.
He takes my keys from me and tosses them onto the table. The too loud sound startles me, but Tristan has hold of me now, his hands moving up my arms to my shoulders and eventually grasping my face. He pulls me in for a kiss. “No. I want you to remind me why I chose you.”
During the first seven days Tristan stays with me, he mostly acts like nothing ever happened. Like he never had a friend, and even if he had, I never knew him. Is it unsettling? A little. Am I mad about the fact that he’s entirely focused on us? Fuck no.
For two people who rarely saw each other and spent years apart, we slide into a live-in relationship without blinking.
He more or less glues himself to me, and I don’t mind it.
For as much as I’m not a huge fan of being alone, Tristan’s never been alone, and from what I’ve gathered about his relationship with my brother, they were highly codependent.
He apologizes when he sometimes follows me from the living room to the kitchen for no reason, but he doesn’t apologize for climbing into the shower with me for very specific reasons.
I understand he’s got a lot on his mind, and so do I, so the arrangement works and keeps us both distracted.
I learn every inch of his body, and he seems just as obsessed with mine.
We’re each other’s riptides, each of us caught up in the fast moving current of the other’s needs and desires.
It’s an obsession. An addiction. I remain utterly fixated. Consumed by him.
It’s one of those things I can’t believe is happening to me.
All that lust and wanting and motherfucking yearning I did for him for so long was worth it because he is the perfect person for me in bed and out of it.
Or I just like him so much that I wouldn’t change a thing about him, and I’m adapting accordingly.
We have a fight on the eighth day. It’s the day after he decides to reach out to Connor.
After several hours of my brother not answering or returning any of Tristan’s texts or calls, he throws his phone onto the hardwood floor in the bedroom, then stomps on it until the screen shatters, and it’s useless.
The next day I buy him a new one when I’m on my way to grab the deposit from the bar. When I give it to him that night, he’s pissed. He says if he wanted a new phone he could buy one himself, and I need to mind my own fucking business.
When he says it, I stand there in the kitchen with the phone in my hand, stunned speechless.
“What?” he snaps at me. “What’s that look for?”
“I just wanted you to have a phone.” I’m still holding it out to him like an idiot.
He snatches it from my hand and puts it on the counter. “Now I do. Happy?”
“No.”
He sighs. “Archer, listen.”
I shake my head. “No, it’s okay. I get it. Mind my own fucking business.”
He grabs the front of my shirt as I take a step back. He manages to keep me in place, stepping up to me until we’re toe to toe. I make myself meet his eyes.
“That was an overreaction,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’m trying not to let this turn me into an asshole. Don’t let me be an asshole.”
When I don’t say anything, he leans in to kiss my cheek. “Don’t shut down on me. Please. I’m sorry.”
I close my eyes at the feel of his soft lips on my skin. “It’s okay.”
“I never told you this because I was scared of what you’d do if you knew, but I’m not actually perfect,” he says.
“I don’t need you to be perfect.”
“Are you sure?”
I nod.
“Then what do you need me to be?” The words are sexy, maybe meant to distract me.
Here is what I want to say. I need him to be here. I only want him with me, and whatever it takes to keep him here, I want to do that.
His body fits itself to mine, and his other hand slides around my waist. I put my arms around him, too. Hugging him comes naturally to me now in the way that I can’t keep myself from doing it, despite any amount of uncertainty or doubt. I say, “Don’t let me fuck this up.”
“You’re not. That was me. Can I be so honest with you?”
“Yeah,” I say even as my gut twists with a painful amount of anxiety.
“I’m hanging on by a thread with this Connor thing. I don’t want to be anywhere near him, but I’m scared of what he might do if I’m not.”
“Why don’t you go check on him?”
“I don’t feel like you were listening to the first thing I said.”
“Can I be honest, too, and you won’t hate me?”
“I’ll never hate you,” he says.
I don’t believe that for a second, but I say what I need to say anyway. “I’m more afraid of you leaving than whatever he’s planning.”
“Goddamn, Archer, I’m not going anywhere. Why would that make me hate you?”
“I’m not sure what you think you signed up for with me, but it couldn’t have been this,” I admit.
“I’m down for whatever.”
“That can’t be—”
“No, no. You’re right. I want you to fall in love with me. I want you to need me. I want you to tell me all the things you thought you could never tell anyone, and I want to be worth the wait.”
“What if I wasn’t?” I ask. “What if I’m not?”
“We’re just getting started. Give me a minute, okay?”
“Tristan—this isn’t all on you.”
He snorts.
I frown and pull my face away to look at him.
“What?” he asks. “You think I don’t know whose mess this is?
Who’s gonna have to be the one to clean it up?
That’s why I called him. I need us to move on.
He’s had time to process the fact that I’m with you, and I’m not fucking going anywhere, and now we need to get past it.
I’m the one who lied. I’m the one who snuck around.
You were just over here telling me shit I should have already known.
It’s my fault it came out at the worst possible time. ”
“Hey, no.” I smooth my hand over his hair. “You’re not the only one who can’t let this go.”
He closes his eyes. “That’s nice to hear.”
“Timing,” I say.
“I mean, I won’t lie—if you could have run into me in May, that would’ve worked out a lot better for all involved, I think.”
“Why do you think the anniversary got to him so bad this year?”
“I’m not sure it’s just that,” he says. “I think there’s something else. Like—in his head.”
“If you need to go, you can go. If you promise to come back.”
He shakes his head. “That’s not what I need.” His lips meet mine. I open for him. His tongue plays against mine a moment before he seals our mouths firmly together.
What he needs becomes obvious as his cock hardens on mine.