Chapter 17
Sayingthat dinner is awkward would be like saying that the ocean is big. It would be the understatement of the year. Bennett and I glare at each other every time Tessa isn”t looking. Meanwhile Tracy and Lydia are making an obvious effort to ignore me. Each time I try to get Tracy’s attention she turns her face in the other direction as if I haven”t spoken. I didn”t think it was going to be easy to make up with her, but I didn”t realize that I wouldn”t even be able to speak to her. How am I supposed to apologize if she won”t even look at me, let alone talk to me?
I take the hint and stop trying. I give up on Lydia before I even begin. She is exactly the way Tessa described her, barely more than a ghost. Other than the physical resemblance, I don”t recognize even a sliver of my old friend in her. Her eyes are flat and lifeless. The amount of trauma she has obviously endured has left behind an empty shell. It makes me wonder how someone recovers from what she has lived through. I know it makes me an asshole, but I am grateful that Tessa seems to be less affected than my two childhood friends.
It was easier to not think of them when they were here and I was in Playa, but I”ll admit that I do need to make an effort. We have too many years of friendship behind us to throw it away over stubbornness on both sides. Whatever is going to happen it”s clear to me that it will not happen tonight, but since Tessa and I are moving here, I”ll have the time to figure it out.
Once dinner is over, Tessa and I slowly make our way to the elevator and push the button for the trip back down to the ground floor. It feels like years have passed rather than hours.
Tessa sighs. “Was it just me, or was that one of the most painful meals you”ve ever had in your entire life?”
Between the purposefully stuffy food, which I”m sure was ordered to make me feel out of place, and the stilted conversation, I”ve had dinners with my biological parents that were more comfortable than that one. Not what I tell her though. I”m not sure how much of the tension she picked up on between Bennett and I, but I”m certainly not going to be the one to tell her that he is not as perfect as she seems to think he is.
“It was tense,” I finally agree.
She gives me a side-eye. “Tense? Were we at the same table? Tense is when you ask your professor for an extension on a paper. That was like sitting in on diplomacy between warring nations. I”m not sure which was worse, the daggers you and Benji were shooting each other all night or the way that Tracy was trying to light you on fire with her eyeballs.”
I should”ve suspected she wouldn’t miss anything. She”s a lot more observant than most of us give her credit for, myself included.
“You saw all that did you?” I ask noncommittally. I”m not sure there is a way I can get out from the stain of disliking her precious Bennett, but I”m certainly not going to admit to anything without an abundance of evidence.
Tessa rolls her eyes. “I know you think I see him as perfect, but I am fully aware that he is human.”
I have many faults, one of them is speaking before my mind fully vets the words coming out of my mouth, especially when I’m irritated. “Are you? All I”ve heard about is how amazing he is. So if you are aware that he’s not perfect, do you happen to notice that he’s trying to make me look bad on purpose to get you back?”
She looks like she’s going to argue with me for a moment, then her shoulders droop, and whatever fight she was mustering deflates. “I’m aware. I could also see that you are very nervous that I”m going to believe him over you.”
I shrug, because she”s got me. “Can you blame me? I’ll admit I have a shitty track record with you. I know that I have a lot of work to do to make up for that, and it”s going to take time. I don”t think he”s going to give me that kind of time to make things right with you. While he”s trying to make me look like a moron, and make himself look like the better option how do I move here with you and try and keep building what we have knowing he”s going to keep trying to cut me off at the knees?”
Tessa gives me a sad smile. “On paper, Benji is the better option.”
I can”t argue with her, but that fucking hurts.
She puts her hand against the middle of my chest, her large, brown eyes look up at me imploringly. “I need you to really listen to me right now. Like I said, on paper, he”s the better option. I”m not paper, Ford. Nothing about us has ever made sense, nor will it ever make sense. You”re my stepbrother for fuck’s sake. When we started out, we were on opposite sides of the tracks. Our friends hated each other, and you hated me.”
“I didn”t hate you,” I grumble.
Her eyebrow shoots up defiantly and she gives me a look, that says, “don”t fuck with me.” I chuckle, because there is a lot of attitude in just one expression. “Okay, maybe I seriously disliked you, but I always thought you were hot.”
Again, she rolls her eyes. She doesn”t really need me to tell her that I was attracted to her, because everyone thought she was hot. I think the only person who didn”t think that was Tessa. “Whatever, you didn”t like me, and that only got worse when I forced you to try and get your mother away from my dad.”
It”s my turn to roll my eyes because that didn”t work out at all. “Yeah, we did a great job at that, huh sis?”
She shudders. “I know that”s a joke, but it”s seriously gross. We did not grow up together. I do not in any way, shape, or form see you as any kind of sibling.”
“The family that lays together, stays together,” I tease her further.
She slaps me on the arm. “There is something seriously wrong with you.”
I start laughing, hoist her up until she wraps her legs around my waist, and I spin us around in the small confines of the elevator. It’s silly, but for the first time in ages, there’s nothing between the two of us threatening to tear us apart.
The doors open to the ground floor and an older woman walking a small dog gawks at us like we’re some kind of carnival curiosity. I refuse to let her obvious judgment bring down my good mood, and I continue to joke, much to Tessa’s horror.
“I”m going to marry my sister someday,” I exclaim to the woman.
Tessa buries her face in my neck while the older woman pales in shock. She quickly picks up her tiny dustball of a dog, and dramatically covers its ears.
“Young man those kinds of jokes are not funny,” she stammers.
Tessa peeks back at the lady as I stroll out of the elevator toward the door. She puts her chin on my shoulder. “Sorry about him, Mrs. Wright.”
“Is that you, Tessa? I haven’t seen you around here in a while. Poor Bennett must be so lonely without you. I can”t say I approve of your present company,” she tuts, while sneering at me. I didn”t think I would care very much, but I still don”t like to be compared to Bennett Richards, and found lacking.
“We just had dinner with Benji and the girls. He”s doing fine. Ford’s bad sense of humor aside, I kinda love the big dummy, so I think I”ll keep him,” she says to the old bat.
I move across the lobby as fast as my legs will carry me still holding her. Once we are outside in the damp spring air, I set her on her feet, so I can look her in the face.
“You love me, huh?” I ask her. It isn”t the first or the second time she’s said it, but I do love to hear it.
She turns her head to the side. “You”re going to marry me, huh?” she counters.
I can”t help myself, and I quickly steal a kiss. Not touching her during dinner was agony. “You bet your ass. The first chance I think you”re going to say yes, I”m going to slip a ring on your finger.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Just don”t make it some crazy big rock, and I don”t want a diamond either.”
“Are you just saying that?” He gave her a big diamond. Sure it didn”t seem like her kind of ring, but girls like those, right?
Her cheeks turn a little pink. “I always kind of thought, not that I pictured it a lot, that you would get me a blue one. Like topaz or sapphire.”
“Blue?” I ask, a little confused.
Now her cheeks turn bright red, and I know she”s serious. “It was the color of your football jersey,” she says almost under her breath.
I tip her chin up with my finger to look her in her eyes. “You totally used to check me out when I played football in high school.”
She covers her face with her hands. “Okay, you caught me. What do you want to hear, that before I came to talk to you that day, I had a huge crush on you? That I had ever since our freshman year? Does that make you feel better?”
I take her hand and we continue walking down the street. “Does it make me feel better to know that you have wanted me for the last six years? Is that really a question? Let me put it this way, when I compare the totality of how long you and I have been something to each other, whether it’s as enemies, lovers, or enemies again, the time you spent with Bennett is just a small blip in all of that. So yes, it makes me feel better to know that you wanted me for a lot longer. Just like I”m sure you wouldn”t be upset to know that on the top of my list of girls I was most interested in at school you were always number one. Of course, you were the one I thought was also way out of my league. I”ve never been so glad to be wrong.”
She glances at me out of the corner of her eye and looks adorably confused. I wait for her to say something, but she focuses on something far down the street.
“Out with it, Tessa. We”re not holding things in anymore, remember?”
She exhales forcefully from her nose. “I don”t know how to say this, without you getting irritated.”
I lightly squeeze her hand, hoping it sends a message of reassurance to her. “It”s pretty simple, you open your mouth and force air through your throat to make sounds.”
I can feel her eyes roll without even looking at her. “Yeah, I know how to talk, it”s what I actually— you know what, fine.”
I wince. It”s never good when a woman says, “Fine.”
“This is the second time in a couple of months that a man has talked about wanting to marry me, and now I”m in this weird place of, where are we?”
“You mean like physically or in life?” Yes, I”m being purposely obtuse. I know that I want to get it out there right now. But that”s because I want to lock her down. I want to make sure that she”s mine completely, and no one else can ever take her from me again. She deserves more than that. I know, without a doubt that someday I want to marry her, but I want to ask her when we are in a better place.
She tries to pull her hand free from mine. “Forget it. I didn”t ask anything just forget it.”
Pulling on her hand, I tug her to a stop. “I”m not asking you to marry me yet, but I think of us as more than dating. I have no doubts that you are my other half. My soulmate. Before you, I didn”t even think such a thing existed. I thought it was some cheesy crap that Jen and Shane spout to each other when they”re being disgustingly adorable. But just because I haven”t asked you yet doesn”t mean that you can”t count on the fact that I absolutely am going to ask you, as soon as we are in a place where all of this uncertainty and healing is behind us. Or at least as much of it as we can get behind us.”
Her eyebrows scrunch together, and I can”t stop myself from smoothing out the line with my thumb. “You realize that you said a bunch of words and I still have no idea what that means.”
“Before we broke up in high school, there was something that I had been thinking about a lot. We were too young to get engaged, but I wanted something more than for us to go to college as boyfriend and girlfriend. It just didn”t feel like enough for me. And you”re right, we are in an in-between. We”re not engaged, but we”ve come too far to just say we”re dating.”
I reach into my pocket and pull out the tiny object that no one knows I”ve been carrying around. Earlier I almost had a heart attack, because I thought maybe she had seen it because the center stone is a light blue topaz. I open my hand and show her the delicate band with the small blue stone in the middle. It”s not fancy, because I had less money then than I do now, but I can”t imagine using a different ring. Giving her this one shows her that for me, it has always been her.
“I got this for you a little over two years ago. Before everything went to shit, I was hoping to ask you to go away to college with me, and for us to make sure that when we planned our lives, that we did it together. I know we didn”t make sense then. Nobody would”ve thought to put the princess and the player together, but I can”t picture my life without you, not then, and certainly not now. I know it”s not fancy, but will you accept this ring as my promise to continue to work on our relationship and one day, when the ground beneath our feet is more steady, I”ll drop down to one knee and switch this one for a different one.”
Her brown eyes fill with tears that I know she won”t let fall. “My answer to this question and the one you will ask me one day is always going to be yes. Even when I thought I hated you, my answer would”ve been yes. I guess that means I never really hated you after all.”
I slide the ring on her finger. It might not be a large diamond, but this one fits us a lot better.
“Hate and love are two sides of the same feeling. I’m starting to see that when it comes to us, we are going to have our ups and downs, as long as you are willing to fight for me as hard as you fight with me, we’ll be okay.”
Tessa smiles, shakes her head, and I give her a puzzled look. “What did I say?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. “It’s just that once I thought you would fight with me, but not for me.”
I take that in. “I deserve that. You”ve carried the burden for us for way too long. I will fight for you, I”m going to fight you too. We are never going to have an easy relationship.”
“Who says I want easy? If wanted easy, I wouldn”t be with you,” she teases.
I almost laugh, but I realize she”s not completely joking. “It”s when we stop fighting that there”s a problem. Love, hate, anger, we can deal with that. It”s apathy and indifference that we need to prevent. That”s the death of a relationship.”
Her eyes are laughing at me, and she shakes her head. “I can honestly say I have never been indifferent to you. You piss me off too often for that.”
“Just trying to make sure to keep the love alive, babe.”
She closes her eyes and a shiver goes through her. “You are being such an idiot right now. Why is it making me hot?”
I pull my phone out of my pocket and quickly call up the app to order a car. “I say, don”t fight it. Just go with what makes you feel good.” I wink at her.