Chapter 3 The Writing Class #9
She doesn’t know. She’s clueless. But her blue eyes are smoldering with intensity as she looks up into my face.
“Why are you so jealous?”
I let out a grunt that’s more like a scoff. “I’m not jealous. I don’t have anything to be jealous of, Tessa. Do I?”
That question mark is the tip of a blade, and I know she feels the sharp edge of it.
“I can’t believe you would say such a thing,” she whispers. “You’re being so… so—”
“Proprietorial?” I offer.
Her eyebrows lower into an icy frown. “Yes. And I wouldn’t be like that about you with your friends.”
“This is different. This is ‘one-on-one time’ with a guy who wants to—” I back up, finishing that sentence a different way. “A guy who likes you as more than a friend.”
“So? Even if he does, that doesn’t mean I like him back that way. I don’t. You of all people should know that. I shouldn’t have to prove it twenty-four seven.”
I gently take her arm. “Tessa, I never said—”
“You don’t own me, Wes.” She jerks her arm out of my grasp, and that one little gesture hits me like a kick in the gut. “I really think you should go.”
With that final word, she spins on her heel and marches back to the table to sit across from Grayson. My blood boils, pressure building in my veins until I can’t take it anymore.
I want to punch someone. Him.
But instead, I thrust open the door of the coffee shop and charge down Main Street, passing my pickup truck—don’t care. The boxing gym is only two blocks away, and I could use the cold bite of fresh air after that suffocating coffee shop.
It kills me to walk away, to leave Tessa there with that guy. All alone. Laughing at his stupid literary jokes.
Part of me wants to turn around, go back.
But she asked me to leave. She told me to leave.
She wanted me to leave.
Bruiser won’t be at the gym yet, but I’ve earned the responsibility of carrying a spare key. It burns in my hand all the way there, and when I reach the entrance door, I let myself in. Lock it behind me. Turn on the lights, then the radio, volume full blast on some ’90s rock station.
I don’t care that I’m wearing jeans and street shoes. I set myself up in front of a heavy bag and start punching, punching, punching.
I punch until my hands bleed.
TESSA
Whenever I show up at my mom’s apartment with grocery bags of ingredients and start making a mess of her kitchen, she always knows something has happened to set me off.
She says the magnitude of the mess is a good indicator of how stressed I am.
When baking calmly, I tidy as I go—sweeping up flour spills and washing dishes between uses.
But tonight, I’m chaotic. Mixing bowls, wooden spoons, and measuring spoons crowd every inch of counter space, surrounding me in disorder.
I guess that means I’m pretty high on the “stressed” end of the baking spectrum. But it’s not my fault. It’s Weston’s. He’s the one who started this whole miserable muddle.
“Don’t you think he was overreacting?” I ask Mom when she appears in the kitchen to show me an outfit option for her date with a work “friend” tonight—a gray turtleneck sweater and jeans with black boots.
“I mean, he acted like I was doing something wrong with Grayson—something… inappropriate. I don’t even know what he thought. He was so weird about it.”
Mom sighs, gesturing towards her outfit. “Help?”
“Uh, do you have a black sweater? I think that would go better with the boots. Oh, and a houndstooth blazer on top would look cute.”
Mom grunts. “I don’t have fancy stuff like that, Tessa.”
I shrug, turning back to my chocolate chip cookie dough as Mom disappears to search for a black sweater.
“Did you hear what I said about Weston?” I holler after her.
“Yeah,” comes her muffled reply from the bedroom.
“And do you think I’m right?”
“I don’t know.”
I huff, swiping a handful of chocolate chips and tossing them into my mouth. Stress baking also includes stress binging on sugar, which is possibly not the healthiest way to expel negative emotions, but oh well.
“I just don’t understand why Weston is so possessive of me all the time,” I grumble, irritably stirring the cookie dough. “I didn’t invite him to the coffee shop today because I wanted him to be all grumpy and alpha male towards Grayson.”
“Alpha male?” Mom echoes, appearing in the kitchen doorway with a scrunched-up expression. “Is that some literary term?”
“No, it’s just… like when a guy is all competitive towards another guy, trying to be the dominant one. You know? It smacks of patriarchal pontification.” I swipe a bite of cookie dough from the bowl. Mmm, perfection.
“Pontification?” Mom chuckles, shaking her head at me. “I think it’s kind of sweet that Weston wants to protect you all the time. Be your number one.”
“He is my number one, but I don’t need protection from Grayson. He’s harmless.” I look her up and down. “I like that sweater. Looks much better with the boots.”
“You think so? Doesn’t make me look fat?”
“Oh my god, Mom. Stop.” I pop another bite of cookie dough into my mouth. “I’m the one who’s going to be fat if Weston keeps stressing me into baking cookies all the time.”
Mom kisses my cheek, tugging at the waistband of my sweats. “I can lend you some stretchy pants.”
I grunt a wry laugh, kissing her back. “I’m gonna need them. Have fun on your date.”
“Thanks. I shouldn’t be gone too long, but feel free to stay the night. And feel free to have Wes come over and keep you company.” She winks at me in a way that makes me think “keep you company” is a euphemism for something else. “He can stay the night too, if he wants.”
“Mom!”
“I’m just joking, sweetie.” She whacks my arm playfully, grabbing her purse on her way to the door. “But seriously, you should invite him. Talk it out, make things right. You’ll feel better.”
“He’s still working,” I say, pointing at the clock, which reads five minutes to seven. “And I’m sure he’ll be exhausted and hungry after his class finishes up.”
“Even more of a reason to feed him cookies and give him kisses and a sensual massage.” She bites back a grin. “I’m telling you, that is the best way to a man’s heart.”
“And I suppose that’s not at all patriarchal.”
Mom shakes her head, grabbing her car keys. “It’s what alpha women do.”
I laugh and blow her one last kiss goodbye. Once she leaves and I’m alone in the silent apartment, I have time to ruminate on everything in a new light.
Maybe Mom is right. Maybe I’m the one who overreacted in the café earlier.
I did, after all, drag Weston there with me—I didn’t want him to feel left out, like I was prioritizing Grayson over him.
I also wanted him to see proof with his own eyes that my relationship with Grayson is purely platonic.
Perhaps it was unfair of me to invite Weston to come and then ask him to leave—perhaps I handled the whole thing badly.
The silence wears away at my conscience until finally, when the cookies are done and I’ve eaten way too many of them, I pick up my phone and send Weston a text.
Tessa:
Hey
I’m alone at my mom’s place if you want to come over
I’d like to see you
It’s only a few minutes after eight, which means his last class is just wrapping up. I wait on tenterhooks for his reply, the possibility that he might say no, I’m too tired making me anxious enough to devour another cookie.
Moments later, my phone buzzes with a new message.
Weston:
I want to see you too
I’m going to shower first then I’ll come over
That good?
I write back, Sounds good. A little while later, he’s walking through the front door with messy damp hair and a bunch of pink carnations in his hands.
“Oh, Wes!” I fall on him with kisses, breathing in the sinfully good scent of him freshly showered; all lean muscle under the softness of his hoodie. “I’m sorry about earlier,” I whisper against his chest, holding him tight.
He kisses the top of my head. “I’m sorry too.”
“I baked you cookies.”
“I brought you flowers.”
I laugh, easing back to look up into his face. “I guess we both have different ways of relieving our stress.”
Weston’s grin is a crooked but adorable thing. “Well, buying flowers isn’t much stress relief. I had to go punch things for three hours first.” He holds up his bruised, blistered knuckles.
I click my tongue, breath catching when I see his poor, abused hands. The irony of it all strikes me as funny. “So you go split your knuckles open training like a beast… and meanwhile I gain ten pounds eating cookies.”
Weston murmurs a husky laugh, sliding his free hand around my waist. “Ten extra pounds of you to cuddle with? Sounds good to me.”
“Oh, stop.” I blush, taking the flowers over to the kitchen to fetch a jar of water. Weston shadows me, snatching a cookie off the cooling tray on his way over.
“Bruiser was surprised to see me already sweating like a pig when he showed up for our first class.”
I unwrap the carnations from their plastic sleeve and begin snipping them to the proper height. “I’m… sorry I made you angry. About Grayson.”
“You didn’t make me angry, Tessa. You never make me angry.”
“Well, you seemed so…” I shrug, searching for the right word. “Annoyed. When you left.”
Weston remains silent for a moment, leaning back against the counter as he watches me trim the carnations and arrange them in the mason jar.
“I wasn’t annoyed with you,” he says at last. “I was just… I was annoyed because I saw something I was afraid I’d see.”
I cast him a questioning frown over my shoulder. “And what was that?”
“Grayson,” he bites out the name, “looking at you like he wanted to…” He pauses, starting a different way. “Like if I wasn’t there, if I didn’t exist, he’d be taking the next step by this point.”
“The next step?” I repeat, on the edge of a laugh. “And what is that next step?” The question is borderline rhetorical, but Weston answers it honestly, straight-faced.
“Kissing you. Making out with you. Getting his hands on you—alone, preferably in his dorm room.”
“Oh my god, stop. That’s not how he thinks about me.”