4. Tristian #2
I wanted to say yes. The instinct that rose in me was territorial. The word was on the tip of my tongue. But it wasn’t true. I liked her, that was a fact I was trying to come to terms with, but we’d met all of twice. I barely knew her. So I shook my head. “Just a friend.”
“Right.” He looked to Ingrid. “Well, your friend is a good artist.” Then tipped her a wink.
She shifted, looking uncomfortable. My grip on the gun tightened until my knuckles turned white. I clenched my jaw, hoping the guy would just shut his mouth before I had to shut it for him.
Friend.
Sure.
That was the story for now. But every cell in my body fucking disagreed.
I finished the outline and color in a tense twenty minutes.
“Come back in four to six weeks for the touch-up, and you should be all set,” I said, my voice clipped.
The man nodded, dropped a hefty tip on my desk, probably to make up for the sudden discomfort his questioning had brought, and left.
Ingrid had drifted off during the session. When I looked over, she was flipping through my personal sketchbook. The one nobody touched. The pages I only opened on the dark days.
She sensed me watching and glanced up. Color touched her cheeks.
“You drew all of these?” she asked.
“…I did.”
I expected her to recoil. My sketchbook was filled with twisted lines, coils of barbed wire, destruction, frenzied faces…
But instead she said, “They’re beautiful.”
I froze. “You… like them?” I asked, my voice dropping.
She nodded. “Do you give any a meaning behind them?”
“Any great artist should…” But I didn’t particularly think of myself as a good artist.
“Can I try one?” My brows pulled together. She immediately panicked. “I—I mean giving it a meaning. Not… getting one tattooed on me.”
Right, because a sweet thing like her couldn’t be possibly talking about getting one of my tattoos drawn on her delicate skin… The thought of my hands holding her jittery body still lingered longer than I wanted it to.
I swallowed. Her doe eyes waited for permission to dissect my soul.
“Go for it.”
Her gaze settled on the shattered clock. She took a breath, steadying herself.
“It doesn’t look like time broke it all at once,” she said quietly. “It cracked slowly. Little fractures at first… then bigger ones. Until the pieces left couldn’t hold anything together anymore.”
Her voice softened into something almost reverent.
“And the harder you try to fix it, the more the clock breaks, the longer you’re stuck in time. But the pieces still matter. You can’t put them back where they were, but… they’re still here… still yours.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. I felt exposed. Naked. Confused and angry all at once. Nobody had ever understood a damn thing about me and she’d just walked straight through the front door of my trauma.
It was too much.
I stood abruptly.
“We’re leaving soon,” I said, voice low and tight. “Get your things.”
Her expression cracked. Hurt flickered across her face.
“I-I didn’t mean to upset you…”
“You didn’t,” I said, quick and rough.
But I stepped back anyway, putting distance between us before she could look at me the way she looked at that drawing. Before she peeled me open again.
I grabbed my keys, shrugged into my jacket. Ingrid hesitated, unsure whether she should take my hoodie off or put her coat over it. I gave her a small nod. She layered the coat on top.
Then we stepped through the door, out into the night, cool air and a sky streaked low down with the fleeing sunlight. I walked her to my Mercedes in silence, opening the passenger door and watching her climb in before I rounded the hood.
I drove toward her house, remembering the route from before, and like last time, I pushed on the accelerator, shrinking the drive down from thirty minutes to fifteen.
Neither of us spoke.
Her silence was anxious.
Mine was… dangerous.
Halfway down the last turn, her phone rang. She jolted like she’d been slapped, fumbling it out of her pocket.
“Oh, Dios mío.”
She glanced to me. “I-I’d better answer this.” And she swallowed, pressing the green button to accept the call, then placing it against her ear with a trembling hand.
“H-hello, Papa—”
The voice on the other end was loud enough for me to hear. “Where are you?”
I watched her start rubbing her pant leg anxiously. My hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“I-I’m on my way home—”
A flurry of Spanish came through the speaker.
I didn’t understand the language, but I knew the tone of a man losing his temper.
A man losing control, used to obedience.
Ingrid’s father was seething. She winced, distractedly rubbing her leg faster and faster.
Instinctively, I reached over and covered her hand with mine, stopping the frantic movement. She stared at our joined hands, then forward, swallowing hard.
She stammered a response.
He shouted again, louder, and the only word I caught was casa—was he angry she wasn’t home?—before the line went dead.
Ingrid sighed shakily, sliding the phone into her pocket. I wanted to ask if she was OK, but she looked like she was trying to keep it together. I didn’t want to be the reason the dam broke. I just kept stroking her hand, offering the only comfort I could.
When we pulled up to her house, she turned to me.
“Thank you,” she whispered, reaching for the door handle.
I tugged her hand gently, stopping her just for a moment. I wanted to stop her completely, having heard what I just had, but I couldn’t do that. It wasn’t my right to—not yet.
“If you need anything at all, you have my number. OK?”
Ingrid nodded. She stepped out, thanked me again, and closed the door.
I idled there, watching her walk up the path and unlock the door.
Every fucking instinct in my body screamed not to let her go in there alone.
Knowing what was waiting for her inside made my blood boil. As I drove away, my hands gripped the wheel until my knuckles cracked.
Her sad eyes stayed with me all the way home.
And they didn’t fade.