Chapter 32
TRISTAN
“Right. Turn right.”
I grip Katie’s calves with my hands. “Simmer down, you fucking menace. I won’t make it down the steps to the dock. The lawn will do.”
I turn right off the path for the catering building. Katie rests her chin on my shoulder.
“Thanks for carrying me,” she muses. Her breath ruffles my hair, as warm as the wind dancing over the property and rustling the trees.
It’s a perfect June night. The humidity has broken, but it’s still seventy degrees. In an hour we’ll need a sweatshirt, but right now, Crownhaven feels nearly enchanted.
And I’m carrying her home. Not that random guy from earlier.
“Always.” I squeeze her leg.
We duck into the catering building. I grab one of the reusable bottles that Alexis keeps filled.
“Water is boring, Tristan.”
“Quiet in the peanut gallery.”
“We should get champagne.”
I let her slide down. She sways briefly on her feet. Her eyes are hazy and her smile is permanent. She’s practically glowing, even under the harsh overhead lighting.
“Who are you and what have you done with Katie?”
“I’m fun now,” she whispers, like she’s telling me a secret, like this side of her is just for me. “So we should get champagne.” She grins. “Steal champagne,” she amends. “Come on, Tristan, please.”
I raise a brow, feeling like I’m already full of champagne. Champagne in my blood and rushing through my head. Making me want to do her bidding, to extend this night forever.
“Stealing from myself? You dirty little freak.”
She laughs, a breathless, full-belly sound that makes her lean weakly against the counter. I take the champagne in hopes that I’ll hear it again tonight.
We stumble along the path. Me, because I’m trying to keep her upright, her because she’s hammered.
“One glass,” I say, when we finally land in the grass.
“Two.” She spreads her arms wide and gazes up at the sky. “Look at this,” she breathes.
I lie next to her, head on the lush lawn. It’s slightly damp and thick enough to cradle us. Above is just dark sky and diamond-bright stars. No clouds. No buildings in our periphery.
Katie Bailey and me at the end of the world.
Without meaning to, my hand finds hers.
“What am I looking for?”
“Meteor shower,” she whispers, nearly reverent.
I want to tease her, but something in her tone makes me stop. “Is this why you cut the date off early tonight?”
“Just serendipity. Now close your eyes.” She reaches over, presumably to help me close them, but her drunken aim is terrible, and she pokes me in the cheek.
I bat her hand away.
“Tristan,” she hisses. “You’ll see better if you leave them closed for a full minute. I know that must seem impossible to you.”
I chuckle, because I don’t meditate or relax. Hell, I barely sleep. And she knows. I close my eyes and squeeze her fingers. She squeezes back.
I thought one minute would feel like forever, but it’s not nearly long enough when her hand is in mine.
“Open.”
We suck in air at the same time. Those pinpricks of light are somehow glowing. The Milky Way is an endless, colorful carpet twisting across the sky.
“Told you,” she whispers.
A meteor flickers, its tail a line of cold fire through the night.
“Tristan,” she gasps.
“I saw it.”
“Let’s toast.”
I raise the bottle in the air. “To meteors.” I uncork it with a soft, practiced pop that I muffle with my hand.
We swallow our first cold mouthfuls and grin at each other. Hers is wobbly and happy, and when she gestures for the bottle, I shake my head.
“You don’t need more of this.”
She rolls her eyes. “I never get to do this. I feel great.”
Something throbs in my chest. She never gets to do this, and whose fault is that? Should I have recognized that she needed more fun, more beauty, sooner?
I pass her the bottle. She takes another big mouthful and grins, her cheeks puffed with champagne.
“To getting out of my shell,” she says after she swallows.
I don’t really think of her as having a shell, but she does. Another throb. “You did great.”
“I did, didn’t I?” She flops back in the grass. I stay, arms looped around my knees, watching over her. “I can’t believe it, Tristan. I made small talk for forty-five minutes. I got his number.” She laughs wildly. “I asked for a guy’s number. You know I’ve never done that before?”
“Never?” I shoot her a surprised glance.
“Never,” she exclaims. “I just sort of fell into my prior relationships. I never did the choosing. I was so grateful that someone wanted to be with me, and god, it’s so embarrassing.
It’s like there’s this little girl inside me who can’t forget that once, she wasn’t picked, so she wants to do everything in her power to make sure it never happens again. ”
My heart is a wild thing in my chest. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to let myself feel the depth of emotion that Katie is feeling, and I don’t think I can be a balm to this wound.
“You deserve to do the choosing,” I say thickly. You deserve the world.
She snorts. “I mean, yeah, but have you met me? I’m pretty fucking weird.”
“I like you weird.”
She flicks me in the leg. “I know, and I channeled that tonight. I told myself to just be how I am around you.” Her smile is hazy.
It stuns me that she’s smiling after all this.
These pieces of her past are painful revelations for me, but for her they’re mere facts of life and it makes me want to scream.
“I’m glad,” I say. It comes out strangled. I am glad, dammit. I want everything for this girl. I want her to be brave enough to wish on every shooting star we see tonight, and I want to will every single wish into existence.
The universe grants us another meteor, with a flaming tail, and she sighs happily.
“I didn’t realize dating was so hard for you,” I say finally.
“You can’t even imagine struggling with this, can you?”
I shake my head. Being the fun one has always come naturally to me.
“It’s always been hard. I always figured girls learned boy skills at sleepovers. Or sororities. That they would endlessly dissect men in group texts. Like they do on TV.”
The breath catches in my chest.
“And you didn’t…do those things?”
She snorts. “Hell no, I didn’t do those things.
I was so odd as a kid, Tristan. I mean, I was homeschooled when I couldn’t join partway through the school year.
I was always the new kid, always this quiet tomboy who had weird skills and didn’t really know how to fit in.
David bought me like, the worst clothes.
Forget hair and makeup. I always figured girls learned those from their moms or something. ”
The unspoken words hang in the air. And I didn’t have one of those.
Even my shitty mom was better than the empty hole in Katie’s life.
“It didn’t even matter tonight.” She spreads her arms, a half smile spreading into something glorious across her face.
“I did it. The cute outfit and a cute guy and I didn’t even second-guess myself when I was talking.
And he liked me. After all that.” Her nose wrinkles.
“I actually don’t think I care that he liked me. I just wanted to do it for myself.”
My chest feels heavy.
“I like you.”
She laughs. “I know, Tristan. I like you too.”
Her words make something tumble inside me. She means as a friend, and I do too.
But I can’t stop wondering what would happen if we tried for more.