Chapter 11 Broken Dreams
brOKEN DREAMS
We lay in a tangled mess of blankets and clothes in the tree house. Tristan lay on his back, blowing the gray smoke from the joint into the fading light of solar lights. Harold’s car was parked in the driveway, so Dar wouldn’t care if I screwed the entire city. She got what she wanted.
“Did he hurt you?”
I took the joint. “No. It was stupid. I shouldn’t have gone with him.”
“Did you sleep with him?”
I hadn’t told Tristan about what I did with Austin.
It didn’t feel like it had been real. “No. I gave him a hand job, then puked on him.” I chewed on my bottom lip, afraid to ask the next question.
The one I had never asked. “Did you sleep with that girl?” I remembered the way he looked when I caught him.
I remembered how my voice broke when I told him I hated him and never wanted to see him again.
I remember Anna dragging me away. But I didn’t remember where Tristan went after.
“No. I went to Shannon’s that night.”
“Oh.” So these past two weeks had been for what? His hand up her shirt. “I thought you… I mean… I was stupid.” I had let Anna talk me into all of what she believed Tristan had done that night. I let her lies become my reality.
“No, love. I was.” He ran a busted knuckle across my cheek. “I thought I could do it without you. But I couldn’t. I’m sorry.” He pressed his broken mouth to mine.
When he pulled away, his dark hair had fallen over his eyes.
I traced the bruise that had started to form on his jaw.
Then over his bottom lip. Across the sharp edge of his cheekbones.
Then his brow. What would he look like in his twenties, then his thirties?
Would he still be so broken? Beautiful? Would he still be mine?
“I’ve already forgiven you.” I kissed him again.
Tristan pulled away, brushing the hair from my shoulder. “Did you really puke on him?”
“Yeah.” I hung my head. Austin’s hands on my breast made me ill.
I thought a hand job would be easy. But the smell of him—his skin, his cologne, all of it—made me nauseous.
I had tried to warn Austin, but he held my hand in place as he finished so I puked on him. He laughed and blamed it on the vodka.
Tristan kissed the top of my head. “Well, since you haven’t thrown up on me, I will take that as a compliment.” He lifted my chin. “Ev. Are we okay? Can we move on from that night?”
I nodded. I was tired of reliving that night. Plus, I had something more important to talk about. “Yes. But I have something else to tell you.”
“Just a minute.” Tristan took another drag. “Does it involve you giving anyone else a hand job?”
“No. I got accepted to the U of M.”
“Ev, that’s amazing. I knew you would.”
“That’s not it. There’s no money. Darcy spent it.
All my savings is gone.” I wanted him to tell me it would be okay.
That he had a backup plan, a way for us to still be together.
To still get that apartment with cream walls and pancakes on Saturdays.
Board games and scented candles. An apartment filled with our life.
Tristan sat up, taking the last drag of the joint before crushing it out. I watched his ribs expand with each breath. His summer tan had started to fade.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“For what?”
“For… I don’t know. But we can still do this, right? I mean, I’ll work more this summer. Maybe get a second job. I’ll get financial aid. It’ll be fine. We can still do this, right?” The words were tumbling out of my mouth faster than I could think them.
“Ev.”
“No.” I could see his words forming. Two words. Two words I didn’t want to hear. “Tristan, you promised.”
He looked down, running his hand through his hair. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. I’ll get the money. I’ll make my mother pay me back. She can ask old money bags Harold.” I took his hands in mine. “Please.”
“It’s not the money. I can’t leave Noah or my mom. I’m sorry.”
I pulled away from him, the tears burning my eyes and throat. “What about us?”
He closed his eyes and turned away from me.
He hated tears, and I hated crying them.
But my heart was breaking more than when I saw him with the girl.
Because then I knew he would come back to me.
She couldn’t compete with us, with our history.
I was the only one Tristan could be broken around.
And he was the only one who knew how I hated my father for leaving me.
He was the one who held my hair back when I vomited all over my black dress the day of the funeral.
He held me while I screamed. He was the one who took my mother’s and aunt’s hateful words for me not being at the funeral. He was my world.
“What do you want from me, Ev? He’s my brother. There is still hope for him.”
“And you? What about you? When is enough enough?”
“Never!” he shouted at me. “He’s ten. He wets the bed when I’m gone. He had a nervous breakdown the other night when I didn’t come home. I can’t leave him.”
“He has a fucking mother. One that should protect her children. She can leave, Tristan. She can take Noah and leave.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is. She’s a grown fucking woman.
I hate your father for what he does. But I hate your mother more.
She’s not the victim. You are.” I said the words he hated.
I spat them out and watched as they hit Tristan.
I watched him inhale them. I wanted him to hurt like he was hurting me.
Bruises fade, broken bones heal, but a broken heart never mends.
Tristan put on his shirt and then his pants. “I wish you the best of luck in whatever it is you do.”
“You’re leaving?”
“You are making me choose.”
“You’re leaving. That’s it? You’re leaving?”
“Yes.” He wasn’t my Tristan anymore. He wasn’t beautiful and broken. He was cruel and ugly.
“I hate you.”
“You were always meant to.” Tristan ducked his head and left.
I had let Tristan become my world. But I was not his.