Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Dalene felt like a new woman.
Her sleep had been dreamless, which was fine. No dream her imagination could conjure would've been better than her reality. She wished she'd woken up sooner to experience the reality of being held by Eliot. She lay still for a moment just to confirm it was real.
It was real.
Eliot had gone. She sat up now and stretched and thought about the moment before he'd left. He'd been looking at her mouth. She'd been looking at his.
There had been a moment where the distance between them was making a suggestion and neither of them had said no yet. She'd wanted a morning kiss. She was still thinking about this when the knock came.
Her heart jumped. He was back. Maybe to get that morning kiss. She decided if Eliot hesitated, she was just going to go for it and kiss him first.
Dalene was across the apartment and at the door before she'd told herself to move, hand on the handle, already composing her face into something that was warm but not too eager, open but not obvious, just a woman answering a door. She threw it open and —
Tristan stood on the landing. Her heart stopped.
The first time Tristan had knocked on her door — introducing himself, moving into his uncle's unit, easy smile and good timing — her heart had done something similar.
It had jumped, then stopped, then started again faster.
This was the same feeling. Minus everything that had made it good.
The organ dropped into her ribcage like a dramatic child throwing a tantrum at unwrapping the wrong toy.
"Hey." Tristan's smile was the sheepish one. She knew all his smiles. This was the one he used when he wanted something and had enough self-awareness to know he was guaranteed to get it. "Can we talk?"
Dalene looked past his shoulder at Eliot's door. Closed. He'd probably headed out to the station by now.
She looked up. The sky above the landing held a cloud formation. The cloud had arranged itself into a shape that was almost cardiac. Two rounded lobes, a tapering point. Not perfect. But there.
At last year's festival, she'd sat on a checkered blanket on the hill.
She and Tristan had lain on their backs looking up at the afternoon sky when she'd grabbed his arm and pointed.
A heart, clear and unmistakable, drifting over the valley.
She'd thought: this is the sign. Four months later he'd sat on her couch and told her he needed closure with someone else.
She watched that cloud now and frowned. As she watched, it pulled apart. The two lobes separated, drifting in different directions, the shape dissolving into nothing at the seam. Just clouds again. Just weather. Just the atmosphere, indifferent to whatever meaning anyone had tried to attach to it.
She looked back at Tristan. He was still standing there. Still with the sheepish smile. Still waiting to be let in.
"I just need five minutes."
She looked at him for a long moment. At the face she had once memorized. At the easy, handsome certainty of a man who had always assumed her door would open when he knocked.
"I don't think that's a good idea," she said.
His smile faltered. "Dalene—"
"Whatever you're going through right now, I'm not the person you should be talking to about it. Go talk to Brooke. Or a friend. Or a therapist. But not me."
"I regret how I left things." He said it quickly, like he'd been holding it and needed to put it down. "Between us. I think we need closure. Proper closure. I don't think we ever really—"
She laughed. "Closure?"
"Dalene—"
"I don't need closure from a man who put a ring on someone else's finger. I got the message; the door to your heart closed to me and opened to someone else."
"I never closed my heart to you."
"Oh? So I misunderstood you moving another woman into your apartment, putting a ring on her finger, and choosing a venue?"
"It's complicated."
"It's not my problem."
"I'm not here to talk about Brooke. I'm here to talk about us."
"There is no us, Tristan."
"I'm trying to be a good friend."
"We're not friends anymore." She said it simply. Not cruelly. Just as a fact that had been true for a while and hadn't been said out loud until now. "That ended when you went on your mission for the one that got away."
"This is because of that weather man Because I have to be honest with you.
" He stepped forward slightly. "I don't think he's good for you.
I know you don't want to hear that, but I'm saying it because I care about you.
He's not going to stay, Dalene. He's just waiting to get his job back and go back to the city and leave.
I heard it from that reporter who's been following him.
He's going to leave and you're going to be standing here—"
"Stop." Dalene looked at Tristan. Really looked, the way she hadn't let herself look in a long time.
At the concern on his face that was real and also convenient.
At the worry that was genuine and also entirely about him.
"I don't want your concern. I don't want your worry.
I don't want your self-serving kindness that shows up at my door when things aren't going well on your side of the landing. "
"Dalene—"
"Eliot is honest with me." She felt the truth of it as she said it, solid and sure.
"He says what he means. He does what he says he'll do.
He cares about how I feel — not about how my feelings make him look, not about whether I'm convenient or available or too much.
He makes me feel safe. And heard. And like I'm not something to be managed. I never had that with you."
Tristan opened his mouth, but she didn't let him continue.
She held up a hand. "Step back."
He frowned. "What?"
"Step back from my door." She reached for the handle. "Because I'm about to give you the closure you came for and I don't want to hit you with it."
He stepped back just in time for her to slam the door in his face.