CHAPTER 9
The next morning, Tristan is awoken by a splash of cold water nearly drowning him in his bed. He jerked awake and took a deep breath before he opened his eyes to who he already knew was standing above him.
“Jordan what the fuck?!”
Tristan begrudgingly pushed himself off the bed slowly, allowing the expected wave of nausea and the pounding of a roaring headache to wash over him.
“You know you had to literally crawl up the stairs last night to get to bed,” Jordan said with a chuckle, which made Tristan cringe because he didn’t remember that at all.
He remembered everything up until he was pushed into the cab to finally leave the party with his teammates, but then it all went blank.
“I didn’t mean to drink like that,” Tristan’s voice came out in a broken hush.
“Yeah, you never do,” Jordan replied flatly.
“I need to call Tessa,” he said, searching for his phone.
His mind was on her immediately, and he remembered their heated miscommunication last night that resulted in her letting another guy give her a ride home.
“I’m such an asshole,” he mumbled to himself when he finally found his phone and scrolled through his messages, not seeing anything new from her.
He sat confused for a moment before remembering that she never messaged him that she was home safe, and also didn’t answer any of his twenty phone calls, but then instantly was relieved once he remembered being able to get a hold of Amber who had assured him that Tessa was home with her and simply did not want to speak to him yet.
“What happened?” Jordan asked, having not being around for their altercation.
“I don’t know man. One second I was asking her to come to the party with me and she said no, and then the next she’s suddenly yelling at me about playing beer pong at the exact party she said she didn’t want to go to.”
“Damn Trist. Oldest trick in the book. You better start paying more attention.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know, like when your girlfriend says ‘no it’s totally fine, go out with your friends’, but really it's a test to see if you will turn down your friends to stay with her. Katie did that to me once. She acted like she didn’t care if I went out to the bar or to dinner with her parents and I chose the bar because she said she didn’t care, and she didn’t talk to me for like a week. ”
Tristan sat in silence for a moment contemplating Jordan’s words of experience.
“I don’t know, it didn’t feel like that. And I don’t think she’d do that either. That just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Trist women don’t make any sense.”
Tristan chuckled and nodded his head slowly in agreement.
“Well hopefully she slept it off because I told her I’d take her to breakfast, and I really want to see her.”
“Just tread lightly,” Jordan said, giving Tristan’s shoulder a supportive squeeze, “she might still be all emotional or whatever it is they do with their ovaries.”
Tristan laughed again as Jordan left their bedroom to head downstairs. With a small amount of nerves and a very large amount of the hangover shakes, Tristan called Tessa and waited anxiously while it rang a full five times before going to voicemail.
“God damnit,” he whispered to himself, dialing again, only to get the same result. He then sent a quick text message to her, informing her that he’s awake and wants to see her, and then quickly sent another message apologizing again for their argument last night.
Tristan sighed and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms before cautiously standing up from the bed, letting the dizziness subside before he went into the bathroom to take a very cold shower in an attempt to bring his body and mind back from the dark shadows of his hangover.
He took his time in the shower, allowing his thoughts to drift, as they always did, to Tessa.
He thought about how it was clear as day that he loved her, and how he should go about telling her.
He then wondered if she felt the same, or if last night was enough to make her run away from him at full speed.
His chest tightened at the thought of not having her anymore, and he said a silent prayer to a God he wasn’t quite sure if he believed in to let Tessa’s heart remain open to him.
Once he was out of the shower and dressed in his favorite pair of grey sweats and Vanderbilt hoodie, he walked back over to his bed and glanced at his phone, his heart immediately thumping against his rib cage upon seeing Tessa had replied to his message.
Sorry, I’m exhausted. I’m going to stay home and catch up on sleep and studying.
“Fuck,” he cursed in an angry sigh before he sent his large body flying down the rickety stairs two at a time. “She said she doesn’t want to meet up for breakfast. What do I do?”
Jordan looked up at him from his place on the couch and cocked his eyebrow at his little brother.
“She’s really laying it on thick, isn’t she?”
“What does that mean? What does this mean?” He asked frantically, holding the phone in his hand and shaking it in the air.
“She’s doing the whole ‘Don’t come chase me’ thing, when she really does want you to chase her.”
Tristan squinted at his older brother, weighing his advice in his head.
He then realized he was taking advice from his brother, who, albeit was better than Tristan at most things, dating girls was not one of them.
Actually, Katie was the only real girlfriend Jordan had ever had, and from what Tristan had observed over the year they had been together, he was in awe of how Jordan was able to keep Katie around.
“I’m calling Katie,” Tristan said in response, shaking his head at his brother’s very bad judgement. Tristan brought the phone up to his ear as he walked into the kitchen to make himself a cup of black coffee.
“Are you in jail?” Katie’s flat and unamused voice came through the phone.
“If I were in jail you’d be getting a call from Davidson County Correctional Facility, not my cell phone.”
“Well, I can’t imagine any other reason you’d be calling me on a Sunday morning.”
“I need girl advice.”
“Christ almighty, what did you do?” She asked in an exasperated tone.
“Listen, Tess and I had a misunderstanding last night that led to I guess our first fight? I don’t even know if that’s what you’d call it.
Anyway. We had agreed to go to breakfast this morning, my treat obviously, and she’s now saying she’s too tired and doesn’t want to go. Is that real or does she just hate me?”
“Okay well first of all, you’re a drama queen, she does not hate you,” Tristan listened intently to Katie’s no-nonsense voice as the coffee dripped steadily into his I’m The Favorite Son mug that Jordan had gotten Tristan as a Christmas gift last year.
“And second of all,” she said, “how bad was the fight?”
“I mean, bad enough that she didn’t want me to take her home. Even though I couldn’t because I was getting drunker by the second but, she didn’t want to stay with me at the party either.”
“So she needed some space.”
“I guess so, yeah.”
“It sounds like she may still need some.”
“Nooo,” Tristan whined, clutching his fist and pounding it lightly on the countertop in front of him, “I don’t want space, I want to see her.”
“Too bad champ,” Katie said with a laugh, “She’ll be alright. Just let her have her moment and maybe check back in with her later to see if she still doesn’t want to see you.”
“Alright, thanks. I’ll check back in with her later today.”
He thanked Katie for her advice and hung up the phone, promptly pulling his messages back up and pressing Tessa’s name.
“What’d she say?” Jordan mumbled, really only half invested in the answer.
“She made a heck of a lot more sense than you did, that’s for sure,” he retorted.
“Whatever.”
Tristan didn’t reply to his older brother, as he was too busy sending off a message to his girlfriend that he desperately wanted to be in front of right now, on his knees, groveling and confessing his love for her. But for now, he would have to settle with Katie’s advice and a simple message:
I really wanted to see you, but I understand. I’ll call you later to see how you’re feeling.
Tristan had tried multiple times throughout the afternoon to get a hold of Tessa, but she continued to ignore his calls and texts.
It was now almost 8pm and the knot in Tristan’s stomach was so tight he felt like he would combust from pure anxiety.
This was so unlike her, and he began feeling like something was off in more ways than just their mild spat the night before.
So when she had ignored his phone call for the fifth time that night, he pulled his hoodie back over his head and slipped into his favorite pair of black and red Jordans and got into his truck.
He had no intention of asking anyone for their advice anymore because all that he knew was that he was unable to stay away from Tessa for a second longer.
There was an ache in the middle of his chest that had now grown to unbearable levels of emotional pain he hadn’t yet experienced.
He knew that if he spent one more second away from her and not resolving whatever was standing in the way of him telling her that he had fallen desperately in love with her, that the outcome likely wouldn’t be good for either of them.
So he drove the 10 minutes from his very small two-story condo on the east side of campus to her very small one-story house on the west side of campus.
A light drizzle had begun to fall from the sky, and the night was especially chilly, but he felt no need to turn on the heat in his truck or activate the windshield wipers.
He was so determined to get to her as quickly as possible that he drove in silence, staring straight out at the road, going over what he planned to say to her in his head.