by Ginger Scott
“No.”
My short response flips his gaze to me rapidly, his mouth squished tight and his eyes narrowed.
“Riley, this isn’t me playing tough guy or trying to boss you around. It’s not safe right now; so please go inside.”
I can tell he’s fighting with himself to show restraint. I relax my shoulders and take a step back, but I stop halfway through the doorway.
“If it isn’t safe, then you should come inside, too.”
Our eyes dance for a moment. This is where the real danger is, and this is the root of why I’m really here in the first place. There’s something about Tristan that speaks to me, and no matter how many warnings I get—from him, from Lauren…from the universe—I still want to let him in. I want time with him. I want to know why my friend thinks he’s so awful, because I just don’t see it.
“Just until Lauren gets back,” he relents, moving to his car to grab his phone and shut the door and lock up. Keys dangle from his index finger, twirling once before he grabs them in his palm. The gesture seems so nonchalant, except he repeats the movement all the way into Lauren’s house and doesn’t stop until I stare at his moving hand as he sits on the arm of the sofa.
“Sorry,” he grimaces, setting the keys down on the coffee table.
Lauren’s math homework is out; she’d been working on it I guess. Tristan tugs at the end of a paper that’s holding a spot in one of her books, pulling it closer and revealing her strings of numbers.
“I have a seventeen percent in math.” His face offers no reaction with his words, and his eyes scan over the page, trying to decipher Lauren’s handwriting. “I don’t even know how I got the seventeen. I think I just got sympathy points. I’m in that class because I test well. That’s what Ms. Beaumont says. I think maybe I just took one test well, though.”
He lets out a heavy sigh and pushes the book away before sitting up and sliding his hands up his thighs until they meet on his lap, fingers weaving and clenching at one another. I move to the center of the couch and turn sideways to look at him. My eyes can’t help but dart to his lips, and every view reminds me of how they felt, followed by the sting of his rejection. After a few long seconds of uncomfortable silence, I begin to chew on my thumbnail just to put pressure on my own mouth in an attempt to erase the ruined memory. It doesn’t work at all.
Lights reflect along the ceiling as they shine through cracks in Lauren’s front-room shutters. Tristan stands the second he senses them and moves to the window, tipping the blade enough to peer out. He shuts it tightly after a second, and when he turns, our eyes meet.
“Just making sure…” He stops midsentence. I let it go briefly but not for good.
“Making sure what?” I fold my arms loosely and cross my legs on the center cushion as I stare at him. Tristan pokes his hands in his pockets and shrugs, looking down at the floor for a while.
The room is so quiet that every small sound sends a jolt of urgency through my body. The refrigerator motor kicks on…then off. The heater rumbles and buzzes a loose vent cover in the hallway. A cricket hidden somewhere inside echoes.
“You get like that when you live here,” he says, bringing me back to the surface.
“Huh?” I shift my gaze to him and he steps close again, this time sitting on the couch, our knees nearly touching as he turns to face me.
“Paranoid, I guess.” His eyes move between mine as I nod, kind of understanding.
Tristan clears his throat then slides against the corner of the couch, gaining a few precious inches of distance. Probably for the best since we can’t be friends.
“You want to listen to some music?” I ask.
He chuckles lightly and cocks one brow, relaxing his expression when he sees that I’m serious.
“Oh…uhm,” he glances around the empty home. I get why—he wants to be able to hear what’s happening…out there.
“I’ll keep it low. I just thought maybe it would help…I don’t know…pass the time you have to sit here with me? You know, since it’s so awful and we aren’t friends.”
My expression grows hard. That was passive aggressive, but I’m still glad I said it. I see him wince, just barely, and I’m satisfied.
“Music’s good,” he finally says.
I pull my phone from my pocket and open my favorite playlist, starting it then setting my phone on the back of the couch. It’s a mix of everything, which is what I was raised on. My dad’s more of the country and oldies type of guy, and my mom like hard rock. I love pop and rap and pretty much anything, so it works. The first song that plays is from the eighties. Tristan smirks, then turns my phone toward him so he can read, half laughing.
“Hey, I saw your lips moving with the words to that. You can’t make fun of me when you know the words,” I say, mouthing too-ra-loo-ra along with him. His mouth curves slowly, and when it’s finally smiling for real, everything in the room shifts.
We begin to sing together, both messing up verses in our own ways, nowhere even close to being on key. When the next song starts and it’s country, Tristan groans, but I catch him mouthing the words to this one as well. I throw a nearby pillow at him and he catches it at his chest, holding it to his body and laughing until the sound fades out, and we’re both just looking at each other.
Country turns into Elvis, and Tristan’s lip ticks up on one side as he blinks and looks down. His gaze doesn’t fall for long, though, and in a breath, he’s studying me again.
“Careful, we might become friends,” I tease. He doesn’t laugh, and his grin falls a little, losing the dimples on his cheeks. I shouldn’t have said that. He took it seriously.
“Every single time I hear a car drive by, I assume it’s someone coming to kill me.”
My throat goes dry at his words, and my heartbeat pounds in my gut. His eyes flirt with me, moving to and away while he chews at the inside of his cheek. I’m frozen on his face, but in the periphery, I can see him wringing his hands.
He looks up and lets his breath slip away until his lip hangs open and his features droop, almost desperate. It’s a surrender.
“My best friend is probably dead.”
The words vibrate as they escape his quivering lips. I feel the threat of tears in my eyes already, so I look away and brush their beginnings against my cheeks.
“I am the son of a man who started the Fifty-Seven. The man who had him murdered started the gang with him, and when my dad was gone, he marked me with this so I’d never forget,” he says, turning his wrist out until the dark X is in plain view. He glances up at me then back down at his arm, his hair falling forward and shading his eyes. He runs his hand with the marked arm through it but keeps his gaze down.
“My dad wanted to be empowered…Dub,” he pauses, flashing his wrist so I can tie a name to the mark, “he wanted money. And he liked how people were afraid. It took me years to piece it all together, or maybe I knew deep down the whole time.”
A heavy sigh leaves his chest, and his eyes begin to glaze. He blinks a few times and starts to chuckle, meeting my eyes.
“I have tried to cry my entire life, and this is as far as I can get,” he says, laughing harder, then standing and wandering around the room. Elvis’s voice haunts the quiet spaces but eventually ends, and I pull my phone close and turn the music off.
“I have done things, Riley…I’ve robbed people. I’ve shot up homes. Yours…before you moved in. Me and Joker, that’s what we call Paul, and a few of Dub’s friends…”
He drifts into a sad laugh again, then flattens his palm on his forehead as his eyes widen.
“Jesus, Riley. We shot up every window in your house, and the county had to replace them all. We did it because we were bored, and we hadn’t shot anything in a long time.” He’s shaking his head, but I grip the cushion beneath me at that one key word.
“What other kinds of things do you shoot?” I ask, my body starting to sweat, visions pulsing in my mind of Tristan holding a gun sideways and pulling the trigger, stopping
someone’s heart with the smolder of gun powder.
“I never killed anyone. I know that’s what you mean,” he says, glancing up, but not for long.
I nod, relieved and terrified at the same time. I’m terrified because inside everything he’s saying—despite all of these terrible things—I still see someone else. Maybe I’m blinded, but I don’t think so.
“I’ve buried bodies. Some of them haven’t been found,” he says, scrunching his eyes closed tightly before standing and circling the room. “I hated every moment of it, and I prayed for courage to stand up to Dub, to carve a different path. The dirt on my hands is stained with blood, though, Riley, and my nightmares...they are so bad.”
He stops pacing and just breathes, his chest moving so fast I think he may pass out. When it slows, he turns his head to the side and looks at me.
“This is who I am. This is why I said we can’t be friends. This is why I don’t want you outside on the courts, where I have personally dodged bullets. I am nowhere near a whole human. I’m riddled with holes…wounds. I’m the least brave person I know, and I’m probably not going to live past my twentieth birthday.”
His feet shift until his body is square with me, and he pushes his hands in his pockets again. He does this when he’s vulnerable, as if he’s hiding weapons and masking his true self. I see more of him than he believes exists though. This guy he describes is also the same one who volunteered to coach my team just so I could impress a few small-time college scouts. He’s the one who made me go home when I was in danger. He’s the one who, for some reason, has chosen me to save.
“Are you afraid?”
His eyes haze and search mine. He’s bracing himself for the answer he expects, but I shake my head no. It isn’t a lie. I’m not afraid. I actually don’t think there is a safer place I could be right now, and a safer person to be with.
“Do you think I’m a monster?”
My eyes pinch, my brow creasing and my lips falling open with a soft breath.
“God, no,” I say, standing from my seat as I flex my hands, relieving them from the stiff grip they’ve had for minutes.
I stop a few steps shy of him, and his eyes fall down my body, tracing my neck and shoulder and hip.
“You don’t have to take this job, Tristan…the one that says you’re a bad guy. It doesn’t suit you,” I say.
His head shakes in small, quick movements.
“No?” he whispers.
I shake my head and move a half step closer, his warmth beginning to radiate, like a warning.
“No,” I repeat.
His chin tilts, pushing his head to the side just a hair, but his eyes stay on mine, roaming my face. Teeth clench and work through conflict behind his barely parted lips. His chest lifts and his face reflexes as he breathes, but his guard remains, even as he lifts his hand and touches the bottom of my chin with his thumb, adding a finger at a time until his palm holds my cheek. His eyes become glossy again, never fully forming tears, and the right side of his mouth lifts, his eyes moving down to my lips. They part under the heat.
His smile grows, but faintly.
“You really look good without hair,” he says, pulling a quiet laugh from my body.
“Yeah?” I say, one brow raised in doubt. I haven’t thought about it much, but this is the first time I’ve considered whether or not I’m attractive like this. It’s strange how I don’t miss it.
Tristan’s eyes flit from my mouth to my gaze.
“You’re beautiful like this, actually,” he says, words that rob me of my breath in a way that nearly erases the gruesome parts of the story he told me before.
“Pretty enough to be your friend?” I make sure my tease comes out light this time, and Tristan’s lips close into a soft smile, his laugh a small twitch of his shoulders and chest.
“I said beautiful, not pretty,” he says, his fingers slowly sliding along my cheek until the tips reach the soft velvet of my hair. His thumb strokes the skin just under my eye.
His head falls to mine, and my eyes close in response, my hands moving to his shirt and holding on to fistfuls of the front.
“We are friends,” he says, his hands pausing where they rest, cupping my face as his feet interlace with the position of mine and we rock side to side just like this. His thumbs tickle at my jaw, his nose grazing against my skin, his breath scented with orange slices or candy. He’s intoxicating—delicious. And he’s helpless for the first time since we’ve met.
“We are friends, Riley, and I think we’re more. I am…compelled to tell you things. The ugliest things.”
I feel him swallow as his head rests on mine.
“I’ve shown you my hard truth, and yet you keep showing up. You’re so…fearless. And stubborn. You don’t pretend, and you don’t listen. God, I wish you’d listen sometimes.”
He laughs softly, and I feel the rumble in his chest, pulling a smile from me too.
“You are my test, Riley. My temptation. My mother says you’re the light, and I want to stand in it with you, but…”
“So stand with me,” I interrupt.
His head rolls against mine and his hands tremble with so much uncertainty. I reach for his elbows and slide my hands up his arms to his wrists, steadying him.
“You are so good, Tristan. You just are…I see it,” I say.
His breath begins to falter, and I can practically taste the conflict—his struggle.
“You are good,” I whisper just before his bottom lip softly touches mine.
I’m so hungry for his kiss, for him to be present here—with me—and to mean it. But I’m patient. His bottom lip rests just underneath mine, its movement slow against my skin until I feel his top lip close and trap me in his kiss. A gentle suck pulls me in more, and I open for breath—and for him. His head shifts slowly from left to right, his mouth making this tender pass before growing more aggressive.
This kiss is never full. It’s light, and cautious. It’s scared and greedy, afraid of being caught…of breaking a rule. Every bit of his mouth against mine is electric, and it’s barely there at all.
“I’m so sorry you met me, Riley,” he says against my lips, his voice a low hush.
I step into him and press my lips to his a little harder, holding my kiss there, his bottom lip now trapped softly between my teeth as I fight the pull to bite just a little more.
“I’m so glad I met you, Tristan. That’s the difference. I’m just so glad,” I say as my head falls into the crook of his neck.
His hands slide over my head and shoulders and back, cradling me to him closely as his cheek rests against mine, and I hide my face in the shadow of his jaw. I breathe him in, and I’m dizzy. I’m amorous. I’m all of it. But I am not scared. Tristan does not frighten me. He never has. He’s never been anything but the cute boy willing to help the new girl move some heavy things. This hardened, cold shoulder and the wall that came with it has never felt like him. It’s never belonged, and all I have wanted to do was break through it.
I have. On a horrible night when his world is rocking. I have broken through, and with that comes responsibility. I can’t leave him to climb this alone. He’s given me so many secrets, and without asking, I know just sharing them puts him at risk. He and I aren’t supposed to walk on the same plane.
For however long it takes for Lauren to come home, I will stand here. I will hold on. I will be brave so he can be frightened, for once in his goddamned life.
Criminals aren’t born; they are made. This world made Tristan, and he fights to break free of it. That hold, though—it’s vicious.
Chapter Thirteen
Tristan
* * *
I love being sick.
I’ve always been okay with it, and that didn’t strike me as weird until recently. Until this morning, actually. I woke up with a stuffy everything. My head is pounding and my body aches. I’m barely able to stand without wanting to fall face down into the cool folds of my pillow.
I’m sick.<
br />
There’s a decent chance I have the flu. God I hope it’s the flu.
My mouth is stretched into the widest smile.
My mom didn’t come home until five or six this morning. I was lying on the bathroom floor in a cold sweat by then, my pants kicked from my legs, my shirt tossed out the door, a towel over the only part of my arms and chest that felt cold under the blower. When my mom found me, she went into nurse mode. She fed me natural drugs—those are all we have in the house because she’s so afraid to have anything real—and then she began switching out a cold compress on my head every fifteen minutes.
This is heaven for me.
The reason I love being ill so much is because it’s the only way I can get away from it all. It’s the one thing that has always been normal. When I’m sick, my mom acts like the ones on TV. I stay home, and I don’t talk to a soul. There is no Dub. There’s a text or two, and eventually a lull when I say something like the word vomit or fever. Nobody wants to get sick. At least, none of the people I hang around want to be ill. They have things to do, parties to go to, girls to fuck, and drugs to smoke or snort.
Getting sick gets in everyone’s way. If I could be sick for everyone, I would.
My mom’s late for work, and I know she didn’t really sleep between the hours of six and nine. She’s faking it well, though. Her hair is wrapped on top of her head in a tight bun, and she’s put on that kind of dress that never wrinkles and feels like pajamas.
“I’m going to go to Danette’s when I get out. I’m working alone for most of the day because she can’t leave the house. But if you need me, just call me, okay?”
I nod from my bed. I haven’t left it since I crawled there hours ago. Danette, Joker’s mom, probably hasn’t moved much either—only she isn’t sick. She’s wrecked.
My mom kisses the top of my head then leaves her hand there to feel for heat. I’m not freezing like I was before, which means my fever probably broke.