“Thank you, Jupiter,” I answered meekly, the tears I had been trying to suppress flooding my eyes with gratitude. I blinked them quickly away knowing whatever respect I had garnered with Jupiter would be instantly and forever lost if I broke down in inconsolable tears in the middle of Seth’s bedroom for no reason at all.
“Let’s get you back to bed,” Seth encouraged, placing a warm hand on the small of my back.
I turned into his touch, letting the heat of his strength comfort me. He led me outside and opened the truck door for me so I could climb in. I wanted to apologize again to him, but as he climbed in the cab and started the vehicle I decided I needed to stop apologizing and get better control of my emotions.
“Thanks for driving,” I offered instead.
“Stella,” Seth glanced at me seriously before turning his eyes back to the blackened country roads. “Promise me you will never stop investigating these feelings you’re having.”
“What do you mean?” I asked as Seth followed the gravel roads that traveled between his farm and mine. The frosted night glazed over the windshield with delicate snowflake patterns and our breath puffed around us in white clouds.
“It could have been something tonight, I mean, even though it wasn’t…. it could have been,” Seth paused and gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Thank you for coming to my rescue.”
I cleared my throat, not trusting my voice with a response. Seth was so sincere, so genuine with his gratefulness that I was actually moved by it. I shook my head, trying to clear it of my over-emotional behavior tonight, but the “what if’s” kept running through my mind and I had to fear that Jupiter was right, that something was going on and we just hadn’t figured it out yet.
“And Stel?” Seth asked, a lightness returning to his tone.
“Yeah?”
“Anytime you need me to come check out your room in the middle of the night, I’m just a phone call away,” he turned to me with a sly smile on his lips and I immediately burst into laughter, thankful for his change in tone.
“Oh, really? You’ll come look in my closet for monsters?” I flirted, still laughing at his brazenness.
“Absolutely,” his grin grew into a wide smile and I stared back into those honey colored, heated eyes smiling just as big. “And under your bed…. under your covers…. wherever those monsters might be hiding.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I laughed.
Chapter Fifteen
“Ok, so here’s the plan,” Piper exclaimed in between seventh and eighth period, “Since there are no basketball games tonight we’re going into Omaha to pick out dresses for the Valentine’s dance!”
“Oh that sounds like fun!” I replied, shutting my locker and leaning against it. “Since we both have dates and all!” I smirked. This was the first dance Piper had ever allowed a boy to take her to, and I couldn’t stop teasing her about Lincoln, it was impossible.
“Actually all three of us have dates,” Piper explained in a quick rush of words I barely understood.
“Three?” I accused, rather than asked.
Piper stuck her head in her locker for a second before popping back out with a bright smile, “Well, me, you and Bree.”
“Are you kidding me?” I asked dryly, seriously reconsidering my evening.
“Come on, it will be so much fun! Plus it’s not like you have a whole lot of couture options in this one-horse town…. and you desperately need my opinion.” Piper reminded me by gesturing around the crowded high school halls as if they were a good indication of the lack of shopping in Mead.
“Fine, although Omaha doesn’t have many couture options either,” I grumbled, realizing the dance was two weeks away and I really didn’t have any options as far as dress shops went other than Omaha. And she was right about her opinion, I was helpless when it came to formal dresses and even if Seth and I were going only as friends, I definitely wanted to avoid looking like a bad eighties movie.
“It will be fun!” Piper practically demanded, the strained edge to her voice daring me not to agree.
“It will be fun,” I sighed, completely lacking the enthusiasm she was hoping for.
“What will be fun?” Seth asked as he and Tristan joined us at the lockers.
“We’re going shopping tonight in Omaha, we need to pick up our dresses for the dance in a couple weeks,” I explained with a marginally better attitude.
“Oh, but I thought we were going to tr-“ Seth cut himself off, his cheeks heating with a soft glow at his almost announcement of our training with Jupiter that I had forgotten about. During basketball season almost every Friday and Saturday were scheduled with games, but this was an off week since our next game wasn’t until Tuesday. I had completely forgotten about the extra training Jupiter wanted to squeeze in this weekend.
Oops.
I needed to figure out Jupiter later though; right now I needed to do some quick damage control.
“Go on a date!” I finished for Seth, placing my hand over my eyes like I was embarrassed. “I completely forgot. Oh my gosh, Seth, I’m so sorry.”
“Yes our date,” Seth nodded, not covering as smoothly as I would have liked him to. “It’s Ok, there are other nights.”
I wanted to laugh at his obvious inability to act but had to remain stoic since Piper was glancing back and forth between us like she had missed the biggest headline of the year.
“Stella, I was just kidding about finding a dress, you can go on your date with Seth and you and I can find a different night to go into town,” Piper promised.
“Are you sure?” I double checked, realizing I could get out of making Jupiter mad and shopping with Bree.
“I have a better idea,” Tristan piped up, sounding enthusiastic but his eyes were narrowed just the tiniest bit sending warning bells resounding in my head. “Let’s all go into town tonight. Lincoln and I can show Seth the big city while you girls shop and then we’ll meet up for dinner and a movie after. It will be fun.”
Why did people keep trying to convince me tonight would be fun? It sounded more like a threat coming from Tristan and I wasn’t really sure how to get out of this one.
“Seth is from Boston, Tristan, it’s not like he’s never been to a big city before,” I laughed nervously, trying unsuccessfully to get the subject dropped.
“No, Tristan’s right! That does sound like fun!” Piper, for maybe the first time in her entire, stubborn, artistic life, agreed with the person she hated most in life.
My jaw dropped, my eyes bugged out of my head. I probably looked like a cartoon character holding a stick of lit dynamite. “Piper, what about this scenario makes you think that it would be fun?”
“Fun” had just officially turned into a curse word.
“What? You don’t want to hang out with your best friends and your boyfriend?” Tristan asked, his voice cutting like an accusation. “You’re the one constantly going on and on about how if we just spent more time together we would learn to like each other.” His pointer finger flicked back and forth between him and Piper who was nodding her head excitedly.
“Seth is not my boyfriend,” I explained too quickly and then forced myself to backtrack after noticing the confusion flash in Seth’s eyes. “I mean, we’re just going to the dance as friends.”
“And going on a date tonight,” Tristan reminded me callously.
“And going on a date tonight,” I echoed in a tiny voice.
“So it’s settled!” Piper squealed. “Triple date in the city!”
“How do you know Lincoln doesn’t already have plans?” I asked her pointedly, not really sure why I was still objecting to the outing.
“Well, then I will just have to convince him with my womanly wiles,” Piper purred conspiratorially and then bounced down the hall in search of Lincoln.
“Piper is something else,” Seth chuckled as he watched her weave in and out of end of school traffic, her severe ponytail of dark hair bouncing enthusiastically behind her. “You’re Ok wit
h tonight? You seemed like maybe you didn’t want to go,” Seth turned to me, his golden eyes squinting in concern.
“Why wouldn’t she want to go?” Tristan asked from his position, leaning against my locker. “A night out with her two best friends and her boyfriend, come on Stel, what isn’t there to get excited about?”
“Why do you do that?” Seth growled, his expression turning dark. “Why do you say ‘boyfriend’ like an insult?”
“Because you’re not really her boyfriend, are you?” Tristan stood up straighter, his shoulders pushed back and his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“Unfortunately, you’re not either,” Seth growled, adjusting to his full height, and cracking his neck forcefully to the side as if he were preparing for a fight.
“I never said I was,” Tristan snapped back in a low voice.
“Tristan you are the one that keeps calling him my boyfriend, so knock it off,” I demanded, annoyed that Tristan was still upset over this. “And we were never going on a date tonight; we had training that I forgot about.”
“Oh,” Tristan backed down a little. Seth had too, although I could feel that the only reason he wasn’t working out his own version of training on Tristan’s face had something distinctly to do with me. “It doesn’t matter anyway, because you two basically are together. Which is fine with me, I just don’t know why you want to blow off your friends now that you’re so busy with him.”
My mouth kind of hung awkwardly open for a moment while I tried to gather a rebuttal to his insane argument, but he cut me off before I could even start a stuttering response.
“Nevermind, I’m being a douche,” he ran a hand over his shaved head and glanced around the hallway impatiently. “I better find Bree before Piper takes all the credit for tonight’s planning.” He stalked down the hallway with my wide eyes watching after him.
“I’m sorry,” I sighed, leaning against Seth. I felt exhausted by Tristan. There were way too many emotions flooding my consciousness to make sense of and I hated that irritation and confusion seemed to overpower all the others. “I don’t know what his problem is.”
“I think I can guess,” Seth mumbled before his eyes softened back into their natural friendly gold. “But anyway, are you Ok with all this? I mean going on a date and having your friends think we are together?”
“Sure, I mean, they were going to come up with their own assumptions anyway,” I replied lightly, and then I ignored the twisting in the pit of my stomach that shouted I was anything but Ok with this. I needed to be. I wanted to be…. but, well, this just wasn’t supposed to be how things worked out. High school was supposed to be mine. Destiny and fate and supernatural callings and all that other weird crap was supposed to happen later…. much later.
“Stella?” Seth said my name softly, reverently and when I turned to face him it was like my entire being tuned into him. He stared down at me with the softest, gentlest expression, the hard lines of his face at extreme odds with the tender tilt of his eyes. My breath caught in my throat and I nodded in response because I couldn’t find words to answer. “We are just friends,” he promised, sincerity coating each word. “I know that this is weird…. this whole future between us. But we are just friends until there’s more and right now there just hasn’t been enough time for more to develop. Don’t let me freak you out, we do this in your time, nobody is pressuring you into anything, especially me.” He lifted his fingers to brush against my jaw, his rough, calloused skin against the soft, feminine skin of my face and I swallowed to fortify myself.
“Thank you,” I whispered, feeling relief wash over me. I should have promised him I didn’t feel pressure, or that it wasn’t him that was freaking me out but the unknown part of our future relationship, but I couldn’t bring myself to utter those words. And if I was honest with myself, truly honest, part of my nervousness was Seth, his presence, his nearness, the way he stirred feelings and emotions that didn’t even make sense to me yet.
Yep, he definitely freaked me out.
Except for right now.
Because right now he was saying exactly what I needed to hear and in the hottest way possible.
There were worse fates to have to come to terms with.
“Ok,” I smiled brighter, forcing myself back to confidence. “We better go home and tell Jupiter that there’s been a change of plans. Do you think we can somehow convince him there is an attack on the city and they need our help?”
“Probably not,” Seth laughed. “But we can for sure blame it on your friends and the fact that we have to keep our cover up.”
“I better let you do the talking,” I agreed, already nervous.
“Probably a good idea.”
----
I was still cringing in the dressing room as I struggled to reach the zipper of the floor length red ball gown Piper had insisted I try on. Jupiter had not been happy that Seth and I were blowing off what in his mind was the training that would determine the entire future of the human race for dress shopping and bad chain-restaurant food. He had made us promise to double up sessions tomorrow, which drained my entire Saturday of anything fun and replaced it with sword movement repetitions and strength training.
Ugh strength training.
I flexed my velvety arms in the dressing room mirror and swallowed back the yelp of horror. Way too much muscle definition. It was one thing to be toned and fit. It was another thing entirely to look like I belonged in a body builder competition, wearing a skimpy bikini and a gallon of baby oil.
Or was that too vain?
“Let’s see it Stel!” Piper called from the other side of the door. I took one more minute to adjust the long sleeve, blood red velvet number she had demanded I try on. The sleeves swallowed my hands, opening up at the end in extra fabric that reminded me of something a witch would wear. The too big dress had enough fabric to spread out in a long train behind me and the color completely washed out my complexion.
I tromped out to the hallway, trying to suppress my laughter. Piper stood waiting for me, impatiently tapping her foot. She looked as equally ridiculous as I did in a white, chiffon ruffled disaster. The tight bodice fit her awkwardly and made her look like she had the chest of a little boy, while the ruffles tumbled in messy, gaudy waves from her waist to the floor and gave her the hips of a woman who could claim giving birth to at least twelve children.
“Are those feathers?” I burst into laughter at the realization Piper looked like a partially plucked chicken.
She gave me a stern glare and then burst into her own hysterical giggles. “You look like Valentine’s Day threw up on you!” she wheezed, clutching at her stomach.
“I’m not coming out there if you two are just going to laugh at me!” Bree hollered from behind the fitting room door. “I already feel ridiculous enough!”
“We promise not to laugh,” Piper swore stoically. She swatted my hand away as I tried to pull on one of her shredded, dilapidated feathers, poking out from where her belly button might be.
A foreshadowing giggle escaped Piper as Bree opened the slatted wood door and stepped tenuously through the narrow doorway. Piper and I held our breath for three whole seconds before exploding in laughter, tears streaming from the corners of our eyes. We leaned on each other for support, sucking oxygen in through laughter that had become completely silent as it racked our bodies in hysteria.
Bree stood before us in a vintage, as in eighties, Pepto-Bismol pink taffeta gown, the sleeves ballooning into giant puffs that sat unevenly on her shoulder blades, the sweetheart neckline, dipping crassly into her cleavage, the skirt swallowed her body in folds of wrinkled fabric and the apron of lace both seemed to domesticate the outfit and tie the whole awful look together. Under her wounded scowl, Piper and I tried to pull ourselves together, but then she turned to get a better look at herself in the three fold mirror and her gigantic skirt swooped around and whipped Piper in the side. Piper took an exaggerated side step and we dissolved into more laughter, this time
with Bree taking part.
“This was such a terrible idea,” Bree whined when we had come back to ourselves and the sales clerk had stopped to check on us twice, not understanding our sense of humor.
“Sometimes you get lucky and find something amazing,” Piper defended her thrift-store idea, although she was still laughing so neither Bree nor I took her seriously. Suddenly she stood up straight and cocked her head to the side examining us all over again. “This could work….”
“What could work?” I asked, feeling the flare of panic at the look in Piper’s eyes.
“This,” she gestured to the three of us. “We could splash black paint over all of the dresses and then wear like corsages with dead flowers in them as like a statement against the greeting-card holiday that defines the awfulness that is Valentine’s Day.” Piper proclaimed, growing passionate at the end of a speech that fell on Bree’s deaf ears and my vain ones.
“Absolutely not!” Bree shrieked, immediately trying to rip off her dress before Piper could pull out some hidden black paint to splash it on her. “Go right ahead and protest consumerism all you want, but I want to look pretty!”
“Are you saying Piper wouldn’t look pretty covered in black paint, carrying dead flowers?” I gasped. “For the record, Pi, I think you look gorgeous in any color of death.”
“I’m not worried about what will look good on Piper! I’m trying to get Tristan to notice me!” Bree lectured and I suddenly had to quell the unfurling of a very angry, desperate beast that seemed to take hold of my insides. I clutched against my stomach that was determined to make me sick. A darkness settled on my shoulders, one that refused to let Bree claim what belonged to me, what I could never have but wanted ferociously anyway. I swallowed against the hole in my chest, the pit dug out by irrational jealousy. Tristan wasn’t mine. Could never be mine.
Heir of Skies Page 20