by Clara Kensie
Mom gestured to the door. “Have fun, kids.” Tristan had been inside for only a minute, but that was already too long. Time to go.
“Home by midnight, Sarah. Be good.” My dad rubbed a spot under his eye. A message to me: he would be watching.
“Nice meeting you, Mr. and Mrs. Spencer,” Tristan said, and to my dismay, enthusiastically shook my father’s hand again.
Jillian had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing.
* * *
While Tristan drove to Twelve Lakes’ town square he told me what he’d planned for our evening. He’d made reservations at Salutos, the nicest Italian restaurant in town, and afterward we could either play mini-golf or see a movie, my pick. I chose mini-golf. Movie theaters were dark and crowded, and you never knew who could come up behind you. Besides, I hadn’t played mini-golf since Virginia.
Tristan circled the parking lot at Salutos twice before finding a spot. As we walked inside, he took my hand and glanced at me to see if I minded. I entwined my fingers with his to show him it was okay. I loved the feeling of his warm palm pressed to mine.
We pressed into the crowded lobby to wait for our table. Dark red brick peeked through the stucco, and strings of tiny white lights twinkled from the ceiling. A mural of Venice covered an entire wall. Tristan had picked a beautiful restaurant, except for the crowd and noise. The last restaurant I’d eaten in was that quiet twenty-four-hour diner after we’d fled Vermont. Only a handful of people had been in that place. Here, the mass of patrons shouted over each other and crushed us from all sides.
The hostess finally called Tristan’s name, and after we pushed our way through the crowd, she seated us at a table.
The table was beautiful. A crisp white tablecloth, a lit candle, three red carnations in an empty wine bottle. Napkins folded like fans.
But the table was in the middle of the room. I couldn’t see the door or the people behind me.
I glanced around the restaurant, looking for anyone suspicious.
A well-dressed couple clinking their wine glasses together. A man with a sharp buzz cut wearing a crisply ironed shirt, ramrod straight in his chair, frowning as his frizzy-haired companion wiped marinara sauce from her shirt. A bald man with a red beard sitting at the bar with two drinks, scowling at his watch. A harried busboy sweeping dirty plates into a plastic bin.
Every single one of them looked suspicious.
“You okay?” Tristan raised his voice over the din.
I forced myself to smile. No one was watching me. No one had even noticed me. Dennis Connelly, with his kind eyes that turned sharp and mean, was not here.
I was safe.
Still, I tapped my cell phone to make sure it was there, and slipped my hands under my knees to keep them from trembling.
“Do you already know what you want to order?” Tristan asked.
I shook my head. I knew I should open the menu, but I couldn’t move. Nausea and dizziness made the restaurant feel unreal and far away. I closed my eyes. Forced myself to breathe.
“Sarah?”
A hacking laugh cut through the din, and I opened my eyes. A man sitting in a corner booth was laughing, and he had something sticking out of his shirt pocket. A cigar. It wasn’t lit, but I swore I could smell it. Burning cherries.
Run. Run. I had to leave. I had to get out of here. With clammy hands, I tried to push myself away from the table when another wave of nausea hit me.
The world began to fade into a cloud of fog.
“Tris...” Before I finished saying his name, he was at my side.
He took my arm and pulled me up. “I’m taking you out of here.” He tossed some bills on the table and rushed me from the restaurant.
* * *
The fresh air cooled me, and now that we were away from the crowd, my lungs could expand again. Tristan helped me into his car, and we raced away. “You look a little better.”
The dizziness and nausea faded with a few deep breaths, and after a few more, I couldn’t even smell the cherry cigar anymore. “I’m okay now.” Great, actually.
“What happened?”
“The crowd. The noise. It was too much.”
“Want me to take you home?”
“No. I want to stay with you.” Suddenly, surprisingly, sincerely. There was nothing I wanted more.
His lips twisted in doubt. “You sure?”
“Tristan.” I put my hand on his forearm. “I want to stay with you.”
He did that thing again, where he lit up from the inside out. First his eyes, then his smile. “Then I have a great idea.” He drove across the street to the supermarket. “Let’s make our own dinner,” he said as he led me inside. “I can’t cook, but I can grill. We have a barbecue at home.”
“I love to cook,” I said shyly. “I can handle the stove.”
With a satisfied sigh, he put his arm around me. “I’m liking you more and more every second, Clockwise.”
The weight of his arm on my shoulders was heavy, and wonderful. I belonged there, under his arm. I pressed into him and breathed in his scent, feeling safe and cherished, like he could protect me from everything bad in the world.
He stopped in front of the meat counter. “Burgers? Steak?”
I crinkled my nose.
“Oh, I get it,” he said. “You’re a vegetarian, aren’t you?”
“I haven’t eaten meat in years.” I didn’t understand how anyone could kill something weak, defenseless and innocent.
We turned away from the stacks of raw dead animals, and Tristan stopped and looked around the store like he couldn’t fathom what to eat if it wasn’t meat.
“We could make a pizza,” I suggested. “Half veggie and half whatever you want.”
“Perfect.” We wandered around the store, picking out a pizza crust, sauce and cheese, then headed to the produce section. “Hey Sarah. Catch.”
I looked up just as he tossed a blue container of mushrooms at me. I caught it, and he immediately tossed me a bag of broccoli, then an onion right after that. I caught them all, tossed them back. He showed off by juggling plums, then apples, then cantaloupes. He tried to juggle watermelons until I begged with breathless laughter for him to stop.
My smile, and an occasional giggle, accompanied us all the way back to his house.
* * *
Tristan’s house was in the same subdivision as mine, around the corner and a couple blocks away. Like mine, his house was older and a bit worn down. But inside, the afghans and throw pillows and knickknacks gave his house a relaxed hominess that mine would never have. The kitchen was cluttered but clean. We unloaded our groceries onto the counter.
“Helloooo!” A high-pitched voice called from the garage entry. A petite woman with a blond pixie cut walked into the kitchen, followed by a man with black hair that curled up at the collar of his plaid flannel shirt. I’d seen him before but couldn’t place him.
“Sarah, this is my aunt and uncle,” Tristan said. “Melissa and Philip.”
Melissa greeted me warmly, and Philip gave me a nod. I gave them the bashful smile I reserved for grown-ups and managed to squeak out a nice-to-meet-you.
“You’ve probably seen my uncle around school,” Tristan said.
That’s right; that’s why he was familiar. His uncle was the facilities manager at TLC. He was one of the men who’d found me in the back stairwell on that rainy Monday, the nice one who hadn’t marched me back to the cafeteria.
“What happened to Salutos?” Melissa asked.
“Too crowded.” Tristan took my hand. “We’re making dinner here.”
Her gaze traveled to our clasped hands. “We’ll stay out of your way,” she said with an amused grin, and pulled Philip from the room.
“I’m starving,” Tristan said as soon as we were
alone again. “Let’s make that pizza. What do we do first?”
“Preheat the oven,” I directed, much more comfortable cooking in a kitchen than eating in a crowded restaurant. I was in charge here. No surprises. No danger. “And wash the veggies. I’ll need a cutting board and a knife.”
He followed my instructions, then spread sauce over the crust while I grated the cheese. I decided to ask him questions, so he wouldn’t ask me any. “Do your aunt and uncle have any kids?”
He swiped a mushroom from the container and tossed it in his mouth. “Not yet.”
“You mentioned you have a sister. Older or younger?”
“She’s fourteen. You two will get along really well. She’s a vegetarian too.”
“Too bad she’s in Malaysia with your parents.”
“Not forever. They’re moving back in a year or so.”
“Oh.” He didn’t realize it, but I would never meet his family. By the time they came back to the States, my family would have run again. Or we’d be dead. I changed the subject before my mood deflated. “Were you on the tennis team at your old school, too?”
“Tennis, ski, cross-country. And student council.”
Now that we weren’t surrounded by classmates, joggers and restaurant patrons, my apprehension evaporated, and questions came easily to me. I wanted to know everything about him. I grabbed a tomato and started dicing it. “Do you miss living at home?”
“Yeah.” He scattered the mozzarella over the sauce. “But I like it here too. Especially now that I have you.”
Our gazes met, and my face became hotter than the oven.
I wondered what his lips tasted like.
“Hey!” He grabbed the knife from my hand. “Careful. You almost cut yourself.”
“Whoops. Thanks.” I hid my burning face behind my hair as I wiped my slippery hands on a dishrag.
Tristan finished dicing the tomato for me. Not as neatly or precisely as I would have done it, but he had definite potential. We added more cheese and veggies to the pizza, then he slid it in the oven. He turned to face me, arms crossed and expression all business. “My turn to ask the questions.”
Oh God. But I had just asked him a million questions; it was only fair that I had to answer a few. I tapped my cell phone, then thrust my chin out the way Jillian did when she was pretending not to be nervous or scared. “Go ahead.”
“Hmm.” He cocked his head with his eyes narrowed, studying me. “What’s your favorite color?”
Turning my sigh of relief into a laugh, I said, “Periwinkle.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a shade of blue, but in certain lights it looks purple.”
“A color that’s two things at once. Interesting. And your favorite food?”
“Blueberries.”
“Ah. Tiny, but lots of flavor.” He grinned. “Like you.”
I bit my lips to keep from smiling, but it wasn’t working.
“Favorite subject in school?”
“Art,” I said.
“Really? I didn’t know you took art.”
“I don’t. We move too often. I can’t haul my paintings with me all over the country.” And we certainly couldn’t leave them behind.
“What states have you lived in so far?”
Okay, time to lie. “Well, you know we just moved from Oklahoma. Before that we were in Colorado.” We’d never been to either state, except to drive through them in our mad dash from Dennis Connelly. We covered our tracks in the states we had lived in by lying about states we hadn’t. “We’ve lived in so many places they all blur together,” I said. At least that part was true.
Tristan opened the fridge. “Lemonade or Coke?”
“Lemonade, please.” I searched the cabinets and found the glasses, then placed them on the table.
“So your dad’s a writer,” he said as he poured the tea. “What about your mom? Does she work?”
“Nope. What about yours?” Maybe if I turned his questions around, he’d talk about himself again. “What do your parents do?”
“My mom’s a preschool teacher, and my dad works for a company that manufactures computer hard drives. He transferred to Malaysia to oversee the construction of their new plant.” He winked. “But it’s my turn to ask the questions, remember?”
Darn. My plan didn’t work. Tristan was determined to get to know Sarah Spencer. I tossed my head in an effort to appear nonchalant. “Ask away.”
“What does your dad write?”
“Books.”
He guffawed. “I mean, what does he write about? Anything I’ve heard of?”
Oh. God, I was such an idiot. “I’m sure you haven’t. He writes about the economy, things like that.”
“Why did he come to Twelve Lakes?”
“He says Illinois has an interesting economic history.” Another stock answer. I was doing okay. I could do this.
“I should read his books, now that I’m dating his daughter.”
Panic zipped through me. I had no stock answer for this one. I gripped the counter, scrambling to think how Jillian would reply if Ethan said the same thing to her. “Don’t waste your time,” I said. “His books are long and boring and confusing, and anyway, he uses a pen name,” I added, in case he decided to take a trip to the library or look up Charles Spencer on the internet.
“Oh, yeah?” He set two plates on the table, then slid a glance at me. “What’s his pen name?”
How stupid of me to bring up a pen name! Of course he’d ask what it was. The only name that came to mind was Xander Xavier. But if he looked up that name, he’d learn Xander Xavier was the pseudonym of respected journalist Andrew Carson, who was killed eight years ago along with his wife Wendy and their young children, Jillian, Tessa and Logan, in a tragic gas explosion at their home in Virginia.
“Um...” I needed to redirect him. “We need a pizza cutter.”
He dug through a drawer, and I held my breath. “Aha! Found it. Here you go.”
Wow. I was better at lying than I’d thought. That realization made me feel guiltier than ever.
The buzzer on the oven rang. Both Tristan and I sprung to take out the pizza. “Sit,” I told him. “I’ll get it.” He obliged, and I sliced the round pizza into small triangles, then placed it between us on the table.
For the first time in a long time, I was ravenous. I served each of us a piece and took a big bite of mine.
We chatted casually about school and his friends—our friends—and before long we’d eaten almost the entire pizza. “Best pizza ever,” he said, and patted his stomach. “What about mini-golf? It’s still open if you want to go.”
I’d forgotten about mini-golf. As long as I was able to deflect his questions about my family, I could stay at Tristan’s house forever. I could tell by his tone that he didn’t want to leave either. “I’d be happy staying here,” I said.
“Good. Me too. My aunt and uncle have a bunch of DVDs. Let’s watch one of those.”
In his family room, we dug through the DVD collection. He let me choose, so I selected a movie called Say Anything, because there were infinite things I wanted to say to Tristan but would never be able to.
He turned down the lights, and we sank onto the couch, then he pulled my legs over his lap and put his arm around me. I loved sitting with him like this. Content. Comfortable. Safe. I snuggled in the crook of his arm.
The movie played on the television, but my gaze kept returning to Tristan. He kept glancing at me and smiling.
His eyes were so beautiful. So blue. So deep.
And his jaw—so strong. He had scruffy hair on his chin. I wanted to brush my fingertips on it.
And his hair. Neatly combed when he picked me up, it had since fallen out of place. I loved his hair tousled like that.<
br />
And his lips...
So soft, yet so strong. I wondered if his kisses would be gentle and slow, or passionate and urgent.
Could he hear my heart pounding?
His eyes locked on to mine, and he shifted so we were face-to-face.
Please kiss me. Please.
He leaned in, just an inch, then another.
For the quickest of moments, I glanced at my hand and crossed my fingers, middle over index. If my father had been watching, he wasn’t anymore. I had five minutes.
Tristan moved in another inch, then stopped. He gazed at me, eyes endlessly deep. He took a lock of my hair and ran his fingers through it.
But no kiss. Why wasn’t he kissing me?
I couldn’t stand it anymore. Just as I reached to grab his shirt and pull him to me, he cupped his hand behind my head, lacing his fingers through my hair, and pressed his lips on to mine.
Bliss.
I kissed him back, our lips crushed together, intense and eager, my arms snaking around him to press him closer to me, and I never, ever, ever wanted it to end.
Slowly, our kisses became tender and unhurried until we parted. I looked up at him, dazed. “Don’t...you don’t have to stop. We still have time.” A few seconds, at least. I wanted every one of them.
The patter of light footsteps on the stairway reminded me that Tristan and I weren’t alone in the house. He sat up just as we heard his aunt enter the kitchen. “I do have to stop,” he whispered. “But I’ll kiss you again tomorrow. And the next day. And every day.”
I sighed at that thought and sat up, snuggling back into him. A few minutes ago, I’d wanted this evening to never end, but the thought of kissing him again tomorrow would make it easier to say good-night.
Chapter Twelve
That night I floated on a cloud up to my room, certain dreams of Tristan’s tender kisses and strong arms would keep the nightmare away.
A shadow slithered across my wall, and before I could bolt, something pounced on me. “So? How was the kiss?”
Jillian.
It was only Jillian. Waiting for me, practically bursting with squealy excitement.