by K. A. Linde
She trotted down the stairs two at a time and went through the kitchen. She had almost made it to the back door when her mother stopped her.
“Trihn, is that you?” Linh called.
“Yeah, Mom. Just going over to Ian’s,” Trihn called back.
“Wait, just one minute.”
Trihn sighed and slunk back into the kitchen. “What?”
Linh raised her eyebrows. “What’s with the attitude?”
“Just on my way out.”
“That’s fine, but don’t spend the whole week over there. Ian will be in the city next year, and you can spend your time with him then. We’re going out on the sailboat later, and you two should join the family.”
“Ian and I aren’t together, Mom,” she quickly clarified.
“No one said you were.”
Trihn snorted and started walking away. “Everyone is just insinuating it.”
Linh shrugged her shoulders. “He’s a nice boy.”
“Ugh! Mom!”
“Fine. I’ll see you two later, but please try to change into something more suitable for the boat.”
Trihn rolled her eyes and quickly left the house. The last thing she wanted to do was go on a sailboat with her family and Preston. Besides the fact that no one going on that sailboat should be wearing fucking white, she couldn’t handle another family outing. She couldn’t handle Lydia. She couldn’t handle Preston. She just wanted out.
And out was the only thing she was thinking about as she dashed across the yard and over to the Petersons’ house. She didn’t bother knocking. Even though it was early, she knew Ian had likely been up, gone for his morning run, and eaten breakfast. It was his MO. Didn’t matter that he had drunk nearly as much as her last night. He was a stand-up guy.
She found him back on the patio. His parents were seated around the table. His mother was carefully slicing a grapefruit while his father read the paper. Ian had his computer in front of him and was typing away at the speed of light.
“Hey,” she said when she walked in on them.
Ian’s head shot up. He had circles under his eyes, like he hadn’t gotten any sleep last night. Or maybe he was hungover. She had never seen him hungover, but it was possible.
“Trihn,” he said. His voice was calm and controlled with none of the playful tone she had heard from him every day this week.
“Hi,” she said cautiously. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Peterson.”
“Trihn,” Mr. Peterson said, not looking up from his paper.
“Good to see you again, dear,” Betty said.
“Can I talk to you?” she asked Ian. She tilted her head to the side, gesturing for them to go inside.
He answered by closing his computer and walking past her into the house.
Once they were in the den, Trihn fidgeted from side to side. She didn’t normally feel uncomfortable around Ian, but something was definitely off. He hadn’t really even looked at her since he had gotten up from the table.
“So, what’s up?” Trihn asked.
She wanted to launch into what had happened this morning and freak out. She wanted to cry and scream and have someone who actually cared listen, but she didn’t do any of that. Instead, she just stood awkwardly and waited for him to say something.
“You’re the one who came over,” he said.
“Yeah. And you’re the one not looking at me.”
Ian glanced up into her eyes, and she saw pain. He was in pain. Both of them were—though clearly for different reasons.
“Now, I’m looking at you.”
“Okay,” she said. “Are you mad at me?”
“Mad?” he asked in disbelief. “That’s not the word I would use.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?” he demanded.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“You told me that Preston was cheating on Lydia. You made me hate the guy. But you didn’t tell me that he was cheating on her with you.”
Trihn’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
“I saw you last night!” he cried, the words erupting out of him, as if he was releasing a caged animal.
Trihn stood stark still. “When?” Her voice was so quiet.
“You know when.”
“I—”
“You had sex with him, Trihn!” His hands visibly shook. “On the pool deck where anyone could just walk up and see you two together. And guess who did just that?”
“I don’t know what to say,” she whispered.
“What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Clearly!” Ian was barely keeping it together.
Trihn covered her face with her hands and shook her head. She could not do this right now, not with Preston and Lydia having sex next door while her whole world crumbled down around her.
“We were dating,” she told him.
“What?” Ian asked in confusion.
“Preston is the guy I was dating before I got here. We didn’t break up.” She looked back up at him. “I just said that when I saw him with Lydia because I didn’t know they were dating…or really that he was dating anyone else. I was blindsided, and then I didn’t know how to tell her. Everything swiftly got out of control.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” Trihn sighed and sank down into a chair.
“I still can’t fucking believe you had sex with him last night,” Ian said. He crossed his arms over his chest.
“You and me both.”
“Were you just wasted? Is that why you acted so stupid?”
She shook her head. She deserved that. “No. I was tipsy for sure, but I knew what I was doing.”
“You could have found me last night and told me the truth about Preston. Instead, you went to him,” Ian said. He sounded so disgusted with her. “What the fuck? You can’t say you were ignorant then. You knew that he was with Lydia.”
“I know! I didn’t go to him,” she said. “He found me, and I was just stupid enough not to walk away.”
“Unbelievably stupid!”
“I know how this must all seem, but I was in love with him, Ian. I thought we were going to be together when I moved into the city in a couple of weeks.”
“That doesn’t excuse you from having sex with him last night,” he said.
Trihn winced. “No, it doesn’t.”
“I was here for you, Trihn. All week, I consoled you over this guy who had broken up with you, being everything you needed. Then, you went and fucked him anyway.”
“I know, okay?” she yelled back. “Don’t you think I’ve already been beating myself up enough about this? I feel like absolute shit for letting that happen. I am well aware that it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life. God! But it doesn’t mean that I’m not hurting! Not to mention the fact that he is fucking my sister in her room at this very moment,” she said, standing and pointing toward her house. “I just want out. I want away from here and away from them.”
“There’s nowhere you can escape to, Trihn. You’re going to have to deal with them eventually.”
“But not today, okay?” she pleaded. “Can we just…go away?”
“Where?” he asked skeptically.
“Will you just take me home?”
“Home? Next door or home…”
“The city.”
Ian sighed heavily. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to just run away from this.”
“If I don’t deal with it, maybe it will just go away?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Me either.”
Trihn sat and curled in on herself. She knew what she needed to do. She needed to talk to Lydia and get everything out in the open, but the thought of that was debilitating.
“Just think…he expects you to stay silent. He expects to just get away with this,” Ian told her. “Are you going to let him?”
Trihn shook her head and steeled her resolve. “No.”
TRIHN TOOK A HESITANT STEP back inside he
r house. Preparations were being made all around her for the sailing trip her mother had planned. She and Ian had discussed what she was going to say to Lydia, but it hadn’t made her feel any better. In fact, she felt awful. Her stomach ached, and at any second, she might be sick. She knew that she needed to talk to Lydia, but that didn’t make it any easier.
“There you are!” Linh said when she saw Trihn tiptoeing around. “Just in time. We’re leaving in half an hour, so go change.”
“Have you seen Lydia?”
“She’s tanning out back. Will you tell her that she needs to get moving, too?”
“Sure,” Trihn agreed easily.
She took a deep breath. The knot in her stomach hardened, and she was shaking by the time she made it to the back door. She didn’t know what she was going to find when she got there. She just prayed that Preston wasn’t going to be there because the last thing she wanted was to have this conversation in front of him.
No, she wouldn’t be able to have this conversation with him around. He would twist her words. It didn’t matter that she had loved him. She knew firsthand what he was capable of. She had experienced it last night on the very pool deck she was looking at now.
She tried to quell the tremble running through her body. It didn’t help that it was a perfect day. Couldn’t it match my mood or something? But no. No rain on the forecast, a perfect cloudless day, and the whole merry family was supposed to go out sailing.
Not after she got this over with.
Trihn pushed opened the back door and stepped outside. She could see Lydia lying facedown on a lounge chair in an all white bathing suit. Her blonde hair cascaded over the side of the lounger while she read a magazine. Trihn’s gaze shifted to survey the rest of the pool deck, but she found it empty, no Preston in sight. That was a relief. But it didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t nearby.
“Hey,” Trihn said hesitantly. She approached her sister on the deck. God, can I actually go through with this?
Lydia’s head popped up. She rested her elbows on the lounge chair and smiled at her sister. “There you are! Are you ready to go sailing? It’s been so long since we went. I can’t wait!”
“I don’t know, Ly.”
“You don’t know what?” she asked, rolling over onto her back and sitting up. “You have to go with us. It’s tradition. Mom is going to have a fit if you try to back out.”
“I’m not sure I’m feeling up for it.”
“It’s because you’re in those dark colors you’re always wearing. Come on, Trihn. Black and studs and dark denim for the beach? I have the cutest outfit you can borrow for the boat.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Trihn’s lips. Why couldn’t Lydia act like this all the time? This was the sister who Trihn missed and who she was looking forward to moving in with in a couple of weeks. This was the sister who shouldn’t have her heart broken.
“That sounds nice,” Trihn said softly.
“Plus, Ian will die when he sees you in it.”
“Ugh!” Trihn groaned. “Ian and I are not together.”
“But he wants you! I know, in your world, it’s bad to rebound or whatever, but in my world, you say good-bye to one and hello to the next. Give it a try. I know Ian would go crazy if you did. He’s liked you since you were kids.”
“What?” Trihn asked, laughing because of her sister’s ridiculous ideals. “He has not.”
“Please! You are not that naive.”
“I…wait, what?”
“Ian likes you. He always has. But you totally friend-zoned him in middle school,” Lydia explained. “That doesn’t mean you can’t unfriend-zone him. He’s cute, and you guys get along. He’s serious. He’s smart. You’ll both be in the city.” Lydia waggled her eyebrows up and down. “Think about it.”
And she was. Thinking about it made her gag. “He’s like a brother to me. Just no. No way.”
Lydia sighed heavily and sagged back in her chair. “Your loss. I bet he would worship the ground you walked on.”
Trihn shook her head. She wished that she and Lydia could just keep talking about frivolous things and let their relationship seamlessly repair itself on its own. That was what Trihn and Renée had talked about when she had first found out that Lydia was dating Preston. Lydia would probably break up with him in a couple of weeks, and then all would be well again between them.
But after last night and this morning…could I really wait around for that to happen? Pretend like it didn’t bother me? Pretend like Lydia didn’t need to know the truth?
“This isn’t really why I came out here,” Trihn said. She swallowed hard and tried to meet her sister’s eyes.
“Oh, yeah? Did Mom send you to tell me to make sure I got ready?”
“Well, yeah. She did, but—”
“All ready!” Lydia said, spreading her arms wide. She hopped out of her chair. “I don’t need more than bathing suit, but you on the other hand need my help. Come on. Let’s try that outfit on you.” Lydia latched on to her arm and tried to drag her inside.
“Lydia, I need to talk to you.”
“Okay. Let’s talk while you try on the outfit.”
“Lydia,” Trihn complained, “can’t we talk first?”
“Why so serious?” Lydia said in her best impersonation of the Joker. Then, she was dragging Trihn through the house and back to their bedrooms. She opened the door and tugged Trihn inside.
Trihn froze when she entered.
There was the bed, Lydia’s huge king-size bed.
It was freshly made, so the maid service must have already come through this morning, but it didn’t erase the memories. Lydia and Preston had had sex on this bed this morning. Trihn’s stomach revolted at the thought.
“Is…is Preston around?”
“No,” Lydia said. She was rummaging through the closet, and then she pulled out a white flowy skirt and a blue-and-white striped tank. She tossed them to Trihn. “Try it on.”
Trihn sighed and then stripped out of her outfit and into the ensemble Lydia had given her.
“Anyway, Preston has been on the phone with work all morning. He’s supposed to be taking the time off, but his boss keeps bothering him with this project he’s been working on.”
Sure he is.
“I see.”
At least he wasn’t around to interrupt them.
Lydia shoved Trihn in front of the full-length mirror and smiled. “Perfect. Ian will die.”
“Lydia,” Trihn said.
“I know you’re not together.” Lydia put her hands up in the air.
Trihn wrinkled her nose. She had to admit that the outfit did look nice even if it wasn’t something she would normally wear. But her face fell when she realized that, all this time, she had just been avoiding the conversation that she knew she needed to have.
“What’s that look?” Lydia asked.
“What look?”
“Whatever is on your face right now.”
Trihn turned away from the mirror. “I said that we needed to talk. It’s about Preston.”
Lydia huffed loudly and rolled her eyes. “Of course it is. It’s always something. I really don’t know what’s been up with you on this trip, Trihn. Mom and Dad think you’re just being a hormonal teenager, but I think it’s something else. Normally, you’re the serious one, and I’m the happy-go-lucky one, and then everything works out. But this trip, you’ve been just so mad at the world. Everyone is kind of over it,” Lydia told her. “Just because your boyfriend broke up with you doesn’t mean that you have to take it out on everyone else.”
Trihn clenched her hands into fists at her sides. Everything she had been planning to say flittered out of her mind. “My boyfriend didn’t break up with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“He didn’t break up with me. I just said that when I saw him with you. I didn’t want this to happen this way, Ly, but Preston is—or was my boyfriend.”
Lydia’s eyes rested on Trihn for a second before sh
e doubled over. She was laughing so hard that tears brimmed her eyes. She patted her chest twice and then coughed. “Oh, that’s a good one, Trihn.”
“I’m not joking,” Trihn said.
“Oh, please! Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous either, Lydia. I’m telling you that I dated Preston,” she said, trying to get through to her sister.
Lydia crossed her arms over her chest and stood nearly nose-to-nose with Trihn. “I get that you’re upset because I brought Preston along, but I’m not stupid. Your boyfriend broke up with you, and now, you’re taking that out on everyone else. I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at Preston this whole trip. You’re clearly jealous.”
“You know what? You’re right,” Trihn said, throwing her hands out. “My boyfriend, Preston, has been dating someone else. As you can imagine, that makes me pretty jealous.”
“Stop saying that!” Lydia cried. “Preston never dated you!”
“I really wish that were true,” Trihn told her. “I wish that this trip were the first time I’d ever met him, but it’s not. Preston and I met on the front steps of your building a couple of months ago. After running into me that day, he pursued me, and we’ve been together all summer. I never knew he was seeing you. I actually didn’t even know you were seeing anyone until Mom told me you were bringing your boyfriend on vacation with us.”
“If all of this is true,” Lydia said doubtfully, “then why is this the first I’m hearing about it?”
Trihn sighed and hugged herself to avoid the words she hated to say. “I was blindsided at first, so I didn’t want to lash out from anger, but then I think a part of me wanted to believe that you guys would just break up, like you do with everyone else. Trust me, I didn’t even want to tell you right now, but I thought you deserved to know.”
With those final words, it seemed to hit Lydia. Her face fell, her shoulders drooped, and she looked like someone had just socked her in the stomach. “So…you’re saying that Preston has been cheating on me this whole time?”
Trihn nodded reluctantly.