“Can you give us a moment?” I ask Quinton. When he hesitates, I wave my hand at him, signaling for him to get a move on. I can handle this, I mouth.
Quinton wavers at my confidence and I don’t blame him. He doesn’t know me, so he doesn’t understand how familiar I am with hung over assholes.
“Okay, but if you need me, I’ll be right outside.” Quinton grabs a pack of cigarettes from the table before heading out the door.
Once he’s outside, I face Tristan who’s now sitting on the bed and scowling at me, hung over and cranky. “So, are you going to glare at me or ask me why I’m here?”
He drops the towel on the bed, crosses his arms, and cocks his head to the side. “Why are you here? I mean, I thought you made it pretty clear you weren’t interested the other night.”
“No, I made it clear that I wasn’t ready to kiss you like that.” I set the box of cupcakes down on the empty bed then take a seat beside him. “And then you just disappeared for three days.”
“Well, it didn’t seem to bother you when I disappeared for three months,” he mutters grumpily. He flops down on the bed and drapes his arm over his head, shutting his eyes. “Now go away.”
My gaze travels to the door and I contemplate doing what he said.
Instead, I lie down by him.
“So what’d you do?” I ask, resting my arm on my stomach while holding the cupcake in my hand.
He peeks at me from underneath his arm. “What do you mean, what did I do?”
“I mean, did you drink? Get high? Spun? What?”
His lips part as he gapes at me. “Wow, you get right to the fucking point, don’t you?”
I shrug. “Sometimes you have to if you want to get anywhere in life.”
“How do you even know I was on anything… Quinton told you, didn’t he?” He shakes his head as he lifts his arm away from his face. “Or was it Nova?” He sits up and roughly rakes his fingers through his hair. “She sent you here, didn’t she? God damn her, always trying to fix me.”
“Nova might have mentioned where you were, but I would have figured it out anyway,” I say, my gaze roving to his back.
Thin red lines mark his shoulder blades, as if someone scratched him. Oh my God. Did I do that in the alley? I can vaguely remember stabbing my fingernails into his shirt… as we kissed... and touched…
“And how would you have figured it out?” he asks condescendingly. “You think you know me that well?”
“No, but I know the effects of alcohol really well, and you’re eyes are bloodshot. And you look worn out from too much partying.” I sit up. “You forget I’m a recovering alcoholic. I know the signs of too much partying. Plus, my mother was an alcoholic and a druggie pretty much from the day I was born, so…” I shrug.
“You never told me that,” he says with remorse.
“I haven’t told you a lot of things about me. I usually don’t tell people anything about me, but I must be in a sharing mood today.”
“Why, though? Why all of a sudden are you willing to open up?”
“I have no idea, other than you kind of seem like you needed me to.”
Silence wraps around us. I start to picture the dream I had last night, the one I saw of him standing in the fire and all I did was watch him burn alive.
Blinking back to reality, I bite a heap of the frosting off the cupcake then move the cakey goodness in Tristan’s direction, wiggling it in front of his face. “You want a bite? It’s really good.”
His gaze flicks from my eyes back to the cupcake before he leans in and takes a bite off the top. “It is really good,” he remarks as he licks a glob of pink frosting from his lips.
The sight of his tongue elicits a shiver through my body and creates the tingliest sensations possible.
“I told you it was.” I peel the wrapper down to get a taste of the cake buried beneath the pound of frosting, very aware that he’s watching my every movement and very, very aware of how wildly my heart is thumping.
“You’re not going to press me to tell you?” he says, raising his brow.
I sweep some crumbs off my lap. “Tell me what?”
“About what I’ve been doing for the last three days.”
“If you want to tell me, you can.” I swallow a small taste of the cupcake before handing the rest to him. “But only if you want to.”
He licks some pink frosting off the cupcake before responding. “What if I told you I did crystal? That those three months just became three hours?”
“Then I’d say at least you have those three hours. And trust me, a lot can change in three hours.”
You can die in three hours and be brought back to life.
His tongue slides out of his mouth again, and I notice the frosting is turning it pink.
God, I want to lick his tongue.
“You’d be disappointed in me though,” Tristan continues unaware of my dirty thoughts. “If I did do it.”
“Yeah, I probably would, but my disappointment would wear off, and then I’d just want to help you get those three hours to four.”
He chews on his bottom lip as he reflects on what I’ve said. Then he opens his mouth and pretty much wolfs the rest of the cupcake before placing the empty wrapper down on the nightstand, his intense blue eyes on me the entire time.
“Why?” he asks, licking a drop of frosting off his thumb.
“Why what?”
“Why did you give me a choice that night?”
I rest back on my hands and stare out the window at the sunlight. “Because giving you a choice made you think about what you really wanted to do.”
He reclines back on his elbows and stares out the window with me. “How did you get so wise?”
I shrug, trying not to feel too elated at the fact that I seem to be cheering him up. “Life.”
He angles his head to the side and looks at me. “You seem older than twenty-two.”
“Gee, thanks,” I say dryly. “Looking old. Just what every girl wants to hear.”
He shakes his head and then sits up straight. “No, you don’t look old. At all…” His attention is locked on me, but I’m not sure if he’s looking at me or trying to get a glimpse of what I keep buried inside me. “You just seem like you know more about life than most twenty-two-year-olds do. Most would want to run away from my problems.” He narrows his eyes. “Are you here to join me? Is that why you’re really here, Avery? To get high? To get fucked? What is it?”