Tristan at all.
'I'm just worried about you.' The concern in her voice wiped my anger away.
I sighed. 'Do you want me to date or not?'
'I think it'd be good for you to date. You need to come out of your shell. But I want you to date a nice boy. Tristan…' She hesitated.
'What?'
She didn't answer, but her meaning was obvious.
'I just don't want you to get hurt,' she said again. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders. I laid my head against her for a minute and then looked at her face, into her warm, brown eyes.
'I'm willing to take the chance with Tristan,' I admitted and she frowned. 'Mom, you know me. I don't make friends easily because I don't trust people—for very good reasons. James, for one. But I'm trusting my sense with Tristan and I feel that he's different. I want to spend time with him…as long as he wants to spend time with me.'
She stared at me for a long moment, pressing her lips into a hard line. Then she abruptly spun around and marched down the hall.
'Even if he's not like James, he will hurt you,' she said over her shoulder. Just before she ducked into her room, she added, 'Just remember who you are, Alexis.'
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
'Why don't you tell me who I am?' I yelled. I stared down the empty hallway, I guess expecting her to come back and explain. Or for the answer to magically appear. Of course, neither happened.
I stomped to my own room and threw my bag on the floor. A notebook slid out and several loose papers scattered across the floor, including my research notes. I picked them up and glared at them for a long moment, wanting to blame them for everything—not them specifically, but the mystery of who I was. It seemed to be at the heart of everything wrong with my life.
I finally balled up the stupid papers and stuffed them in my desk drawer. I didn't need them anymore. The ideas were absurd and a waste of time. The research was only useful for my writing.
And now I had another mystery: Tristan. Who was he and what was Mom's problem with him?
Chapter 4
I couldn't sleep. Mom and I didn't argue frequently and I hated it when we did. She was my best friend, the only person in the world I could trust. I stopped trying to make friends in middle school, when everyone turned on everyone else so easily. And I was an easy target—the perennial new kid who just wasn't quite normal. Even if they didn't know my quirks yet, they knew there was something different about me and were quick to poke fun and spread rumors. But Mom was always there for me, with a comforting hug and a shoulder to cry on when the kids were especially hurtful. I could talk to her about anything. Well, almost anything. Our history was the only taboo subject. Until now.
And I really wanted, no, needed , to talk to her about Tristan. My feelings for him were a first and I wished I could talk to her to sort them out. It didn't look likely that would ever happen. Especially after she'd brought up James—and compared Tristan to him! Not that I hadn't thought about it before. James …I shivered under my comforter. Not with chills, but with renewed anger.
It was the last time I'd shared anything with anyone besides Mom. I should have known better, but I was fifteen and naive. I'd experienced enough kids taunting me, but James was different…so I thought. He didn't give any particular bad vibes, but I became more attuned to my sixth sense later…after him… because of him.
He seemed genuinely interested and unusually friendly and somehow finagled out of me nearly all of my secrets. I wasn't ready for anything more than friendship, but that's not what he had in mind. On the last day of school, I let him take me to a party and learned that he only saw me as an insecure girl who would respond to the first guy who paid any attention to her. His mood—his whole demeanor—changed as if, by pushing his hand away when he made his first move, I had hit some kind of switch.
'You're really rejecting me, Alexis?' he seethed. 'After I accepted you, you're rejecting me ?'
I felt like I'd been slapped. I had misunderstood every single kind gesture from the very first smile. He just wanted in my pants. Blood rushed to my face with a mix of embarrassment and anger. I stormed through the house, looking for an escape.
'You thought I'd sleep with you ?' he shouted as he followed me out of the house, dozens of people following him to witness my shame. 'Did you think I'd feel sorry for you because you're such a damn freak ?'
I'd heard that one before. I could even get over whatever damage his twisted words had done to my insignificant reputation. But he continued and I spun around in disbelief as he aired everything I'd confided. My body trembled. My hands balled into fists. I could barely breathe. He ranted, sauntering closer to me as he did.
'Your own dad didn't want you! Ditched you before you were even born. Probably knew you'd be a freak. And your mom…well, she's hot, but she must have been thirteen when she had you. And with all the boyfriends… she's just a fucking whore !'
The next thing I knew, my right arm pulled back and, like a slingshot, flew forward. My fist jammed into James's nose with a crunch.
We moved the next day. Not because we ran away from my humiliation or a potential lawsuit or battery charge. But because when I hit James, he sort of flew about fifteen feet backwards, bowling over a group of witnesses—I had more power in my punch than was normal for a fifteen-year-old girl. Actually, more power than a grown man. I wasn't usually so strong, not like Mom. But I had never been so raging mad either.
That last betrayed trust set the final layer of blocks in the emotional wall I built around myself. There had been others like James, but I'd learned my lesson. I shut them down without ever giving them a chance. I just couldn't take the risk of that humiliation again. But now here I was, with another interested guy. There was a difference, though: the feeling was mutual. I just didn't know how smart that was.
Mom didn't say anything more about Tristan for the next several days and neither did I. In fact, we hardly spoke at all. I figured if I waited it out long enough, she'd come around. Either that, or Tristan would lose interest soon enough and it would no longer be an issue. That was more likely than anything.
Thursday I went to campus for a team meeting. I wanted to write—the first few chapters had poured themselves out and I fell in love with my main characters—but with mid-terms next week, I needed the extra help the study group would provide. That hope was lost when I ran into Carlie in the bathroom right before our meeting.
'Tell me if it's none of my business, but are you and Tristan going out or something?' she asked while I washed my hands and she primped.
'Um…no.' I watched her reflection in the mirror, trying to understand where she was going with it. Does she like him?
'Okay, good.' Her deep-blue eyes showed relief.
So that was a yes . A tinge of jealousy pricked my heart. But then she shocked me.
'Because he's kind of creepy, don't you think?'
' What ?' I suppressed a surprised chuckle. Tristan creepy ?!
'I don't know what it is. I mean, yeah, he's really hot. Drop-dead gorgeous, actually. But he's just…I don't know… different , somehow.'
I wanted to laugh. I was so concerned about how unusual I was and she thought he was different .
'Something just bothers me about him,' she continued. 'I think it's something about his eyes, in his eyes.'
Like the sparkle? I like that sparkle!
'He's always been really nice,' I said in a lame attempt to defend him.
'So you do like him?' She peered at me, and then made a face. I didn't know what to make of it.
'Just as a friend,' I lied.
