I found almost right away that it was best just to stick close to James and Bianca. The crowds parted for them, which was good, because there was no telling what an obsessed James would do if, G.o.d forbid, someone accidentally b.u.mped into Bianca.
We hadn’t exactly rushed there, but it was a full hour before I spotted Tristan, and it was as he came through the front door, Mona on his arm. They had only just arrived.
An entire hour later.
I told myself they must have just been held up at the funeral home. I had to tell myself that, or I would have started screaming and throwing things, and I wouldn’t have stopped.
He hadn’t even spotted me yet, but I turned my back on him.
Bianca’s eyes were sympathetic as they met mine.
“Tell me, am I overreacting? Am I being selfish and insensitive right now?”
“It’s a bad situation. I think you’re doing your best. James is almost done making rounds. You want to catch a ride with us? I could abscond with you to my painting studio, again. I’ve been wanting to start on that painting with you that I was telling you about, with the yellow scarf, and you could vent at me to your heart’s content.”
That was tempting. There was nothing I’d have liked better than to slip away before Tristan even saw me, and spend the afternoon with Bianca in her peaceful studio. I loved that studio. And I could undoubtedly use a good venting session.
“I would love that, but I did promise Tristan I’d stay close for the next few days, for moral support. Still, it’s not like he needs me right this second, and he could be here all day. Let me talk to him and see.”
I bit the bullet and approached him.
Mona was just holding his arm now, one big fake t.i.t pressed into his bicep. It was still a vast improvement over what she’d been doing before, which had been just shy of dry humping him in public.
They were talking to another couple, people I didn’t recognize, but I approached anyway.
“Tristan,” I said quietly.
He started and looked at me. He seemed off, some stiffness in his expression cluing me in that something was wrong.
“Hey, I’m taking off with Bianca, but maybe I’ll catch you later tonight, okay?” My words came out stilted, almost cold, which hadn’t been my intent at all. I just wanted to get the h.e.l.l out of there.
He started trying to pry his arm out of Mona’s death grip. “Excuse me,” he told her. “I need to talk to my girl.”
She let him go, giving me very solid eye contact. I never could read her. I’d considered briefly that she might be high, with the way she’d been acting, and everything else that was going on, but looking at her up close, I didn’t think it was that. Still, she seemed just as off as Tristan did. Something had definitely happened between the funeral and the reception.
I dreaded figuring out what.
“Hurry back,” she told him in a breathless voice.
I had to bite back a response to that.
Tristan tugged me down the nearest hallway and into a small sitting room that somehow didn’t have any occupants. He shut the doors behind us, but there was no way to lock them.
“You’re upset,” he began quietly.
I shook my head, though he wasn’t wrong. “I don’t think you need me here, in fact, I think it would be better if I left and leaving with Bianca seemed like the best solution.”
“I do need you here, and I know it’s tedious, but it would be really nice if you would just stay by my side.”
“Your side’s been occupied.”
He rubbed his temple while I began to pace around the room. “Yet another reason I’d like you to stay close. She’s…not herself today, and I would like to discourage her without making her day any worse than it already is.”
“You want me to, what, stake my claim?”
“That would be nice, yes. What would be really nice is for you to mean it.”
Ha. That really wouldn’t be a problem. “Oh, I can do that.”
He started moving to me, and I had to stifle the urge to start backing away. I didn’t want him to touch me until I knew what he’d been up to between the funeral service and here.
“So you rode over here with the entire family?” I asked him, watching his face very carefully.
He grimaced, and I tensed up. “No. Mona set it up so it was just she and I in a limo.”
Well, at least he hadn’t tried to cover that up.
“Did you f**k her?”
He didn’t take that well, which was understandable, because I hadn’t meant it well.
I didn’t really think it was a possibility, but I couldn’t seem to keep it in. I had to vent somehow, or I’d go nuclear. Even so, I regretted saying it instantly. This was not the time or the place.
His nostrils flared, his eyes gone wild. “Is that a serious question?”
I chewed on my lip, reluctantly admitting, “No.”
“Good. And no, I stayed far away from her.”
He finally had me backed into a corner when he cupped my face in his hands.
“This is why you don’t sleep with the daughter of a close friend,” I told him. I was angry about that, how his naiveté could potentially harm what we had, what we were still trying to build into something. “Especially one that you work with. What were you thinking?”
“I was a fool, clearly, but she didn’t present herself as she is now. She was, I don’t know, the opposite of you. She’s not a relationship girl, or so I thought. She always tried so hard to prove that she was just the cool chick and just as disinterested in having anything serious as I was. She was all too happy to volunteer for f**k buddy status. It made sense at the time. None of it is an excuse. I was an idiot.”
Yep, I was done with that line of conversation. I tried to pull my face out of his hands, but he wasn’t having it.
He bent down to me. “Stay by my side. Stake your claim.”
“That’s just what Bianca told me to do.”
“Well, aside from her taste in too pretty men, she’s a smart girl.”
That got a small smile out of me, as though he took that as permission, he brushed his lips against mine.
I gripped his wrists, whether to keep them where they were, or push them away, I wasn’t sure.