“You should take it like the truth.”
“Which is what, Tristan?” She asks with a frustrated sigh, sinking back into the seat as the flight attendants come around and do their safety checks.
“That all sense of logic goes out the window when I’m around you.”
“You haven’t been around me in a decade,” she counters, but he doesn’t seem phased.
“So you can see how troubling it is for me to discover that even after that amount of time I still have the same reaction to you.”
“I can’t do this,” she says, desperately looking around the plane for another place to sit. She suddenly feels hot, nearly suffocating under the intensity of the chemistry radiatingbetween them. Why is she suddenly thinking about the way his tongue felt between her legs that one night they shared together?
“This is so inappropriate on so many levels. You have a girlfriend and we are supposed to be working together.”
“Suite yourself,” he says casually as he gets comfortable in his seat. She throws an unamused look at him, but he only winks back at her in return, and she grunts and throws her headphones in her ears.
About an hour passes on the flight. Tessa has her nose buried in a book with her earbuds in while Tristan is watching some play film on an iPad that looks cartoonishly tiny in his large hands. Tessa sneaks a glance but then looks away.I will not allow myself to think about his hands, torememberhis hands.
She can’t help herself and glances his way again, but this time she sees two little girls who are seemingly speaking to the phone, and Tristan smiling a mile wide. Her heart swells seeing the look on his face, and she wonders if he knows them.
“Whose kids are those?” she asks, taking out an earbud and leaning towards him.
“Huh? Oh, this is Winnie and Emmie. Jordan’s girls.”
“Jordan, your brother?” she asks in surprise.
“Yeah. Him and Katie.” He says it casually, as if she should know these things.
“They’ve stayed together all this time?” Her mind wanders back to Katie fondly and how nice she always was to her. She always thought about Katie and hoped that good things came to her in life but never expected two college sweethearts could actually make it. It was hard to believe when a love and bond as strong as her and Tristan had been shattered so easily.
“Yep, got married, have two babies, and she already pregnant with another one.”
“Another one?!”
“That’s what I said,” Tristan laughs and looks back at the video. “They’re so fucking cute. You’d love them.”
“Does Jordan still play?”
Even though Tessa had made an effort to ignore all things football, and she did a pretty exceptional job over the years, she was still aware that Jordan had been drafted to the Eagles, but she didn’t know much beyond that.
“Damn Tess, did you just erase us from your whole memory when you left?”
She can’t ignore the iciness in his tone, and he doesn’t make eye contact with him when he says it. She can tell his whole demeanor has shifted, and she suddenly feels uncomfortable with his mood change.
“Of course not,” she whispered. “I never forgot any of you. I’ve thought about you every day of my life, Tristan. It was just easier to not keep up with what you guys were doing. It would have been too painful if I kept tabs on you.”
“Do you even know that him and I played each other in the Super Bowl?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the last Super Bowl was Eagles and Titans. Me and my big brother, we both played in the Super Bowl at the same time.”
She smiles at him, tears sparkling in her eyes.
“That’s incredible,” she whispers.
“It was. Too bad you wrote me off and walked away like I was nothing.”
“Tristan, don’t do this here,” she said, very aware of the fact that she couldn’t run like she usually does.
