Page 88 of Heart to Heart
Tristan nodded, looking like he wanted to say more than he was restricting himself to. “If it’s for you and not for him.” He leaned in and kissed my forehead. “I’ll be right here.”
I inspected the boy I’d been in love with once upon a dream—or, at least, I’d thought I’d been in love with him. The more time I spent with Tristan, the more I realized it had been more of an infatuation with a popular boy who I thought was too good for me. Now, as I approached him, all I saw was desperation mixed with a selfish need to take the spotlight from the ex he’d humiliated so callously on social media.
“What is it, Guy?” I asked.
He winced, appearing wounded. “I’ve been watching the show,” he said. “You’ve been…different. You’re pretty awesome now.”
“She’s always been pretty awesome,” Tristan raised his voice.
“Does he have to be here?” Guy nodded at Tristan. “I’d like to talk to you alone, if possible.”
I looked back at Tristan. “He stays.” Tristan smirked, leaning with one hip resting against a light pole, his hands in his pockets.
Guy sighed, knowing this was one argument he would lose. “Look, Avery. I’ve been watching you on the show, and I’ve been taking in how much I’ve missed you. Seeing you with someone else, I didn’t think it would affect me as much as it has. I…I just needed to see you.”
“You just needed to see me?” I rolled my eyes, anger replacing trepidation. “Tell me, Guy, where was this energy when we were together? Also, where’s your girlfriend?”
“She and I broke up a couple of weeks ago. Things just weren’t right with her. She was jealous and insecure when it came to you.”
Liz Bennet. The perfect, pretty Liz, who was far better than me in every way, was insecure when it came to me.
“Tell me, Guy. When she was expressing her insecurities to you, what did you do to put her at ease?”
He stared at me. His mouth opened to speak, but no words came out.
“Just what I thought. You’re no Darcy.” I moved to walk away, stopped short by Guy grabbing my arm.
“Let go of her,” Tristan commanded, stalking toward us.
I held out my hand, motioning for him to stop as Guy let go of my arm.
“Please, Avery,” Guy pleaded. For a split second, I almost felt sorry for him with the genuine pain I heard in his plea, but that moment of empathy was short-lived. “Don’t throw away everything we had together for a guy who will dump you the second the show is over and you both have to return to your real lives. He won’t be there when you come back to Michigan, but I will. And I promise you, Avery, we can go back to the way things were before. We were happy, right?”
I couldn’t stop the laugh that bellowed from me, even if I had superglued my mouth shut. “That’s a good one, Guy. Because if I remember correctly, things were great for you, but not so much for me. I mean, you did cheat on me.” He moved to speak, but I shut him down. “And as to Tristan, you have some audacity to presume what his intentions are. He’s treated me with far more dignity and respect than you ever did. He listens to me, genuinely interested in what I have to say; he cares when things bother me—all courtesies I never received from you. Maybe Tristan isn’t in love with me, but he's still a far better boyfriend than you ever were. If you think your emotional manipulation is going to work on me again, and I’m going to run back to Michigan with you with my tail tucked between my legs, just so you can tell everyone you bested Tristan Tate, you’ve got another thought coming. I’d rather go back home alone than be miserable with you because, as I’ve come to realize, Guy, it wasn’t me. It was you the entire time.”
My body shook as I walked away from Guy for what I knew would be the last time. A small fragment of me felt terrible for what I’d just said to him, but all that changed when I turned tofind Tristan with a smile so wide it took up most of his beautiful face. Infectious as it was, I couldn’t help but smile back at him, feeling like a whole new Avery.
When I reached him, Tristan pulled me in for a hug, whispering in my ear, “I’m so proud of you. But you got one thing wrong.”
CHAPTER 51
AVERY
“Okay,that’s enough filming for today.” Tristan addressed the cameraman, Garry, a grizzled entertainment veteran pushing retirement, who seemed grateful to be packing it in early.
He offered his hand to me, helping me up from my chair placed around the small table that had been set up in a gazebo strewn with even more fairy lights and roses. A river ran alongside us as we ate dinner, its flow a calming presence and a stark contrast to the camera that had been shoved in my face. We’d made small talk, mainly about my newfound goal of opening a lemur preserve, which I was only half-joking about. Tristan had smiled, listening to me intently and offering up a story about an errant bull on the set of one of his movies. An entertaining anecdote, but I could tell he was holding back. So, I did, too.
“Come for a walk with me?” he asked, nodding to a trail that wound along the river. I looked down at my shoes, my feet already sore from the heels I’d walked in all day. Tristan looked down, frowning. “I could always carry you.” He laughed, but I was pretty sure he was all kinds of serious.
“I think I can tough it out, even though I may pay for it tomorrow.”
He guided me down the steps out of the gazebo and onto a wooden walkway. Overhead, even more fairy lights twinkled. Whoever manufactured them was making some serious bank offHeart to Heartfor this date alone.
“It’s absolutely breathtaking,” I said, looking up at the trees in awe as we strolled underneath them.
“Yeah, it is.”
“Tristan Tate, if you were looking at me while saying that you need to turn in your action hero card right now because the cheese on that was strong enough to clear a room.”
