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Second Impressions 4
AUTHOR: The Corrupter
“New Years,” the man echoed, slowly letting the words flow from the tip of his tongue.
“Yes,” Tristan responded, wryly. “The next major holiday after Christmas. The one that occurs every first of January. The start of the new year.”
“I’m familiar with the event. Tell me what happened.”
Tristan shrugged. “Nothing much. Rory and I talked, as usual, and that was about it.”
“Don’t resist the process, Tristan. It’s obviously a significant event in your strange relationship with this girl, otherwise you wouldn’t have made such a point to separate those memories from the Christmas ones.”
“I’m not resisting. I’m just organizing my thoughts in a coherent and linear manner,” Tristan objected, futilely.
“Did you give her a New Year’s kiss?”
Tristan gave a short, sarcastic chuckle. “Boy, this linear concept is beyond your grasp, isn’t it?”
The man grinned. “I’m just trying to skip to the good parts.”
“Patience, my friend, patience,” Tristan chided, as if their roles were reversed.
The man leaned back in his plush armchair, watching as Tristan mimicked his action, settling himself into the dark olive couch. One arm sprawled across the back of the couch. The other hand absently played with one of the throw pillows. The expression on Tristan’s face was one of calculated humor and amiability. Even now, after all the months that Tristan had stopped coming in as a patient and started coming in for something else – advice, peculiar friendship – he still felt it necessary to reveal his thoughts and emotions in tiny measured steps.
“You’re not going to tell me all the good parts, are you?” the man announced, staring at Tristan, egging him on with just the right amount of challenge in his voice.
“What makes you think I’d hold back?” Tristan appeared to be offended.
“I know you,” came the simple reply.
Tristan laughed. “People change,” he offered, lightheartedly, but without promise.
“Not by that much,” the man retorted, as Tristan’s grin grew wider. “Besides, I know you’re going to hold back. Or do your own version of elaboration and censorship. I can tell by your body language.”
“I know that stance. It’s the stance of a person with a silver spoon up his…”
Tristan whirled around on the toes of his freshly polished dress shoes. “Heeey!” he interjected before she could finish her greeting. As soon as he recognized the teasing voice, his face had broken out into a huge grin. He noticed that the smile was returned in kind on the pretty face that stood before him. He didn’t even want to think about what it meant to have her greet him in such a way, especially since he had been standing in the main room of his grandfather’s mansion, trying to be inconspicuous as he eyed the front door. Somehow, she had slipped by him and accosted him from behind. There were moments in the past few weeks when Tristan didn’t know what to think or expect of Rory’s actions towards him, but it was definitely not the move of a girl who hated him. “Your mom looks hot.” He nodded towards the older woman, still beautiful, who slinked across his grandfather’s foyer in a shiny red dress.
Rory’s blue eyes followed his gaze, her eyes darkening and the corners of her grin turning slightly grim. “You’ve been gone for over a year… You’re only back for three weeks… I’m not supposed to like you or have anything to do with you,” she recounted, swiveling her attention back to him. Cocking her head to one side, she directed a scolding, yet amused, quirk of her eyebrow at him. “Do you honestly think that’s the best way to get into my good graces?”
“No.” He hung his head, apologetically, mollified.
The corners of Rory’s mouth twitched. “At least you agree.”
“You look pretty hot, too.” He glanced up quickly, catching her off-guard, as she flushed under his sudden and deliciously intense scrutiny of her. The first thing he had noticed was the simple royal blue dress she wore and the way it brought out the color of her eyes, until “piercing” was too mild an adjective to describe their deep blue hues. He himself had abstained from wearing the requisite stifling tuxedo for a more relaxed look. And it was with some irony that he mildly noted that in his suit, they matched.
“Okay,” she blurted, “I was going to ask you what you did with the real Tristan, but I see he’s alive and well. He never disappoints, does he?” She lifted a perfect brow in mock tease.
Tristan grinned, about to retort with a wise remark, but thought better of it. “I’m a new and improved Tristan DuGrey. Take that however you want,” he told her.
“Hmm.” Rory’s eyes glanced past Tristan, doing a slow survey of the festive room. She had only been in the elder DuGrey’s mansion once – at the last New Year’s bash – but without anyone her age to talk to, she had sat primly in the corner, gushing with her mother over the extravagance of the place and speaking only when spoken to.
“What?” he asked, unconcerned, taking advantage of her own distraction to examine and memorize how she looked that evening.
Rory cleared her throat softly and followed the delicate sound with one of curious consideration. As if she had seen something she hadn’t expected. Or she was not seeing what she had expected.
“What?” Tristan glanced at her, curiosity piqued.
“Nothing.” She looked up and their eyes locked. He could see the spark of a challenge in her eyes, disguised under a twinkle of innocence.
He smiled, slowly, as if understanding. “I get it. You’re doing that thing where you make all sorts of weird sounds to make me think there’s something wrong when really there isn’t.” Tristan dipped his head towards her, inadvertently breathing in her scent of vanilla and honeysuckle shampoo. “I’m onto you, Gilmore,” he warned, voice lowered enough to cause a shudder of goose bumps to appear along her bare shoulders. He resisted the urge to reach out and massage them away.
She didn’t flinch. “You know me that well, huh.” Again, her eyes twinkled mischievously and she aimed a lopsided smile at him, lowering her eyes in sheepish surrender.
Tristan was not deceived. As a person who had played the game much too long to be fooled by such manipulation, he recognized the act. “Of course. For over a year, I was the hunter and you were the prey. It’s the job of the hunter to discover everything there is to know of his victim.”
“What if I want to be the hunter?” Rory piped up, arching a brow.
“Can you start now?” he asked, without missing a beat.
“Jerk.”
“You love it. And you missed it.”
“Hmm.” He noted, with some disappointment, that she did not truly react to his tease. Instead, her eyes flickered to the side, inexplicably brightening in what Tristan thought was morbid anticipation.
Tristan didn’t know how good of an actress she had become, and was almost afraid to look. “Again with the noises! What?”
She met his eyes, with a serene and too innocent air. “Why aren’t you looking for him?” The “him” did not need to be clarified. As long as Tristan and Rory had known each other, there was only one “him,” and that “him” meant Dean. “He could be behind you.”
Tristan rolled his eyes. “You said the two of you broke up.”
“I say a lot of things. We still keep in very close contact.”
He tensed, not sure what to make of her statement. Was she trying to bait him, or was she being serious? He let out a perplexed sigh, as if he were bored of Rory’s mind games. “But you just called it quits. That’s what you said last week. Besides, you said he’s in Chicago for the holidays.”
“I talked to him a few days ago. He mentioned the possibility of returning early. And you never know. Things could have happened between the Christmas party and now.” Rory fluttered her eyelashes in exaggerated innocence.
He rolled his eyes again, deciding that she was definitely playing with him. “Things could not have happened between then and now,” he corrected, adamantly.
“I could have fallen for you.” The remark came easily and smoothly from her lips, as if she had practiced the line before, or really did believe it was true.
Beat. “You’re right,” Tristan agreed, slowly, letting a lazy grin appear playfully at the corners of his mouth. “Things could have happened.”
He stared at her, silently willing her to make some sort of retort in order to keep the verbal game going. She made no such attempt, only stared back. While their eyes held, Tristan broke out into a grin that was somewhere between embarrassed triumph at having defused her plan of attack, and pleased smugness at having had the last word. Rory’s lips twitched, trying to suppress an exasperated smile at Tristan’s expression, but the sparkle in her eyes, at least, informed him that she was amused.
Rory glanced down briefly, and when she looked up again, she was wearing a whimsical smile of concession. They both knew that she had allowed him the last word in their most recent playful banter. “Now can we stop talking about Dean, and start on your favorite subject?”
“Who, you?” Tristan was all innocence.
Her grin widened. “You.”
The older man chuckled, the suddenness filling the otherwise quiet room with a warmth and heartiness that was often missing during the majority of his sessions with other patients. “She really does know you pretty well, doesn’t she?” he asked, rhetorically. “I believe it took me at least a week to figure out how much you liked to talk about yourself.”
Tristan resisted the urge to stick his tongue out, but mainly because he was feeling slightly more mature at the moment. He also did not bother to point out that during their former sessions, his favorite topic of discussion had been himself out of default, until he had felt secure enough to actually speak about Rory. “Well, you can’t really teach an old dog new tricks… that quickly, anyway.” Yes, he was feeling more mature, but it didn’t preclude letting out a few verbal zingers anyway.
“Old dog? Why don’t we just agree that I’m obviously more… mature… than you or Rory,” the man joked. “Now, don’t tell me that you really spent the rest of the evening talking about yourself, even if she did insist.” He smiled knowingly.
“Actually… did you know that Rory has quite a keen sense of awareness of her surroundings?”
“Well, he transferred in from some snobby boarding school in Vermont, and I think there was going to be an actual catfight until she made Madeline cry. But then he decided he liked Trish Hudson better, anyway.”
“I can’t imagine Louise doing such a thing. Sure, she can be cold-hearted, calculating, manipulative…”
“And this is your defense for her?” Rory quirked a brow. “You’d make a great character witness.”
“Well, if the prosecution would rest for just a minute…” Tristan snickered. He met Rory’s patient gaze. “Must have been horrible,” he said, thoughtfully.
She nodded once. “The worst three weeks in Chilton history. Other than that year when you were still around.” Her eyes twinkled merrily, enjoying the reddening of his cheeks at that reminder. “What is it with you guys, anyway? Anytime someone new comes to the school, it’s like hunting season. You all swoop in like vultures. Is there some handbook for rich, egotistical guys who think they’re entitled to act like jerks in order to get whatever they want?”
“Hey,” he interjected, feigning hurt. “Do not group me with the general ‘you guys.’ I do not make people cry.” Rory directed an unreadable expression at him. He threw up his hands in defeat, conceding with grumbling reluctance as a vision of Rory, with tears in her eyes, flashed in his head. “All right, that was an aberration.” He sighed when it became apparent that she would not be convinced otherwise. He changed the subject instead. “Is that why Paris decided to go to Europe for the holidays?”
Rory pursed her lips. “I think she was about to explode over what idiots Louise and Madeline were making themselves out to be, and how foolish she would appear to be through her association with them. Anyway, rumor has it that her mother finally invited her to join her on her holiday retreat, and she jumped at the chance.”
Silence followed as they both pondered this news. Most of the kids who went to Chilton and traveled in their – Tristan’s, at least – circles, were used to the notion of being left behind for the holidays. Neither one said anything. Rory, most likely because she had run out of things to say, still amazed at how civil they had been to each other during the last ten minutes while she caught him up on the happenings within the Chilton student population. And Tristan, because he didn’t really know what to make of Rory.
He stared at her, almost analytically. “When did you become such a gossip?” he asked, suddenly. There was a mix of disapproval and amusement at the edges of his voice.
To his surprise, she squirmed, eyes cast down towards the floor as her feet did some awkward shuffling of their own. She refused to meet his eye. “After you left, there was no one left to talk to me.” She had tried to downplay it by adding a hint of sarcasm to her softly spoken remark, but it wasn’t anywhere near the full-blown derision that he had been expecting.
“Doubt it,” he clucked, lightly, as if he didn’t believe a word she said, even though the deliverance of her admission had caused his heart to skip a beat.
She glanced up, his insistence on keeping it lighthearted between them easing her discomfort. “Well, you were the only one who actually talked to me on a consistent basis.” Rory rolled her eyes, before adding, “If you could call it talking.”
The grateful sparkle in her eyes informed him that she was glad he had chosen to keep their playful banter going, instead of using any of her statements to his advantage. Tristan, himself, did not dare reveal that he was happy to do whatever it took to keep their amiable conversation going. He opened his mouth in astonishment, eyes widening as his right hand came to rest over his heart. “Are you trying to imply something?”
“Never.” Rory shook her head, even as a broad smile spread across her face. Their eyes met once again, and a comfortable curtain of silence fell over them. But the moment passed too quickly for his liking, as it usually did. “So tell me about Eton,” she prompted, quickly. “I don’t want to talk about Chilton anymore.”
The request caught him off-guard. He had simply begun their current conversation by posing a simple, curious question of his own, wondering what he had missed while he had been behaving like a rogue in England. Rory had enjoyed the wording of his inquiry, especially the “rogue” part, and he hated to disillusion her. Tristan hadn’t really expected her to go to any lengths to satisfy any requests he put forth to her, but she had stunned him by talking about Chilton and its students for the past half hour. And as she randomly jumped from topic to topic, from student to teacher and back, he had reveled in the ease at which the smooth silkiness of her voice washed over him and enveloped him in a spark of warmth he hadn’t felt since the day he first laid eyes on her. But he was prepared to relinquish it as soon as she finished talking, knowing that when Rory ran out of things to say to him, she would most likely walk away. It had always been that way between them. And except for that burgeoning seed of hope churning a hole through his gut, he hardly expected it to be different this time.
Except it was. He had never expected her to actually want to hear what he had to say. Or hear about anything that had to do with his life and experiences. It was a twist he decided he could get used to, fast, but was afraid would spoil him for the day she resumed walking away. “There’s nothing really to talk about. Eton’s boring. You’re not there.” He flashed her a bright smile, one that bordered dangerously on a leer, at that last part.
A soft smile graced her lips. She didn’t look like she believed him. “You better talk,” she ordered. “I spent all summer after sophomore year, thinking of good retorts and comebacks for when I ran into you again junior year… only to arrive at Chilton in the fall to hear that you transferred out over the summer.”
“What can I say? You were too much to handle.” Pause, silence. Then a quirk of his brow. “You were thinking of me over the summer?” Despite a surge of self-control, Tristan couldn’t stop the hopeful note from sneaking into the nuances of the question.
Rory automatically rolled her eyes. “Don’t be smug. It’s not like I was thinking of you constantly, everyday...” She didn’t finish the thought, giving a little huff of impatience and annoyance instead. “And now it’s senior year, and you show up at my grandparents’ Christmas party, acting like we’re long lost friends.”
Tristan couldn’t tell what was under her mask of exasperation, but he sensed her sudden frustration with him was only superficial. Deciding to bring the discussion back to a safer ground and tone, he wagged a finger in front of her. “Hey, you came to find me,” he reminded, in a ridiculously sing-song voice.
The corner of her mouth twitched. “Semantics,” she shot back.
“We’re not going to do this for the rest of our lives, right?” he asked, giving an exaggerated sigh, almost afraid to meet her eyes.
She pretended to consider the question, then raised a noncommittal brow. “What? Hate each other?”
He grinned. “I’m perfectly lovable.” And before she could correct him, he quickly answered her rhetorical question. “No, contradicting each other out of spite.”
“We’ll see.” And Rory offered him a smirk that matched his own.
An expected and simple “no” or “yes” would have ended that train of thought with the utmost finality. The very unexpected “we’ll see,” however, threw him for a loop and sent his stomach somersaulting down to his toes and rocketing up to his throat. His heart, on the other hand, was busy trying to burst through his chest. Her simple two-word statement had offered too much hope and promise of more. More what, he couldn’t be certain, but it was definitely better than what he had ever had with Rory.
He broke the stalemate by reaching out with his hand and briefly allowing his fingers to graze her bare wrist. The movement was so quick, and such a product of sleight of hand, that Rory never even knew he had done it until after his fingers were gone and all she felt were the remnants of his heat burning through her skin and tingling all the way up her arm. “Hey,” he said, softly, as his fingers met creamy flesh, catching her attention with both his voice and his audacious, yet successful, attempt at contact.
Rory’s eyes snapped from her wrist to his face, her face flushed. She didn’t say anything, only gave him a questioning look. He pretended not to notice the rosy tint creeping over her cheeks, even though it made her complexion even more becoming. She was as lovely as ever, with or without the blush, but he would never dare to tell her in all seriousness. Rory was likely to give him a hard right hook, even though one was probably long-deserved.
She was still looking at him, curiously. He let his eyes do a slow scan of the room behind her, before letting his soft gaze settle on her. When she tilted her head, inquisitively, Tristan directed a ghost of a grin at her, and allowed his gaze to drop just inches towards her reddish pink lips. As soon as she realized what he was doing, she tensed and Tristan’s grin widened. “It’s almost midnight,” he finally informed, voice low and dangerous.
There was a thick, audible pause as the man waited for Tristan to continue. When none of the rest of the story was forthcoming, he gave an exasperated sigh. “Did you kiss her at midnight? And I’m not trying to skip to the ‘good parts.’ According to your insistence on telling the story as it unfolds chronologically, midnight is next.”
Tristan neither honored the blatant dig, nor did he hesitate in his response, as if the answer to the question was so obvious. “Are you kidding?” he asked, incredulous. “She would have kneed me.” But he was smiling.
“No gain, no pain.” The man broke out into his own smile.
Tristan scoffed, rolling his eyes. “I’ll try to remind myself that next time,” he drawled, glancing away and shaking his head to himself.
“A wasted opportunity.”
“It would have been my dying breath if I tried it,” Tristan countered.
Their eyes met across the four feet of gray carpet. They smiled together. “Would that have been so bad?” he sniffed, as if he resented having a good story withheld from him.
Tristan chuckled. “No, but then I wouldn’t have lived to see yesterday.”
The man’s brow went up in a silent “ah ha.” Tristan, having expected the trait, simultaneously executed his own version of the man’s expression. Seeing how correct he had been in predicting and assessing the therapist’s actions caused him to break out in a congratulatory grin. The older man clucked his tongue, mildly berating Tristan for such childish behavior.
“And I suppose,” he began, lifting a brow in challenge, “that ‘yesterday’ is why you’re really here today.”
Tristan didn’t say anything, just continued to grin.
The knowing grin sparked a wave of annoyance in the older man. “Well, go on, then,” he sighed, as if he really didn’t care if Tristan spent the rest of the afternoon sitting there, grinning like an idiot. “Tell me all the parts you want to tell me so I can go home and fill in the rest of it myself.”
Tristan tilted his head to one side, still grinning. “We didn’t share a New Year’s kiss.” His blue eyes flashed, mischievously. “Although… I vaguely remembered singing Auld Lang Syne while standing beside her…”
It was a lie. Neither he nor the other man could picture him participating in such a New Year’s tradition. “And yesterday?” he prompted.
“I didn’t kiss her then, either,” he offered. This wasn’t a lie.
The man rolled his eyes and groaned. “I meant, what happened yesterday that prompted you to come see me today?”
Tristan’s face was a study in blankness. Slowly, almost absently, his pale blue eyes drifted towards the direction of the large picturesque windows with their magnificent view of downtown Hartford. When he answered, his voice held a hint of wistfulness.
“It snowed.”
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