“You sure you are all right?” she asked again, her voice full of concern.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Really.”
She looked me over, and I could see her gaze fluctuating between my eyes. I wasn’t sure what she was looking to find, but apparently she found it. She gave me a quick nod and then tried to kill me with her next sentence.
“Good,” she stated, “because I have to go home.”
I knew the whole “life passing before your eyes” was only supposed to happen when you were faced with death, but that didn’t stop the last few weeks from running through my head in a matter of seconds. Everything from when I saw her surrounded by those animals in the street, to feeling her hand press against my chest when I confronted her douchebag ex, to wrapping her up in my arms the previous night, flashed in my brain as I considered what she was saying.
She was leaving.
Going home.
“What the fuck?” I yelled, which made my head pound more and made Tria startle. “What the fuck are you talking about? Going home? What are you doing, dropping out of school?”
As much as I wanted to think school was the main concern, what I really wanted to know was why she was leaving me. Had I done something to piss her off? I didn’t think so, but I’d pissed people off before without realizing it, so anything was possible. Maybe it was the fighting. Maybe she was realizing with the way I looked, the ot
her guy must look a lot worse.
Maybe she found some of that shit I still have shoved into the back of that dresser drawer.
More than anything, I didn’t want her to go. I was just starting to think that maybe, just maybe, we could be more. Maybe Yolanda was right, and it was time for me to take a chance again.
I hadn’t even tried to kiss her.
“No, no,” Tria said with a shake of her head. “Nothing like that—just for a few days.”
Well, at least my heart was pumping blood again, but that just fueled my anger.
“Did Douchebag call and tell you to come back? And you’re listening to him? You said before he was going to try to come up with a reason for you to go back there so he could keep you from leaving again, and now you are going to let him?”
“It’s not him.” Tria shook her head back and forth. “It’s Nikki.”
“Who the hell is Nikki?” I asked. I was suddenly annoyed that we did very little talking to each other about our lives.
“She’s my best friend,” Tria said softly. “She was there for me when I needed her. I can’t turn my back on her. Without her, I wouldn’t even be here.”
I stared at her for a moment, watching the wetness coating her cheeks as it glistened in the light from the lamp.
“She got you out of there,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
Tria nodded.
“I knew I couldn’t leave without a big confrontation. Keith had already told me that he wasn’t going to put up with my moving away. He even tore up the acceptance letter from Hoffman when he found it. I had been so happy when I got it, and he just tore it up!”
Tria leaned forward and put her face in her hands.
“He wasn’t going to let go,” she said, “even though I told him I wasn’t seeing him anymore. Even though I told him I wanted to go to school, he wouldn’t drop it. I shoved all my stuff in my dad’s old suitcases and ran to Nikki. She took me up near the Canadian border where her cousin lives. They were all on some extended fishing trip up to New Brunswick, so she hid me there until I could arrange to come down here.”
“I had a little bit of money after Dad died,” Tria continued. “I had been working at one of the local stores after high school and saved a bunch of that as well. I used it for the deposit on the apartment and the bus ticket. Nikki kept lying to Keith and Leo until I could move here, saying she didn’t know where I was. Her husband, Brandon, is one of Keith’s buddies. He was harassing her, too, but she still wouldn’t tell anyone.”
She raised her head and looked at me.
“I can’t just abandon her,” she stated definitively. “I can’t, not when they’re going to…”
“Going to what?” I asked when she didn’t go on.
“I’m not supposed to tell anyone,” she said. Her voice was reserved, but I wasn’t going to give in that easily.