Me:
Your parents not going with you?
Bug:
Nah, Mom got called into work, and Dad is attempting to fix the kitchen sink, it sprang a leak this morning.
I rubbed my lip, thinking over my response before tapping out a message, deleting it, and retyping it. I hit send before I could chicken out a second time.
Me:
Want some company?
When he didn’t reply straight away, I cursed myself. Why would he want me to be there on a day out with his sisters? Besides, after yesterday, he likely didn’t want to see me at all.
My heart leaped into my throat when my phone buzzed with a new message. I almost didn’t want to look.
Bug:
Sure. Meet you there in an hour?
I read his reply three times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things before I let a small smile creep onto my face.
Nerves bubbled in the pit of my stomach as I made my way through the mall to the ice cream parlor where Tristan had instructed to meet. I wasn’tjustnervous at seeing him, but also meeting his sisters. He adored them, and I had a sudden need for them to like me.
When I saw him in the distance, sitting on the bench outside the parlor with two girls on either side of him, eating ice cream, Iwanted to bolt, and I would have done had he not caught my eye and waved me over.
His custom smirk eased some of my anxiety as I weaved through the crowd to meet him. He stood when I reached them.“Hey, man. You found us.”
“Yeah,”I replied, glancing at the two girls gawking at me.
They weren’t identical; one had dark brown hair, the same color as Tristan’s, while the other had lighter chestnut hair and was an inch or so taller. Their features were similar, though, and in both of their faces, I could see Tristan and Rob in them.
“Allow me to introduce you to the most important girls in my life,”Tristan said proudly.“This is Jivey Ivy—”he wrapped an arm around the taller of the two“—and this is Jolly Holly.”
The taller twin, Ivy, scowled at her brother.“I wish you wouldn’t call methat.”
“You love it,”he replied, ruffling her hair and earning an eye roll.
“It’s nice to meet you both. And Happy Birthday,”I said, feeling stupid. Should I have gotten them a present? Or wouldthathave been weird?
“Girls, this is my friend, Ben.”Tristan waved to me, and the twin who hadn’t spoken, Holly, smiled shyly at me, a smudge of chocolate ice cream coating her top lip.
Ivy folded her arms across her chest.“Are you Tristan’s boyfriend?”
Tristan’s eyes widened in panic as my chest tightened. But it wasn’t in fear. Ilikedthe thought of being Tristan’s boyfriend. In fact, I more than liked it.
“No, Ivy,” Tristan said, quickly recovering. “Ben’s just a friend.”
The words were like a knife plunged straight into my heart, and it took all of my restraint not to correct him and tell the girlsthathe was more to me than a friend.
He was everything.
Before I could say anything, though, Tristan clapped his hands.“Right, come on you two, eat up so we can hit the arcades.”
The girls squealed and licked their ice creams as they led the way through the mall to the Arcade Palace, throwing questions at me every so often: did their dad work for me, was I excited about Christmas, did I have a Christmas tree at home?
Ivy was the confident one out of her and her sister. Where she fired question after question—for which Tristan apologized and said he should have warned me about Ivy—Holly barely spoke. I didn’t know if she was shy or felt overshadowed by her dominant sister, but I couldn’t help but glance surreptitiously at her. She carried herself like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders.
