Page 24 of Our Forever Starts Tonight

It snapped my heart in half. Tears rose to my eyes and I was certain I was going to puke. A hand settled on my back and I looked up to see Taylor standing next to me, looking furious. He looked down at me, then used his hand on my back to pull me away from the kitchen doorway. He shoved me past the dense collection of students and over to the front door so we could step out into the fresh air. I let out a loud gasp as if I’d been holding my breath that whole time and I could no longer stop the tears from running down my face.

“Aria,” Taylor said. “I’m so… He’s not… I just…” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. Can I get you something to drink or something? If you want, you can go take a breather in my and Molly’s room. No one is allowed upstairs.”

I shook my head, biting the inside of my cheek. “No. I just want to go home.”

“I understand,” Taylor said, then he pulled me into a hug. “I’m sorry. These kids make Tristan an entirely different person.”

Tristan’s hurtful words rang through my brain and radiated out until every ounce of me just felt weak. After being so excited to be reunited with him and thinking that things were going somewhere between us. How could he say stuff like that about me? I was actually beginning to think that maybe I was going to be that lucky person that got to be with their school sweetheart. After everything.

How could it end like this?

“Thanks, Taylor. It was nice to see you.”

“You too,” Taylor replied, sounding almost as heartbroken as I felt.

I walked back to my car, passing the people who were still just arriving, and climbed into the driver’s seat. I was barely there before I broke down sobbing, and only just barely managed to get my car a block away before my eyes were too blurry to drive safely. Talking was only going to be a trainwreck, so I opened up my phone and sent a text to Arden that just said, “You were right.” She called me right away, but I couldn’t bring myself to answer and tacked on, “Can’t talk now, I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Definitely,” she replied. “Lunch on me.”

The thought that I would be able to see Arden and talk things out was enough to calm me to the point that I could limp home. I drove so slowly I was certain a cop was going to pull me over, but after a long thirty minutes, I was finally pulling into my driveway at home. The living room light was on, which meant my mom was still awake, a fact I was less than happy with, but I walked in nonetheless, preparing myself for the conversation that was sure to take place.

“Aria?” she yelped as soon as she saw my face, standing to rush over to me. “What happened?” She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me over to the couch to sit down. Something about a mother’s love always made emotions feel stronger, and I started bawling in earnest. She pulled my head down against her shoulder and petted my head gently. “Baby. What happened?”

“Tristan,” I whimpered. “He called me fat and a loser. He said he liked my gift but then he trashed me in front of all his friends.”

I’d told her about Tristan, and even apologized to her because of him, because I thought he was going to make this whole experience worth it. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

“Honey,” my mom said sadly. “I am so sorry.”

After all of my worrying, all of my fears, and all of my anxiety, trying to give people the benefit of the doubt had turned out to be an egregious mistake. I wasn’t even upset that the popular kids were bullying me—that was a reality I’d come to accept—but hearing those words come from Tristan’s mouth, less than an hour after making out with him, was something that was going to haunt my nightmares for many days to come.

I was hoping for a new adventure, but it was beginning to look like it was going to be more of the same. Maybe even worse.

9

Tristan

It took a while, but eventually I got my friends to move on from the topic of Aria and the gift she’d given me. Pretending to hate it and dislike her as much as I did made me feel gross. If I’d known that it was going to be so problematic, I actually might have opted to invite Aria to my birthday lunch with my family rather than the party with all my friends. I didn’t expect them to be that cruel, and I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to jump in. With the party just beginning, I didn’t want to cause any problems that would ruin things for everyone, so I did what I had to do to get through the conversation, but it wasn’t fun.

As long as they all had drinks in their hands and were off talking about someone else, I took my gift from Aria and slipped away from the pack. Honestly, I didn’t want Aria to cross paths at all with Ceradi or the others, so I figured it would be good if we could just slip to a quieter place and continue spending time alone. Maybe I could even use my new sketchpad and pencils to draw another portrait of her, more accurately with her right in front of me.

I did the cursory scan for her, but didn’t see her right away and could see people looking at my gift. Whether out of curiosity or guilt from not having brought anything of their own, people kept staring at the bag, so I decided to take it upstairs to keep it out of the view of others.

When Taylor bought his house, he thoughtfully kept me in mind, and I had my own dedicated bedroom. I walked in and set the gift down and then took a few minutes to pack up my bag and backpack that I’d brought with me for staying overnight, and even lit a candle to make the room smell a bit better. At the very last second, I made sure the bed was made and that there was a nice, calming and romantic playlist going. In my backpack was a box of condoms that I kept on me just in case, and I moved them from my bag to the drawer next to my bed. I wasn’t expecting anything from Aria, obviously, but if things went in a certain direction, I wanted to be prepared.

Once I was confident that my room was prepared for eventually bringing Aria up to get away and spend more time together, I walked back out of the room and returned to the first floor, where everyone seemed hellbent on distracting me as I looked around for where Aria was. It wasn’t the worst thing, because I did need to show my face, especially considering the fact that once I got Aria alone, I may just stay there until the end of the party. I took pictures, enjoyed a drink for a few minutes with a handful of different people, expecting that, at some point, I’d see Aria wandering around too.

But I couldn’t find her.

After an hour of not seeing her anywhere, I started to just full-fledge look for her. She had to be somewhere—we agreed to meet up again—but I checked the living room, the kitchen, the backyard, and the man cave, and couldn’t find Aria at all. Did she get uncomfortable and leave?

The only person as excited as I was that Aria was there was Taylor, and if I knew him at all, he’d probably been keeping an eye on her. He, Molly, and Sherelle had been making sure to keep a presence all around the party so that people knew not to misbehave. It was much easier to find Taylor, who was in the kitchen with Molly, refilling food trays and restocking the drink supply.

“Taylor,” I called out.

Taylor turned and looked at me, and I thought his gaze was going to freeze me over. I side-eyed Molly, who was shifting her gaze between what she was doing and Taylor, eventually throwing me a nervous glance. “Uh… What’s going on? I was wondering if you guys have seen Aria?”

The mention of Aria’s name had Taylor’s fist tightening around the bucket he was holding. He looked at Molly, then back at me, and Molly reached out and took the bucket. “I’ll deal with this, you deal with that.”

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