Page 51 of Our Forever Starts Tonight

A knock on my door had me looking over my shoulder in confusion. “Tris?”

I sat up a little, shocked by whose voice I heard. “Taylor?”

“Can I come in?” he asked.

He sounded more reasonable than he had the last few times we’d spoken, which was nice. Though we stayed in close communication after my birthday party, Taylor had been treating me very differently. It was like he said, he struggled to be friends with me after he’d seen the way I acted at the party. For the last two months, Taylor was just my brother and nothing more. He loved me, that was obvious, but a lot of the friendly stuff we’d done had come to an end. Between him being angry at me for the past two months and Hannah not having contacted me since we left dinner Friday night, there was no one to guide me through the weekend.

So… I was a potato.

“Yeah,” I called back.

Taylor took one step into my room and then slapped his hand over his nose and backed out. “Holy shit, it’srankin there. Have you not bathed, like… at all?”

I looked down at the sweats and t-shirt I was still wearing from when I’d gotten dressed for school Friday morning. “Um… no.”

“Okay, well I can’t talk in there with it smelling like that. Open a fucking window, leave your door open, go take a shower, and meet me downstairs.”

I turned my back to him and pressed the spacebar on my laptop to resume my show. “I don’t want to.”

“I swear to god, Tristan, if I have to wade through this sulfur pit to drag you out, I am not going to be happy about it,” Taylor said.

“So don’t,” I snapped back. “Just leave me alone.”

“Jesus,” he huffed. “What the hell is wrong with you. Youneveract like this. Dad was right to call me.”

That made sense. My dad had made a few attempts throughout the weekend to discern what was wrong with me, even going as far to offer to play video games with me to try and coax it out of me, but not only did I not want to revisit the pain that it was causing me anymore than I had to, I didn’t want to deal with the fact that I was my own problem.

And I’d rather talk to my dad about it ten times over before talking to Taylor. He already told me how frustrated he was with me. The most recent fuck-up was only bound to make him angrier.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Aria’s smile skidded across my brain and made me sick to my stomach. At the end of the day, what happened was in her best interest. She deserved awaybetter guy than me. “Sorry to have wasted your time.”

Taylor let out a long, loud groan. “I am going to have to shove your funky ass in the shower. I am not happy.”

“No you don—” but before I could say anything else, Taylor’s hands were on my back, ripping me backwards out of my bed. “Fuck off! Let me go!”

I tumbled onto the floor, grabbing Taylor around the shoulders and taking him down with me. Like a child, when we were face to face, I breathed right into his nose and he gagged. “Disgusting!” We continued to wrestle, the noises of which brought Andrea and my dad rushing up the stairs.

“Stop it!” Andrea screeched.

“It’s fine,” my dad said. “At least he’s out of bed.”

“Taylor, let me go!” I growled.

“Dad, can you go start his shower?” Taylor grunted out.

“Yep.” My dad stepped into the room, groaning and stopping briefly to say, “Ugh, Drea, go grab a spray.” Andrea walked away, and my dad continued into my bathroom, moments later starting the shower.

“Okay, up we go,” Taylor said.

He flipped around until he was at my back, then he wrapped an arm around my chest and jabbed his knee into my back, holding our weight with his other leg, which forced me up onto my feet unless I wanted his knee to split my vertebrae. He was hissing out a flurry of swear words in my ear as he shoved me forward into the bathroom and towards the running shower.

“I’m still dressed!” I barked.

Taylor stopped pushing me. “I’ll let you go if you promise to get in.”

“Fine!” I said. “Just let me go.” Taylor unwrapped me and took a huge step back. My dad walked past us, tapping Taylor on the shoulder as he passed and left the room. “That was unnecessary.”

“Seemed pretty necessary to me,” Taylor said, then he sniffed his shirt. “Great. I smell like your funk.” He speared a finger in my direction. “Go fucking bathe and meet me downstairs.”

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