The woman who sat before him was molded from years of acts so damaging Tristan couldn’t bring himself to imagine them. The fact that the people who were entrusted with her well-being had brought harm to her made him boil with anger. He didn’t understand how anyone could look into those eyes and bring hurt to this girl.
Tristan had always been protective. His father taught him to love and cherish women and to keep them safe at any cost. Dr. Daniel Fallbrook was just that kind of man. He still believed in chivalry and courtship and reverence for your elders. Tristan learned early on in life that his father’s word was final, his mother was never to be disrespected, and he was to put forth his very best effort on all tasks.
When Tristan lost McKenzi, he’d been devastated. He’d felt abandoned and completely cheated by her death. Everyone looked at him with sympathetic but dismissive eyes. They thought he would soon get over it. He was just a child. No one understood what Mac meant to him; they never would. Tristan had mourned her with every piece of his mind, body, and soul.
It had been one thing when she’d moved across the country. Both of them had been heartbroken. But they’d made promises to find each other again. There was solace in the fact that McKenzi still existed, however unreachable she may have been. When news of her death surfaced, Tristan hadn’t believed it. He’d thought that it had been a joke of the cruelest nature and raged out at anyone who would listen.
Looking back, he recognized now that he had gone through every Kübler-Ross stage of grief. After denial, Tristan’s anger had tried to purge McKenzi from his system, and when she wouldn’t go, he had begun to bargain. He’d begged and pleaded for just one more chance to see her, for just one more moment to tell her how much he needed her.
To a fourteen-year-old-boy, depression was not a familiar state. Though he knew the definition of the word and all its symptoms, Tristan was not able to recognize it in himself. Even though his grades suffered and he didn’t have the will to eat, Tristan thought he had finally accepted the loss of his best friend. His mother had watched him with a worried eye and his father had grown tired of the moping.
The summer after his sixteenth birthday marked two years since McKenzi had been gone. He’d finally become social again, hanging out with friends and spending more time outside his bedroom than in it.
This particular day, a group of boys had gone down to the lake for a party. There had been loud music and kids dancing around an overgrown bonfire. Couples huddled in dark shadows, kissing and pawing at each other. Girls, wearing next to nothing in the heat, danced together, taunting the boys. Tristan was immune to all of it. The waves lapped at the shore as he sat motionless, eyeing the beer growing warm in his hand.
She’d first appeared as part of a group, though Tristan would say that Fiona stood out like a goddess among mortals. Her cheerless blue eyes had reflected his own feelings and he’d felt drawn to her sadness. That was the instant that his life shifted, the circumstance that set into motion the destruction of every dream he had ever built.
Fiona, the bottle blond with an acidic smile, had changed who he was destined to be. The girl had redirected his life, and he’d been all too willing to let her. Tristan had left behind his family and embraced her as the only thing tethering him to happiness.
“Where were you?” Josie’s voice startled Tristan, and he looked down to see her eyes fixed upon his. “Up here,” she clarified, tapping at his temple. “Where were you?”
“In Wonderland,” he answered absently.
“How’s the Queen?”
“Which one?”
“Huh?” Josie asked. “The mean one.”
“Well, there’s the Queen of Hearts in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and then there’s the Red Queen in the sequel, Through the Looking Glass,” Tristan answered.
“Whichever one said ‘Off with their heads!’ I liked her.”
Tristan smiled.
“That’s Disney’s version. She’s more of a combination of the Queen of Hearts, the Duchess, and the Red Queen. Pretty much a sadist who is easily annoyed.”
“So she just goes around beheading anyone who irks her. I can get behind that,” Josie said.
“If we lived in a world like that, we’d have a much smaller population. Get cut off in traffic? Bang. Cashier doesn’t take your coupon? Bang. Chaos and no laws to hold people accountable for their actions.”
“Can you imagine the thrill, though? Never knowing when you were going to die? Maybe you piss someone off and that’s it. You’re gone. I think it would force people to live the best life possible all the time. No working at jobs they hate or staying in bad relationships.”
“And also people would go around fulfilling all of their selfish desires, however heinous they might be. How would you separate the general population from the guy who wants to chain women up in his basement and torture them? You couldn’t. Anarchism is a philosophy that holds the government to be immoral because of its use of violence, authority, and force. Seems ironic that, with lawlessness, the citizens would be just as immoral.”
“Depends on your definition of morality, I guess,” Josie said.
“Conformity to the rules of right conduct. But then, what is right?”
“Exactly,” she said. “Getting high and tagging pristine walls feels right.”
“Psychopaths and deviants believe what they do is right. Or they just don’t care.”
“Kind of like me,” Josie teased.
“I don’t believe you don’t care about your self-destructive behavior. I’d say you were more masochistic as a result of neglect and dysfunctional feelings about yourself.”
Josie popped up and stomped to the kitchen. She pulled a beer from her otherwise empty fridge and twisted off the cap. As she brought the bottle to her lips and let the coolness soothe her scorching insides, she squeezed the cap tight into her fist. The metal edges cut into her palm until she released it to the floor.
She kept her back to Tristan as she finished the beer. When she slammed the empty bottle down, Josie realized her fingers were trembling.
Tristan’s shadow cloaked her in darkness as he approached. Josie closed her eyes and titled her head toward the ceiling. She exhaled slowly and deliberately before speaking.
“Not you too,” she said. Tristan remained silent, but he wrapped his arms around her. His embrace was comforting and the answer to all her problems. “Don’t head-shrink me. I’ve had enough of that. Not from you, okay?”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Josie spun in his arms and gave her most convincing smile.
“Do you want to get out of here?” she asked.
“Yeah, where to?”
She just pulled him toward the door.
“Do you have your car?” He nodded. “Good.”
No questions asked, Tristan drove her to Trader Joe’s and followed her around as she shopped. He loved how domestic and utterly normal it felt to do this with her. As they loaded the bags into his car, curiosity finally got the best of him.
“Are you cooking?” he asked.
Josie laughed, throwing her head back and placing her hand over her stomach. Tristan just watched and waited for an answer.
“Uh, no. This isn’t for us.”
She instructed him toward Balboa, and when they were parked, she wordlessly grabbed half the bags and started walking. Tristan carried the rest of the food and followed her through the grass.
“Stems!” Gavin shouted. She sat on their usual bench smoking a cigarette.
“Hey, Gavin. What’s up?”
Tristan made it to the bench and set his paper bags down next to the others. He looked between the two women and waited for an explanation.