Chapter Eleven

The Meeting

 

 

 

We left the restaurant and we walked home hand in hand. I was thinking about what we would all say later when we met at Tristan’s place. I had to get a little work done and so Tristan left me at the door. He held me close before he went off and told me he would try to make things right. I didn’t know what that meant but I hoped things could be right.

I found that I couldn’t work and I sat staring out of the window at the woods. For a few seconds I was lost in some dream, I don’t know what, just a staring dream, and then I started to think about what Tristan had said. Where could the magic have come from or better still who? Could it all have started with those artifacts? I tried to pinpoint some time in the last few months when it was evident Tristan was changing.

The only thing I could think of was Dale’s arrival. I didn’t dislike her or anything horrible like that, I just thought maybe it would have been better if she had not arrived and then I remembered she had come for help to free Gaston. We couldn’t wish that away, Gaston had to be freed, so what else was there? Nothing. I couldn’t think of a single thing I would wish away so that Tristan had not fallen in love with Dale.

I watched as a group of small deer came out of the trees and began grazing on the vegetation at the edge. It wasn’t the first time I had seen them and they were growing more daring.

I turned back to my computer with a sigh. There was no way I could work.

I went to take a shower and change.

 

****

 

I wasn’t expecting Oliver to come over but he arrived just before eight as I was going down the stairs to leave and drive over to the Dearing house.

I opened the door as the bell was ringing. Oliver smiled at me and then hugged me.

“What’s going on?”

He whispered it and I held his face, kissed him, and then steered him out of the door.

He smiled as he turned to me. “Seriously what’s going on? Please don’t tell me Tristan’s changed his mind and doesn’t love Dale after all?”

I stopped walking as we were making our way to my Wrangler.

“Oliver how bad would that be really, if that’s what it was?” I asked him.

He sighed. “That’s it isn’t it? I knew it wouldn’t last. I actually said to myself ‘don’t get too used to having Chloe to yourself Oliver, because Tristan’s under some spell or another, and when it breaks he’ll realize he still loves Chloe and not Dale’. Chloe, I almost expected it”.

I looked at him in surprise. “Oliver, why didn’t you tell me that? I guess it doesn’t matter. Let’s get in my car and I’ll fill you in quickly”.

Oliver grinned. “I knew you still loved him. It’s been the best thing ever having you to myself, thinking that you and I were going to get engaged. It was great”.

He stopped by my Jeep and I threw myself at him. He caught me and crushed me to his chest. I started to kiss him and he smiled but kissed me back holding me up as he leaned back against the Jeep’s door.

“Oliver I love you”, I whispered. It was true. What a mess as usual.

He put me down but kept hold of me. “I know and I love you, and you know what if we went back to you me and Tristan the way it used to be, it would be okay. It’s weird I know, but there it is. He’s like a brother to me, which is even weirder when you think about it”.

We hugged for another few moments, and then changed our minds about going in my Wrangler and Oliver drove us over to the Dearing house.

We walked up to the door hand in hand and rang the bell.

Liz answered the door and grinned.

“Hello you two, how’re things?”

I smiled at her. “Okay Liz. We’ve come to see Tristan he said he would be in”.

I didn’t want to say too much.

“Just go up”, Liz said, as she closed the front door and so we started up the stairs. Tristan appeared at the top of the second flight of stairs.

“Hi come up I’ve made coffee and tea”. He grinned at me as he said ‘tea’.

Oliver took my hand to go up the remaining stairs and I glanced at him smiling. Oliver would want to keep things as they were now.

Tristan had put two more chairs around his desk by the little stained glass window and he indicated them.

“The drinks are on my desk”.

I smiled at his formality but walked over and sat down.

Oliver didn’t, he went to the window and stared out at the growing darkness.

Tristan looked at me and then at Oliver. I think he really wanted to talk sincerely. I thought we should all have been in the big kitchen at the hunting lodge, which is where we had shared so much. It was too late for that, and anyway mom was around the house packing bit and pieces, and she would have been bound to come to talk to us.

Oliver suddenly spoke. “Okay Tristan what’s going on?” he turned around, and came over to the desk but didn’t sit down. Instead, he reached over and took his coffee to take a sip of it standing up.

It felt as if he was hostile to Tristan and I hadn’t expected that.

Tristan must have felt it too because he looked down at his hands holding his own coffee, and then when he looked up at Oliver I thought I saw sadness in his eyes.

“Oliver, this isn’t easy but I need to know the exact time that you actually met Eddie?” This was a surprise. I had no idea Tristan would start the conversation with this question and I looked at Oliver for his answer.

Oliver was obviously surprised too because he put down his coffee, pulled out the chair and sat down in the middle of Tristan and me.

“I had talked with him on the phone, we emailed, and then I went to see him. It was odd because he had been hard to pin down to a time when I would meet him in person. I’m sure now that has something to do with him being immortal, you know the hiding it all thing. When did I meet him in person? It was yesterday afternoon. I was hanging around waiting for Chloe to have finished her meeting, and I knew I had a couple of hours so I called him, and said I’d drop by. It was about three-thirty yesterday afternoon. Why Tristan what’s going on?”

Tristan took a deep breath. “Oliver I want you to know, you are my best friend. I care for you and it’s at least as much as I used to care for Richard, my half-brother, if not more actually. I never intended any pain to come to you or Chloe when I suddenly seemed to be in love with Dale”.

Oliver put up a hand as if to stop Tristan talking. “Wait, what, ‘seemed’ to love Dale, you did, you do”.

Tristan sighed. “Oliver I know, I know, but something bizarre happened to me. I was trying to tell Chloe today. I’d been feeling a huge sense of loss and then a strange feeling of being able to see more clearly just washed over me. It happened in a rush and at about the same time as you met Eddie, and now we find he’s immortal and he knows me, it’s got to be something to do with him”.

Oliver groaned in his endearing way.

“Tristan have you any idea how that sounds? It sounds like a stretch. Why not just say you are jealous that Chloe is getting engaged to me and it’s sparked the old feelings you had for her. Suddenly you are doubting the love you said you felt for Dale. It seemed real enough to both Chloe and me, real enough for her to withdraw so that you could have Dale”.

I was a little shocked by this outburst but I understood it.

Tristan shook his head. “Oliver in the beginning when I told you about Dale do you remember you asked was I sure I wasn’t being influenced by magic and I didn’t think I was? Well now I do”.

Oliver was thoughtful for a few moments. “I remember, yeah I do”. He sighed. “Tristan please make sure this isn’t a jealous bid for Chloe, because if you turn around in a couple of weeks and start with the ‘I love Dale’ stuff again I really will be annoyed with you”.

Tristan grinned. “I’d like to see that Oliver, but I’m not going to get the chance because honestly I feel differently”.

I sighed then and they both looked at me. “I’m wondering about Eddie now because if Oliver meeting him did something to some magic you are being influenced by, what does that say about him?”

“Are we all influenced by this magic, do you think?” Oliver added.

I was thinking the same thing myself because it had been remarkably easy to let Tristan go, and yet I’d always said I would, so maybe that wasn’t anything to go on.

Tristan ran his hand through his hair.

“I think Eddie is significant but I don’t know why. Things don’t ‘just happen’ for and around us three, there’s always something that isn’t co-incidence. We seem to be in a special place with regard to fate, magic, and destiny. Sorry I know that sounds bizarre but surely you get what I mean. Nothing around us is not fate. We are always connected to each other, and some kind of magic. That’s probably my fault so sorry”. He sighed again.

Oliver nodded. “I agree. Not that it’s your fault but about the destiny stuff”.

I shivered then, just one of those shivers that go down your spine when you realize something is seriously spooky. You’d think I’d know already wouldn’t you after the last three years? Odd I seemed to have been so comfortable and kind of cushioned these last few weeks. I felt as if I had suddenly remembered we weren’t normal.

“I want it to be the way it used to be. I want things back to the way they were before Dale appeared. Do you think that could happen?” Tristan asked. I don’t know who he expected to answer the question because I had already confessed to him that I wanted that too.

Oliver sighed. “I’m okay with that except for the fact that Chloe’s parents are expecting us to get engaged. I don’t want to find they are going to drag Chloe and Steven off to California because we say it’s off”.

Tristan shook his head. “What if you still go ahead, just for the look of things? Does it matter? What do you think Chloe?”

I shrugged. “To be truthful I don’t know. I only know I’m not leaving here. I love both of you enough to be engaged to either of you and I know that sounds bizarre but if you must know I’d have gone on loving both of you forever in the same way if Dale hadn’t happened along. I’ve stopped caring about it, stopped agonizing about loving you both”. After I had said it, I was surprised I had.

They looked at me and then at each other. They must have known I meant sexually as well as every other way. I wondered what impact that would have. It seemed none as Oliver said, “Right then we need to get to the bottom of what’s going on. I don’t think it’s anything to do with Bartholomew and his crew. I don’t think it’s anything Dale is doing either, so who?”

Tristan stood up and walked to the window and he looked out as he answered, “I was thinking not ‘who’ but ‘what’?”

Oliver pushed his coffee cup around. “Have you said anything to Dale, Tristan? Told her you don’t love her?”

Tristan sighed and came back to the desk. He shook his head. “No because it would hurt her wouldn’t it? I do still care for her, feel fondness for her, but it’s just as if I was obsessed with her after my dream, and then she was real, and now the obsession has melted away. I’m so sorry. I feel so bad for you all”.

Oliver looked at me with concern. “Well that’s a worry”, he said.

Tristan sat down. “I’m working up to it. Let’s talk about going to see Eddie tomorrow Oliver. What time can you make it?”

Oliver got up. “Can I make more coffee Tristan?” he asked.

Tristan nodded. “Let’s go down to the kitchen. I’ve not actually eaten yet so maybe we can get a sandwich too”.

We went down there quietly. I hoped no one else would be around because it felt like we really needed to talk some more.