I raised an eyebrow while turning the lock. "Where is it then?"

"On my keychain," he answered slowly, like I should have known that.

"Oh, okay then," I said sarcastically with a roll of my eyes. "Don't come letting yourself in randomly. I walk around in my underwear, and I use my hummingbird religiously."

"What's a hummingbird?" he asked me once I'd caught up to him.

We started walking down the stairs together despite the fact that they weren't built to fit two adults at the same time. "Oh Magellan, Magellan, Magellan..."

Chapter 35

A few nights later, Tristan was driving me home, and it was almost two o'clock in the morning. He'd been yawning for the last hour but insisted that he was fine to drive after we finished watching a documentary. I'd started dozing off toward the end of the movie, but he kept reaching over and digging the pads of his fingers into my ribs each time he caught me snoozing.

"Stop yawning," he whined, finishing his words with his own long and drawn out yawn.

"You started it," I told him with a lazy smile. I'd been making an effort to spend more time with my other friends since he'd come home, limiting the amount of time we had spent together. He called me and texted me everyday to invite me over, but with Nicole's wedding coming up in less than two months, she seemed to have an endless list of things to do. Secretly, I was relieved she was doing it in Vegas because I could only imagine what it would be like if she had a big affair.

The interesting part of the time Tristan and I had spent together since he'd gotten back six days before was that he'd been acting normal, but not really. His smiles were the same, his jokes too, but there was a different look in his eye. His fingers lingered on me when he touched me, lasting a second or two longer than normal, and I felt like Texas grass getting a rain shower after a drought. I was soaking it all up, but I couldn't help but be a little wary. Tristan made me laugh, and made me feel so much more differently than my other three friends that it seemed strangely foreign. I wondered if ten years from this point, if we were still friends, if he'd make me feel the same way. Would it ever get easier to look at him and not wonder what his mouth was like? It had gotten easier to not be so hung up on my expectations. Our friendship seemed even easier than before, if that was possible. Tristan accepted me for me, and I relished it.

When Zoey and I first became friends, she used to go on and on about how we were meant to be; how she and I were long lost souls destined for each other. Then, as Nikki and Josh came into our lives, she'd keep reiterating that idea. It wasn't difficult to accept her ideas because I had friends before them, but it was never anything half as meaningful as the relationships I shared with them. With Nicole, I could just look at her and without moving a single muscle we could read each other's minds. With Zoey, I felt like my happiness was tied to hers, and when I was with Josh, he just knew what I was feeling or what I needed to hear. These friendships were effortless. I loved them. We didn't have to work at them, and I couldn't remember a time when any of us had gotten so mad at one other that we didn't speak out of anger for more than a day.

Tristan was this way to me, as well. I didn't have to censor my words to make sure I wasn't being crude, I didn't have to pretend to like things that I hated, I could just be me. I could stuff my face, cry during a movie, scream when he held dead crickets and threw them in my direction, and it was all fine. I just wished he was ugly. Or gay. Either one of those would have been a nice balance to the perfect mess that I found him to be.

"You better not fall asleep," I heard him chuckle over from the driver seat when I felt my eyelids start to droop again.