Winter Lost

Interlude

Jesse looked up from her textbook with an irritated frown when someone knocked on her door. Her irritation was not appeased when she saw Tad standing in the doorway. Being caught belly down on her unmade bed in her oldest set of sweats made her feel uncomfortably exposed.

“What?” she growled.

He pulled out his hand and showed her a rectangle of silver-embossed card stock he held between his fingers, fluttering it to draw her attention.

She sat up indignantly and grabbed her backpack, unzipping the front pocket. It was empty. Her best friend had stolen the invitation and given it to Tad. Another time she’d have understood how concerned Izzy must have been to call in Tad when their on-again, off-again romance was currently on pause.

“Tell your girlfriend she’s a traitor,” Jesse growled.

“Don’t go,” he told her.

“It’s a wedding invitation,” she said dryly, “not a summons to a duel. Really, Izzy is making too much of it. Gabriel and I were friends before we dated.”

“It’s an attack,” he said.

Gabriel had no reason to want to hurt her. He was the one who broke up with her. Even if he’d felt wronged, he wouldn’t have tried to hurt her. Gabriel wasn’t like that.

She stood up and made her bed, because the rumpled sheets were making her feel vulnerable. Tad waited patiently while she righted her bedding, then set the stuffed elephant in its proper place on top of her pillow.

Her emotions tucked away as effectively as her unicorn sheets, she turned back to him.

“If I don’t go,” she told him, “it will look like I’m still pining for him. It’s not an attack. Gabriel isn’t vindictive.”

“No,” Tad agreed. “He isn’t. But he and I were friends, too. And I didn’t get an invitation to his wedding.” He paused. “And neither did Mercy.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. She couldn’t tell him he was right. Or that she’d rather rub her heart with sandpaper than go watch the man she’d loved marry someone he’d started dating as soon as he’d left the Tri-Cities to attend the UW in Seattle.

She walked to her closet and rummaged through her box of hair dyes. She grabbed a bottle at random and walked past him.

“I’m going to dye my hair,” she said airily. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Don’t go,” he said.

And because going to Gabriel’s wedding was the very last thing in the world she wanted to do, she said, her back to him, “You aren’t the boss of me, Tad Adelbertsmiter.”

Then she retreated to the bathroom and dyed her hair purple.