At No Time || Bruno Mars

27

Angelique looked thoughtful for a moment before asking, "Have you guys done anything?"

"We haven't slept together if that's what you're asking." The thought of her being with Peter that way had her flustered. They may not have gone that far, but there were times where she certainly wished they had.

"But you guys have done other stuff," Angelique deadpanned.

"We just . . . kissed a little, that's all." Her friend didn't need the image that surely was not PG.

"Tree, you know he's engaged right?"

Trystan gave her friend a pointed look. Of course she knew! That was the sole reason she was so bent on having feelings for him. "Yes, and he knows that, too."

"You guys are treading some dangerous water here. I've gotten around in my day but I was never with a person who was engaged. Way to surpass me," Angelique teased and Trystan really threw a pretzel at her.

"It isn't funny!" she whined. "This is a crisis, Lique."

"Only if you let it be a crisis it'll be." Angelique took a sip of her drink. Trystan was annoyed at how easily her friend tended to take situations. Had she not understood? Trystan was involved with an engaged man!

"I mean, you can't help you fall for," Angelique added as if reading her mind. "But in some cases, you have to put your mind before your heart."

"I don't know if I can do that," Trystan admitted. That's what she'd been trying to do even before the night at the studio to no avail. If it was so easy to put Peter off her mind, she would have done it the moment he'd entered it. "I don't know what to do."

Angelique eyed her friend sympathetically. She knew Trystan well enough to know her companion hated not being in control of her feelings or not knowing what to do with them. Since the second grade, Trystan had always been the level-headed one, calm, cool, and collected. Even when her father died, she'd expected Trystan to be over at her house crying her eyes out on her shoulder, but she'd seen her at school the next day, still calm; much more solemn, but calm nonetheless. From the screwed-up expression on her face, Angelique could tell the situation was slowly killing her.

"I'm not really sure either. This isn't an everyday situation. I'm still trying to figure out how you managed to get yourself in something as crazy as this." She smiled tinily. "You two could go together like peanut butter and jelly–," she pulled apart her sandwich before squishing it back together, "–or like anchovies on pizza."

Trystan cringed, but remembered that Peter liked anchovies on his pizza. Why did everything connect back to him?

"But, if I'm being honest," Angelique added soberly, "either choice you make, somebody's gonna get hurt. You'll just have to go with the choice that's right in your heart and mind."

Trystan said very little after that, ot liking that her friend had kept her options so open. She kind of wished Angelique had told her to think ethically and stop whatever she and Peter had going on, but as freaky as she was, Angelique was a hopeless romantic, too. She picked at her sandwich that wasn't as appetizing as before.

Noting her discomfort, Angelique smiled sheepishly. "If it makes you feel any better about this whole thing . . . I'm screwing Neal."

Trystan perked up then. She wasn't surprised at the fact that there was something going on  between her best friend and studio pal, just that it had gone so far. Her brow pushed together, she exclaimed, "Are you serious?! Lique, you have a girlfriend!"