At No Time || Bruno Mars

57

"Baby, you work too hard, give yourself a break. Let Raina have some time with her grandmama while you get have a day to yourself, all right?"

Yvonne ran a hand down her daughter's face. She had just announced she would be taking Raina out again, to the park, then the toy store, and then to a café in town that sold some of the best ice cream and hot chocolate anybody could buy. "You deserve it," Yvonne added with a concerned tautness to her brow.

They sat out on the deck, shaded by the abundance of trees in the backyard and a surrounding net warding off insects that refused to see their deaths as the cold months approached. A teapot and cups sat between them both, as well as crackers. Trystan always wondered why her mother preferred crackers with her tea over something sweet, like cookies or macaroons like Trystan liked, but Yvonne had never had a big sweet tooth like her daughter.

Trystan sighed, and then nodded, accepting her mother's suggestion because she was left with no other option. Before almost anyone, her mother could pick up on things that Trystan herself had not realized. Maybe she did appear tired, though something in the pit of her stomach swelled with furor. 

Yvonne did not know that Peter was coming over a second time, and it had worked out well that she wanted to leave with Raina for the day. It was not that she did not like spending time with her child and mother—Yvonne's visits were some of the best parts of the year for her—but since she and Peter's moment the day before, she could not shake the feeling of him, trailing his finger across her scar, off.

She could not shake away what she felt when he told her she was beautiful. She could not shake awake the butterflies when he sat so close to her. No amount of late-night conversations with her mother, lullabies she sang to her daughter, or how she smiled a little wider when looking at her scar in the mirror that night, could distract her from her thoughts of him. She craved them. She craved him.

But then the tiniest part of her, the part that managed to feel the least bit guilty, thought of Derek, too. He was away, clear from knowing about anything that went on in the home, maybe privy of her innermost feelings, and calculating of her intentions.

And that made her nervous. Not that he was thinking these things, but because he had every reason to.

"Did Bruno go back to Los Angeles?" Yvonne asked as she stirred her cup of tea, not because it needed to be but because she was too concerned with reading her daughter's face.

"Uh, no actually. He's still here in Savannah," Trystan admitted and hoped she looked innocent enough.

Yvonne tilted her head in the same manner that Trystan did and the same way that Raina was learning to.

"Oh, is he now?" she took a dainty sip of her drink. "Why don't you invite him over then?"

Trystan cut her eyes to her mother and smirked, "I thought you wanted me to rest?"

Yvonne offered a knowing look. "How much energy do you think you'd be taking up? I can tell you like talking to him. About matters that are worth talking about." She slid her gaze to the teapot to pour herself some more as Trystan shifted beneath her words.

"Besides, I know you don't like being alone all the time. It'll be mighty quiet without Raina to keep you company. Rest for a little and then invite him over for dinner."

"For dinner?"

"Yes. Cook something for the both of you." Yvonne shrugged as if the sentiment were simple. "I know how much you like to, so it'd be a nice gesture. Nothing wrong with spending an evening with a good friend."