Piece By Piece | ✓

12 | tristan

     He struggled to keep his face as calm as possible—he didn't want to frighten her any more than she was; if he lost his cool right in front of her tonight, she might freak out on him and push him away all over again.

     "I'm here, Vanessa," he reassured her once more. His hands were shaking as he hesitantly cupped her pale face, and that's when he realized that her cheeks were stained with salty tears. Alarmed, he carefully wiped her cheeks with his thumbs. And as stupid as it sounded, he still asked, "Are you okay?"

     He asked her again when she didn't answer the first time, but Vanessa's eyes remained blank and unfocused. Right before he tried to say something else, she suddenly wrapped her hands protectively around herself and gasped loudly, a fresh batch of tears spilling down her flushed face.

     "Vanessa," he whispered, panicked. He still didn't know what exactly happened to her, but he was determined to comfort her in the best way he could. With careful precision, he lifted her face so he could meet her gaze and look directly into her distressed brown eyes. After a beat, her eyes finally focused on him. He sighed in relief. "Tell me what happened, please," he pleaded.

     Out of ideas to make her talk to him, he sighed in defeat and pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment to recollect, to try and think of any kind of way help her communicate better with him. Once again, he didn't get any kind of response from her—but then, as she shook her head repeatedly, he heard her mutter something that sounded like, "home".

     Tristan would've loved to take her home, but unfortunately, he didn't know where she lived... he still asked her if she could tell him her address, though. He wasn't surprised that she didn't answer his inquiry again. There was only one solution he could think of, and he was pretty sure that she wasn't going to like every word that was going to spill out of his mouth—but he asked her, anyway.

     "Vanessa," he started hesitantly, looking away from her for a moment and clearing his throat to ease off the tension he was feeling. "Uh... would it be okay if I... I drove you back home? With me?"

     Vanessa's eyebrows scrunched up in the middle as she looked at him with bewildered brown eyes, confusion painted vividly across her face. She tilted her head to the side and blinked, clearly not yet grasping what he just asked her yet.

     Tristan repeated his question again, this time, he forced himself not to get swallowed up by his nerves. "Vanessa? Is it okay—" he was abruptly cut off when she nodded her head weakly, her eyes looking away from his gaze and staring down at the ground.

     Satisfied with her response, he nodded to himself and helped her get back up on her feet, steadying her with his hands on her shoulders. "Here, let me help you stand up straight," he said, walking her to where his Prius was parked. He opened the passenger door and helped her get inside it. "Make yourself comfortable, okay?"

     Tristan sighed in utmost relief; he was glad that Vanessa didn't throw a fit or protest violently. When he got inside the car and started the engine, he noticed that her head was leaning against the window, and her eyes were staring blankly at the windshield.

     Once again, he thought that it was a stupid idea to ask, but his compulsive desire to make sure that she was feeling alright ruined everything. "Are you okay, Vanessa?" he asked her again, mentally slapping his face for sounding so needy.

     Well, in all honesty, he really did need to hear her say that she was feeling alright. Not knowing anything about her drove him nuts—it was such an outrageously unsettling feeling, really.

      When Vanessa refused to give him any kind of response, he ran a hand through his hair in frustration and took a few deep breaths to calm himself down. Moments later, he gripped the steering wheel in his hands and then he drove through the night, a vast ocean of questions flooding his befuddled mind.