To say that he was stunned to know that his cousin worked at the same coffee shop as her would be an understatement.
He was downright stupefied.
Honestly, the only reason why Tristan went out for a coffee fix was because his pack of Nescafe had gone missing for some reason.
Finding out that Vanessa and Nicolai, his cousin who barely came home to the apartment they were sharing, worked at the same coffee shop was definitely something he did not expect.
And seeing Vanessa explode all of a sudden surprised him, too. He didn't expect her to get angry just because Nic wrapped his arms around her, but she did. He had no idea why she reacted that way, and it only solidified his determination to find out more about her.
Tristan planned on giving Vanessa her papers earlier, but since he saw her outburst and noticed how pissed off she was, he decided to let her cool down for a while. They shared the same Literature class later anyway, so he opted to return the papers back to her before Mr. Henri proceeded with their lecture.
She wasn't at class that afternoon.
Mr. Henri noticed her absence immediately, his lips settling into a frown when he called out Vanessa's name and noticed that her seat was vacant as he checked his students' attendance before starting his lecture.
Tristan anticipated questions about Vanessa's whereabouts from Mr. Henri, but his professor remained focused on his lecture, not even bothering to ask about her. He took down extra notes, just in case Vanessa asked him for it whenever she got back.
Tristan hurried back to his car after his last class ended; all he could think about was continuing his research and getting another cup of coffee from Books and Brews.
After finding a spot to park his car, he was once again welcomed with the relaxing smell of coffee beans, another acoustic song playing mildly through the speakers as he entered the coffee shop.
Kayla was at the counter, wiping its granite countertops with a wash cloth, her blonde hair tied into a messy chignon. She instantly lifted her gaze when she heard the bells jingle, signaling the arrival of a customer.
"Hi, welcome to—oh, hey, Tristan," Kayla flashed him a brilliant smile, her blue eyes warm and inviting. She placed her left hand on her hip and tilted her head to the side as she greeted him. "Nice to see you again, pretty boy. What can I get for you today?"
"Is Vanessa still here?" Tristan asked bluntly, turning his head to the left, then to the right. He wasn't sure if she worked overtime today, but looking for her at Books and Brews was definitely worth a shot.
Kayla scrunched her eyebrows in confusion. "What are you talking about? She has afternoon classes almost everyday. She's probably at school right now, Tristan."
"She wasn't in our Literature class earlier," Tristan admitted, pursing his lips. "I thought she was still at work..." he trailed off. It was frustrating, not knowing where a certain person was, especially when someone was desperately searching for them.
And the fact that the person being searched for was trying their hardest to push away the people who were looking for her... it was extremely frustrating. That's how Tristan felt.
Kayla tucked in a few loose strands of her blonde hair behind her ear. "No offense, pretty boy," she said, crossing her arms and looking at him with appraising blue eyes, "but what you're doing is... hmm, how do I say it sparingly? Oh, I know! Stalkerish. Yep. That was definitely the word I was looking for."
Upon hearing those words slip out of his new friend's red lips, Tristan did a double take. "I'm not a stalker," he said defensively, shaking his head. He was just a concerned classmate who happened to be interested in finding out why she was so keen on pushing everybody away from her.
"Mhmm, yeah, sure," Kayla chuckled, a smug smile spreading across her lips. "Of course you're not. I was just making an observation." The mischievous glint was back in her cobalt eyes.
"You're not fucking helping," Tristan ran a hand through his hair in exasperation, his eyebrows furrowing in frustration.
Kayla threw her head back and laughed, a low, derisive sound. "Oh my God, pretty boy," she said in between laughs, "chill the fuck out. I'm just messing with you. I didn't mean it." But the wicked glimmer in her eyes convinced Tristan otherwise. He ignored her sarcastic remarks. "Hey, are you still gonna order coffee?"
"Yeah," Tristan sighed as he plucked out his wallet from his pocket, his eyes scanning the menu behind the blonde-haired barista. He wanted to try a different kind of coffee today, but ended up ordering another flat white instead. He handed Kayla three dollars and just like before, he insisted that the change should be dropped inside the tip jar.
As Kayla wrote his name on the empty cup, she said, "Thank you for giving tips, Tristan. You're one of the few people who do, and we really appreciate it." When she looked up at him, she gave him a fond smile before turning on her heel to work on his coffee.
Tristan looked around the coffee shop, noticing the abundance of customers and the lack of baristas. Were they short of employees?
"We're doing alright by ourselves," Kayla said, answering his unspoken question. He raised an eyebrow at her, bewildered. "You're easy to read, pretty boy," she shrugged, handing him his cup of coffee. "And don't worry, we can handle it. Gabe's in the back cleaning the lockers."
"Gabe?" Tristan tilted his head to the side.
Kayla nodded. "Yeah, she's like, our pseudo-manager while Jack's visiting some relatives."
Tristan thanked her for the coffee, then excused himself to find a decent spot to sit in. He was relieved to see that the gray couches were unoccupied. I'll stay for half an hour, he told himself. I need to relax for a bit.
After placing his coffee on a table, he focused on the grand bookshelf and thoroughly read its titles before choosing a book. One minute later, he picked out The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.
He had read this book when he was still in high school, he even wrote a reaction paper about it. It had been a while since he last sat down and read a good book; he deserved a short break from all the research he'd been so engrossed in.
Tristan was just beginning to read the first paragraph of the third page when Kayla appeared out of nowhere and made herself comfortable on the couch across from him. He stopped reading and closed the book, placing it on the table. "Are you on break again?" he asked her.
"Everybody's preoccupied with something and there hasn't been a customer for the past ten minutes," Kayla winked, leaning against the plush couch and sighing in content. "These never fail to relax me," she purred, fluttering her eyes shut and sporting another lazy smile. "I sleep here during the early morning hours. Nic or Vanessa usually covers for me."
Tristan smiled in amusement. Trust Kayla to be a ninja whenever she could. He still had a lot of things he didn't know about her, and the fact that she was voluntarily sharing her experiences with him made him feel good. It was another step forward in their newfound friendship.
"But anyway," Kayla shifted and faced him with a serious expression. "I'm also here to tell you what I know about Vanessa. Not everybody wants to be close to her, you know?" She shook her head in disappointment and sighed. "I'm glad you and I are on the same page, pretty boy."
"Me too," Tristan agreed. It bothered him, seeing how people treated her horribly, as if she were a monster who had escaped from hell. It was also one of the disgusting names he'd heard them call her.
"Not to be an assuming bitch," Kayla said, crossing her legs and folding her hands together, "but I don't think I've seen you around before. You're new, aren't you?"
"Yeah, I am," Tristan nodded, taking another sip of his coffee. Kayla's intuition impressed him once more. "You're really good at reading people."
Kayla shrugged as she let her hair down and straightened her back, shaking her head and flipping her blonde hair to the side, a glow of confidence emanating from her. "It's one of my special talents," she said proudly, but in that same moment, her face fell. "Such a shame that Vanessa's too much of an enigma."
"Why are you even interested in her, anyway?" Tristan inquired, his curiosity suddenly piqued. If his motive was to find out why Vanessa acted so cold and aloof towards other people, what was Kayla's?
"She reminds me of myself," Kayla confessed, her blue eyes sad and staring blankly at her folded hands, as if she were remembering something. "Being alone, being ostracized by people for doing something you didn't have control of... it's not a very pleasant experience, trust me."
From the tone of Kayla's voice, Tristan guessed that she must have had some sort of same experience like Vanessa's. Was she was bullied during her high school years? Wait. Aside from the disgusting way people treated her, did that mean Vanessa had exprerienced bullying even when she was in high school?
How could people stand to do that to an innocent person? He didn't understand why bullying was still a rampant issue—shouldn't people be more tolerant and compassionate towards those who had suffered?
He didn't even know how she suffered or what she suffered from, but could feel that he was about to find out soon enough.
"Vanessa... she and I went to the same high school," Kayla went on, her voice solemn as she told her story. "At that time, she wasn't alone, you know. She had a sister. An identical twin sister, to be exact. Her name was Veronica."
Tristan's eyes widened in surprise, his grip tightening on the cup he was holding. He was glad that he had finished drinking the remnants of his flat white, or else he would have spewed coffee all over himself and Kayla.
"What the fuck," he gasped, still not comprehending the information he just heard. "Are you serious?"
"Do I look like I'm kidding, pretty boy?" Kayla arched an eyebrow and frowned. Tristan didn't respond to her question, the serious expression on her alluring face was enough to convince him. "Anyway," she continued, "I knew who the Dawson twins were because they were part of the upper echelon. More specifically, Veronica. She was even labeled as Miss Congeniality because of her undeniable charisma."
"But what about Vanessa?"
"Hush, peasant, I'm getting to that part," Kayla shushed him, pressing her index finger against her brilliantly red lips. Tristan rolled his eyes and zipped his mouth shut to humor her.
She giggled, then she went on with her story. "Vanessa was the complete opposite of her sister, though. She was Veronica's shadow, always following her twin wherever she went. I saw her at parties, yes, but unlike Veronica—who never said no to hooking up with guys or doing body shots—she stayed sober most of the time and never involved herself in any kind of trouble."
"They were both in AP classes—we even shared a few subjects here and there—despite the fact that the other twin was a party animal. And as much as I hate to admit it, I liked Veronica better because she was a wild child like me—we were kindred spirits. She was loud, audacious, and beautiful. Back then, I thought Vanessa was nothing but a boring, mousy prude."
It took him a lot of effort to process every ounce of information Kayla was telling him. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to picture a quiet, timid-looking Vanessa instead of the tired, always irritable version he had encountered for the past few days.
"Sounds like you and Veronica were good friends," Tristan pointed out.
Kayla smiled in acknowledgement. "I guess we were," she nodded slowly, clenching and unclenching her hands as she shifted in her seat. "Just to clarify, Veronica and I weren't best friends or anything, okay? We were more like... acquaintances. We knew each other's names, but that was it."
"It was a different story with her and Vanessa, though. They were each other's best friend, and they were absolutely inseparable—you couldn't welcome Veronica to an exclusive party without Vanessa in the VIP list, or you couldn't be in a study group with Vanessa without Veronica highlighting important paragraphs beside her. They were a package deal."
Tristan let his imagination wander off again, finding out that this part of Vanessa had existed before definitely shed some light into his so-called research. It helped him flesh out the past events in her life that he had no idea of.
In the back of his mind, he knew that he should have asked Vanessa about this first, but he was certain that she would have turned him down harshly without hesitation. He was very grateful for Kayla; if it weren't for her, he'd be blindly grasping answers from strangers who blatantly disliked Vanessa.
"And then what?" Tristan was pretty sure that whatever happened next wasn't going to be a very delightful event, but he readied himself, anyways. He had a feeling that it was going to be something dark, gruesome, and unforgettable—his instincts were usually right with these kinds of things, and most of the time, he didn't like it.
"From what I heard..." Kayla trailed off, her voice barely inaudible, her eyes downcast and unblinking, a haunted look brewing in the depths of her arctic eyes.
For the first time since he'd met her, Tristan saw her expression change into something more vulnerable, more resigned and delicate than her usual easy going demeanor.
"It's ridiculous," Kayla sighed in exasperation, clenching her fists as she blinked several times. "They got into an accident..." she trailed off, pressing her lips together in a tight line. Seconds later, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffed.
Alarmed, Tristan stood up and almost went over to where she was sitting, but Kayla shook her head and gestured for him to sit back down.
"It's fucking ridiculous," she repeated, this time, her voice was a bit louder, fiercer than before. "People at school instantly loathed her, they accused her of murdering her own sister," she spat, her blue eyes blazing, her nostrils flaring in anger. "Because, according to them, she was jealous of Veronica's popularity—because she was the Less Attractive, Incompetent Twin. It was bullshit! All of it was bullshit! And it still is."
Tristan's temper skyrocketed, clenching his hands into tight fists as well. It was one thing to see the incessant bullying in person, but finding out how long Vanessa had been enduring it was different. Waves of scorching hot rage ensconced him. "How fucking dare they," he snarled through gritted teeth.
All of a sudden, he felt the strong urge to put himself in between Vanessa and whoever dared to call her horrendous names or accuse her of being a murderer.
Although he still didn't know the whole story, he had already decided that he was going to go with whatever his instincts told him—she was never guilty, and he was never going to believe anyone who said or thought otherwise about her.
"Jesus," Kayla sighed, puffing out her cheeks and standing up from her seat. "I need to calm down." She slipped her hand inside her back pocket and pulled out a pack of red Marlboros. She looked around again to make sure nobody was approaching the counter.
"I'll be outside, pretty boy. If you see Gabe, she's this girl with braids, tell her—" Kayla suddenly stopped talking when she spotted the girl she was looking for and left him alone.
Tristan stood up from his seat as well and decided to follow her, he wanted to know more about Vanessa and her twin sister. He was desperate for answers—he honestly didn't mind waiting for Kayla to finish smoking, in fact, he was eager to accompany her and listen to every word she was going to say.
Burying his hands inside the pockets of his jeans, Tristan sauntered over to where Kayla was standing. She was talking to a brunette with freckles, whose hair was neatly tied into braids.
"Come on, Gabe," Kayla was saying, her voice soft and pleading, "it's just one stick. I'll even walk a few meters away from here. We're not that busy today, anyway."
Gabe was about to say something when Tristan stood beside Kayla. He nodded at the braided girl, flashing her a small smile. He didn't fail to notice the blush that began blossoming on her freckled cheeks. At times like these, he was thankful for his hard-to-resist smile and awesome genes.
"Just... just be back before your shift ends, alright?" Gabe sputtered, looking nervously at everything but him. Kayla smirked. Gabe pressed her lips together before nodding at Kayla one last time and walking away from them.
When Gabe was out of earshot, Kayla elbowed him and with a wide grin, she muttered, "Damn, pretty boy, I guess I owe you one today. Thanks for saving me back there."
"You're welcome," Tristan smirked at her and winked. "Glad to be of service, milady."
"Stop flirting, pretty boy," Kayla laughed, shoving him playfully before entering the back room.
After they exited the coffee shop through the back door, they walked for a bit, just as Kayla promised Gabe.
"Ah, finally," Kayla muttered under her breath and threw her head back for a moment before sighing in content as she pulled out the pack of cigarettes from her pocket again. She held it out to Tristan and said, "Want one?"
Tristan shook his head no. "I'm good, thanks," he politely declined her offer and leaned against the slab of concrete instead. A gust of wind blew softly across his face, slightly relaxing the tension he had felt earlier.
With manicured fingers, Kayla placed the stick of Marlboro in between her red lips, got out her lighter, lit the tip of her cigarette, and took a long drag out of it.
"Sorry about this, pretty boy," she said, gesturing to the space between them and the cloud of smoke surrounding her, "you know, second-hand smoke and all that shit."
"It's fine," Tristan shrugged and crossed his arms across his chest, remembering how often his own aunt smoked inside her house before he moved out. "I'm used to it."
"Yeah?" Kayla grinned, running a hand through her messy blonde locks. "How about we talk about you for a change? Vanessa's backstory stressed the fuck out of me." She scrunched her nose in mock disgust and laughed, but the sympathy in her blue eyes told him otherwise. He admired her genuine concern for Vanessa.
"Before that, I want to ask you a question," Tristan said. "You didn't exactly tell me why she reminded you of yourself."
He caught her off guard, her eyes widening in surprise but she recovered quickly with an impressed smile.
"She'd been bullied and stigmatized as a murderer," she said, frowning at the memory. "Being labeled as an A-Class slut is a totally different story, but the horrible things she'd been through..." Kayla paused for a moment, her voice low and hesitant. "I understand how it feels because... I've been through the same bullshit before, too."
Another unexpected bomb was dropped, shocking him all over again. He froze for about three seconds, still trying to process this new piece of information she just told him. This vulnerable side of Kayla was something he still wasn't used to seeing.
A beat passed, then she sighed dramatically and clucked her tongue. "Ugh, enough of the sob stories," she said, taking another drag out of her cigarette. "Let's save my dramatic shit for later, okay? I promised Gabe that I'd be back inside after a stick."
"Alright," Tristan said, shrugging his shoulders. He wasn't very keen on talking about himself—he wasn't embarrassed; there was simply nothing interesting in his life that was worth finding out. "Go ahead and ask me anything, Kayla."
"What made you transfer schools, pretty boy?" Kayla asked bluntly, her azure eyes brimming with immense curiosity.
Tristan fought back a wince. Okay, so there was something a bit interesting in his life after all—maybe it was some sort of juicy gossip for girls, but for him, reminiscing about his ex-girlfriend Lillian only made him cringe.
"It's not that fascinating, honestly," he snorted. "My ex-girlfriend was insane."
Kayla rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Said every guy ever," she scoffed, breathing out smoke one last time before discarding the used cigarette stick and crushing it underneath the sole of her brown leather boots. "Well, that was a bit anticlimactic," she grumbled. "Seriously, though?" Tristan nodded.
Then, without warning, he was bombarded with lots of questions, questions he couldn't even keep up with. "Aw, man, what did she do to you? Did she get too clingy and needy? Did she fuck somebody but still didn't want to break up with you? Did she fight some random chick from the internet because she thought you were flirting behind her back?"
"The clingy and needy part is correct," Tristan answered, running a hand through his mop of blonde hair and scratching the back of his neck. "Lillian was a different level of crazy. though. She—"
Before he could continue what he was saying, Kayla interrupted him. "Hang on," she pointed a finger at him and scrunched up her eyebrows. "Your ex's name was Lillian? As in Lil, the baby in Rugrats?" When Tristan said yes, Kayla burst out laughing, her blue eyes gleaming with mirth. Two seconds later, he bent over his knees and laughed along with her.
"Oh my God, I'm sorry—" Kayla said in between her fit of giggles as she wiped her slightly teary eyes, her mouth still grinning widely. "—I swear, I wasn't planning on laughing a whole fucking lot, pretty boy."
After a beat, she shook her head in amusement and let out a sigh. Tristan straightened up. "I really am sorry," Kayla apologized sincerely. "Offending you is the last thing on my mind right now." Then, she looked up at him with inquisitive eyes and said, "We're still friends, right?"
Tristan flashed her a bright smile. "Yeah, we're good," he said. "Just to let you know, I broke up with her because she was demanding as fuck. I also caught her sniffing and stealing my dirty underwear." This time, he cringed for real.
Kayla wrinkled her nose. "Ew," she groaned, not hesitating to flinch at all. "Like, the demanding shit, I can understand. But the whole stealing-your-boxer briefs—" she gestured animatedly with her hands and her face like a child, something that amused Tristan.
But he wasn't going to tell her that anytime soon.
"Jesus, pretty boy," Kayla said, placing a manicured hand on her hip and frowning her red lips. "That's some fucked up shit right there. I thought you were going to tell me some kind of bad boy meets nerdy-slash-good girl and falls in love bullshit." She rolled her eyes and sighed in theatrical relief before smiling up at him, that devilish smile he was familiar with. "Thank God you didn't."
Tristan grinned at her again. "Yeah, I know," he said, glancing down at his watch to check the time. "Shit, Kayla, we've been here for fifteen minutes."
Kayla, being her usual laidback self, shrugged her shoulders and waved him off. "Chill," she chuckled, her blue eyes glittering with mischief again. She patted his arm lightly before turning on her heel to walk back to the coffee shop.
Tristan followed suit, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. This day turned out to be alright after all.