Almost There, Going Nowhere

[Tristan Marcus Dell]

--reserved

It was incredible how much colder New York was than Haiti. Tristan hated heat and humidity, but the 32 degrees – 28 with the wind chill – that New York greeted him with was too cold for even the kid who wore shorts and T-shirts until the middle of November.

He had spent the last week with his father in Port-au-Prince, doing his best to be of some kind of service to the disaster-stricken Haitian capital. Now, after seven straight days of exhaustingly hard labor, he was standing outside of LaGuardia Airport, waiting for a ride home.

When he wasn’t sleeping on the three-and-a-half-hour flight from the Dallas/Fort Worth, he was thinking about sleeping. He missed his nice, warm, inviting, real bed; the stiff cots at the volunteer site just didn’t do it for him.

It was 11:30 a.m. His flight landed at 10:30 and after a half hour of navigating the confusing airport and waiting for his bag to arrive n the baggage cam carousel, he had been waiting outside for another half hour. Charlotte was late.

As he stood on the curb of the pick up and drop off loop, Tristan bounced on the balls of his feet and pulled his jacket tighter for warmth. His duffle bag sat at his feet as he checked his watch every few minutes. 11:05. 11:08. 11:15. 11:20. 11:23. 11:29. 11:30. It was freezing and he felt like he was waiting forever. He would have just called his mother to see where she was, but his phone was dead. There weren’t very many places to charge a cell phone in a demolished third-world country.

He craned his neck to the left, hoping to see Charlotte’s familiar Equinox pull up beside him. Little did he knew, his mother sent someone else in her place.

[✿ngela wingrose]

--table for two?

"Shoot shoot shoot!" Angela whimpered, pounding the steering wheel to emphasize each syllable. From the back seat came a giggle and "Su su su!". The new mother peeked in the rear-view mirror at the sound, but all she saw was the back of the backwards-facing car seat. Despite her anxiety, she managed to crack a smile. At eight months, Kellyn was beginning to imitate sounds and actions.

Charlotte had called to beg Angela to pick Tristan up from the airport. She was tied down doing something or other, no doubt important because Angela knew there was little in this world that would occupy Charlotte enough to neglect her youngest son. She'd been all ready to go when Kellyn started crying. Angela checked everything, made sure her diaper was clean, that she wasn't hungry, that she didn't need to burp. Babies were so high maintenance! But over the past few months, the jobs started to come more naturally to her. They were no less exhausting, just less foreign.

Instead of the Equinox, Angela's rented MPV pulled up to the crowded and chilly loop. She rolled down the window of the passenger side for a clearer view of the arrivals waiting for cabs and family. When she spotted Tristan, her heart jumped. Later she would blame that on the volume of the Mazda's horn.

"Tristan!" She shouted, waving through the small opening of the window. Someone standing nearby peered in curiously; Angela's arrival wasn't the quietest affair. They seemed to recognize her, but weren't quite able to put their finger on it. "Tristan!" Angela called again after assuring the stranger that no, she didn't know them.

She had a myriad of apologies for the boy, excuses for being late, explanations for him to contemplate. But she forgot about all those as she inched the van forward, the biggest grin on her face. It had been a very long time since she'd seen Tristan, and she was silently thanking whatever had delayed Charlotte to give her the opportunity to see him again.

"Kelly, it's Tristan!"

"Tssm!"

[Tristan Marcus Dell]

Tristan Dell was as patient as one could get. He didn’t mind waiting at long traffic lights or in never-ending lines at the grocery store. There was always something swirling around in his brain to occupy his time: his car, his nephew, his friends. But now, at 11:37 p.m., an hour and seven minutes after his ride promised she’d be there, Tristan was getting impatient. The cold wasn’t helping either.

He mentally scolded himself for not charging his cell phone when he was in Dallas. He was just too exhausted from the previous week to even think about it. He passed out not even ten minutes after getting to Marcus’s house the night before, then woke up, showered, and left the house for the airport all in a half hour that morning. No time for cell phones. Tristan thought about just hopping in a cab before deciding that was a bad idea. What if Charlotte came right after he left? Plus, he remembered, he only had $16 in his wallet, which wasn’t nearly enough to get from LaGuardia to the new house in Brooklyn.

The tired young man was about to cave and go look for a payphone, but then the white van pulled up near him and someone called his name. He didn’t know anyone with a minivan; those were for moms. But then he saw the blonde in the window and suddenly the mom-car made sense. He was surprised that he didn’t recognize Angela’s voice right away. There used to be a time when he could have distinguished her voice in a room crowded with people, but today he couldn’t do it when she was 15 feet away from him.

He was surprised to see her, but it was a good surprised. Not the kind of surprised like when she showed up on his doorstep bawling and pregnant. That one was awkward. This surprise tugged at the corner of his lips as he took the few steps to the edge of the curb to the van.

“You’re not my mom,” he observed, resting his forearms on the open passenger side window, leaning inside a little. Tristan smiled, relieved that not only someone had finally arrived to pick him up (at least he hoped and assumed that was why she was there), but surprisingly excited that it was Angela.

They were friends now. At least that’s what they said. But friends talked. Friends hung out. Tristan and Angela hardly spoke. He had only seen her once since the move to New York, and even that was for ten minutes when she stopped by to copy something out of one of Charlotte’s cook books. Angela was busy raising a baby and having a family. He was busy running the diner three days a week and feeding Haitian orphans.

Calling Angela his friend was easier than calling her the girl who cheated on him with some other dude who she was now marrying and, oh yeah, raising his baby.

[✿ngela wingrose]

As Tristan leaned in through her window, her smile pulled wider. She'd always been so susceptible to boyish charm, and Tristan was the only boy she knew that had mastered it without even knowing. His accusation was met with a face, and not one that you'd see in any magazine. Wrinkled noses and tongues sticking out would not make it in any modeling book.

During the time between when he spotted her and when he got to her car door, a million different thoughts zipped through her head. She too was thinking of how little they talked, despite their claim that they were friends. Now they had an entire car ride to... be friends.

"Nope. You can keep waiting for her if you'd like," She bit her lip, though this time it was to withhold a telltale smile, "but I'm here now... and I have heat," she added, tapping the vents. He could probably feel it through the window. She could sure feel it escaping.

Angela had always been a happy person. Very optimistic, always seeing the best in people. Sometimes it was harder with certain people, but whenever she'd been around Tristan, she could always sense the good in him. Being with him had just come naturally to her, and she knew that he belonged in her life. After everything turned upside-down, she'd been devastated. Losing him was like part of her heart being ripped from her chest. But now that they were trying to patch things up, it felt like the hole was being mended.

It wasn't nearly as comfortable as it once was, and although she wished it otherwise, she knew it never would be. But they both wanted to be a part of the others' life; at least she knew she did. Charlotte was like a mother to her, and the few times she saw Tristan's older brothers, they'd made her feel at home too. Landon was the most adorable thing on the planet (next to her Kellyn, of course!), and Amanda was always more than ready to share tips on raising a child as a young mother. Angela had always felt a small pang of sympathy for Amanda; Tristan had told her the entire story of how his brother didn't want to be in the relationship anymore, but the baby changed everything. She often wondered if Tristan could sense something similar in her relationship with Kennedy. Though it wasn't Kennedy who had doubts...

She unlocked the door, hoping her words and this action combined were enough of an invitation for him to get out of the cold. "Sorry I'm late. Things got a little crazy at home..." Home. If you could call it that. Her and Kennedy and Kellyn were living in a cheap New York apartment. She never invited anyone back there, and always skirted past the subject when her whereabouts were questioned by friends. Maybe it wouldn't look so awful if baby things weren't scattered all around the living room. And kitchen. And bathroom. And bedroom. It was no place to entertain guests, and more than one person would argue that it was no place to raise a child. But Angela was doing the best she could; all her money from modeling went into raising Kellyn, and Kennedy was working two jobs during AM and PM shifts. Despite their combined efforts and funds, a baby was much more expensive than either of them anticipated. The paparazzi didn't come around that much anymore, meaning her temporary fame had diminished since her pregnancy, which meant there would be fewer job offers. Angela just hadn't been prepared for how few. There were none.

All these depressing thoughts took their toll on the pretty young mother. Beneath the concealer were dark purple bags from long sleepless nights. She'd always worn a lot of make-up, but it was a little more obvious today with the cracks in her foundation. The cold and the stress did nothing to illuminate her skin. Yet still she smiled, thrilled to see the boy she once pledged her heart to.

[Tristan Marcus Dell]

She had him at "heat." Relieved that Angela had in fact come to pick him, not her dad or anyone else like that, up from the airport, Tristan took a step back from the car and lifted his duffel bag up from the concrete. He took another look at the van and had to hold back a laugh. Angela was driving a minivan. She was 19 years old and she was driving a minivan. It was way too weird for him.

"Don't worry about it," he shrugged at her apology. "I wasn't waiting long anyway." It was a lie, but there was no point in making her feel bad about it. Angela didn't have to pick him up. She was doing his mother, and him obviously, a favor. He just wanted to go home and he was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Tristan stepped up to car again, pulled the handle, and opened the door. He was about to carelessly toss his duffel into the first row of back seats before a sight he'd become all too familiar with caught his eye right before he let go of the bag. The car seat. He luckily held on to the bag long enough to toss it to the other side of the back seat, avoiding the little girl that he hadn't noticed until then.

"Damn. That would've been bad," he winced, stating the obvious. He flashed Angela a sorry-I-almost-just-took-your-kid-out-with-a-10-pound-bag-of-dirty-clothes look before settling into the passenger seat and closing the door. He turned back to the back seat again to make sure that Kelly was okay, relieved that the baby seemed completely unfazed by the almost-accident, if she knew anything had happened at all.

Tristan clipped his seat belt on with one hand and pressed the window's UP button with the other, immediately feeling the heat coming from the vents. Sitting inside in the heat was much better than standing outside in the cold, that was for sure.

"That's for coming," he told Angela, holding his hands in front of the heat vent, ready to get home.

[✿ngela wingrose]

His white lie made her feel a little bit better about being late, and let out a breath of relief as he prepared to open the door. She made a small noise of alarm when he moved to throw his luggage in the back, but he corrected his mistake without a word from her, and another relieved sigh escaped her lips. Kelly's back was to them, and she jumped when the back appeared from nowhere. She imitated the breathy noise her mother made with exaggerated volume, and her little hands flailed animatedly from the car seat.

Angela returned Tristan's apologetic look with an it's-okay-we're-all-still-alive look of her own, and waved it off. "No harm done," she put the car in drive and flashed her signal to pull out, "she thinks it's funny, anyway," and as though to back up Angela's statement, Kelly let loose a high-pitched giggle.

She could see him warming up from the corner of her eye and smiled. It was weird to adjust to the new car, and she was sure Tristan thought it was awkward too. It was more for a joke than anything; Kelly didn't take up that much space, nor did any of the mobile equipment Angela toted about with her. Kellan had pointed the car out while they'd been passing by the dealership one day and mentioned how she could see Angela driving a pink one. After a couple Barbie jokes, she thought it would be funny to rent it out; her and Kennedy needed a vehicle anyway. For important missions such as this one where the bus/cabs/subway just wouldn't cut it.

As she pulled away from the curb, Tristan thanked her, and she gave him a soft sideways smile. "I wasn't just going to leave you stranded," She said, and she didn't realize until after she said it that her words had a double meaning. She would do anything for Tristan, everything really, til the day she died, trying to make it up to him for what she'd put him through. He may say he'd forgiven her, but there were always those cursory glances that made reminded her there was no way he was over it. It was awful and underhanded and she was the one to blame. Time had blurred what happened exactly, and although the more reasonable part of her told her to just move on and assume he had too, she couldn't completely shield herself from the memories of his crushed face. Anything she could do to make him smile like this was a small step to making things up to him.

"It must be quite the temperature shock, from Haiti to this," Angela gestured over the steering wheel to the chilly horizon she was driving toward. Charlotte had filled her in as to where Tristan was coming from, and she felt a little peeved that she hadn't known about the trip earlier. She didn't have to know; it wasn't like Tristan was obligated to tell her these things anymore. But Angela still liked to be apprised of the whereabouts of her friends.

And there was that word again. Friends. It still left a strange taste in her mouth when she said the word aloud, and even when thinking about it, it felt wrong. A lot of things were wrong with this picture. If things were different, there should have been a welcome home kiss at least. Maybe a movie-moment rush through the crowd at most. The distance from the driver's side to the passenger seat felt like a giant chasm. It felt like 'friends'.

[Tristan Marcus Dell]

"Yeah, definitely," Tristan nodded. He pulled his hands away from the air vents, finally able to feel his fingers. "It was a nice break from the snow and ice and stuff here, but it was so hot. It was 90-something degrees every day, and you know me, I hate the heat."

Of course she knew him. Angela knew Tristan better than almost anyone. Probably the best, minus Eve. He obviously changed and grew up a lot since they ended their relationship, but there was still so much of him that was still the boy who spent his 17th birthday with the pretty blonde girl who used to make him stumble over his words. He still preferred cereal over a full-cooked breakfast, had to be forced to step a single foot on a train, and could sleep through an air raid.

"You have to just work though it though," he shrugged. "It's really bad over there. Who am I to complain that it's too hot when there are families who don't even have homes any more or food to feed their kids?"

Tristan, for as long as anyone could remember, had always been selfless. He would do anything for anyone, whether he knew them or not. It only made sense that when the people of Haiti's worlds literally came crashing down on them, Tristan was there to lend a hand. The work had been brutal and difficult, but it was the most rewarding thing he had ever done. He knew he'd never take the simple things in life, like having a warm bed to sleep in or friends and family who cared for him, for granted ever again.

The over-worked boy turned around in his seat and looked back at the baby in the back seat. He still wasn't used to it. It wasn't even because Angela used to be his girlfriend. It was because Tristan, at 20 years old, couldn't even begin to fathom having a child. It was weird to think of any of his friends as mothers, fathers, or anything other than a bunch of kids.

"She's getting big," he observed as he looked at the wiggling baby girl. He thought about how his nephew was once that small and the thought made him smile. He felt like his mother when he thought it, but he couldn't believe how quickly Landon had grown. He thought back to the day the little boy was born, when he nervously held him for the first time, and then to the night before he left for Dallas. The little guy unzipped Tristan's suitcase and pulled its entire contents out and threw it all on the floor.

Tristan turned back around and turned his focus from Kelly to her mother in the driver's seat.

"So how's family life?" he asked, because he was genuinely curious.

[✿ngela wingrose]

Angela nodded, though truthfully she was unable to imagine the terrible state Haiti was in. She'd never known or witnessed disaster like that; her life was a very sheltered one, and sometimes she preferred to live in ignorance. The girl had a big heart, and if she knew all the things that plagued the world, she'd likely throw herself into a pit of despair. That, or a nail salon, which would only make her feel petty and self-centered.

"I'll bet they really appreciate your help," She tried, simultaneously trying to imagine the wreckage and block it from her imagination. She wasn't like Tristan; wasn't selfless. She was able to recognize something awful, but she couldn't leap into action to make a difference, to make things better. Angela was too accustomed to playing the victim; she would never amount to a hero. Which is why she looked at Tristan with so much admiration.

She peeked back at Kelly in the rear view mirror and smiled, trying to see the difference Tristan saw. When she was around Kelly every day, it was difficult to notice her growing. Sure, she'd have to buy bigger clothes occasionally, but even that didn't make the growth a reality. "She tried saying your name," She added conversationally, thinking it was adorable. The little girl seemed to sense she was being talked about, because she let out a high-pitched squeal.

Tristan's next question, as innocent and as logical as it was, set her teeth on edge. She tried not to let it show how much it bothered her, but Angela had never been a good actress. "It's um..." The blonde stared straight ahead, "It's definitely a handful."

Maybe if he'd reworded it; phrased it so it only included Angela and Kellyn. The word 'family' insinuated a mother, a child, and a father, or at least that was how Angela viewed the word. Her world was devoid of any sort of fatherhood. Travis was never to see her again, and Kennedy... she was lucky to see him at all these days. His hours were the worst. He had to leave before she woke up and he came home after she'd go to bed. He had one full time job, and a part-time job he went to right after initial hours. Every time Angela suggested he take a break (in the rare moments they shared together), he'd get testy and ask her if she wanted Kellyn to have diapers next month. That shut her up pretty quickly, and even after his apologies the initial sting of his snappy words felt like a slap to the face.

Yes, how was family life?

"You've saved me from another day in the house," if you could call her apartment that, "Kelly and I really needed some fresh air," she was careful not to mention his name, "We've been stuck watching Dora the Explorer on television," well, they would have if they owned a tv, "and I'm not sure how much more Spanish I can take before I go nuts," it would actually be refreshing to hear someone other than herself speak, in any language.

Her babbling about inane things, anything that wasn't Kennedy, was really drawing more focus on the topic she so desperately avoided. Even this became obvious to her, and she shut up, changing the radio station to occupy the silence after her rant.

"Charlotte will be so excited to see you," Angela said after finding a song she liked. She turned it down to a decent level they could talk over, but the lyrics were still audible.

I want your love,
I don't want to be friends,
Je veux ton amour...
I don't want to be friends!