Hazel St. James - Fighting For You (Redemption#1)[ (19 page)

Peyton was sitting next to him when he woke again. She was fully dressed, reading the newspaper, with her feet crossed at the ankles, her back propped up against the wall. Tristan was lying on his stomach, with his arms spread eagle at his sides. He pulled his arms back towards him and tucked them under his body.

Peyton looked over to him, practically cooing, “Hey, sweets. How ya feeling?”

Tristan cleared his throat, “I’ll tell you in a minute. Can you get me something to drink?”

She was off the bed in a second, practically running to get him something. It was usually endearing the way that she tended to him, but right now it felt like she had a collar around his neck and was strangling what little life there was left in him.

Back in a flash, Peyton sat on his side of the bed, and helped him to sit up. He took the glass from her hand and finished it in one long swallow. Tristan set the glass on his nightstand, checking the clock and groaned when he realized that it was almost three o’clock in the afternoon.

“Thank you. I’m gonna take a shower and get ready for work.” Tristan didn’t let her speak, even though he could tell that she wanted to. His legs felt like jelly, but they responded when he worked the muscles and he moved towards the bathroom.

When Tristan came back out, he was wrapped in a towel, and peeked into the kitchen to see that Peyton was hunched over the counter, speaking to someone on her phone. She had a very stern expression, but Tristan had no idea who she was talking to. With a slow and steady speed, Tristan dressed himself and was ready to go to work with a few minutes to spare.

“Do you really think you should go to work today?” Peyton asked from the doorway of the bedroom as he sat on the bed and tied his shoes.

“Why not, Peyton? It’s not unusual for me to have an episode like that. There is just usually no one here to get hurt. Sorry about that.”

Peyton scrunched her eye brows together and frowned. “I didn’t know that you were having nightmares all the time, Tristan. Does your therapist know this?”

Tristan laughed darkly, “I don’t know that it makes a difference, Peyton. I gotta go.” He gave her a kiss on her cheek as he passed by and grabbed a coat from the hall closet.

“I have to work tonight, but I can come over again when I’m done, but it will be early in the morning.”

Tristan pulled his coat on and shook his head, “You go home and get some sleep when you’re done with work. I’ll be fine.”

Peyton frowned, but spoke with a laugh, “Okay, Sunday then.”

Tristan just shook his head, “Sorry, babe. Gabriel runs an after church brunch on Sundays and I’ll be working most of the day.”

“When is your next doctor’s appointment?”

Feeling irritated with the conversation, Tristan spit out, “I don’t know. Last time I checked, I was under your care, and didn’t have permission to make my own schedule.”

Peyton jumped back, like he’d slapped her in the face again. Her lower lip quivered, and the tears started falling almost immediately. “What did I do wrong?”

Tristan let his shoulders slump down, and he lowered his head. “Peyton, I need some space. You need some space. We can’t be so co-dependent on each other. Okay?”

Peyton continued to let the tears stream down her face, but she didn’t make any noise. She finally nodded and quietly told him, “I’d planned on making Thanksgiving dinner for us on Thursday if you want to come over.”

She turned and walked away. Just like he wanted her to.

Chapter Twenty One

Monday, November 19
^th

D
r. Martin’s office was always cold and there were noise deflectors running on each of the end tables. There was the standard psychiatrist couch against one wall, but there was also a rocking chair opposite that Tristan preferred to sit in. He didn’t know why he preferred the old wooden seat, but it was much better than being laid out on the couch, feeling like he was vulnerable. When he was here inside this room, Tristan needed to project a great recovery because giving away how fucked up he really was would send him straight back into the hospital.

“How are things going this week, Tristan?” Dr. Martin asked.

“Fair to middlin’, I guess. Feeling pretty good and was hoping we could talk about my prognosis, Doc.”

“Things are steadily improving, from what you’re telling me, Tristan. I would say that soon we will be able to discuss reducing the frequency of your visits to see me.”

Tristan paused for a minute to consider what he’d just said, and he nervously asked, “Will I ever be able to get to a point where I can stop taking all these drugs, and be released from your care?”

Dr. Martin took a deep breath, and took off his designer glasses, setting them down on the desk. “Tristan, bi-polar disorder isn’t something that you recover from. It is a life-long condition that requires monitoring of all the aspects of your life in order to keep it under control. I don’t foresee you being able to stop the medication at any time in your life, but you will be able to get by with only seeing me a few times a year when you are feeling better about things.”

Tristan lowered his front half down, bracing his arms on his knees. He was staring off into space, but nodded his head a few times to acknowledge he heard what Dr. Martin had said. Even though he’d thought about the possibility before, to hear it plain as day made Tristan realize that he was a habitual mental case.

It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the restaurant was completely dead. They were prepared for this, especially since the weather was beautiful and families were getting for the next day’s dinner. Tristan was the only one left at the restaurant except for Susy and two of the dinner cooks, and of course Gabriel.

Susy had just finished all her busy work and asked Gabriel if they could shut down the restaurant and go home. He reluctantly agreed and Tristan worked on closing the remainder of his things down.

Susy waited by the bar for a while with her coat on, but Tristan didn’t give her any notice. He wasn’t one to hold a grudge, but she wasn’t the easiest person to deal with. She was layered in make-up and acted way too old for her age. Honestly, if she wiped all that shit off and just relaxed a bit, maybe she wouldn’t seem so fake.

“Tristan, can I ask you a question?”

“What’s up?” he threw over his shoulder, not looking up from restocking the bar cooler.

“Do you have family to spend Thanksgiving with?”

Tristan was stunned by her question, and nearly knocked himself out when he shot out of the top hatch of the cooler. “Ahhh…not really. But I’m not big into family dinners and all that, so it’s okay.”

“Well, if you want, you’re more than welcome to eat with us. My mom wouldn’t mind.”

Tristan was honest about not being in to family dinners, but he also didn’t want to have another run in with Susy’s older sister.

“I’m not sure that you sister wouldn’t
mind
my being there,” sarcasm dripped off his words.

Susy huffed and looked down to pick at her fingernails. “She doesn’t come to family dinners. She only hangs around me when she needs something. I’m sorry for the other day.”

Tristan gave her a weak smile, not sure if he should believe her or not. In the end, part of him wanted to believe that there was hope for Susy, and she wasn’t destined to be like her older sister. “It’s okay. Thanks for the offer, but I was invited to have dinner with Peyton, but like I said, I’m not into that.”

Gabriel took that moment to enter the bar area from his office. He shot Tristan a pained look, and stopped dead in his tracks. The sad way he was watching the interaction was pretty close to being full of pity. Yet there was just as much sadness there too, which lessened the impact but confused him just the same.

Gabriel spoke to Susy, but kept his eyes trained on Tristan. “Have a good Thanksgiving, Susy. I’ll see you on Friday,” effectively dismissing her. He walked her to the door, and Tristan heard the lock click before Gabriel came back and sat at a stool on the other side of the bar.

“Line ‘em up, kid.”

Tristan smiled, but gave him a puzzled look. “What? I gotta get home yet, boss. I don’t drink and drive.”

“Neither do I.”

Gabriel stood up in his place, and reached over the bar to grab the whiskey bottle out of the well. Tristan slipped two shot glasses over from the shelf and Gabriel yanked the bar pourer out of the bottle and poured them each a slug. They clinked glasses before shooting them, and the cheap whiskey burned on the way down, but he didn’t expect any less. Whiskey from the well was for mixed drinks, but he could tell from Gabriel’s demeanor that there would be no arguments.

They did two more shots each before Gabriel finally spoke. “I had a daughter when I was just eighteen years old. My ex-wife was the same age as me and we got married straight out of high school.”

He scoffed, “We were stupid kids. Didn’t know what the fuck we were doing, but God damn, I loved that little girl. Darcy was ten years old before we realized she had a problem.”

Gabriel paused for a moment and poured another drink for the both of them. Tristan already had a good buzz rolling from the first shots, so he set his to the side and filled a glass with soda instead.

“She was in and out of the Children’s Mental Center in Boulder for a year before she was finally diagnosed as bi-polar. We didn’t take it seriously enough until she tried to kill herself when she was just barely twelve years old.”

Gabriel took a labored breath, and started again with a hitch in his voice, “She did okay for a few months after she was released from the center, but she was hiding her pain from us and the doctors. She took her own life on her thirteenth birthday.”

A lone tear fell from Gabriel’s eye and he quickly wiped it away with the back of his hand. “She’s been gone over two years now, but there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about her and wonder if I pushed her to open up, or did more things with her, if things would’ve been different. But, I ignored it and hoped that it just went away on it’s own.”

Gabriel looked up from the utter zombie stare he’d formed on the bar top and pinned Tristan where he stood with a pained look. “I want to help you, Tristan. And I can see you shutting everyone out, just when you should be pulling them close.”

Gabriel clenched his fist and tapped himself on the chest a few times. “If you got someone that gives a shit, don’t push ‘em away. Let ‘em in.”

Tristan stood there, completely stunned; the pain of watching a father relive his biggest regret in life, and being left behind wondering what could have been. Which was strangely just the opposite of what he felt with his own father leaving him. It wasn’t often that Tristan let his father take up residence in his brain, but watching Gabriel suffer like this, made it hard not to.

Tristan decided he needed another infusion of numbness to kill the pain. He took the shot glass that was already poured and tipped it to his mouth. He didn’t know what to say to Gabriel. Didn’t know if there was anything he could say right now that would make things easier. For either of them. His disease was a bitch, but he didn’t want to bring Gabriel back into the pit of hell by telling him the whole truth about where he was right now: knee deep in the belly of the beast. Not able to shake himself out of this funk, other than what progress he’d made at his job here. And that wasn’t even saying much, other than holding a steady job for not even a full week. He’d made steps in the right direction with Peyton, but right now, he wanted to keep himself away from her. Not because he didn’t want to be with her, but he felt like he was relying on her too much, and he needed some space to get his head on straight.

“Peyton is a good girl, Gabriel. I just want to do right by her.”

“That’s good kid. Because the love of a good woman can move mountains.”

Tristan knew that, somewhere deep inside, but being loved wasn’t what scared him the most right now. What scared him was that he would love her back and she would leave him. Just like everyone else did.