I Love You More Than I'm Afraid (Our Forevers #2), Rebel Hart [best adventure books to read .txt] 📗

15

Arden

“This is so painfully cute, I could cry.”

Tristan laughed at my comment, but seemed emboldened nonetheless. “Yeah? You don't think it’s tacky?”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, no, it’s completely tacky. That doesn’t mean that it’s not cute or she isn’t gonna love it.”

I held Tristan's graduation party invitation out to give back to him where he’d used clippings of notes that Aria had written him throughout the duration of their relationship to design it in secret homage to his love for her. It gave the entire invitation a sort of ‘ransom note’ appearance, but that was sufficiently quelled by how adorable it was that he felt he had to make this declaration in the first place.

“Oh, no. That one is for you,” he said, pushing the invitation back at me.

I looked down at it again, a little surprised. “Uh, oh…”

He snickered. “Did you think I wasn't going to invite you to my party?”

Slipping the invitation into my backpack, I tried to shove away my initial shock. “I guess I hadn’t really thought about it. You know, for like three whole years you were Mr. Unattainable Popular Guy to me, so I never really considered what would happen if we ended up becoming friends.”

“It is kind of unexpected, I'll give you that. I'm happy about it though, aren’t you?” he asked.

Aria had once described Tristan to me as a puppy who runs around the house trying to impress the big dogs, and even the cat. Though he’d come a long way in terms of his self-consciousness regarding being liked and popular, he still occasionally sought validation from anywhere he could get it, all while being as adorable and innocent as a puppy.

“Totally,” I confirmed. “You are so much cooler than I thought you were, and I’m glad that we get along, for Aria’s sake, as much as our own.”

Tristan’s happy expression turned sad at this. “Yeah. Me too.”

On the other side, with his best friend, Tristan wasn’t having that much luck. Apparently Hannah had been harboring less than positive feelings towards Aria, and I couldn’t help but feel particularly responsible. Ever since our little “exchange” at the beginning of the month, Hannah pretty much stopped coming around, sticking mostly with the popular kids and Ceradi. She stopped trying to hide her disdain for Aria, and though she and Tristan were still friends technically, they hadn't seen one another much, which was heartbreaking. I never meant for my past with Hannah to interfere with her friendship with Tristan, but there was only so much I could do. My feelings for Aria weren’t romantic, so if Hannah was committed to hating on Aria for that reason alone, then things were just bound to be problematic.

Still, it didn’t ease my guilt in feeling like I was part of the reason Tristan was losing his best friend. “I’m, uh… I’m sorry."

Tristan looked over at me as we walked, his expression quickly twisted into confusion. “Sorry for what?”

“All of the Hannah stuff,” I said. “Maybe if I’d just swallow my pride and played nice she’d still be around and you guys would be doing better.”

Tristan shook his head. “Oh… No. I don’t think so. It’s not all about you guys’ history, Hannah just struggles with Aria in general. She’s so used to being around fake, superficial people that being around someone as genuinely incredible as Aria really throws her off. And I mean, you know, Aria is sickeningly perfect.”

I snickered. “Sickeningly.”

It wasn’t entirely a compliment when he said it or when I agreed. Though we both loved Aria to death, she had this way of making everyone around her seem like a mortal in the presence of a god. It wasn’t something she did intentionally, it wasn’t even really her fault. The woman literally was just good at everything.

Aria had faults, and those who were close enough to her got to see them in a way that made her seem even more human and incredible, but she did a good job of hiding them. For someone like me who played at high-roller tables with no money, or Tristan who battled with facing himself in the mirror every morning, someone like Aria who seemed to walk the line without issue and feel totally secure about herself could earn the slightest bit of contempt, even from us.

We knew and loved Aria far beyond those things, but for someone like Hannah who had more self-confidence issues than you could shake a stick at, I supposed it did make sense that her and Aria would just be a chemical mismatch. Hannah probably felt like dirt on the ground in Aria’s presence.

“I tried just about everything I could to embolden her confidence, but nothing took. She’s so convinced that Aria just means more to me than her that she can’t see me kicking and begging and screaming for her to just not worry about Aria and be my friend. Nothing has to change, but her insecurity is suffocating her.” He looked over at me. “Has she always been like that?”

“No,” I said. “Right before things went ass up with her family, she was so laid back. Sure, she was a little dorky with her braces and old style, but she was still her. Hannah’s naturally beautiful.”

“She really is,” Tristan agreed. “I’ve seen her without all the makeup and her contacts and I don’t quite get what she's trying to hide. Don't get me wrong, if Hannah likes all the makeup and fancy clothes, then more power to her, who am I to tell her not to do it? But I get the feeling she doesn't like it.”

“No. She hates it, at least she did when we were kids. Her mom would force her to sit down and have these makeup sessions where she taught her how to do her makeup and she used to complain for hours on end about them. At the end of middle school,