Unexpected (2 page)

They no longer lived in the majestic, fully and beautifully restored Victorian home she’d lived in since childhood. They now
rented a small, battered house near the warehouse district. Apparently when parents in our lovely little town of Laughlin had to make a choice between putting shoes on their kids’ feet or metal sculptures in their front yards, the sculptures—and therefore the Kriegers—lost out.

I quickly c
overed the few blocks to Jamie’s. The road had been plowed but my feet still crunched along as I trekked through the snow at a pace that helped me to keep warm. There were a few snowflakes floating through the air. Not enough to amount to anything substantial.

Robert
Jacobs was a pediatrician and Anna was co-owner of Tranquility. It was the one and only spa in Laughlin.

They could possibly be our town’s most mismatched couple, at first glance, anyway. She was
Korean, adopted by a family from Florida when she was a baby. She was petite, beautiful and always, always impeccably dressed. I was sure I’d never seen her leave the house without high heels and layered in jewelry.

This was in
large part due to the image she felt she needed to portray as co-owner of Tranquility. It just wouldn’t do for her to be spotted out and about in frayed jeans and flip-flops. Come to think of it, I was not sure she even owned jeans, let alone flip-flops. 

Robert, on the other hand,
was likely over six feet tall. His red hair was kept neatly trimmed because as soon as it got too long, it got completely out of hand. It sprouted from his head like crazy brambles sprouting from a bush. Unlike his wife, his clothing, in my opinion, was rather questionable. He typically wore thick-soled sneakers and thick, black framed glasses. They didn’t look as though they were a funky retro fifties style. They looked more like actual fifties relics. And he always wore a bowtie. Why? I’ve no idea other than I think he just liked to prove that he could. If not for Robert, I would’ve thought bowties to be extinct. Perhaps he was singlehandedly trying to revive them. Or perhaps because he worked with children, he felt it gave him license to always look… a bit
silly
?

My guess was that he was an attractive man. However, it was hard to see past the wonky ties and the gaudy glasses.

Both Jamie and Tristan took after their mother. No thick-soled sneakers, wonky accessories or gaudy glasses for either of them.

The Jacob
s’ house was easily one of the largest in all of Secluded Pines. It was nestled back, far off the tarred road that looped around the entirety of the development. The large red brick structure stood out against the snow. I traipsed down the driveway, stamping the snow off of my boots the last few feet
.

I rang the bell to announce my arrival
. After a few seconds I let myself into the Jacobs’ house because that’s what I’d been doing for years. I was greeted with the sound of classical music. It was so glorious, so perfect, so incredibly breathtaking that if I hadn’t known better, I’d think it was floating through the speakers as a CD played.

But I knew better.

The haunting, beautiful and now-familiar chords of
Moonlight Sonata
floated down the hall to greet me. I wouldn’t have known what the piece was called if Tristan hadn’t told me. He had been practicing one day last summer and for some reason, the piece had gripped me. I had asked him to play it over and over again.

He had, without complaint.

I slid my outdoor gear off. Instead of heading up to Jamie’s bedroom, I followed the sound of the melody.

I stood outside
of the music room for a minute, just listening to Tristan. The way he played always amazed me. It wasn’t just because
I
had the musical ineptitude of a preschooler. It was because
he
was truly phenomenal. I loved to hear him play.

I waited for a break in the music before poking my head around the door.

“That was beautiful,” I said as I made my way into the room. I loved this room with its cherry flooring and burgundy, faux-suede painted walls. There was a mocha colored overstuffed sofa off to the side of the room. It had been placed there for company when Mrs. Jacobs insisted Tristan play for them. I never used it.

Tristan grinned at me, his hand frozen on the page
he was going to turn. “Hey, Britta. Thanks. I can play it again,” he offered as he put his hand down in his lap.

“Okay,” I accepted, grinning back.  I
crossed the room, bypassing the leather couch. I slid onto the bench next to him. As always, I probably made it harder for him to play. He never complained.

He leaned toward me, reaching up to push a strand of my wind-blown hair off of my face.

I was freezing from my walk and I could feel the heat coming off of him. I was tempted to lean into him. Instead, I shivered.

“Cold?” He didn’t wait for an answer to the rhetorical question. He pulled me into a sideways hug.

“Just a little,” I said
. He rubbed my arm, warming it with the friction. My other arm was tucked cozily between us.

A
smile tugged at my lips because as always, he looked like a complete contradiction. From the doorway, where I could only see him from the chest down, he looked so stuffy and proper behind Anna’s baby grand. But sitting next to him, I had a clear view of his ripped up jeans and his vintage Cinderella t-shirt. Cinderella as in the rock group, not the Disney movie. Obviously.

“Britta!
You were supposed to come upstairs!” Jamie called from the doorway. “How was shopping?” she asked as she came in. Willow was right behind her.

“Did your mom go crazy?”
Willow wanted to know.

“Yeah,” I said with a laugh. “She did.” My mom was a notorious shopaholic.

“Well, come on,” Jamie urged. “We were just heading into the kitchen.”

I glanc
ed at Tristan. He shrugged as his arm slid away. “I can play it later.”

“Okay,” I said with a nod.

I got up and followed my friends out of the room. I heard Tristan get up as well, though he was probably headed off to his bedroom.

“You know he plays that piece just for you,” Jamie told me. She started peeking inside of holiday containers as Willow and I took our usual seats at the granite bar.

“He does not,” I scoffed.
“Why would he? He has no idea how much I love it.”

“That sappy smile you get on your face every time you hear it tells him exactly how much you love it,”
Jamie said as she rolled her eyes at me. “Cookie?”

She slid a snowman tin our way.
Willow and I each plucked out an enormous, glazed molasses cookie.

Willow
flipped her long, curly white blond hair over her shoulder. She took a bite of her cookie as she gave me a wary look. Jamie was leaning across the counter from the other direction. She was watching me, too.

“What?” I finally asked after I swallowed my own bite. “Why are you both staring at me like that?”

“She doesn’t know,” Jamie said decisively.

“Know what?” I wondered
. My gaze darted back and forth between my two best friends. They finally settled on Willow. “What don’t I know?” I cautiously demanded.

“About
Corey.”

My stomach did a painful little twisting-into-a-knot feeling. I shrugged as I ignored it. “What about him?”

“He’s dating Tara Robinson. We saw them last night.” Jamie informed me. “At the movie.”

“Oh.” I shrugged. “So what? I don’t care. I’m over him.”
It wasn’t considered a lie if I was
willing
it to be true. Was it?

Willow
let out a disgusted sound from beside me. “He didn’t waste any time did he? When Corey said he wanted to see other people, I guess he must’ve meant it.”

“Guess so,” I muttered.
I stared at the cookie in my hand, no longer wanting it.

“I was just glad you weren’t there,”
Willow said with a grimace.

“Yeah,”
Jamie tacked on. “It worked out well you had to do a belated Christmas with your grandparents. Because the two of them were really—”

“
Not important!” Willow interjected.

Jamie
blinked. “Oh, right. Yeah.
Not
important.”

“
We need to find you someone new,” Willow decided.

“I don’t want someone new,” I reminded her.

“Ugh, I know, sweetie. You just want Corey,” she said sympathetically.

I shook my head, realizing, to my surprise, it actually wasn’t true.
I didn’t like the thought of him with Tara. Yet, I wasn’t sure I wanted him back, either. Things had not ended well.

“No. That’s not it. I just think I need a break from the whole dating thing.” It was true. I’d started dating
Corey junior year. He’d dumped me nine months, one week, two days later. Sadly, I could probably figure it down to the exact hour but thus far, had been able to refrain from such obsessively neurotic behavior.

“
You’ve had a break,” Willow informed me. “Now you need to quit moping—”

“I’m not moping!” I
interjected. She shot me a look and then her green eyes narrowed at me. “Not anymore,” I muttered as Tristan came into the kitchen. He seemed to be ignoring us as he started checking out the contents of the fridge.

“Good.
Then you shouldn’t be opposed to us finding you a new boyfriend. The winter dance is going to be here before we know it,” Willow said as she sat back. A conniving smile spread across her face.

“I’m available,” Tristan offered as he shut the fridge. He
threw us a teasing grin as he twisted the top off of his bottle of iced tea.

“Over my decomposed, rotting corpse
,” Jamie told him. “Besides, Britta’s so far above you that you’d need a rocket launcher to get there.”

“Hey, be nice,” I said as
I scowled at her.

Tristan didn’t look the least bit offended by the insult coming from his sister.
I assumed he was used to it. I just didn’t want to be the reason for it. He winked at me and grinned before turning to leave.

“Whatever,” he called over his shoulder. “Don’t ever accuse me of not offering to help out a friend.”

Before anyone had a chance to respond, he poked his head back through the archway that connected the kitchen to the front hall. “You know Jamie…I do actually
own
a rocket launcher. So—”

“No!”
Jamie snapped at him.

I giggled, remembering all of the homemade
bottle rockets we’d launched in the back field when we were kids.

Jamie didn’t find it as funny as I did.
Her hand dove into the fruit bowl that rested on the countertop. Before I could blink, an orange was soaring through the air at Tristan’s head. He easily caught it.

“Now go away!
” she commanded.

He went. But not before making another face at me. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“You know, that’s really not a terrible idea,” Willow said as she raised her eyebrows at me.

“It’s a horrible idea!
Nerd boy would just drag her down with his intrinsic nerdiness. I mean, his GPA is almost perfect without him even trying. There’s just something a little too perverse about that,” Jamie fumed.

That wasn’t true. He did try. Tristan, I knew, studied.
Constantly. He deserved his good grades. There was a good chance he would be next year’s valedictorian, or at least salutatorian.

Willow smiled sweetly. “See, then he’s perfect for Britta. Her grades are disgustingly high, too.”

At least she didn’t say it came easy for me, because it didn’t. Mom had high expectations as did my teachers. I think it was a result of having a parent with a doctorate. But like Tristan, I studied a lot. I was the first to admit I should attribute my GPA more to study habits than any sort of brilliance.

“No,” Jamie said, cutting into my thoughts. “This isn’t even up for discussion.” She looked at me.

I shrugged.

I hadn’t started this conversation. I hadn’t even participated in it.

It didn’t really matter to me what Jamie’s thoughts were. Because I wasn’t interested in Tristan. Furthermore, I was pretty sure his interest in me was nothing more than a scheme to annoy Jamie. It was only logical that since Tristan excelled at everything, he’d also excel at that.

“But he’s cute,”
Willow pressed. “I think that boy grew a foot since last year. He also grew some biceps. Has he been working out? He must’ve started working out,” she mused. Then she turned to me. Her grin was devious. “Did you check out his—”

“No!” Jamie cried as she glared at Willow. “Nobody needs to be checking out my baby brother’s
anything
!”

“Hey, I’m just saying…”
Willow explained.