Chapter 26
Tambry had jogged out of sight from the picnicking couple seated on the blanket.
"Can you believe that?" Wendy threw a hand with fingers spread in Tambry's direction.
"Believe what?"
"Tambry!" Wendy crossed her arms and looked to the side. "Humph! Bending over like that, how...how cliché!"
I better play it safe. "What, you mean picking up her Frisbee?"
Wendy turned her head around to look at him with an unbelieving tilt, her crossed arms still facing away from him. Her eyes not lowered in love, but in cynicism. It was pretty loud and clear: Come on, you can't be THAT clueless, are you? She turned back around without saying anything.
"Wendy?"
Dipper touched her shoulder. "Wendy?"
The redhead threw her hands up in the air fingers spread, and nodded as she spoke:
"OK, OK, I'm jealous all right? She bent over on purpose, she was flirting with you again Dipper! On purpose! Right in front of me!"
"Wendy, I think she did it more to make you mad, not for me."
"I don't think so." She crossed her arms again and looked away, closed her eyes, frowning.
Dipper now put his hands on both of her shoulders from behind.
"Wendy, don't you trust me?"
Wendy uncrossed her arms and slowly turned around with hurt eyes and her mouth open in revelation. She stared at the young man that continued to surprise her every day.
WOW. I did not see that coming from a fourteen and a half year old! He is SO mature for his age!
"Oh Dipper." She leaned over and hugged him as he simultaneously wrapped his arms around her waist.
"Oh Dipper, I'm sorry. Of course I trust you." And she leaned up. "I just don't trust her. Anymore. She has made it clear she is either going to use you as a weapon to taunt me, or...or...worse." She looked down.
"What do you mean worse?" He gently placed a hand under her chin and lifted her face to look at him.
"Dipper...she..."
"She what?"
Wendy still faced him, her chin still in his hand, but now she looked to the side.
"What is it Wendy?" She looked back up at him, and now with lips pressed tightly together but tears in her eyes.
"Remember...snif...when I told you...snif...I was your first, but not your last?"
"Yes, and it isn't true. You are my first and last and in between." And he kissed the first tear that ran down her cheek. It was the only thing he knew to do when she was sad.
Wendy now looked directly at him, straight into his eyes, right through her tears as her lips trembled in sadness.
"Wendy, I love you. And no one else." He kissed her but there was no receiving pucker, the frown remained, tasting of tears. He held her face with both hands now, and she reached up with her hands and grasped his wrists, holding on to him for dear life, and now she lowered her forehead to touch his.
"Dipper." She said it with so much pain and heartache, it scared him, he had never heard her cry like this before. "I love you too. So much Dipper, so much." And now she couldn't hold back any more: she cried with a loud painful sobbing, Dipper could only hold her and rock her as she let it out. Her mournful wail was breaking his heart, to see his strong, fearless Wendy collapsing from an unseen danger of the heart. Where is the tough girl I fell in love with? What is going on?
