Take Me Home | ✔

Chapter Forty-One

BY THE TIME I GOT BACK INSIDE with the rest of the wedding supplies, Tess told me that Vienna had already gone upstairs to bed, even if it was only seven pm.

My shoulders sagged and my throat ran dry.

"Did she tell you why?"

Tessa narrowed her eyes, scanning me over. "She said she was jetlagged from her flight and went on upstairs."

Yeah, sure, that was it.

"By the way, Angie said you had to help clean up the dishes with me," she informed me. Even though I was exhausted and jetlagged too, I agreed anyway. I began picking up the leftover dishes and started washing them, with Tessa drying them and putting them away. By the sound of it, Uncle T, Angie, and Payton were all in the living room watching Christmas specials.

Although I probably should have been concentrating on not breaking any of Angie's dishes, my mind was someplace else. Even though I managed to not think about her for a while after our confrontation outside, I learned that trying not to think about someone techincally still counts as thinking about them. I couldn't help but hate myself for making Vienna feel so terrible. And for a whole year, too. I should have done better. I should have sent a letter or tried to find her on Facebook, or something to apologize. Yelling at her to leave and then never talking to her again sent the wrong message; the opposite one that I wanted to send. I tried to get in touch with her by looking through the phone book right before I left for Denmark, but when I found the only Vienna Dawson, she was a sixty-three year old woman who owned a corn factory.

"Elliot, you're putting too much soap!" Tess screamed then, pulling me out of my thoughts and making me realize that my hand had been pressing the soap dispenser for a long time. Now there were suds almost coming out of the sink.

"Shoot, my bad," I rinsed off the sink as best I could, trying to get my grip on another dish.

I could feel Tess's gaze slowly burning through me. She asked slowly, "Elliot, are you okay?"

The was the exact thing I didn't want her to ask.

"Yeah," I gave my best smile, "I'm fine. Jetlagged, but I'm okay. I mean, why wouldn't I be?"

Tessa put her dishcloth down. "You've been acting really strange since Vienna got here."

I kept a clear focus on a food stain that wouldn't come off on this one dish. "Really?"

"Yes, really."

The stain wouldn't come off, so I scrubbed harder. "That's ridiculous, T. What makes you think that?"

"It's just that...whenever you and Vienna are in the same room together, you act like you're angry at yourself. Or sad. Kinda both."

"It's nothing, Tess." I scrubbed even harder.

"You wanna know what, though?" she insisted.

I sighed heavily, "What, Tess?"

"She acts the same exact way you do."

Tess resumed to drying off dishes, but I stopped scrubbing. "It's like," she continued, "you're both synchronised. Like twins. It's pretty weird, if you ask me."

I shook it all away, blinking, before cleaning another plate. "You're imagining things, Tess."

"No, I'm not, El," she almost snapped. "I know I'm not imagining things because I know you a lot better than you think. You get this weird look in your eyes, and sometimes you stare off into space and it looks like you're frozen. And when you look at her, you don't look at her like you used to do. When you look at her, it's like you're not even Elliot anymore."