Finding Beauty (Rewrite)

Chapter 31

~The Beast ~

"Can't you see? It was always meant to be you!" she screamed in the pouring rain. Her tears blended with the rain drops, the water soaking through her sundress and the man's white t-shirt. "I picked the easier path but it wasn't the right one. Our love was worth fighting for!"

Teigan glanced at Bethany who was sitting cross legged beside him. She had a fistfull of popcorn in her hand, the other holding a single piece up in front of her mouth. The climax of the movie had dug its roots so far into her that she was frozen. He smiled. He knew she was going to eat this movie up when he first threw it on.

The love interest pulled away from the main character. He turned his grief stricken face to the moving van ready to drive him towards his new life with his new wife.

"You may be right but we're adults now. We have responsibilities. We've made commitments . . ." He took a step away as thunder boomed from a distance. "We can't go back in time and change the past."

The camera panned over to the main character as she delivered her next line. "But we can."

The movie ended with the female protagonist using the enchanted birthday candles to time travel to her thirteenth birthday where instead of falling into the wrong crowd of kids at school, she stood loyal to her childhood friend. The two got married ten years later in a heart warming happy ending.

"That was a cute movie," Beth said, placing the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. She plopped down on the floor next to it, picking up the popcorn kernels that had fallen. Teigan joined her on the ground.

"Have you ever been in a relationship that sweet?"

Immediately, he regretted asking. He was tempted to pull up his hood to cover his face but he had stopped wearing it around her and it would feel lame to revert back to old habits.

She lifted a shoulder, scrunching up her nose. "Not really? I've met a few guys who seemed nice and acted like they were interested but it never went anywhere."

A face appeared in Teigan's mind. "What about that guy you video chatted with and helped you at the masquerade? Grayson, was his name?"

Again, he had spoken before he could think better of it. He was failing at his original plan of staying quiet as to decrease the threat of saying something that would anger Bethany. The wall that he had set up between them had been slowly chipped away at and he was only now noticing the humungus hole.

What had made the hole? Bethany. It was her willingness to converse with him, her insistence on wanting to know him as a person.

"What about him?"

Teigan trained his gaze on the pillow in his lap, trying to sound incurious. "Maybe he scared all those guys off. He seems like he cares about you a lot so maybe he wanted to keep you for himself."

"Grayson? No." She paused, her cheeks momentarily tinting red. "At least, not like that. Maybe he did chase them off to protect me but we've always just been friends."

"If you say so."

She squinted at him. "I do say so."

Since he had already pried this much into her relationships, he didn't see the harm in pushing a little more. "Is it so hard to believe he might have feelings for you?"

It looked like he did to Teigan. In fact, what happened with Grayson at the masquerade was something out of the very genre of film they had been watching together. Grayson had single handedly saved her from Tyler Daniels. Teigan hadn't made it to her in time. The thought was morbid but without him, Bethany might not have been alive. Ordinary people would not have attacked a gunman alone for a friend. Grayson was either incredibly heroic or was in love with her.