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Post by Melanie Benson on Dec 30, 2015 21:00:36 GMT
Isn’t this your boyfriend?
Melanie’s eyes skimmed the words on her phone before she took a look at the picture and felt her heart drop into her stomach. She stared at it for a long time before it even started to sink in. It was, in fact, Tripp in the picture – but what was more was that he appeared to be out with a pretty blonde and the way that he seemed to be leaning in to talk to her almost made them look cozy. She didn’t respond to the girl who’d sent her the picture – knowing that while she’d known her “friends” for years, that they would delight in having some gossip to push around town regarding Melanie and her love life.
Instead, she got herself dressed and hastily gathered up things from around her room. All of the jewelry and trinkets that he’d given her since they’d begun dating, things of his that had been left behind in her apartment when he’d hastily exited for work in the morning. The handcuffs and blindfold she’d bought for him the night of their first fight. She went into her closet and dug out a shoe box, emptying out the Jimmy Choos inside to fill the box with his belongings and gifts.
On the way to his apartment, she wondered if she’d been fooling herself into thinking she was the sort of person that could have a normal relationship. She wondered if it was karma for all of the times – both knowingly and unknowingly – that she’d been the other woman. Though she supposed there was a chance that maybe she was still the other woman – maybe the girl in the picture had been in his life even longer than she had and she had just blindly allowed herself not to realize it.
Tapping her foot in the elevator impatiently, she realized that while she was angry – she was also extremely hurt, but she steeled herself to those feelings, deciding that she wouldn’t let him see her that way. After knocking on the door, she barely gave him time to greet her before she shoved the box into his hands.
"There," she snapped. "That's it - that's everything that's yours or that you gave to me. Except the jam, because there's still quite a bit of that left and I wasn't sure the best way to carry it but I'll have it sent back to you." She frowned, glaring up at him.
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Post by Tripp VanderMill on Dec 30, 2015 21:15:52 GMT
Surprise only began to scratch the surface, though Tripp remained oddly calm as he opened the door and looked down at his girlfriend. He tried not to find the amusement in the situation, particularly as she was clearly upset about something. For a moment he tried to think of what he could have possibly done to upset her so, but he was struggling to find anything that would warrant this sort of reaction. He was sure that he hadn't hurt her when they last found themselves in bed together, and he was absolutely certain that he hadn't missed another dinner, but he assumed that there must have been something. And judging by the box she had just thrust into his hands, it must have been pretty bad.
Raising a brow at her in curiosity, he tossed the box onto the table beside the door, which he generally reserved for mail. Turning back to her, he leaned against the door frame and once again peered down at her as though waiting for an explanation.
"Don't bother with it," he dismissed the idea of her trying to send back the jam. He silently surveyed her for a moment before deciding to simply ask what he had done. "Is there a particular reason why you've decided to give all of this back?"
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Post by Melanie Benson on Dec 30, 2015 21:36:55 GMT
Melanie stared up at him for a moment. Through the course of their relationship thus far, Tripp was typically calm and collected. She enjoyed that about him sometimes, as she was excitable - as they were both respectively demonstrating right now. Most of the time it balanced itself out, some of the time it drove her insane and she’d do her best to try to rile him up. But now, standing in front of him, having just given him back every trace of their relationship that he owned, as he still seemed so casual, she couldn’t help but feel wounded by it.
“I thought things were going pretty well, actually,” she said gently. “You and me. I mean, I’m not great at the girlfriend thing – but I was trying. And I’ve been fighting with my father - who is literally the only person that has been in my corner for my entire life – over you.” She looked away and shook her head. “My friends saw you, Tripp. Out with – whatever her name is, I don’t care, I don’t want to know - some skank.”
“I don’t know if this is some sort of game to you or how you normally operate with women or if I did someth-“ she broke off and shook her head. “But I’ve been with a lot of men – a handful of whom have treated me pretty poorly. But you…you really had me fooled for a minute into thinking this was different and I won’t ever forgive you for that.”
She huffed with frustration, “And then the fact that I came over here to end things and you could just stand there, like it’s whatever…” she scowled and shook her head. “Maybe it is. Maybe it’s just whatever,” she shook her head and turned around on her heel to head back for the elevator.
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Post by Tripp VanderMill on Dec 30, 2015 21:46:05 GMT
Sighing in frustration at the entire situation, he reached out and grabbed her arm to if for no other reason but to keep her from storming off before he had a chance to explain. Knowing now what she had seen, he could understand why she had been so upset. "Melanie, stop," he told her.
In trying to come up with a name of the woman her friends might have seen him out with, the only one he could come up with was Penelope. In which case, Melanie was seriously overreacting.
"The only woman I've spent any time with lately that wasn't you was Penelope - my step-sister. Blonde? Reasonably attractive, I suppose."
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Post by Melanie Benson on Dec 30, 2015 21:56:37 GMT
When he grabbed her arm, she had half the mind to slap him but stopped herself. She'd been hoping to make it to the elevator before her emotions got the better of her, however - upon hearing his explanation, she blinked. Melanie paused, thinking back to what the woman in the picture looked like. "Yes. That...sounds like an accurate description," she replied flatly, not willing to make eye contact now that she realized she'd been wrong. "I didn't...it's not like I knew what she looked like," she said immediately. "My friend made it seem like there was something going on."
She looked down and frowned, clearing her throat. "Well, then. I take back what I said about her being a skank and the not so nice things I said to you after that."
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Post by Tripp VanderMill on Dec 31, 2015 1:21:25 GMT
Tripp tried not to smile at her and instead retained his grip on her, pulling her closer to him so that she had no choice but to face him. "Would you like your things back?" he asked her, noting that they still hadn't moved inside of his apartment. "Or at the very least, would you like to come inside? I'll get you a drink."
It would figure that one of the few times he opted to be civil to his step-sister that Melanie or someone she knew would see it and misinterpret it for something that it wasn't. Though he supposed that she had gotten over it considerably better than he would have if he had been in her shoes.
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Post by Melanie Benson on Dec 31, 2015 1:35:34 GMT
Melanie sighed and nodded at him, allowing him to lead her inside of his apartment. When the door closed behind her, she leaned against it. "Do you have vodka?" she asked. "And perhaps a time machine so I could have thought that through a bit better?" She sighed and looked down again. "I overreacted," she admitted. "But I just thought...it looked like...my friends are stupid."
Crossing her arms in front of her chest, she sighed. If there was one thing the entire experience had taught her it was how much she really did care for Tripp. In the past, her relationships - if you could call them that - she always found it easy to come and go as she pleased and to leave when she felt it had run its course whether that meant a night or in Brody's case, a couple of months. But it was different with Tripp. She was now acutely aware of just how upset she would feel if things didn't work out or if Tripp did decide that he would be better off dating someone else - perhaps someone more suitable who didn't throw a fit over a misunderstanding and who was better at dating. Suddenly, it all felt much more real and she found she really did want that vodka.
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Post by Tripp VanderMill on Dec 31, 2015 2:03:44 GMT
Tripp nodded, moving into the kitchen to retrieve the vodka he stored there and pouring it into a glass for her. He had quickly learned that she had a tendency to use vodka as a coping mechanism, and while he wasn't necessarily fond of the fact that she was using her coping mechanism to help get over something that he had indirectly caused. "It's fine," he reassured her, handing her the glass. "I don't blame you for making assumptions." Moving into the living room, he took a seat on the sofa, a spot he had been occupying only moments before she had made her brief rant about him cheating on her. It was actually interesting to him that she thought that he was even capable of that action at the moment, considering the fact that he hadn't even considered the idea of being with anyone else since they had started dating. It was one of their conditions, actually. Well, perhaps not in as many words, but the fact remained that he had assured her that they would do this the right way, and that included his own actions. Being with someone else behind her back had never occurred to him, and the fact that someone had made that assumption about himself and Penny served to both amuse and annoy him.
Waiting for her to join him, he looked at her for a moment before smiling at her softly and shaking his head. "Your friends are stupid. But I suppose I should have introduced you to Penny first, or at least told you that I was planning on having lunch with her."
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Post by Melanie Benson on Dec 31, 2015 2:31:54 GMT
Melanie waved her hand dismissively, taking a long sip from her drink before joining him on the couch. "You don't have to tell me who you're planning on meeting with," she told him. Part of her wanted to talk to him about the assumptions she'd made and why she'd even entertained the idea that he would cheat on her when he'd been nothing but wonderful to her so far. And maybe that was really the part she had the hardest time believing.
She licked her lips and shook her head before taking a few more long sips of her drink, practically draining the entire glass. Her eyebrows knitting together for a brief moment, she looked up at him. "I'm not very good at this, you know," she told him. "I've been the other woman a lot," she admitted. "And I guess I thought that maybe you'd realized that that sort of relationship was what I was better suited for." She paused a beat and shrugged a shoulder up, "Plus, I think I'm trying to figure out something wrong with you - because so far there's nothing. I mean, you're a bit of an ass sometimes but I like that. And you work a lot, but I get that that's important to you."
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Post by Tripp VanderMill on Dec 31, 2015 3:02:35 GMT
He watched her for a moment, as she nearly downed the drink in her hands. Tripp hadn't been expecting that she was going to display so many feelings toward their relationship, not just because it seemed to still be a new concept to her, but because they had barely scratched the surface of what it meant to be in a relationship. Aside from dinners and attending events together, they hadn't yet gotten to any of the stereotypical rights of passage, so to speak. And now that he had mentioned it, he did suppose that perhaps it was time for her to meet his family. He made another mental note to look into the best time and place for such a meeting and instead looked at her again, nodding in understanding to her own explanation. "You're doing fine, Melanie." In all honesty, she was actually doing quite well on the girlfriend front, with the exception of the last thirty minutes. Though, again, he supposed he still didn't blame her.
"You're not the other woman. I'm not seeing anyone else." He felt like it was unnecessary to remind her how he felt about her, that was something he thought that she should have already known.
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Post by Melanie Benson on Dec 31, 2015 3:42:47 GMT
"Yes, I know that you're not," she assured him. Taking a breath and setting her glass down, she scooted a bit closer to him. "I didn't mean to believe that you would," she told him as she leaned up to press a kiss to his lips. Melanie had never been one for talking about her feelings, she'd been much better at expressing herself in other ways and she thought maybe the best way to do that now and keep herself from saying anything she might regret was to do what she did best. Shifting from the spot behind him onto his lap, she smirked at him before pressing her lips to his neck.
"Mine," she murmured before her teeth nipped gently at his earlobe.
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Post by Tripp VanderMill on Dec 31, 2015 4:01:57 GMT
Tripp didn't think that there was really anything left to discuss, but he was a little hesitant about jumping right back into bed with her after everything that had just conspired. All the same, he smirked at her own possessiveness and reached out to grab her by the waist, pulling her body close to him. "I wouldn't," he repeated, realizing how truly honest he was being when he said that to her. In a way, he was realizing that his feelings for her were progressing a lot faster than he had originally expected them to. He blamed her entirely for that, all of the challenges that she presented and all of the happy moments she had provided.
"Is everything all right now?" he questioned softly, nipping at her lower lip lightly before kissing her fully.
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Post by Melanie Benson on Dec 31, 2015 4:15:57 GMT
Melanie moaned softly into his mouth when he kissed her, hands braced on the back of the sofa for some leverage as she kissed him back. When she pulled away she mulled over his question for a brief moment. She actually wasn't completely sure what she would qualify as all right - but she knew that she wanted to spend less time thinking about it because it made her feel anxious. The feelings she'd been developing for Tripp were completely knew for her and while for the most part it was exhilarating for her, sometimes it terrified her as well. She knew that if she really thought about it too much, it might spook her at the moment and she didn't want that. The only place she wanted to be was right there with him.
"Everything's perfect," she replied, leaning in to kiss him quickly.
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