Start Me Up

When Tessa woke up that morning to voices in the house she thought she was imagining things. Then, when they didn't stop she thought Shea had left the TV on. But then, when she heard Amelia's voice she practically jumped out of bed and across the room. She pulled the door open just a few inches and glanced into the kitchen where Shea was standing, a look of surprise on his face that Tessa figured mirrored the feeling she had now.

"I finished everything I had to do super early and so I told Aaron that I needed to go home to spend some time with my fiance." Amelia told him, smiling at him from the other side of the island.

Shea slowly set his mug of coffee down as she walked toward him and he asked her, "So... you just came home?"

She nodded her head with a smile as she wrapped an arm around his neck and said, "I'm home."

"I'm glad." Tessa wondered if Amelia heard in Shea's voice what she had heard.

Tessa swore she saw Shea glance at her mostly closed bedroom door, and her thoughts were confirmed when Amelia looked over as well and then she turned to Shea and with a smile asked, "Tessa's home?"

He nodded, "Yeah."

"That's okay, we can be quiet." She said, leaning up to kiss him gently.

That was when Tessa closed her bedroom door quietly again, and she leaned back against the door and closed her eyes tightly as she heard footsteps pass her door and the door to the bedroom down the hall closing. She waited for a second or two longer before she changed out of her pyjamas and into her usual painting clothes and pulled her hair up into a neat bun.

She was careful and quiet leaving the house and it took her all of eleven minutes to get to Pekka's. She was early, extremely early, so she let herself into the house with the key he had given her so that she could do some work while they were on the road, and she grabbed the keys to the guest house out of the pile of keys on the counter and headed out there. She turned all of the lights on, closed the door behind her and set up the drop cloths to cover the flooring before she started painting.

That was where Pekka found her, four hours later after he had walked through the dining room to get to the living room and saw the light in the guest house on. So he shoved his feet into sandals and brought two mugs of coffee outside.

Tessa literally dropped the paint roller on herself, catching it before it hit the drop cloth on the floor beneath her feet when Pekka said, "Morning."

She turned, cheeks flushed, and then she glanced down at herself and the streak of cream paint on her shirt and jeans. She then looked over at Pekka and said, "I hope this is okay. I just couldn't sleep and figured I'd come out here and get started but I didn't want to wake you so I thought I'd work on this first."

Pekka raised his eyebrow at her, it wasn't like Tessa to be so nervous she rambled. He nodded his head and held out one of the mugs of coffee and as she took it from him he told her, "It's all good. Don't worry about it."

So they sat in the middle of the floor in the guest house and drank their coffee, any talking between the two of them was done strictly about the house and Pekka found it hard not to even try to pry into what was going on in her life lately. She was jumpy, quiet and if she didn't seem completely lost in her own world she was spewing all kinds of things he didn't understand about his house to him a mile a minute.

After a long period of silence, Tessa told Pekka, "Amelia came home early today."

Pekka nodded his head, "So that's why you came here at seven in the morning? She and Shea are... busy getting reacquainted?"

He was at home, having sex with his fiance after he had kissed her sister the night before.

Just the thought made her stomach flip but she nodded her head anyway.

"Yeah, I don't blame you for that. Roman lived with them for a few weeks when he first started playing here... he didn't spend a lot of time at home either."

Again she wanted to lean over and hurl but this time Tessa didn't know if it was because of what had happened last night or if it was because she didn't want to hear about the things her sister and Shea did behind closed doors because she didn't want to know those things about Shea, or at least she shouldn't want to know those things about him.

Tessa had barely slept a wink last night, and she knew the same could be said of Shea because it was his pacing the hardwood between the length of hallway between the master bedroom and her guest room that kept her up all night in the first place, as if he wanted to come in and say something to her but couldn't bring himself to do so. Tessa knew that Shea hadn't meant for that kiss to happen, he hadn't planned it despite the fact that he had been the one who initiated it. But it didn't matter that he had kissed her first because she had kissed him back. She had kissed her little sister's fiance. What the hell kind of person did that?

She didn't know what had come over her, or what had come over Shea either but all of a sudden all of the weird, awkward tension between them over the last few weeks made sense now. When had things changed between them, though? Never once in the years, they had known each other had anything like this ever happened. Tessa had never even wondered about Shea in that way and now here she was and it was all she could think about.

It was like all she could do was think about Shea every second of every day no matter what she did to try to distract herself it always came back to Shea.

Shea, Shea, Shea, Shea.

It was exhausting, it made her nauseous all of the time, and then when after letting herself think about him in that kind of a way her brain would think about Amelia, her heart hurt.

What happened between she and Shea last night, and whatever had been happening over the weeks was done. It couldn't be anything, so why was she letting herself think about him like that? She had to think about Amelia, the kiss last night was one really big, really bad, awful mistake that needed to be forgotten. Even if she didn't want to forget it.

"So." Pekka started, stopping when Tessa looked over at him in alarm as if he could read her mind to know what she had been thinking of moments before. His brow lifted, and hers did too in a challenge, so he asked her, "Off the record, and off the clock from one friend to another...how are you?"

"How am I?" She asked him, brows furrowed in confusion.

He nodded his head, took a sip of his coffee and clarified, "It's been... what six or seven months since you and Jake split... I just... I don't mean to overstep but I just wanted to know how you were."

"Honestly?" Tessa asked, and when he nodded she told him, "Shitty."

"You wanna talk about it?" He asked her curiously, offering his support.

Tessa wasn't sure why, but now more than ever it seemed easier to talk to Pekka about Jacob than it did Amelia, and especially Shea lately. So she told him, "I just feel like I had this bomb dropped on me and I haven't quite figured out how to pick myself up and carry on yet, you know? Like I don't even remember who I was before I was someone's wife."

"I'm sure you just think you don't, but you probably do know how, somewhere in there." Pekka told her softly.

Tessa shrugged her shoulders, "Honestly sometimes I still catch myself on things."

"Like what?"

"Like when I get dressed I have to stop myself from changing because eight months ago I would have needed to have my outfit approved before even leaving the house. Sometimes I go to say something and I stop because I was so used to having to watch what I said around people. I've been the same person for almost six years and this trying to understand that it's okay to be myself, to dress how I want and say what I want and do what I want is okay, that everyone does it is a lot harder than I expected." When she told him this Pekka reached out and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, pulling her into his side.

Tessa rested her head on his shoulder and he rubbed her bicep with one hand as he told her gently, "For what it's worth Tessa, some day you're gonna find a guy that treats you like a man should treat a woman, and I really hope that you find that soon."

I think I already have... too bad he's marrying my sister.

Pekka pulled away from her and he told her, "Well, it's almost lunch time. I was supposed to meet Roman and Craig for lunch, you should come with me."

Tessa glanced down at her paint covered self and asked, "What, like this?"

Pekka sent her a wicked grin, "I could loan you a shirt. They'd shit bricks if they thought you slept over you know."

She couldn't help but let out a loud laugh and nod her head, letting him pull her up to her feet before she closed the paint can lid back on, and then picked up their mugs and followed him inside. Pekka disappeared upstairs and Tessa put their mugs in the dishwasher and pulled her cell phone out of her backpack, there was a message waiting from Amelia.

Just wondering where you disappeared to this morning? Sorry if we were a little loud, it's just really, really good to be home if you know what I mean ;)

Tessa closed her eyes tightly, holding her breath for one, two, three.

She deleted the message without even replying to it, before tucking her phone back into her bag. She looked up when Pekka came back downstairs holding a light blue shirt in his hand, he handed it to her and told her, "I can put yours in the laundry if you want."

She shrugged and swapped shirts, not caring that he was standing right in front of her. She looked up to find him turned away, and it made her smile a little before she told him, "It's my painting shirt anyway."

Tessa followed him out to his car, and their ride to the restaurant was filled with small talk, and Craig and Roman were already seated waiting when they arrived. Roman smiled at Tessa, but it was Craig to reached out and tugged on her shirt, asking, "What, you turned all of us down for this loser?"

Pekka rolled his eyes and Tessa told him, "I'm not into blondes you should know that by now."

Pekka reached out and pinched her side, "That's not what you said last night."

She rolled her eyes this time and said, "There is only one real reason I won't date you, you know."

Pekka's brow lifted, "Oh yeah? Why's that?"

"Pekka and Tessa? Rhyming names? No, thank you." She said, nodding her head in affirmation as Craig and Roman laughed.

Roman told her, "Our names don't rhyme."

"You're too pretty for me, besides I don't think your girlfriend would appreciate that." She told him with a smile.

"Alright, that leaves Smitty." Pekka told her.

Without even looking up from her menu Tessa told them, "He's even prettier."

All three guys turned to her with looks of surprise on their faces and Craig stated, "That's a first."

She shrugged her shoulder and told him, "I mean, Roman's gorgeous but you... you have that whole big 'keep you warm at night' lumberjack look to you. Plus the smile, you've got a way nicer smile. No offense Roman."

After lunch, Tessa went back to Pekka's to finish painting the guest room, and it was nearly four by the time she headed back home. She walked into the front door, pulled her shoes off and left them on the mat next to the door and made her way to the guest room. She nearly ran right into Shea, who was walking down the hall with his bag for the road trip she knew they were about to head out on, she mumbled an apology and they both stepped out and around each other without any more words exchanged between the two of them.

Shea went out to his truck in the driveway, and Tessa closed the bedroom door of her guest room behind her with a sigh.

When Shea took his seat on the plane later that night he pulled a pair of headphones over his ears and leaned back in his seat. He didn't say much to the guys since arriving, but no one seemed to care much since they were all pretty much doing the same thing as him. So he pulled a book from his bag, flipped through to the dog-eared page from the last time he had put it down, and settled in for the flight.

He knew he should have manned up and actually talked to Tessa after their little moment in the kitchen. All that time pacing back and forth in the hallway the night before trying to decide if he should knock on her door and what he might say to her he should have just done it. He should have just gotten it all out in the air once and for all, but then again he didn't even know how to have that conversation.

It wasn't as if there was a manual for this. There wasn't some book he could read or article on the internet he could skim through to give him ideas on what to say.

I feel like I should apologize for kissing you even though I really don't want to apologize because I've been thinking about doing that for weeks?

He was mad at himself because of what he had done, and the mess that he had made, and he was mad at himself because he knew how much this would hurt Amelia but Shea had never, not once in a million years, thought he would be this guy. He had made it thirty years of his life without being labeled a cheater, and now not only had he cheated but he had done it with his fiance's own sister. What the hell kind of person did that?