Tobias
I lie in bed staring at the ceiling. I don't know how long I've been awake, but I know it's getting close to midday from the amount of sunlight shining through the windows. I try to close my eyes, to shut the world out, but every time I do all I can see is her face. I try to push my thoughts away but it's already too late: stray tears fall down my cheeks. I know that this is all my fault. If I hadn't been so stupid, Tris would be here with me right now instead of with that guy. I can't even think about him touching her. Now I keep replaying her kissing him last night in my mind. Her eyes staring into mine as she took her dress off and refused to kiss me. She took her dress off in front of everyone, in front of him. She looked so beautiful. Her hair and makeup, her body, she was perfect. More tears fall down my cheeks and I rush to wipe them away as someone pounds on my door. I run into the bathroom and splash some water on my face and through my hair before I throw a pair of pants on.
"Dude open up!" I hear Zeke yell.
Of course it's Zeke.
"Can I help you?" I ask as I open the door.
"Do you know what time it is?" He scoffs.
"I can't say that I do, Zeke," I glare at him.
"It is one o'clock in the afternoon and you are sitting in your apartment in your underwear sniveling."
"I'm not in my underwear, and I was not sniveling," I roll my eyes.
"You just put those pants on, and yes you were," he says, pushing past me to come in.
"What do you want?" I ask as I follow him to the couch.
"I want you to start living your life again," he looks at me seriously. "Dude, you have been trturing yourself. When you're not harassing Christina, you're waiting for her in the cafeteria. And if you're not there, you're hunched over your desk at work, or you stay shut up in here."
"I've sat hunched over my desk or in my apartment since I joined Dauntless."
"Not once you met Tris," he disagrees. "Man, I know she changed everything for you, and I know you two have been through a lot together, but you have to do something. You either have to do everything you can to get her back or you have to move on. You can do either one but you can't just hide from everyone and everything. You can't hide from the world, Four. The world needs you. I need you, man. I need my friend back. Okay, so last night definitely did not go according to plan, but so what. I will do whatever you want or need me to do to either help you get her back or to help you move on."
"I think that is the most you've ever said to me at one time, Zeke," I joke.
"So, what's it gonna be?" He questions.
"We're gonna get her back," I say.
"Now that's the Dauntless Four that I know," he slaps me on the back. "Now, get dressed. We've got some work to do."
I go into my bedroom and put on some black pants and a black shirt, the usual. When I come back into the living room, he's already standing by the door. We walk down various paths until we reach the exit of the compound. We catch a train and jump off when we reach the Amity farms. We walk down the dirt paths until we come to a lite wooden stand in the middle of a garden.
"What is this?" I ask Zeke.
"This is where I come when I get Shauna flowers," he says. "Fill this out," he says as he hands me a little white card.
I think for a minute before I write a couple sentences. I have to write small to make all of my words fit.
"It's just a note, it's not an Erudite research paper," he hits me in th e shoulder. "So what kind does she like?"
"What kind of what?" I ask, my brows furrowing together.
"Flowers," he says. "What kind of flowers does Tris like?" He repeats himself slowly.
"I don't know," I shrug. "We've never talked about it."
"You've never gotten her flowers?" He asks with his mouth open. "No wonder she wouldn't kiss you."
"Hey," I say more abruptly than I meant to, "when was I supposed to get her flowers? While she was my initiate or while we were in the middle of a war?"
"Okay, you have a point there," he pauses, "but she's never said what kind of flowers she likes?"
"No, man, she hasn't."
I close my eyes for a minute and try to put myself back in all grey. Back in Abnegation. Back to my childhood. Back to when I watched Tris play with Robert Black. I repeat every moment that I can recall seeing her. Knocking the books out of Caleb's hands and pretending that it was an accident because he made a comment to her about not being selfless. Shoving down a boy because he was being mean. Wandering off the beaten paths when she walked home from school instead of taking the bus. Wandering into empty fields when she thought no one was looking. Picking wild daisies and carrying them with her until she made it back to one of the main paths. Daisies.
"Daisies," I blurt out. "She likes daisies."
"Well alright then," he nods. "Two dozen daisies, my friend."
The guy at the stand leaves for a fee minutes but then comes back with two dozen fresh picked daisies. I pay him and give him a couple extra points just because before we turn back to the main road.
"The only downside is, now we have to walk back," Zeke says looking at the flowers in my hand. "She's gonna love them."
"If I can even give them to her," I force myself to say.
I can feel my hear beating faster and I feel like I can't breathe. This is too much.
"We're gonna leave them at her front door," Zeke says as if it's just that easy.
"I don't know where her apartment is," I shake my head.
"I do," he says as if I should have known that already.
"How do you know?"
"Christina is the one that found it for her. She told Uriah, Uriah told me," he flashes a proud grin.
"You know where she is and you haven't told me?" I yell, something inside me snapping.
"I had to wait for the right time," he puts his hands in the air. "Otherwise you might screw up the plan."
"There is no plan," I mumble as I walk away from him.
"You must not trust me at all," he says, faking a pout. "Every bit of it was planned, right down to letting her think she likes Tanner."
"She does like him."
"No, she doesn't," he shakes his head. "She thinks she does. And her thinking that she does is all apart of the plan."
We continue walking in silence. Zeke has lost his mind. None of this was planned. I made some really stupid mistakes and I made her leave. She left and she found someone else. That isnt a part of any plan, and if it is, then it's a really bad plan.
When we get back to the compound, Zeke leads me to Tris's apartment. Through the crack at the bottom of the door I can see a little bit of light, meaning that she's home. Zeke helps me tuck the card into the bundle of flowers and then he leads me down the hallway.
"Now what?" I whisper, because I feel that if I don't, my voice will get lost in the storm that's inside my head.
"Now we wait," he replies as he heads down the hallway.
"What if she tries to leave and she steps on them or something?" I ask.
"She won't," he shrugs.
"How do you know?"
"Because," he says confidently. "On the way back to my apartment I'm going to go by Christina's and tell her to go to Tris's place and pretend to be surprised that there are flowers out there."
"Do you think she'll do it?" I ask worriedly.
"For you? Of course not," he looks at me seriously. "But for her best friend, I think she would do whatever it takes to make her happy again."