Piano Man (Tradley au)

Chapter 4- Tristan's POV

A/n- there's a brief mention of violence in this

I'm sitting at the bar awkwardly going through my phone. I don't want to draw attention to myself, especially to the fact I'm alone, so I'm keeping quiet. Consequently, I'm both relieved and happy to see Brad heading over to me. "Hi, uh Tristan!"

I blush. "When are you going to stop calling me that?"

"When I think of something cuter." he tells me. "Anyway, did you like the music?"

"I loved it." I say honestly. "You're really good."

 Brad smiles. "Thank you." He sits at a bar stool next to me, and I relax slightly.

"Is that you done now?" I ask.

Brad nods. "Yep. Are you trying to get rid of me?"

Embarrassingly, I blush again, and Brad picks up on it. Admittedly it's hard to miss, especially since I'm so pale. "You look cute when you blush." he says.

"Thanks, I guess?" I say. "Hey, I didn't say uh that time!" I'm weirdly proud of myself.

Brad laughs. "I'm proud of you." We sit and talk for a while longer until he says "Do you want another drink?"

"Yes please." I say, smiling. "I'll have a red wine, if that's ok."

"So polite, I like it." Brad calls over his shoulder as he goes off to get our drinks. I watch him in the queue, slightly surprised at how quickly he gets served. I usually have to stand there for ages, I'm too polite to shove. He returns a couple of minutes later with my wine and something I don't recognise for himself, but he's looking at me curiously. 

"Are you ok?" I ask him.

He nods. "I was going to ask you that actually." he says. "It kind of looked like you had a mark on your face."

"Oh," I stammer, panicking slightly. "That's just where I had my hand resting against, it's fine." Brad raises an eyebrow, but thankfully doesn't question it. It's not exactly a lie- there was a hand that left a mark on my cheek, it just wasn't my hand. It was Corey's, as usual, but I don't need to tell Brad that. I take a sip of my wine, hoping it'll relax me a bit. "This is good stuff." I say.

"It is, isn't it?" Brad agrees. "That barman definitely knows what he's doing." We continue to talk, and as much as I'm enjoying myself, I'm aware that I need to get home soon. I don't want Corey to be even more mad at me than he already is.

Sighing deeply, I begin to make my excuses. "I should probably go. My boyfriend will be waiting for me."

"I thought he kicked you out." Brad says, looking slightly worried. 

"He did." I say. "But it's ok, we sorted things out."

Brad rolls his eyes, clearly not believing me. I don't blame him, I wouldn't believe me either. We haven't sorted things out, in fact they're somehow worse than usual. I stand up to leave, but Brad stops me in my tracks. "Wait, didn't you give me your number?"

"Oh yeah." I say. "I forgot that." I did, I had many other things to worry about.

Brad has his tip jar on the table next to him, and he rummages through it until he finds a slip of paper with my number on. "Is this it?" he asks.

I nod. "Yeah, that's the one."

He smiles. "Ok. Let's swap phones so we can put in each other's numbers." I hand him my phone and he starts tapping his details into it, before taking a picture of himself. "Caller ID." he says by way of explanation. "Not that you'll ever forget me, of course."

"Obviously." I say, giving him his phone back. I put myself down as just 'Tristan' in his, but I have to leave when I see that he's put himself down as 'Piano Man' in mine.

He's still typing, and flips his phone around to show me. "Fixed it!" he announces.

I smile, seeing he put 'uh' in front of my name. "You're never going to let that go, are you?" I say jokingly.

"Nope." Brad tells me. "Well, it was nice seeing you uh Tristan. I hope you come again."

"I will." I promise. "I enjoyed it." He smiles at me, then I turn to leave. As I'm walking out, I'm hit by a realisation of how much I don't want to go home. I don't want to face Corey, even the thought makes me want to cry. In all honesty, I want to spend the evening with Brad, but I can't. 

I look wistfully over my shoulder, but Brad's gone, probably off to charm someone else. To make things worse, my phone rings, and my heart sinks when I see Corey's name. I don't want to pick up, I really don't, but he'll only get angrier at me. Actually, he'll get angry anyway, so I decide to ignore it. My mood will be ruined later, I want to keep it while I still can.

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Poor tris 😢 I feel bad for him, even though I created this story.

Is anyone else going to see the boys on Tuesday? I am, hi if you are too!