Cross Country Hearts by Suzanne August

Twenty One

“I like that too.”

“Why not?”

“Because that locked gate says it closes at sundown,” I tell him. “We’d be trespassing.”

Jasper’s crooked grin grows even more lopsided. I’m standing closest to the gate surrounding the small garden park, so he has to walk around me to reach it. One hand holding his food, the other reaches out to fold around one of the gate’s long bars.

He’s examining it. He’s figuring how much effort it would take to get inside.

“Jasper—”

“Live a little, Pierce,” Jasper says, but when he looks at me again, his eyes are laughing.

I have the urge to cross my arms and widen my stance, to at least try and seem a little taller. A little more authoritative. That’s impossible with the food box in my hands, though. “You’re trying to goad me.”

“Is it working?”

“No, it absolutely isn’t.”

Jasper turns his back to me. Does he sense that I’m lying? With how perceptive he is about people and what they’re thinking and feeling, he probably can figure out I’m lying by my words alone. He doesn’t have to look at me and observe.

When Jasper glances over his shoulder to reassess me, I sigh because he knows before I do that, I’ll cave.

I move forward. “This isn’t a good idea. What if we get caught?”

“It’s a park,” he reasons. He hands me his to-go box. “Who’s going to arrest us for hanging out in here past sundown?”

He places both hands on the gate’s vertical railings. The gate’s railings only start mid-waist. From my waist down are concrete and brick slabs. It gives the park a nice aesthetic, but it also offers Jasper a helping foot as he pushes himself up, swinging a leg over the short rails. Straddling the fence now, he peers down at me. Craning my neck to look up at him isn’t much different than when we’re standing close together.

“You going to be able to climb over, too?” he asks.

Even his mischievous tone, part goading, part laughter, is exactly like the ones his friends have. I’m thrown back to the moments before I kicked off the canyon’s cliff, gripping onto the iron bar attached to a zip-line. His friends’ attention on me, wondering if I was brave enough to do it. Days earlier, when Jasper asked me what was stopping me from going on a road trip, I decided that nothing should stop me.

Jasper King is good at goading, I decide. Aloud, I say, “Bring it, King.”

He’s laughing softly as his feet hit the ground on the other side. I pass the two to-go boxes through the narrow spaces in the railings and then swing myself over the gate like he did. I’m not graceful—not like he was, anyway. I’m smaller. I have to stand on my toes and grip the gate, trying not to skewer myself as I maneuver to the other side.

The garden park is not big. There are skinny trees and even tinier branches snapping in the breeze. Hedges make a circle around the park. Four stone pathways from each cardinal direction angle toward the center, where there are benches and flowers of every kind. In one corner of the park is a small playground, sad-looking compared to the bigger playgrounds the kids probably prefer.

Jasper hands me back one of the boxes. “Come on.”

I follow him into the center of the park. The moon’s faint glow paints the stone benches a faded blue and illuminates the flowers in soft, cooler hues. The grass is darker, the tiled pathway lighting the way. Inside here, on the other side of the gate, we’re protected from the metropolis sounds of the highway and the glowing lights of the city.

It’s almost magical. It’s also enough to make me feel apprehensive about being alone here, with only Jasper. He settles onto the bench, leaving enough space for me to sit next to him. It’s not a lot of space, though.

I hesitate.

I’m saved by the shrilling sound of my phone.

“Oh.” I startle, almost dropping my food again. When I look at the caller ID of my phone, tucked away into my purse, I almost gasp.

“Is it your mom?” Jasper asks.

Slowly, I shake my head.

“Your eyes are wide,” he observes.

I blink, and I almost can’t say it. I can’t believe what I’m looking at, even as the proof stares up at me. “It’s Melanie.”

“Are you going to answer it?”

Will I answer it? It’s instinctive. My hand clutches my phone, tugging it out of the purse. It’s not a question that I’ll answer. With Melanie, no matter who you are, you answer it. But Jasper’s question repeats itself in my mind, and I ask myself, do I have to answer it? Why do I have to answer it?

I push my phone back into my purse, just as the last ring blasts and my phone falls silent. A second later, it pings. It’s the notification that I’ll see later, telling me that I’ve missed a phone call.

“No,” I say, at last, taking a deep breath. “I’m not going to answer it.”

Not one, but two of Jasper’s eyebrows rise. “I’ve got to tell you, June. I’m surprised.”

I settle into the small space next to him, my elbow bumping his as I position the to-go box on my lap, opening it. “I… I guess I’m surprised too.”

I always answer her phone calls without question. Especially during times when she’s been angry with me, has ignored me, and has made me feel the intense need for forgiveness because I hate it when people ignore me. I hate feeling like I don’t belong. Most of all, I hate the insecurity.

“It’s a game,” I tell Jasper. My hands clutch the box in my lap. “She’s been mad at me for a week. She hasn’t answered any of my calls or texts.”

Jasper tilts his head to the side, looking down at me. Considering. “What’s the game?”

“She wants to show me she has the upper hand,” I tell him. “She wants me to feel more guilty before she’ll forgive me.”

“So, this is her forgiving you.”

No, I think. That’s not it. If she was on the road to “forgiving” me, she would send a text, inviting me to hang out or tagging me in a social media post about something funny. It’d be like nothing happened. That’s how she plays the game. She doesn’t call.

I force myself to relax my grip on the box. “I left her a voice message this morning. I told her I knew about you and her.”

Jasper makes a non-committal sound. “You’ve probably scared her.”

“Maybe,” I say. This is the first time I’ve had the upper hand with Melanie in all the years we’ve been friends. I don’t know how to feel about it.

“Why is she mad at you?” Jasper asks.

He’s asked this question before. This time, I tell him. The words fall out easily. I don’t hesitate because now, Jasper and I are on a new road. It’s not a road that leads to more hatred between us. No, it’s a road that involves familiarity, even friendship. It’s a path that allows me to tell him things I’d only tell my other confidants, like Georgia or April.

“It’s a couple of reasons,” I tell him. “At the end of track season this spring, the coach—who’s also the coach for soccer—came up to me and another girl, asking us to be the varsity soccer captains this fall.”

Jasper’s eyebrows pull together. “That’s bad?”

“He didn’t ask Melanie. Melanie thought for sure she’d be asked.”

Jasper pulls out the chopsticks from his take-out box, handing them to me. “What’s the other reason she’s mad at you?”

" She and Adam O’Shea broke up two weeks ago,” I tell him. He looks ready to laugh, but I cut him off. “That’s not why she’s mad at me. Last week I had a small party at my house. Just a couple of friends. We were drunk, and Melanie started getting mad at me for not suggesting to the soccer coach that he make her a captain too. I told her she was jealous. She called me selfish. I said I could see why O’Shea broke up with her.”

“Wow,” Jasper says. He repeats himself. “Wow.”

I roll my eyes, but I don’t feel as confident as I want to feel. “Is this a good wow or a bad one?”

“How could it be bad?” Jasper shakes his head. “I’m surprised you actually said something mean to her.”

“It happens a lot, believe it or not,” I tell him. “She just… always wins in the end.”

“How so?”

“I always end up apologizing. She doesn’t.”

“Hmm.”

I don’t want to add anything else, so I stuff my face with more noodles and fried rice. I’m chewing on a piece of beef when I finally hand the chopsticks back to Jasper.

He pulls them from my grasp, saying, “You don’t have to be scared of her.”

“What do you mean? I didn’t answer her call. I’m not scared.” Even as I say this, though, I wipe my hands with a napkin a little too hard.

“No.” He shakes his head again, twisting his chopsticks around some noodles. “I mean, you don’t have to be scared of losing your friendship with her. She bullies you too, in her own manipulative way.”

“I know.” I sigh. “She’s hard to understand, but there’s a reason I’m still friends with her. She’s insecure, Jasper. Like, she doesn’t want to be soccer captain just for status, but because it’s something she’s always been expected to do. I understand, in a way, where she’s coming from.”

The chopsticks Jasper grasps pause, noodles wrapped around them. Jasper lifts his head to study me. He studies me for so long, brown eyes dark, thinking. Whenever he thinks about what to say, he’s never looked at me. He always looks at a wall, or a fire, or up at the sky. His focus has never rested on me, intense while the words jumble and form together in his head.

“What?” My hands fidget, and I hide them in my sweater pockets.

Jasper’s mouth lifts into a little, soft smile. “Lila calls me the compassionate one, but really, I’m starting to think that might actually be you.”

To hide my surprise at this comment, I laugh. Behind the laugh, though, a jolt of something akin to nervousness, but not quite, rushes through me, gripping below my chest. I say, “Yeah?”

Jasper bobs his head slowly. “I never really saw it in you. I like it.”

I laugh again, but this time I find it easier. The things Jasper and I never realized about each other before this road trip? They’re uncountable. “I like that I don’t have to tell you what kind of food to get.”

Jasper’s smile widens. “I like that you agreed to go on this road trip with me.”

“Oh, so it’s not that I can spew out random history facts, so you’re not bored?”

“I like that too.”

Everything about this moment should feel wrong. I’m his bully. He’s my victim. Theoretically, the history between us should be so thick with hatred that no week can just erase that. But as he hands the chopsticks back to me, his shoulder brushes mine and stays. I blame the proximity on the limited space of the bench. I blame our new easiness together on the fact that we’re alone and no one else is here.

“Well,” I say. “You’re not going to get me to tell you I like your paintings.”

“No?”

I pause. “I guess I admire the technique, however misplaced your talent is. If you ever tell anyone I’ve admitted you have talent, though, you’ll regret it.”

Jasper laughs. His bellow is more heartfelt than mine was. He’s not hiding anything behind it. “I can’t believe you said that.”

“I’ve threatened you before.”

“It’s not that.” And his eyes rest on mine. Not only is his smile amused and soft, but his chocolate eyes have softened too. They always used to be so hard, so angry, when they looked at me, but now they’re the color of dark chocolate Lindts, and they rest directly on mine. They’re soft, smooth. There’s something besides the amusement there, which I can identify but won’t allow myself to. I tell myself it’s the affection of a burgeoning friendship.

I wonder how my eyes must look compared to his. Murky faded green or pale and inviting mint?

But really, has he ever looked at me like that?

And I’m suddenly uncomfortable again. “Here,” I say. I try to press the chopsticks into his palms, but my movements are jerky. Instead of giving Jasper enough time to get a grasp on them, I let go too fast, and the sticks fall to the grass behind us.

Jasper blinks. “Oops.”

He leans back, lowering the upper half of his body to reach for the sticks, which are more behind me than closer to him. I feel his breath on the nape of my neck as he passes me, searching blindly in the grass. I freeze. When he pulls back, chopsticks in one hand, his other hand brushes against my waist, in the soft spot below my chest.

Jasper’s hand jerks away. “Sorry, June.”

I close my eyes, shaking my head. But it’s a mistake to open my eyes because we’re too close. His eyes are wide. That unknown feeling, that something akin to adrenaline, is pounding against an invisible cage in my chest. The feeling is so strong that my coiled snake of anxiety, which is always just there—is gone, hiding and whimpering in some dark corner of my being. I can’t find it. I can’t even feel it. I cannot even begin to understand.

I try to play off the emotion and the moment. I brush my hand against his arm, aiming for a light punch. A playful punch. I say, “Don’t worry about it.” But when I laugh, it’s strained. I’m a mess of a foul.

Jasper looks away. His eyebrows furrow, and he lowers his eyes toward the ground. Has Jasper ever felt embarrassed in front of me?

Somehow, that gives me some strength. I grasp for anything, for any words I can say to bring us out of this awkward moment. But what I ask is, “What did Lila mean when she said you only like ‘real girls?’”

Even with his face turned away from mine, I see him blink. His shoulders relax a bit, and his head lifts, though it’s still angled away from me. “What?”

I take a deep breath. There’s no turning back now, and this could only get worse if I say never mind. “Your friends. They said it never works out for you, with girls, because they’re never ‘real’ enough.”

“Oh.” Jasper runs a hand over his wrist. He takes a deep breath. “They just mean… I’ve said in the past that my relationships with girls I’ve dated haven’t lasted because they can’t just be themselves.”

“How do you mean?”

“They’re always hiding something,” he clarifies. “They can’t just say what they mean, or they try to be something they’re not.”

What he says hits almost too close to home and reminds me of what he’s accused me of before. Something in my chest cracks. I try to cover it up. My mouth opens, and I’m about to blow this off, to make fun of him. That will make this better, and it will help this awkward moment of something pass.

But I can’t. I don’t agree with what he’s said. When I open my mouth this time, I say what I’m thinking. “That’s hypocritical.”

Jasper’s eyes lurch to mine. “What?” he repeats.

I square my shoulders, but when I do, it presses against his arm. My confidence deflates, distracted by his proximity. “No one ever really acts outwardly who they are on the inside. Everyone is flawed. The inside is always going to be different from the outside. That’s real.”

He’s staring again, and his dark chocolate eyes are intense. They’re searching and thinking. His gaze lowers briefly to a spot right below my eyes, but just as quickly, he jerks them back up. My insides squeeze. His brown eyes are dark, not empty but so full like those dark chocolate Lindts.

He says nothing. It’s a silence that’s uncomfortable. I squirm, but it’s impossible to do without knocking my foot against his or drawing my hand against his arm. There’s awkwardness. Darkness has fallen.

I try to say, “This garden is nice.”

He says, “Maybe.”

Are we leaning too close? What does that mean?

I can’t ask what his “maybe” means because his mouth is on my mine and mine on his. His hand is on my cheek, the other cupping my chin. Our noses hit awkwardly. Our heads tilt. I make a gasp of surprise, grab his shirt’s black fabric in a fisted ball of hands. Jasper pulls back, hesitant. Unsure. I lean forward. His mouth tastes like spicy Asian food.

And there’s no time to think or overthink because red and blue lights flash. A siren blares.