And They Were Roommates(59)
I ignore him.
“We never met at the beach on the last day of camp,” he goes on, “so I didn’t have your number, and I couldn’t find your social media. That’s why I posted my poetry online. I hoped, someday, you’d come across my name.”
Clenching my jaw, I lift my bag over my head and align my aim with the bushes off to the side. “I deleted most of my pictures after that summer.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, Jasper, what do you want me to say?”
He finally picks up his bag, but he’s not tossing it. “I was just a poet back then, okay? I had an overemotional personality.”
I narrow my eyes at him.
“Okay, fine, I have an overemotional personality,” he says. “I didn’t even think those letters I sent to those other girls were love letters. I thought we were practicing poetry together. At a Shakespeare camp! Right? So, I apologize, Charlie. Truly. But now I’ve learned.”
I chuck the bag over the gate as hard as I can. “I’m glad that I could be your love tutor, Jasper, even though I didn’t sign up for it.”
“But I—”
A groan releases from my deepest depths. I snatch the bag in his hands to toss it myself. Mom’s varsity ring catches on it and locks with his bracelet, trapping us in place. I try to free myself. Nothing budges. I pull again, again, again.
“If you wanted to handcuff me, you could’ve just asked,” Jasper mutters.
Heat flares through my face. “Shut up.” Summoning my strength, I whip our conjoined arms up in one quick motion and fling the bag high into the air. Our ring and bracelet pull taut, snagging on something, and Jasper’s bracelet snaps in half. Crunching leaves come from beyond the gate as the bag lands, finalizing the mission.
We stumble away from each other, sticking out our arms to steady ourselves.
Jasper blinks at me. With only the moonlight and the distant lamppost light, his blue irises look so magically shimmery. I didn’t notice until now. “How’d we do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“I hope it landed okay.”
I scan the path again for any figures in the distance. “We need to go.”
Jasper steps forward. “Will you forgive me?”
“What? No, Jasper. What are you talking about?”
“What more can I apologize for? Tell me what I can do to fix this.”
“Nothing.”
“Then why won’t you forgive—?”
“Because I never want to forgive you!” The words erupt so loudly that my voice echoes through the night. I’m so past my limit that I don’t care if the guard hears. Anyone.
Jasper’s face goes slack.
An undeniable regret swirls inside me. The words I had to say to make him shut up hang heavy in the air, but they’re not how I feel.
Because now, logically, there’s a chance I did throw Jasper off with a kiss, and he didn’t realize we were anything more. That, logically, he then did grow feelings after that summer. And that, logically, he hasn’t been with anyone else since.
I don’t know what to do about that.
So, with nothing left to say, I head back through the campus, leaving Jasper behind. Xavier and Robby run into me on the path. They toss me high fives.
“Where’s Jasper?” Xavier asks. “He didn’t get caught after our whistle signal, did he?”
“No, he’s”—I readjust my glasses—“on his way. He’s fine. We’re both fine.”
“Nice. And with six minutes to spare until lights-out.”
Robby smiles. “Then tonight’s a winning success.”
Chapter 29
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2
I have no clue why Luis and four others from his physics class have dragged me into one of Valentine’s campus gazebos—the Aguilar Piano Gazebo—during STRIP Time, but at least they’re keeping my mind off Jasper.
After last night’s delivery, I went straight to bed. Now that it’s the weekend, I won’t have to worry about seeing him in class for two more days. At first, distance sounds good. I need a chance to think. But my memory of telling Jasper I’ll never forgive him keeps replaying, forcing me to see him in my mind’s eye regardless.
An icy wind blows from Au Sable Forks Lake. I lift my scarf up my face, shoving aside the guilt hanging over me. “Wait, did you just say eggs?”
Squatting on the grass, Luis opens his backpack full of raw eggs wrapped in a plaid blazer. Everyone else came dressed for the outdoors, but Luis took things to the next level: a puffy parka falling to his boots, fuzzy pink earmuffs, and matching fuzzy gloves. I’ve locked in my final answer that Luis is popular, but for a special reason—he says and wears whatever he wants, and that translates into a confidence that pulls people in. I wish I knew how to do that. “Thirteen eggs, bro.”
“From Dix?”
“Yup. Asked a chef. We tossed eggs in physics yesterday, and all of us sucked.”
“Dropped them,” Michael corrects him, nudging Luis with his shoe.
A single touch from Michael’s foot turns Luis’s face red. Definitely his crush.
“The force equals mass times acceleration thing,” Emilio says. “We have to keep a raw egg from cracking when dropped from ‘ever-increasing elevations.’ Ms. Andrew offered us plastic bags and stuff, but I couldn’t even figure out round one. Which was, like, two feet.”