"You're going to do that anyway," I said.
"Maybe." She shrugged. "I definitely won't forget to add your names if you promise to let me sit this one out."
Before I could say anything about my desire to protect Jasper from those two hundred guests and everything they'd heard about her on cable news, Ash said, "We've got it. Just keep those babies cooking until the day after the party, would you?"
"It doesn't work that way, Ash. I can't just squeeze my legs together and hold my breath."
"I mean, yeah, sure," he replied. "But you can still try, right?"
"You're going to be just adorable when Zelda's pregnant, aren't you? An adorable little nut that just needs to be bashed over the head a few times."
Ash glanced at me, asking under his breath, "Is she being serious? I don't know."
The game ran the full two hours I'd estimated and my sister required me and Ash to accompany her to an ice cream shop that served up scoops in bubble waffle cones. She also required each of us to order cones for ourselves—but plucked those cones from us and claimed them as hers the minute we sat down. Thankfully, her husband arrived soon after Ash texted him our location and he took over Magnolia's ice cream needs.
Ash departed for Zelda and their Haymarket apartment and, for the first time in all the sporting event outings we'd shared as siblings over the years, I was eager to return home. I didn't want to steal a few more minutes with Ash and Magnolia, didn't want to laugh over ice cream or grab another beer while watching the game's highlights. I wanted to go home to Jasper, and that—that hit me as hard as the vision of her married to me.
It was late when I arrived home and Jasper was already tucked into bed, her hair gathered in the same nighttime bun she favored. There was something enchanting about that bun, the one she wore in private, liminal moments. Maybe it was that I knew about the bun and that was the enchanting part. I wasn't sure.
The best part—the absolute best, no substitute in the world—was finding her asleep in one of my flannel shirts. She had the cuffs rolled up and left the top few buttons open, and was there anything more perfect? I didn't think so.
I undressed and climbed into bed beside her, not bothering with any form of pajamas. No need. Jasper arched against me when I pulled her to me, a soft, sleepy murmur greeting me when I ran my hand up her thigh and found her ass beautifully bare.
"That's my girl," I rumbled, grabbing a cheek and giving it a thorough kneading. "Good and ready for me."
She replied with another murmur but there was no mistake about the way she wiggled her lower body into my lap. A condom came next and some strategic organization of pillows and legs as we settled into this side-by-side position. Then I pushed inside her, snaked a hand down the front of her shirt, groaned into her hair. We moved together in languorous thrusts and echoing sighs that skated the line between dreaming and waking.
There was no rush to find the end, not when we could float in this heavenly in-between.
I reached for Jasper's hand, the one busy squeezing my upper thigh, and shifted it between her legs. "Show me," I ordered, my fingers over hers. "Show me how you do it when you're alone."
"When I'm alone," she started, veeing our twined fingers over the place where I moved in her, "I lie back and let a toy suck my clit and another work my G-spot." She brought our fingers up to the hood hiding her pearl. "Don't see why I should have to do all the work when I can play with toys instead."
I closed my other hand around her breast, her nipple pinned between two fingers. "Will you show me that?"
A purr rolled through her that I felt in my bones. "Maybe. That might be interesting."
My hips jerked in a messy, erratic rhythm. "Might be?"
That gorgeous, piercing moan of hers filled the room and I knew we were close to the end, the in-between space behind us now.
"I doubt you can sit back and watch. You'll last two minutes before taking over. You'll want to show me the right way to do it."
That sent me shifting to my knees, both hands gripping her hips, turning her until she was flat on her back. "Isn't this better?"
She went on teasing her clit with luscious circles that made me want to fuck her and lick her and kiss her and bite her all at once. That made me want to keep her.
"It's different. It's totally different," she said, her head tilting back into the pillow.
"I guess I'll have to see that for myself." I pumped into her, fast and reckless now, like she was mine to break. That was the singular thought in my mind as her body clenched around me, sucked me in, held me prisoner.
"Does that make you jealous?"
"Of your toys? Not in the least. They're my coconspirators, Peach. Not my competitors."
"Ohhhh. I like the sound of that."
When I caught hold of my release, I caught another flash-forward, this time with Jasper in a wedding dress. As I filled the condom, I leaned into her, my lips pressed between her breasts to prevent myself from saying something premature. Something permanent.
As soon as I was able to walk steadily, I headed into the bathroom and straightened myself out.
This was the wrong time to run away with wild ideas about marriage and—Jesus Christ—babies. I'd told myself for years I didn't want any of it and I had to remember that some good times with Jasper wasn't meant to change anything. I preferred a solitary life. I didn't want anything else. Marriage and kids weren't the paths for me. Too complicated, too messy, too tenuous.
I believed that as devoutly as I believed in the religion of nature. And yet, when I gathered a sleeping Jasper into my arms and closed my eyes for the night, I thought about all the lives we were allowed to live with the time we had, and I whispered into her hair, "I wish you were mine to keep."
20
Jasper
I dropped two slices of bread into the toaster and asked, "Do you happen to have a nail gun I could borrow?"
Linden belted out a tremendous belly laugh from behind the Sunday newspaper. As he set it down on the kitchen table, he gave me a fond smile that did terrible, terrible things to me. Just the worst. "Why do you think you need a nail gun?"
"I don't think I need one." I frowned down at the cherry tomatoes on the cutting board in front of me. "I know I need one. It's going to take me two years to finish the porch if I have to bang every single nail into place. A gun would make it much quicker."
"Also quicker to nail your hand to a board."
"I wouldn't do that."
"No one thinks they're going to shoot themselves with a nail gun. It's always an accident, Jasper." He shook out the newspaper, folded it in half and then in half again. "Why not work on something else?"
"I've done everything else. Generally speaking."
"What does that mean?"
I fussed with the burrata and basil for a minute. "It means I've cleaned out most of the house and done most of the work I can do on my own. You know, without a nail gun."
I didn't need to detail or justify my avoidance of Midge's bedroom. It did not need to be said this morning, not when it was a bright, sunny October day that had started out with the kind of maybe we're asleep, maybe we're awake, maybe we're a little perverted sex that legends were made of and I had this gorgeous pint of tomatoes to drizzle with balsamic glaze. I wasn't popping that bubble with my inability to step into Midge's room without crying.