Chapter 10
Jasmine
I made a decision, and I made it the right way.
With a list.
I know how that sounds, but I swear it works.
There are two columns in this list. The left one says REASONS NOT TO, and every line on it is true.
1. My father will end his career.
2. Caleb loses the possibility of a contract.
3. Caleb won’t be able to help the family he’s always quietly working for.
4. I lose the only family I have and the careful little life I’ve built at VCU.
The right column, REASONS TO, has one thing on it.
1. Him.
And, believe it or not, the one thing wins. I ran the scenarios six different ways, and it keeps winning. It makes no sense, but I’m doing it anyway.
I tried to watch my show last night. The thing that turns the volume down in my head. I couldn’t. I sat in front of a rose ceremony and couldn’t call a single elimination, because there’s no little room in real life where they pull you aside and ask what you’re feeling.
No overzealous producer.
No cheesy script.
Just a guy who keeps my green beans in their own bowl, and a list with one REASONS TO item in the right column.
So, it’s been decided.
Although the hard part isn’t deciding. I figured that out around three a.m. The hard part is the manual.
Everybody comes with one.
Mine’s just longer, and written in a language people quit reading about four pages in. I’ve watched it happen my whole life. The exact second somebody decides I’m going to be work.
That’s why it’s just easier to play the background where it doesn’t bother anyone. If I don’t make friends, eat the food that doesn’t touch, and keep my sleeves down, everything will be fine. Although I’m not sure I can be fine after deciding what I have.
He opens the door before I knock. He’s got a dish towel over one shoulder and flour on his forearm, and he looks so ridiculously good that I nearly lose my whole speech on the spot.
“You’re cooking,” I say.
“It’s eleven in the morning.”
“You’re always cooking.”
“It’s how I keep this body looking so good,” he snorts. “But it’s also how I think.” He wipes his hands on the towel. “You drove over here with a face on, like you’ve been thinking hard about something. What did the should you or should you not list say?”
That knocks the things I was going to say out of order, which he knows, which is exactly why he did it.
“Which house are you in?”
“What, Dixon?”
“Potter House.”
I don’t usually ask such a nerdy question, but I’m pretty sure he’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
He cocks an eyebrow. “Slithering.”
“I knew it.”
“And I bet you’re Ravenclaw.”
Damn, he’s right again.
“How do you do that?”
“Haven’t you figured out by now that I’m amazing?” he snickers. “So…don’t keep me in suspense, what did the list say?”
“The list said come over,” I tell him. “Basically.”
“Basically?”
“It was more detailed than that.”
“I bet it was.”
“You’re stalling me on purpose.”
“I’m pacing you. You taught me that.”
“I taught you that about signing forms.”
“It transfers,” he says. “You’re here in the daytime.”
“Well, you said daylight. You were very specific about it.”
“I was.” He doesn’t step back to let me in. He just looks at me, carefully. “You good?”
“I made a decision.”
“Yeah?”
“On purpose. I need that on the record.”
Something moves across his face, and he holds the door open wider. “Okay, it’s on the record. Come in.”
I don’t come in. Not yet. There’s a thing I have to do first, and if I go inside, I’ll lose the nerve to do it.
“There are things you have to know,” I say firmly. “About how I work. Before anything.”
“Okay.” He leans on the doorframe and waits for me to speak as if my words truly matter. “Tell me.”
“I need to know what’s coming before it comes. It’s not me being controlling or anything; it’s all just about my wiring. You tell me what you’re going to do, and then you do that thing. You change it on me without saying so, I will cut you off…at the knees.”
“Done.”
“I’m not finished.”
“Sorry. Keep going.”
“Some touch is fine and some makes me extremely uncomfortable, and it’s not the kind of touch you’d guess, so I’ll have to tell you as we go.
” My voice is doing the flat thing, the official voice.
“You can’t take it personally. The second I have to manage how you feel about it, I will check out of the moment.
If I let you finish when I’m in “that way” you’ll have had a body, and not me. ”
I recall my time with my ex– Jay. Well, calling Jason an ex is being gracious with myself.
We were fuck buddies at best. He was a so-so looking, engineering major who was quiet like me.
The very opposite of Caleb. I thought we’d be a good fit but we weren’t and it was brutal.
We were miscommunicating with each other the whole time.
“I’ve done that before,” I tell Caleb. “I’m not doing it with you.”
Caleb doesn’t say anything. He’s listening with his whole body, the way he watches a room.
“And I might need to stop,” I say. “Even at the end. Even if it’s good. And if you make me feel like a problem for stopping, that is probably something I will hold against you.”
“Okay.”
“One more. After, I don’t talk. It’s not that something’s wrong. I need quiet to come back down. Don’t fill the silence with questions or mindless chatter. Don’t ask me if I’m okay forty times.”
“I’m great at quiet,” he grins. “Ask anybody. Actually, ask nobody. I don’t talk to anybody.”
A laugh jumps out of me.
I can’t believe he’s even listened to my list of demands this long.
“There,” he says, soft. “There she is.”
“Okay, last thing, and this one’s the one people hate.” I make myself say it. “I won’t always look at you, at your eyes. It’s not hiding, and it’s not a lack of confidence. Eyes are just hard for me. I can do your mouth, your jaw, your hands. I hear you better when I’m not also doing the eyes.”
“Then don’t do the eyes.”
Why is he so agreeable?
“Most people think it means I’m lying.”
“People are exhausting.” He says it flat, final. “I already know where you look. I’ve been watching you not look at folks for weeks. Look wherever you want. I don’t give a shit. I’ll still be here.”
This is the part where people’s eyes go polite, or when they look at me with pity. I make myself watch for it, because I’d rather see it coming now than later.
It doesn’t come.
How peculiar.
“That the whole manual?” he asks casually.
“The relevant section, yes.”
“Okay. Mine’s short.” He says it easy. “I’ve been telling you what I’m about to do since the first conference room. You flinch when things move you didn’t see coming, and I’d rather lose a hand than make you flinch. So that’s not a new rule for tonight. That’s just how I already am with you.”
“Caleb.”
“I’m not done. You taught me to wait my turn.
” The corner of his mouth turns up. “You stop, we stop. There’s no version where that makes you a problem.
You stopping is just you telling me the truth, and the truth is the only part of you I actually want.
Everybody else gets the: I’m fine, Jasmine.
I’d rather have the real one, even when the real one needs a minute. ”
It’s quiet, but I’m crying.
“That’s not fair,” I say.
“What isn’t?”
“You. Saying the exact thing back to me. You don’t even have to try, you just–”
“I try constantly,” he tells me. “You have no idea, Dixon.”
“Why are you like this?” It comes out almost mad.
“Like what?”
“Easy. About all of this…about me. Nobody’s ever been this easy about all of me.”
“Because none of this is hard.” He shrugs one shoulder. “The hard part was you showing up today, in the daytime, looking like a snack.” He holds his hand out but doesn’t reach for me. He just offers it, palm up, leaving the last move to me.
I look at his hand, at the flour on his arm, and at the door standing open behind him.
“If I come in,” I say, “I need you to act normal. Not careful. Careful makes me feel like I’m a freak.”
“I can do normal.”
“You’re the least normal person I’ve ever met.”
“Takes one to know one.” He wiggles the offered hand. “Come on. Brunch is getting cold, and I’m standing here holding a door like an idiot. The neighbors are going to start to talk,” he chuckles.
And here’s the thing I finally understand, standing on Caleb Adams’s doorstep in the daylight with my whole truth laid bare between us.
I spent my life sure that being known all the way to the bottom was the most dangerous thing that could happen to me.
But he listened to my entire irks and quirks list, and he’s still standing there holding the door.
He holds so much power over me in this moment; he has zero idea. This could be one of the most self-destructive things either one of us has ever done…or it could be amazing.
I think about my pros and cons list from earlier. I think about the one item in the right column.
Him.
My hands aren’t steady.
Everything in me that’s kept me safe for twenty-three years says run.
But for once, I don’t listen to it.
And I take his hand.