Chapter 34 #3
“Yeah, well, congratulations! It was very funny.”
“Jasper…” I start, but I’m already realizing no excuse will ever be enough, so I let the words fade without ever coming out.
“So I definitely can’t understand why you’re so surprised with the words coming out of my mouth,” he continues, shrugging. “The only thing you don’t know is that you think you’re all prim and innocent, but you can do a lot of damage with your tongue too.”
I guess Connor felt abandoned. He thinks Jasper and I left him out and now he wants attention back. That’s the only explanation as to why he decides to speak next.
“She’s very good at doing damage with that tongue, I guarantee that!”
Mila covers her face with an utterly horrified gasp.
“And that’s when he hit Connor?” she asks again.
“That’s when he hit Connor,” I finally agree.
After that, all hell broke loose.
Connor fell right on top of Mila’s grandma, who was hiding on the balcony with a napkin full of homemade chocolates she’d snuck from the dessert table.
The chocolates scattered across the floor. Gus’s cigar ashes finally landed on the cushion, which is now confirmed to be synthetic wool because it caught fire instantly.
Robbie, very intelligently (and drunkenly), tries to put out the fire with whiskey. Obviously, that doesn’t work. He runs with the burning cushion to the balcony, smacking it against the pergola to smother it, ultimately burning the white bougainvillea to the ground.
We had to call an ambulance.
We had to call the fire department.
By the end of the night, Mila and Robbie were facing massive hospital bills, which Jasper will probably offer to pay so people think he’s a gentleman.
And me?
I destroyed my best friend’s wedding. Suzi hates me. Jasper hates me. Connor’s an asshole and I don’t care, but yeah, he’s definitely another person who hates me.
It’s noon. I’m starving, but I can’t bring myself to go down the stairs for breakfast and face everyone.
Yes, I’ve felt like a complete failure before, but never like this.
“That’s why you’re packing?” Mila asks, her tone not judgmental or angry, just understanding.
“I can’t stay here anymore, Mila.”
“What? Because of this little mess?” she asks with a little laugh.
I can’t help it and laugh too. But my laughter comes with tears. Mila pretends it’s nothing, and I just can’t.
“I ruined your party, Mila.”
“You didn’t ruin my party,” she replies.
“And I almost killed your grandma.”
“Connor’s fat ass almost killed my grandma, but hey, if not for that, she probably would’ve ended up in the hospital in a diabetic coma or something.”
I laugh, mixed with crying, while trying to breathe and calm down.
“Connor has a horrendous black eye,” she teases.
“At least one good thing,” I reply. “And Suzi? Does she still hate me?”
“Well…” Mila starts. Then nothing. Just silence. In the part where she should comfort me, only silence. She knows it’s true.
Finally, I gather the courage to bring up the one subject that’s been bothering me since the start, “Jasper?”
“Hungover. Wearing sunglasses indoors and drinking an absurd amount of coffee.”
I press my lips together and feel my shoulders sag as I add one more item to Julie’s list of disasters, “I went to the bathroom this morning when I woke up, and he opened the door while I was inside, do you know what he said?”
Mila’s expression screams, Get out of the way, you fucking bitch! But she doesn’t say it aloud.
“No.”
“Sorry,” I say, squinting, trying to explain. “He said sorry, Mila. Ten years we’ve known each other, and he never apologized for anything in his life. He made jokes, tortured me, pretended I didn’t exist when he felt nasty enough. But today? He apologized and closed the door to give me privacy.”
Mila keeps looking at me as if those words mean something entirely different to her than they do to me. I have to look deep in her eyes to explain, “He hates me.”
She just looks at me dismissively, like I’m a kid who doesn’t even know what she’s talking about.
“Doesn’t seem like he hates you,” Mila says, and I’m about to protest when she asks, “What happened yesterday?”
I squint in confusion. I already told her everything from yesterday, except what she saw herself. I’m sure that’s not what she’s asking.
“On the mic, Jasper said he thought it was clear he liked you after everything that happened yesterday. What happened yesterday?”
I groan in frustration. I don’t want to tell her. It will make me seem like even more of a jerk than I already feel.
“He lied, saying he needed to go to Mérida to pick up the cake, just to take me to a secret cenote where they served traditional Yucatecan food by candlelight, and then he took me to Kukulcán because I really wanted to see the pyramid. Then, when a cute retired couple offered to take a photo of him with his fiancée, instead of saying no, he leaned me toward the ground like we were in a black-and-white movie and kissed me for the photo, in front of everyone.”
By the end of the story, I’m practically out of voice, while Mila’s eyes are wide and impressed. It’s the first time, after the whole horror show I told her this morning, that she looks genuinely shocked.