14. In Which Aiden Becomes Acquainted with Juniper’s Wandering Tongue
IN WHICH AIDEN BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH JUNIPER’S WANDERING TONGUE
W hen I come home from school the next day, I’m covered in ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise. There’s chocolate milk in my hair, and I don’t think I’ve managed to scrape all the mashed potatoes out of my ear.
I am fuming.? *
“Whoa,” Juniper says when I storm into the kitchen.
Her blue eyes go wide as they trail over me.
She wanders toward me as I glare, her socked feet shuffling silently on the floor.
It’s something I’ve noticed about her—when she’s in author mode, she dresses for comfort.
And though she does most of her writing in her loft bedroom, I’ve seen enough over the last week or two to know the signs: Fuzzy socks.
Leggings. Oversized sweater. That’s her writing uniform, and it’s what she’s donning now.
Can’t help but notice that none of her clothes have condiment stains. Don’t see any mashed potatoes in her ear. Yeah, I’m feeling salty.
Literally.
Juniper’s jaw is hanging open by the time she reaches me. Her gaze ping-pongs all over the place, from my face to my crusty hair to the splotch of red on my shirt.
“There was a food fight in the cafeteria,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Whoa,” she says again, and at this point I really just don’t think her eyes can get any wider. There is an entire ring of white around those cornflower blues?—
But my brain shudders to a halt, all thought of color comparisons for Juniper’s eyes disappearing, when she reaches out to touch my cheek.
One finger extends slowly, brushing ever so gently against the corner of my mouth, right above my jaw.
When she holds that finger up, I’m surprised to see that it has food on it—mayo, I think. I must have missed a spot.
“Hmm,” Juniper says, her gaze alight with something that makes my stomach flip nervously. Those eyes sparkle up at me, bluer than anything I’ve ever seen, as her lips pull into a mischievous smile. “Pudding, maybe?”
And without another word, she steps into me, her body pressing gently against mine—no more than the touch of a butterfly landing on a flower. Then she tilts her head up, looks at me with her laughing gaze, and licks the pudding right off my cheek.
She licks me. The flick of her tongue, hooking under my jaw, trailing up until she reaches the corner of my lips. And I knew, I knew, that Juniper’s respect for personal space was more loose than most, but this—this is?—
“Mayonnaise,” she says softly, her nose wrinkling. “Gross. And…” She tilts her head. Another flick of her tongue, th is time just below my ear, and my hands clench desperately into fists at my sides. “Chocolate of some kind,” she says, nodding. “Definitely chocolate.”
My nostrils flare as I drag in breath after breath after breath, trying to get oxygen—but it’s not enough, because my head is still spinning, and Juniper’s body is still pressed against mine, and I can still feel her breath against my skin.
“Do you recall,” I say shakily, “telling me that you wouldn’t flirt with me?” I don’t move. I am a statue, too afraid to move—a sculpture, not of stone but of ice. And if I stand here too long, pressed up against this woman and her wandering tongue, I will melt.
Juniper sighs. “I do remember that, yes.”
I nod, no more than a spasm of my neck muscles. “And do you recall rule number one? That we won’t become romantically involved with each other?”
Another sigh—another gusting breath against my neck. “Yes,” she says, finally stepping away, leaving me chilled with the sudden absence of her warmth. “I remember that too.”
“I let the other evening slide?—”
“Hey,” she says, her eyes narrowing up at me. “I told you that wasn’t just me.”
I swallow; she’s right. It wasn’t just her. It was a weird spell she wove without meaning to, yes, but I was pulled in with embarrassing ease.
“But this time?—”
“This time was me,” she admits, nodding. Then she smiles. “And you don’t even like me. Isn’t that what you said the other day?”
I swallow again. I did say that. It sounds a little harsh now, though, that she’s repeating it back to me.
“All right,” she says with a melodramatic sigh. “I will keep my body parts to myself from now on. Tell me, though”—she gestures to me—“how did you end up in the crossfire?”
I’m still frozen, my hands in fists at my sides, my body tense. “When you do stuff like that,” I say instead of answering, “what exactly is going through your mind?”
And I regret asking immediately, because the change that comes over her is unmistakable. She recoils as though she’s been slapped, her body curling in on itself. The smile she gives me is forced, and even her pink hair seems to wilt like a flower without water.
“I’m sorry,” she says. She takes another step back, her eyes falling to the floor. “You’re right. That was weird of me. I’m weird.” Her voice cracks on the words, and they emerge broken from her lips. “I’m genuinely very sorry. It won’t happen again?—”
“Stop,” I say, frustrated. I’m melting, just like I suspected I would, but it’s happening in an unexpected direction.
It’s her words, the look on her face, that have my sharp, icy edges succumbing to warmth—not the press of her body or the velvet of her tongue.
“That’s not what I mean,” I say, pushing my hand through my hair and scowling when I’m reminded of how crusty it is.
“I’m not making fun of you or getting angry.
I just…want to know. You can’t—you can’t go around licking people, Juniper,” I say, sighing.
“And I know that, right?” she says with a bitter laugh.
“My mom always said I was an odd duck. Kids at school weren’t that nice.
” She leans over, resting her elbows on the countertop and playing absently with the hair clips I’m just noticing for the first time—bobby pins, I think they’re called.
There are a bunch of them in a pile there in front of her, and now she begins separating them, pushing them into a line—a little row of soldiers.
“I know that. My brain fully realizes that licking people isn’t normal.
Neither is hoarding food or killing all my main characters or—or—ugh.
” She shakes her head, pushing the bobby pins more aggressively into their little line.
Then she looks up and gives me a tight smile. “I’ll do better,” she says.
“What are these for?” I say, pointing to the hair pins.
“Oh, those,” she says, looking down at them. “I was trying to teach myself how to pick a lock. YouTube.”
I raise my eyebrows at her. In truth, though, I’m grateful for the change in subject. “How to pick a lock?”
She shrugs. “Yeah. My detective needs to pick a lock, so I kind of wanted to give it a try. I’m struggling with something about this book; it feels too neat, or something like that.
I don’t know. I just want to do something productive, since—oh!
” She starts suddenly, her eyes widening, and she stands up straighter.
“I was going to tell you. I even called you earlier, but you didn’t answer.
I spent a full hour looking for Thomas Freese this morning before I went to Namaste, right? ”
I ignore my twinge of discomfort at this; it makes me a little nervous, her working with Gus, now that I know he had some connection to Sandy. It wouldn’t be so bad if he’d just told Juniper what happened, but since he wouldn’t say anything…well, it’s easy for my imagination to run rampant.
But come on. When someone admits that there was an “incident” with a young woman I now know to be dead? Yeah, I’m a little suspicious.
“And Gus was normal today?” I say.
She brushes this off with an impatient wave of her hand. “Yeah, he was fine.”
“He didn’t say anything more about Sandy or what might have happened?”
“No,” she says, “but I didn’t ask. I was…kind of too scared.” She winces. “It’s just, he’s so big?—”
“He’s huge,” I say.
She nods. “There was a kid in my foster home—I went for a few months in my senior year,” she explains, and then she goes on, “and I thought he was the tallest person I would ever meet. He was like six-four. But Gus is bigger. I have truly never seen anyone his size.”
“He’s massive,” I say, trying to shrug off my discomfort. “He could bench press your entire body without breaking a sweat.”
“Ew.” She spits the word out, her nose wrinkling with disgust. “Ew. No. We will not be using that phrase in this household ever again, please. The last time someone said that they turned out to be talking about my little brother.”
Fair enough. “Fine. You looked up Thomas Freese?” I say, leaning with my hip against the counter. “What did you find?”
“Nothing,” Juniper says, leaning across the counter. She’s clearly anxious to get this out. Her voice is low and significant when she goes on, “Because he’s dead, Aiden.”
He’s…what?
She nods as though I’ve asked this question out loud. “Yep. He’s dead . Six years ago he was reported missing by his boss at work, and they found him in the shed behind his house. They ruled his death a suicide. I couldn’t find any details.”
Well, that’s sketchy. That’s beyond sketchy.
“And how—” I say, unsure of how to voice this. “How do you—uh— feel about that?”
Yes, I sound pathetic. A grown man should not struggle asking someone about their feelings. But whatever.
“Um,” Juniper says, her face crumpling. “I think it hasn’t quite sunk in yet.”
“It looks like maybe it’s sunk in a little,” I say without thinking. But the way her face has fallen, the way her teeth dig into her lip as her eyes drop—she looks upset. “You’re allowed to be sad.”
I find it’s remarkable how many people don’t think they’re allowed to be sad.
“I know,” she says. Her voice comes out a little thicker this time. “I just don’t want to get bogged down by a ton of emotion right now, you know? There’s a lot to do and a lot to figure out still.”
I nod; that’s fair, and it’s her choice. So I move on.
“And can we find out any more about him?”