Chapter 1 #3
Jasper didn’t answer me as he parked the car in the lot of a popular walking trail about thirty minutes out of town.
The lot wasn’t very populated, surely because it was a Tuesday afternoon, all avid hikers working.
Or doing whatever the heck avid hikers did when they weren’t hiking.
Shopping at Patagonia, freeze-drying meat.
I followed him when he got out of the car, rounding to the trunk where he grabbed something, hopefully not a gun or a bat to bludgeon me with.
Despite the levity in my question, I was nervous. This was the troubled new kid, and I’d just gone off with him, no one knew where I was, who I was with. Perfect set of circumstances to be murdered.
Yet the danger didn’t unsettle me; I liked the way my heart pounded. I felt excited by it.
When he turned around, I saw what he’d retrieved from the trunk—it wasn’t a weapon. It was yoga mats.
“A gun would’ve surprised me less,” I informed him truthfully.
He didn’t say anything, just thrust a mat at me then went toward the trail. I took it, following him.
We didn’t walk far before he left the trail, leaves crunching underfoot as he navigated with a confidence that told me he’d been there before.
I had not. I did not hike. I was not outdoorsy like the rest of my family.
I’d made a game of complaining on the camping trips I’d been dragged on throughout the years.
Yet I didn’t complain as I followed Jasper into a clearing that even I had to admit was beautiful.
The leaves were only just hinting at the vibrant orange they’d soon be painted with, wildflowers dotting the area.
Late afternoon sun streamed in, birds singing.
Jasper was a smudge on the landscape with his jagged edges, his general aura that he’d sooner set fire to the space with a rogue cigarette than enjoy the ambiance.
He kicked off his boots, and they landed quietly in the grass.
Following his lead, I toed off my sneakers, wiggling my toes in the dewy grass and not actually hating the feeling of the earth underneath my bare feet.
Though my shoulders were tense, waiting for Jasper to pounce, to tell me to take my clothes off, revealing himself to be just like every other boy, albeit with more of an interesting exterior.
But he didn’t even look at me.
Jasper unrolled his mat, and after a moment, I followed his lead, waiting for drugs or illicit contraband to magically appear from inside the roll. None did.
“We’re going to do yoga?” I folded my arms. “ Really?” Yoga reserved for the stay-at-home moms looking to stay in shape or the girls at school who wore patchouli perfume. Great for them. So not for me.
“Really.” He nodded without any kind of self-consciousness at my judgment which served to make me look like a close-minded bitch. “Try it. You may like it.”
I licked my lips. Yoga. Inner peace? Calm? “I’m certain I won’t.”
He didn’t even look up at me. “How can you be certain about anything you’ve never done? That sounds ignorant and cowardly, I don’t think you’re either.”
He spoke like someone years older and certainly not like I expected him to.
I didn’t think I was a snob by any means—we definitely didn’t come from money—but there was always enough to go around, which I guessed was plenty.
But I had expected him to be different, less educated, more … feral, for lack of a better word.
I’d prided myself on being more worldly, open-minded and generally better than everyone in my small town. But there I was, shocked that a boy with a less-than-ideal upbringing was pleasant, well-rounded.
What else could I do?
I sat beside him and followed his lead.
An hour later, my body was covered in a thin film of sweat, muscles I didn’t know I had crying out in pain.
I wasn’t athletic by any means. I did the required physical education at school, let my father enroll me in sports that he coached.
Then I grew my backbone, understood where I wanted to go in life and promptly told everyone that I was not a team player and would not be acting like one.
That went down as well as a cup of hot vomit.
My father still muttered about it, bringing it up when we were fighting about one thing or another.
But I’d gotten my way, which I’d been smug about until then. Now I wished I’d submitted to my father’s demands, just once, so I could have some cardiovascular stamina, upper body strength.
When we started, I thought yoga was soft, hippy shit that didn’t require much beyond audible breathing, stupid outfits and incense.
Following Jasper’s lead, I discovered it was a challenge and yet somehow … calming. There was nothing to focus on but Jasper’s increasingly complicated movements, having to contort my body, stretching out limbs with the gentle breeze kissing my sweat-sheened skin.
Though at the end, when he’d been lying there in silence with his eyes closed, his face blank and calm, I tried to mimic him, but I kept turning my head and peeking to see if he was done, scratching my nose, wiggling my toes. The movements could calm me. Immobility never would.
“Did you hate it?” he asked, not opening his eyes.
“No,” I admitted, surprising myself by being honest instead of being contrary just to be abrasive, like I was known to do. “I’m not crazy about this whole stillness part, though.”
“Shavasana.” The foreign word flowed easily off his tongue, pronounced in a way that sounded correct. Like he had a cache of other Sanskrit words and their corresponding yoga poses.
“You some kind of yogi?” I was suddenly hungry, ravenous for all the little tidbits about him. “Where did you learn this?”
Jasper stayed stock-still, his eyes closed, expression even, without so much as a crease between his brows. “Foster parent liked it, wasn’t an asshole, showed me books. I read them. Figured this was a better way to work through my shit than beating up a bunch of kids and landing myself in juvie.”
It was the most words I’d heard from him, the most insight I’d gotten into his past, who he was. He spoke without inflection, spitting facts without any emotion attached. I was greedy for more. To hear a hitch in his breath signaling to pain, to the core of him.
“Do you miss them?” I thrummed my fingers on the foam mat. “Your other foster parents?”
He opened his eyes then, turned to look at me, his gaze piercing yet empty at the same time. Appearing much older and more jaded than any kid our age should be.
“I don’t miss anyone,” he declared. “Because I know better than to get attached to people.”
I heard the ice in his tone and was perceptive enough to understand that that was an outlook honed from years of pain and rejection.
My throat closed at the reality of the world.
People like Jasper were really going through serious shit, and I complained about my life like it was a sport.
Like it was a cornerstone of my personality I should be proud of.
I had a mother who asked about my day and wanted to make me lunches.
A father who wanted to throw a softball with me and didn’t want me dressing like a woman because he still saw me as his little girl.
My stomach churned with discomfort at what an asshole I’d been to them. Surely, this feeling was fleeting, and I was going to continue being an asshole to them, though I tried to cling on to it.
When Jasper pushed up from the mat, I made to do the same.
Mimicking his body language was quickly becoming natural to me.
Something that should’ve been disturbing yet felt alluring.
I was so desperate to march to the beat of my own drum that I hadn’t realized how exhausted I was from it, not until I got the respite from making decisions through the simple act of following Jasper’s movements.
“No.” His voice was an octave deeper, more masculine, sending a flutter to my lower belly.
I rested on my elbows, watching him crunch through the grass in bare feet to the end of my mat.
My previously even heart rate accelerated to that of a galloping horse as I understood the expression on his face as he slowly descended to his knees.
His movements weren’t rushed, and I recognized the unspoken question in his eyes, the request for consent.
I was not na?ve, and I certainly wasn’t a virgin, so I understood when a boy was requesting sex.
What I hadn’t experienced was a boy doing it so wordlessly, sensually and intensely that he had the aura of a man .
Heat erupted in my core, a desire I had never experienced with any boy flooding through me. Jasper stayed there while I considered.
Not that there was anything to consider. My body was overcome with excitement and a kind of desire that was utterly foreign, adult and addictive.
I let my legs fall open as an invitation, my breath already coming in low, quick pants.
Jasper’s large hands confidently grasped my sweats, I instinctively lifted my hips as he rolled them off. It was jarring, exciting and vaguely terrifying that he exposed my naked lower half so quickly, without ceremony or so much as a kiss.
Jasper, as it turned out, had other plans.
His lips settled between my legs long before he kissed me on the mouth.
He sent my body wild with pleasure, eliciting a scream so loud from me that doves nesting in a nearby tree fluttered from the sky—earning me a lifelong term of endearment that never failed to make me think of this moment.
And that was where we started.
In a beautiful meadow.
How far we’d come.
How far we’d fall.