Chapter 15
Robbie is gonna be an uncle.
Brad and Victoria just made the announcement over breakfast.
We're all thrilled, obviously, but there's this weird, insane tension in the air. I can't tell anymore if it's from everything that happened at the party last night, or the hangover, or the fact that everyone is starting to think Madame Ximena might actually be a real psychic.
It doesn't help that the bride has a black eye after last night's fight outside the club.
And it really doesn't help – really, truly doesn't help – that the first thing Robbie said after coming downstairs with one hand on his head and the other rubbing his sleepy face was, "Okay, whoever was having the loudest sex in the history of the universe last night, for the love of God, dial it back.
There are parents in this house. There is a ninety-year-old grandma in this house. "
I choke on my coffee, eyes flying straight to Jasper's. They meet for half a second and he looks down. Even from across the room I can see the filthy smile he's barely keeping off his face.
"Right? I thought we were the only ones who heard it," Brad agrees from the couch.
Which is a massive problem, because, if Robbie and Brad are both reporting the noise, it obviously wasn't either of them.
And there are considerably fewer couples left in this house once you rule those two out.
"Could you tell where it was coming from? "
"Everywhere, man. It sounded like the goddamn exorcism of Emily Rose all over the house."
Jasper presses his lips harder.
"I think it was the Carnegies," Suzi whispers on my left, spreading cream cheese on her whole-grain toast without the slightest worry or suspicion about what actually happened.
Suzi is sleeping with Cordelia in the room right next to theirs, so it kind of makes sense given the noise and how thin the walls are.
But Robbie has a completely different theory, because his eyes also land on Jasper for half a second before he asks, one accusatory finger pointed straight at him, "Was it you?"
Jasper chokes on his own coffee. Since there isn't room for everyone at the table, we're all spread out across the living room and the kitchen island, eating fancy breakfast food that Robbie's mom spent the morning preparing so we could celebrate the news.
He's sitting on the couch in a pale blue shirt, wearing suede loafers and neatly pressed khaki shorts, of course looking like a freaking Ralph Lauren ad: Monaco, yachts and an expensive oversized watch on the wrist that lifts the coffee cup to his lips.
When he opens his mouth to speak, he's completely distracted, as if he has no idea what the conversation is even about.
"Me?" he asks, his only concern seems to be whether he’s gonna eat the mini croissant on his plate first or the chocolate-covered éclair and nothing else.
"I lived with you all four years of college," Robbie presses on, his finger pointing at Jasper. "I know the kind of crazy deranged stuff you're into."
But the day Jasper Hassmann is rattled by an accusation – true or otherwise – is the same day hell freezes over and the devil laces up his skates. Or something like that.
So he just takes the moment to flash a cocky smile and say, "Well, thank you very much for acknowledging that I can make a woman scream like a caged beast, Robbie," and glances at me as he says it, "but I was completely blacked out all night. Didn't do anything, didn't hear anything."
I hear Suzi let out a breath beside me, relieved, but I don't have the nerve to look at her. I don't have the nerve to move a single muscle and somehow let the conversation circle back to me.
"Then how do you know it was a woman?" Robbie tries to catch him.
"Considering you were my roommate for four years and still think it was me, I'm pretty sure you've never heard anything from my side of the wall that would suggest otherwise."
"He got you there, son," Uncle Henry pulls his mouth away from his beer can to weigh in. Beer with bacon and eggs. That's been his breakfast every morning since we got here.
And well, that's the only thing that finally forces Robbie to let this go, because he's run out of arguments. Jasper always dismantles whatever case anyone tries to make against him. He is an insufferably successful lawyer after all, you’d assume he’s pretty good at what he does.
The topic dies and I let myself breathe for a second. Robbie makes his way toward the kitchen, stops next to Mila, and presses a gentle kiss just beside her black eye in solidarity, then heads to the table where the food is laid out.
"It was definitely him," Elise whispers on my right, and I jump.
At least her, I can look at. Because I'm too caught off guard not to, even though I'm terrified of what's coming next.
"His room is right above mine and I'm pretty sure I could hear it thumping directly over my head. The ceiling was shaking for like half an hour."
Oh God.
The ceiling was shaking?
The actual ceiling was shaking?
"No idea who was up there with him, but honestly? Respect. The man has stamina."
I dart a look around to check who else is listening, but Suzi has already gotten up to put her dishes in the sink, making her way across the room in her white bikini and nothing but a tiny cover-up that goes from her hips to mid-thigh.
My eyes follow the whole path she takes to get there, and I'm weighing whether it might be worth coming clean to Elise and begging her not to tell anyone what she heard, what she thinks she heard, and the whole business about the shaking ceiling.
But she's way ahead of me, already whispering again, "What I wouldn't give to have been a little bug in there."
And this time I actually choke. Not on coffee, on my own saliva.
Oh, no. No you wouldn't, Elise. Trust me. The things that happened in that room… any sane person who witnessed them would need intensive therapy just to recover.
I start coughing, and I can't even tell anymore if it's saliva that went down the wrong way or my heart threatening to crawl up my throat and out of my mouth. The sound is so sudden and desperate that now everyone is looking at me with concern.
"Oh my God, Julie, are you okay?"
I try to answer, but the coughing only seems to get worse every time I open my mouth.
God. How does Jasper do it? How does he manage to redirect attention so effortlessly, and all I can do is, well, the complete opposite?
OH MY GOD.
OH. MY. GOD.
Everyone is going to find out. Everyone is going to notice how frantic and desperate and slightly limping I am. Did I mention I'm also limping?
Elise pushes her glass of juice toward me, and I have no choice but to take it and drink.
Mrs. Carnegie appears to pat me on the back, and then, only then, does my throat start to settle down.
Only then does Jasper finally glance at me again, sideways, still playing it perfectly cool with his coffee and his breakfast, but I know.
I know I’m freaking out and does he care? No, of course not.
He's having all the fun in the world with this.
While I'm choking and my heart is leaping out of my chest and I am genuinely on the verge of dying, he is having fun.
I'm going to die, and the last accomplishment I’ll have in this life is having had sex with Jasper Hassmann in a way so wild and savage it made the walls tremble.