Chapter 14
Fourteen
Do you think we’ve ever bought milk from the same cow twice?
—Calliope to Jasper
CALLIOPE
“Hello?” I answered, staring outside as I watched with awe and shock.
Snowing.
It was snowing on Christmas Eve.
What in the actual fuck?
Didn’t Texas know that it was Texas?
We didn’t get snow, and we certainly didn’t get it this early in the year…or at all.
But there it was, happening right in front of my face.
It wasn’t sticking, though.
In fact, the weatherman actually said that all this would be gone by the evening as a warm front blew through the area.
Tomorrow it was supposed to be sixty.
“What took you so long to answer? Damn,” Searcy grumbled. “I’ve been calling all morning.”
I looked at my watch.
Or, more accurately, the watch that was delivered to my porch today.
It was actually Jasper’s watch.
It was also a Rolex.
I had to look it up online to see how much money it cost, and my stomach ached a little bit at the price.
I was also in shock at how the delivery driver had just handed it over and didn’t ask me to sign anything.
He’d just handed me the box and left.
And since we’d been playing the stealing each other’s packages game since last week, I saw no reason to not open this one.
Though, when I saw the thoughtful note inside from a man named Haggard, which I thought might be Jasper’s sister’s man, I’d hesitated to put it on.
But, I mean, I was doing Jasper a favor. That was a twenty-eight-thousand-dollar watch he was just going to have delivered onto his front porch.
“Are you even listening to me at all?”
I sighed. “No. I was looking at the snow.”
“It’s snowing?” she shrieked.
“Yes,” I answered. “Like, literally right now.”
“Oh.” She paused. “No wonder you’re not paying attention…” I heard the sound of her footsteps, then the creak of her back door. “It’s not snowing here, you lying cow.”
“It’s snowing here.” I switched to FaceTime. “Look.”
She gasped. “That’s not fair!”
I smiled. “What was it that you called about?”
She grumbled darkly under her breath before saying, “Cutter and Jasper are running in a marathon today that runs right by your house.”
I blinked. “What?”
“They signed up for it last minute. Cutter had to finish one by the end of this year or they were auctioning off his bike. I’m not sure why Jasper agreed to do it, though.
He really sucks at running, which was why he was originally exempt from the running a marathon thing that they did a while back in Hawaii.
Cutter couldn’t run that one because he was sick as a dog.
And he’s been putting it off ever since. ”
I rubbed at my eyes. “When were they supposed to start this run?”
Just as I said that, a runner ran past wearing candy cane short shorts and nothing else.
He had to be freezing.
He also had a camera pointed at his face with a man riding an electric bike holding said camera.
I’d bet he was in first.
“About thirty minutes ago,” she answered. “You’re at the halfway point on the course. They make two loops. They’ll be passing you twice,” she said. “I wanted you to take pictures. No way am I going out today. It’s so damn busy.”
I agreed.
“Okay,” I said. “Is there a way to track him or anything?”
“You mean them?” Searcy quipped, unaware of my obsession with my grumpy neighbor. “They’re wearing numbers, and I think you might be able to track that. But I don’t know their numbers because they didn’t share that information before they started.”
I rubbed at my left eye while simultaneously keeping my eye on the street. “I guess I’ll go get my heated chair out of the garage and post up.”
“When’d you get a heated chair?” she asked.
I refrained from telling her last week, when I opened the large box that definitely didn’t belong to me and found the world’s greatest chair in there.
It actually worked pretty damn perfectly because I liked to sit out on my porch and watch the world go by. Sometimes I got chilly and had to wrap up in a blanket, but my backside always ended up staying cold due to the thin material of my chair.
The new chair was a papasan-type chair that had built-in heaters along the backside of it, making your tushy all nice and warm when you sat curled up in it.
Jasper had taken one look at me in the chair the first night I’d found the package and shaken his head at me in exasperation.
I did notice, however, that no other chair had been delivered to his house.
I wondered if he was getting them delivered somewhere else now…
“Got it last week,” I lied. “Off .”
“Huh,” she said. “That’s a pretty good idea. You know, it’s weird, because Jasper was just asking us last week at dinner where the best heated chairs could be bought.”
I dodged her inquiry and said, “Imagine that. Ask Cutter’s wife, Milena, what number Cutter is. Maybe Jasper will be close to that number.”
Searcy hung up with a promise to get in touch with Milena.
Meanwhile, I got my new heated chair out of my bedroom where I kept it hidden in case Jasper made any unannounced visits, grabbed my biggest blanket off the recliner—one of the only pieces of furniture that I had in my living room—and headed outside.
I arrived outside just as the first of the runners that weren’t having cameras pointed in their faces started past.
I still couldn’t believe Jasper was running.
He didn’t run.
As in, ever.
I’d seen him do workouts out of his garage, and when it came time to run, he biked instead.
He was notoriously bad about skipping the run if given the option.
I’d once given him shit about it, because he’d written it on his big, fancy whiteboard and had biked instead.
My comment of “why write it down if you’re not going to do it” had gotten me a good glare.
I wanted to point out the hypocrisy of his daily choices, which was why I was parked right on the side of the road.
The snow was still coming, though in very fine flurries, and I pulled the blanket up over my head and continued to watch.
Searcy texted back with a “Milena doesn’t know their number” which left me to people watch until I saw him nearly an hour later.
I was on my fourth Christmas Tree Cake when Jasper finally came dragging ass past.
He saw me and looked instantly relieved. “Can you take my phone? It’s rubbing my leg raw.”
I caught it just as he threw it at me and said, “Sure.”
He kept shuffling past, and I sort of felt bad.
I could’ve at least offered him something to eat or drink.
I knew he was doing the damn marathon for a reason he hadn’t shared with anyone else.
Which was why I stole his mountain bike from his back porch, loaded up with some water and snacks—my last two Christmas Tree Cakes—and headed off to find him.
I stayed to the sidewalk while the runners took to the street.
I pulled up next to him and said, “Yo. You want some water? A banana?”
He looked over at me with torture in his eyes and I said, “You should lose the shirt, too. You look hot.”
He grumbled something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like “no one wants to see this.”
I continued to ride next to him and said, “Listen. Don’t be a little bitch. Give me the fucking shirt!”
He contemplated it for all of two seconds before he whipped it off and tossed it at me.
I gagged when the wet fabric hit my face and neck.
“That was uncalled for.”
He didn’t apologize, and I almost turned around with his damn banana and water.
Except I was in a good mood today and gave him the water and the banana one by one as he continued to shuffle his way along.
“You look like you’re dying,” I said helpfully.
He grunted.
“You also look like you might should’ve done those running workouts instead of skipping them,” I continued.
He tossed me a glare over his shoulder.
I continued pedaling. “I have a Christmas Tree Cake if you want one.”
He looked interested in that. “Sure.”
I handed it to him and he ripped the packaging off. He swallowed the delicacy in two bites then handed me the trash.
“I should’ve worn different shorts,” he grumbled. “My taint is killing me.”
“You can feel your taint?” I wondered.
He glanced over at me. “Yes.”
“Huh,” I said. “I just always figured that was burned as well.”
“My balls and dick are fine. So is my taint and asshole.”
I smiled. “That’s good.”
The race started to turn, and he waved me off. “Turn back around. They’ve been kicking off non-race participants from the course. They’ll make you walk back if you’re not careful.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll have another snack cake waiting on your second time through if you make it back a second time.”
He snorted. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
I gave his pitiful looking form a long glance and said, “You look like shit, man. I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass.”
He snorted out a laugh and turned the corner.
I rode back, riding his bike right inside my house in case I needed it a second time, and then started to make cookies.
I had several batches chilling in the fridge for tomorrow’s dinner with Searcy and the family when I looked at my watch and realized that Jasper would be coming through a second time fairly soon.
I grabbed my blanket off the couch and headed outside and rejoined my seat that was, luckily, not covered in snow. The weather was significantly warmer than it had been two hours ago, so I didn’t bother turning on the heated seat part.
Sure enough, within ten minutes Jasper came shuffling up to me.
Instead of continuing to run past, however, he stopped and reached for the bottle of water I had sitting at my feet.
He drained it in half a minute and tossed the crushed-up bottle into my lap.
I handed him the banana, which he ate.
Then the Christmas Tree Cake.
He ate it all in silence, his eyes looking sunken.
“How many more miles do you have?” I asked once he was done with the second bottle.
I had a lap full of his trash, and I wasn’t bothered by that at all.
What was wrong with me?
“Four,” he grumbled darkly. “Fucking Cutter.”
My lips curved up into a small smile. “Get going. You’re almost done.”
He swiped at his face, turned forward to face the road, then said, “I’m going to have rhabdo when I’m done with this.”
He left, and I quickly searched up what rhabdo was on my phone.
According to Doctor Google, it was a breakdown of protein in the body that released dangerous contents into the bloodstream and damaged kidneys. It happened a lot when people had a very hard intensity exercise and didn’t take care of themselves after.
I went inside and pulled six bottles of water from my fridge then walked them over to his doorstep. At least this way, he would see the water and maybe it would remind him to drink.
I’d just picked up my chair from the front yard where it lay with my discarded blanket when Jasper’s phone, still in my hoodie pocket, rang.
I contemplated not answering it for a half of a ring before I decided…fuck it.
“Hello?” I answered.
There was a hitch in the person’s breath on the other end of the line, and I pulled my phone away from my face to see that it was his best friend, Harlow.
Why I hadn’t checked that in the first place, I didn’t know. If I had, though, I probably wouldn’t have answered it at all.
Their relationship was entirely weird to me.
Boys and girls couldn’t be best friends.
“Harlow?” I asked. “Are you okay?”
There was another hitch and then, “No.”
I immediately stiffened. “Where are you?”
She made a sound in her throat that was close to a sob and said, “I’m three hours away.”
I did not care.
“Never mind that,” I said. “Where. Are. You?”
Her breath hitched. “I let Jasper follow my location on an app called Life 360.” She swallowed, and it sounded painful. “I’m at my boyfriend’s house.” Her throat started to sound funny. “Hurry.”
I didn’t blink.
Didn’t even hesitate.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”