38 - Milo
Milo
THE PLAN TO have dinner at Mom’s on the weekend had me spiralling again. I hadn’t brought it up again since Jasper reassured me that everything would be fine, but my anxiety bled out in every other way imaginable.
Like when we were out together in public.
“You know I hate going to the mall.” Jasper frowned at me from the passenger seat.
I pouted as I cut the engine. “You said anything I needed, I just had to ask. Are you saying you’re a liar?”
He sighed in resignation and unbuckled his seatbelt, getting out of the car without another word. He was upset now, but once we got in there, I knew he would love it.
Opportunities like this didn’t come up often, since Jasper wasn’t into a lot of the things I liked. Concerts were out of the question because there was no way he would tolerate a mosh pit, and working at a bar meant he rarely agreed to go out to one.
“Are you taking me out on a hot date?” he taunted, leaning against the car.
I got out after him, shutting my door a little too hard.
“No,” I grumbled, rubbing dirt off my side mirror.
I’d been wrestling with the idea all morning. Every time I tried to figure out what to classify the outing as, I thought back to how embarrassed I’d been when Oliver silently clocked what was transpiring between Jasper and me when he came to apologize.
Even worse, I unwillingly conjured up the worst-case scenario for each person finding out that we were suddenly a thing. In my mind, Mom had already disowned us, Blane was disgusted with us, and Jasper had decided this wasn’t worth losing everyone else for.
I want to love you.
For Jasper, it was simple. Straightforward.
But I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, because in my life, it always did.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” Jasper probed.
“It’s a surprise. You know, that thing where you don’t find out until we’re there?”
“Yeah,” he said flatly. “I hate that too.”
“Not today.” I slapped the hood of the car and winced, the slowly healing wound on my palm throbbing under the gauze.
Inside the mall was busy. It was always packed, no matter what day of the week you went. That’s what you get when your city has one of the world’s largest malls, complete with an amusement park and a waterpark.
“We’re secretly here for something you want to do, aren’t we?” Jasper accused as we stepped onto the escalator.
I didn’t give him an answer, instead crossing my arms and glaring at him. I was notoriously terrible at surprises. I’d always been the kind of person who gave Christmas gifts weeks early, but this time, I was determined.
Once we reached the second floor, I grabbed his sleeve and dragged him through the crowd. The storefront gave it away immediately, the interior lined with merchandise for the two experiences they offered: a space station and ancient Egypt.
“Hi there,” the woman at the counter said. “What show are you here to see today?”
“Explore Egypt,” I answered quietly, pulling out my phone to scan our tickets.
She gestured behind her. “You can go on in. There’ll be a waiver to sign inside, and they’ll help you with the gear.”
Jasper hadn’t said anything yet.
A rush of despair made my stomach roll. I looked between him and the arrows on the floor marking the path forward, overwhelmed with self-doubt.
Maybe he thought it was stupid. Could he even do this with his glasses on?
I’d been so excited to find something I could do for him that I hadn’t stopped to think it through.
“I wonder how accurate it’s going to be,” Jasper murmured, brows pinched.
Great. I hadn’t thought about that either.
Maybe it wasn’t historically accurate at all, and instead of enjoying it with childlike wonder, he was going to give me a ten-minute rant at the end about all of the inaccuracies, and I’d have to crawl into a hole somewhere and die.
Signing the waivers and getting instructions passed in a blur. I wasn’t listening, too busy wondering about what the instructor might think about us. Did it look like a date? Did we seem like siblings?
When the headset came on, Jasper became an avatar, and from there, there was no way to tell whether he was enjoying it until it was over, and that made everything worse. I wanted to get something right. I wanted to make him happy.
The experience started, and I moved slowly, worried I might stumble or walk into a wall, even with the obvious markers meant to keep us on the path.
We stepped onto a virtual platform that ascended towards the pyramid's entrance, and vertigo hit me hard.
He moved ahead, and I nearly tripped trying not to be left behind.
I reached for his arm.
“You good?” He chuckled, slipping his fingers into mine and squeezing.
“Yup,” I lied, squeezing back.
I didn’t let go after that.
By the end, my head ached from the pressure of wearing the headset, but it was worth every second. When we took them off, and I could finally see him again, he looked dishevelled and pleased, a smile tugging at his lips that made my blood run hot.
“Was it good?” I asked cautiously.
“Surprisingly, yeah.”
My heart felt several sizes too big for my ribs.
In the gift shop, Jasper drifted toward the shelves. I watched him touch everything, silently cataloging each reaction. If I could pick something he liked and buy it for him, maybe, just maybe, I’d be less of a burden.
I tracked how he picked up a replica of the pyramid and pulled off the top half, amused by what he found.
“It’s a candle.” He tipped it towards me with a cheeky grin.
“It would look good on your bookshelf.” I snatched it out of his hands and clutched it to my chest.
“It would,” he agreed without hesitation, seemingly clocking what I was trying to do.
He let me buy it for him without protest, the warmth in my chest igniting into a full-blown fire. I felt a sudden burst of energy, excitement washing over me and nearly making me nauseous for the first time in a while. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this happy.
“I wanna look around,” I said quickly. “Can we?”
“Fine, I guess I can tolerate the mall a little longer,” he relented.
Jasper turned the candle over in his hands as we exited the store, pointing out details on each side of the little pyramid. “You can tell whoever designed this didn’t actually know anything about Egypt, since these are all just kind of random symbols that don’t go together. Like, look, here—”
I followed his attention to where he’d pointed, but my gaze drifted back up to his lips.
“—what you’d call a ‘false door’ stelae that you’d find in the tomb chapel, usually facing West—” His hands moved when he spoke, and our shoulders brushed as we walked.
He was such a fucking nerd.
“—believed they functioned as metaphysical portals that allowed the deceased’s soul to travel back and forth between the tomb and the realm of the dead—”
I had no idea what he was saying.
“—mirrored the physical door that the living used to enter the tomb, which made the chapel itself a liminal space where life and death overlapped—”
Life and death overlapped. That sounded dramatic, and I didn’t know what it meant. I just liked the way it sounded in his mouth.
“—usually decorated with the wedjat, or the eye of Horus, which was both an apotropaic symbol to guard against evil and symbolically represented the eyes of the deceased, which allowed them to observe their worshippers from Aaru—”
I wanted to kiss him.
“—exclusively funerary and has nothing to do with any of the symbols on the other faces—”
He finished talking, slowing to a complete stop. Our surroundings rushed back in, overwhelmingly loud. People brushed past us, the lights were too bright, and all I could think about was how much I wanted him to lecture me like that while bending me over at the same time.
Fuck.
It had no business being so attractive.
“Neat,” I muttered, too embarrassed to admit I hadn’t been listening.
“Were you even listening?” He didn’t seem upset. If anything, he looked amused.
“Yeah,” I hesitated, too hot in my own skin. “Listening to you being a fucking nerd.”
Jasper tucked the candle into the gift bag it came with and leaned in closer, and my stomach flipped with nerves. I tilted away, the awareness of eyes burning between my shoulder blades.
“Let’s look at shoes,” I suggested hastily.
“Okay.”
My mind was already racing, latching onto the next thing as I bee-lined for a shoe store across the hall. The bright lights hummed, and the faint smell of rubber and leather made my nose wrinkle.
“What about these?” I held up a pair of Converse. “I like the black.”
“Those are navy.” Jasper side-eyed me from the spot he’d settled into, where he leaned back against the shelves.
“What? They’re black.” I frowned and took a closer look at them.
“Nope,” he said confidently, plucking one out of my hands. “Navy.”
“Do your glasses make you colourblind?”
“Says the one who hasn’t been for an eye exam since they were seventeen.”
“Rude.” I snatched the shoe out of his hand, holding it to my chest like I was clutching my pearls.
He pushed off the shelves and crowded my space, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes.
My heart skipped a beat. I wasn’t sure I was ready.
I wanted him to kiss me, to know for certain that we weren’t some dirty secret.
He hovered so close, all I could do was stare up at him, my muscles tight with anticipation.
“Hey,” he called past me. “Are these black or navy?”
That motherfucker.
I spun around, boots squeaking against the vinyl floor. Two girls stood at the end of the aisle, wide-eyed, probably trying to figure out which one of them he was talking to.
“They look black to me,” the brunette answered.
Jasper grinned and rested a hand on my shoulder. “Amazing.”
The situation quickly turned into a spectacle, Jasper and I full-on bickering over the colour of a pair of shoes and elbowing each other in the ribs with every verbal jab. It was enough to draw the attention of a sales associate, who tiptoed her way over.
“Does your boyfriend need any help?” the saleswoman asked.
The blood drained from my face, and I took a few steps away from Jasper. The knee-jerk reaction earned me a strange look from him. Annoyance, or disappointment, maybe? He quickly schooled it into an award-winning smile as he looked at the employee.
“Yes, he does.” He pointed at the shoes. “He thinks these are black. They’re navy, right?”
“Yes, those high-tops are navy,” she confirmed, thoroughly amused.
Jasper’s head swivelled back in my direction, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Would you look at that, babe?”
My soul left my body, presumably, along with my dignity. The girls we’d been speaking to were giggling amongst themselves as I put the shoes back on the shelf, my stomach doing gymnastics over the casual term of endearment.
I needed to leave, not just the store, but the fucking planet.
“I don’t want them anymore,” I declared stubbornly.
“Maybe I want them.” Jasper picked them off the shelf.
“In my size?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
I begrudgingly followed him up to the front counter.
The sales associate rang up our purchase, and I hastily slapped my debit card on the machine to soothe my humiliation.
I was too fucking early, though, and the tip function was still on display.
Jasper slapped my hand away, and then went on to pay once the tap-to-pay prompt popped up.
I hoped that if I glared at the receipt printing hard enough, it might burst into flames. The universe was unfortunately not on my side. He shoved the shoe box into my hands and began walking away.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re literally the worst?” I fumed quietly, taking long strides to catch up to him.
“A few people, at least.” He smirked.
“You’re so embarrassing.”
“You’re so easy to embarrass.”
I looked away, not willing to let him see the stupid smile on my face.
I couldn’t believe I ever tried leaving him behind.