Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
“So, anyway, after I dug the big hole, I had to line it with some plastic. You cannot even begin to comprehend how much plastic it takes to line a hole the size of a pool.”
Jasper stared at his not-really-a-date date, Shawn. Despite his own protests against dating at all, ever again, he could appreciate Shawn as being quite a catch. Objectively, he had it all: A killer body, a strong jaw softened by a neatly trimmed beard, gorgeous brown eyes, a sharp mind.
But somehow, none of it did a single thing for him.
Jasper appreciated Stevie’s efforts and really did want to be happy again, so he agreed to bring Shawn, to show that he was trying.
It was just that Shawn was… Well, he knew what Shawn wasn’t.
He wasn’t protective and funny. He wasn’t passionate.
He didn’t have a mullet Jasper pretended to hate but secretly loved.
He wasn’t Ryan, and unfortunately, that mattered more than he wanted it to.
The drive over hadn’t even ended by the time it became painfully clear Jasper had made a mistake. Instead of normal conversation, or even awkward small talk, Shawn delivered a fifteen-minute monologue on the history of “ugly” Christmas sweaters.
It was almost charming at first. Harmless, borderline ignorable.
But when he segued into acrylic yarn being a “game changer,” then into a decade-by-decade breakdown of washing machine advancements, Jasper found himself wishing he could leap out of the moving car and disappear into a snowbank.
The only thing that stopped him was knowing Stevie and Beni would kill him for messing up their guest count.
Now, standing in front of a beautifully lit Christmas tree he couldn’t even enjoy because the entire room was listening to Shawn discuss the history of beaded garland, Jasper wished he could launch himself off the back deck and into another, even deeper, snowbank.
He might have done it that time if he hadn’t been distracted by Ryan standing by the food table, pointing out different cheeses with one hand and using the other to direct people to whatever fruit would pair best. When someone smiled and placed their hand on Ryan’s forearm in thanks, the red cup in Jasper’s hand was crushed by his clenching fist, dribbling warm, mulled wine on his ivory wool sweater.
“Goddammit.” Jasper wiped at the wine with a decorative paper napkin, the kind that lacked any real absorbency, rendering it as pointless as the mistletoe he’d just spotted dangling above them.
“Oh, no. I can go find some club soda. Stay here,” Shawn said, gently squeezing Jasper’s bicep.
“Oh, that’s—I don’t need club soda,” Jasper said. He looked up from his wrist to look at Ryan again, but he was gone from his spot at the table.
“It’ll keep the stain from setting on that beautiful sweater. Stay here and keep blotting, I think I saw some in the kitchen.”
“You stay here. Teach everybody the history of mulling spices, or something. I can find the club soda.” Jasper did his best to smile at Shawn but was distracted by Ryan’s disappearance. Maybe his date had arrived?
Before Jasper was able to make his way to the kitchen, Terrance, Beni’s friend, approached them with a shy smile.
“Sorry to eavesdrop, but I love mulling spices. Do you really know about their history?”
“Well,” Shawn said. Half his mouth quirked up before he laughed and said, “Yes. I do, actually.”
Terrance’s face lit up. “Go on…”
“Well, there are a few theories about who first used spices to make wine more palatable…”
“Can I speak to you for a sec?” Stevie asked, grabbing Jasper’s arm, hard.
“Ow!”
“Cry about it. Go into the bedroom, now,” she hissed.
Jasper headed to her bedroom and stared out the window with his arms crossed. Stevie shut the door behind him and he crossed them tighter.
“What the hell is your problem?”
“I don’t have a problem. Well, other than this big wine stain,” he said, blotting at his sleeve again. “Do you have club soda, by the way?”
“Yes, I do. But I’m not giving it to you until you explain why you’re being so rude to Shawn.”
Jasper sighed and rubbed at his eyes, pressing them hard enough to see stars. “Ugh. I’m not trying to be. He didn’t do anything.”
“I didn’t think so. So why are you being mean to him?”
Jasper turned around and stared at her. Stevie was unbelievable—he had never wanted to go out with Shawn in the first place, but she’d harped on it for days after he asked for Shawn’s number, offering the party as a good place for them to get to know each other.
In hindsight, not a great plan, but he was upset about Ryan getting someone else’s number, and he wasn’t thinking straight.
“I’m not being mean to him,” he said.
“Well, you’re not being particularly nice.”
“I’m being cordial. But I told you I didn’t want to date anybody, and I get the feeling he thinks this is a date. Ryan and I broke up two months ago and you’re setting me up with your handsome, boring coworker.”
“Shawn isn’t boring. He’s like a walking encyclopedia! And he’s sweet. And cute.”
Jasper’s mouth turned down into a half scowl. “I don’t want a sweet, cute, walking encyclopedia.”
“Well, what do you want? It seems like you just want to be angry with Ryan at the expense of everybody else.”
There wasn’t anything Jasper could say in his defense—that was accurate, at least on some level. But he didn’t want to get into it with Stevie, not if it meant being stuck in the bedroom while Ryan was out there somewhere, with a date.
If Stevie knew how much he’d realized he missed Ryan after years of saying he barely knew him anymore, he’d never hear the end of it.
But the reality was, he did miss Ryan. And now that Ryan was always around, pointing at cheeses during Christmas parties, doing thankless work on the theme park, or sending him photos of wildlife with misspelled, handwritten speech bubbles because he was the opposite of a walking encyclopedia, it was even worse than it was when they’d first split up.
When Jasper ended things, he’d felt like he was being assertive, standing up for himself. Now, it was that he couldn’t get over the still-open wounds from the last several years, held back by being face-to-face with the Ryan he fell in love with fifteen years ago. It was a much harder place to be.
Jasper shoved past Stevie, ignoring her hushed attempts to get him to go back to the bedroom.
The party was still going, which was a relief—part of him worried he’d made such a scene with the wine that his return to the living room would invite well deserved glances from every party guest. But as it turned out, nobody gave a shit that he was back.
Not even Shawn, who was standing with Terrance and… Ryan? They were all smiling and laughing at a cheese cube Ryan was holding.
Ryan loved cheese cubes. Especially cheese cubes with thin threads of blue mold woven throughout, the presence of which, based on hand gestures and a conversation Jasper caught the tail end of, were being explained by Shawn.
Jasper approached them, and Ryan glanced up. His smile fell so dramatically that Shawn’s eyes bounced from Ryan’s face to Jasper’s and back again before he opened his mouth. “Um… is everything okay?” he asked.
“Jasper,” Ryan breathed. “Hi.”
“Hi, Ryan. I see you’ve met Shawn.”
Shawn smiled at Ryan, and they both seemed to relax.
“I have met Shawn. He’s teaching me about blue cheese. Did you know the mold in blue cheese is the exact same mold they use to make penicillin, the medicine?”
“Well, not the exact same mold. They’re the same genus, but different species,” Shawn said.
“Same genus, though, so pretty close,” Ryan said, smiling to himself while he twisted the toothpick between his fingers, spinning the cheese slowly.
It made Jasper’s heart ache. Ryan loved being a little bit right just as much as he loved being completely right.
“That’s right,” Shawn said, patting Ryan on the shoulder. “You got it.”
Jasper pursed his lips so tightly they nearly disappeared, and he was about to physically remove Shawn’s fingers from Ryan’s shoulder when a familiar voice called out from behind him.
“Uncle Ryan!”
“Winnie!” Ryan opened his arms. She ran towards him, letting him wrap her up in a hug. “I wondered where you were. How’s junior year going? Any colleges catch your eye? Any guys catch your eye?”
“Please,” she said, shaking her head. “College, yes, I’ll start looking soon. Guys? No thank you. Once you talk to the men of the world about their endless failings, I might reconsider.”
Ryan laughed and elbowed Shawn, and Jasper’s eyes locked on the point of Shawn’s arm, probably still warm from Ryan’s touch. He let himself scowl openly, and Shawn took a step back. Ryan, surprising Jasper with his understanding, looked to Jasper and scowled right back.
“Shawn, it’s been nice meeting you. I hope you and Jasper have a great night together. But for now, I’m going to chat with Winnie, here. Jasper may get to see our niece pretty often, but I’ve had a more complicated schedule.”
Ryan and Winnie left the room, the door to her bedroom closing halfway, leaving just enough space for Jasper to stare at the opening, trying to catch a glimpse of Ryan. For what, he wasn’t sure.
“So, uh. You guys share a niece?” Shawn asked.
“Yeah, um. So, funny story, Ryan and I used to be together.”
Shawn’s eyebrows raised. “Together?”
Jasper bit his lip before continuing. “Yeah. Like, husbands. Not legally, but fifteen years is fifteen years. It’s… We ended things a couple months ago because—"
“Fifteen years?”
“Well, no, fourteen. Almost fifteen. Would have been fifteen, in about a month,” Jasper said, grabbing a cheese cube. “But he… I… Well, he was just gone so much, and I—”
Shawn rubbed his face before putting his hand up to stop Jasper’s rambling. “Stop. You don’t need to explain anything to me. That explains why you both got a little weird.”
“It does?”
“Well, hopefully. It explains why you’ve made eye contact with me exactly twice tonight, and I’d like to think you’re not this big of a buzzkill when you’re not torn up about your ex.”