Playing for the Other Team (16 page)

“So it might be just the right thing for her to talk to some other adults about this whole situation.” Jasper tilted his head at me. “Don’t you think? She sounds like she might be kinda lost without someone else there to help her make the big decisions.”

“Make the decisions for her, you mean. She never got a word in edgewise once Uncle Adam decided he knew best. Not that she tried all that often, mind you.”

“Don’t you worry.” Lisa patted my hand before withdrawing her own and rising from her chair. “It will be fine. We’re going to have a lovely dinner and a comfortable chat, and everything else will just come naturally.”

The oracle-like confidence of her prediction helped calm me. Later, of course, I decided that she probably shouldn’t quit her day job.

* * * *

“So, Rebecca, what is it you do?” Jasper’s dad asked with stoic politeness.

It felt bizarre to be sitting around a table with Jasper, Missy, and Jeronimo, plus Brina and my mom, trying desperately to find a good topic of conversation while Lisa served pork carnitas. Jasper had moved his chair a bit closer to mine than strictly necessary and was chewing on his lip while I rearranged my silverware for the fourth time. Missy, who had colorful ribbons braided into her hair today, observed the awkwardness with interest.

“I’m a secretary.” My mom stared at her plate. “For a landscaping company.”

“How lovely,” Lisa said, sounding stilted.

“Thank you,” my mom responded, equally stilted.

Brina cleared her throat before helping herself to some food. Then she coughed. Then she shoved an enormous forkful of pork into her mouth, temporarily putting herself out of commission.

“Did you know that microscopic mites live in the eyelashes of most humans?” Missy asked my mom, leaning toward her intently. “I’m only bringing it up because you blink a lot. Maybe they’re a contributing factor.”

Jeronimo threw his daughter a look of warning. Jasper kicked her under the table, and Missy kicked back and hit my shin instead. I yelped. My fork clattered to the floor.

“Sorry, Bryson.” Missy gave me a sweet smile that was utterly nonthreatening, which was probably why I found it so terrifying.

“So,” Brina announced cheerfully after swallowing her food, “my brother’s gay. How about that?”

I groaned and buried my face in Jasper’s shoulder.

“Subtle,” was Missy’s comment. “I like it.”

“Well, somebody had to bring it up.” Brina shrugged. “Figured it might as well be me. Mom, you need to start talking about this. It’s not fair to Bry if you just keep shutting down like you always do.”

My mother pressed her lips together tightly and remained silent.

Lisa deposited the last pan into the sink. The clattering noise made everyone else jump, but Jasper’s mom only tossed her lovely hair back and sat in her chair while wearing an expression of determination I was certain I’d seen before on both Missy and Jasper.

“So,” she began, “back when my son told me he was gay, it hit me hard. I mean, I love him, just as much as you love Bryson. I didn’t let Jasper see how upset I was, but I worried for a very long time. I was afraid it would make life much harder for him, and when I read up on the topic, I saw I was right. You know, anyone whose sexual orientation or gender identity falls outside that little box into which society likes to put everything, they are far more likely to be bullied and depressed. The suicide rate is…I don’t remember the exact number, but it’s far higher than that of other teenagers. And then I realized that one of the biggest contributing factors to their mental well-being is being accepted by their parents.”

“What my wife is trying to say,” Jeronimo cut in, speaking quietly and evenly, “is that making an attempt to come to terms with this will help Bryson more than you can possibly imagine right now. And rejecting him could hurt him beyond anything he has ever experienced before.”

He stopped and exhaled slowly. My mom continued to stare at her plate, causing the speck of hope I’d been clinging to to dim.

There was a long, heavy, expectant silence.

“I…” My mother folded her hands in her lap. “I don’t want anything bad for him. I’m not rejecting him. I just have a lot of trouble understanding how…” She glanced at me for a fraction of a second. “How he could have turned out this way. I just want them both to be good kids. Normal kids. That’s all.”

“Rebecca.” Lisa leaned forward and touched my mom’s hand lightly with her own. “You might as well wonder why Bryson has blue eyes instead of brown ones, or why he isn’t taller. It isn’t something you can influence. Just because their orientation isn’t obvious on the outside when our children are born, that doesn’t mean you can shape it like you do their character.”

My mom gave a single nod, presumably to show she’d heard Lisa’s words. She blinked more rapidly while continuing to avoid eye contact, and as I watched, she swallowed hard. It struck me at that moment how very tired she looked, how overwhelmed. This was hard for her. I was glad she had agreed to this dinner, at least, but I had a feeling that everyone trying to pressure her all at once wouldn’t have the desired result. She would just shut down again.

“Maybe we could leave them to talk to her alone?” I whispered into Jasper’s ear. It had the sexy and completely unintended effect of making him shiver. He turned his head, frowned, then gave me a minute nod.

“I think we’re gonna hang out and chat about some other stuff in the living room,” he announced with no subtlety whatsoever. I followed his lead when he picked up his plate and stood. Missy and Brina, after exchanging a few looks, did the same. The adults let us go without a word. Jasper’s parents probably understood what we were trying to do, and my mom wasn’t all that inclined to talk at the moment.

“Phew,” Brina vocalized once we had closed the door separating us from the awkwardness in the kitchen. Jasper and I claimed the couch, Brina sat on the floor, and Missy perched on the coffee table, legs crossed, stuffing food into her mouth while looking adorable to a ridiculous degree.

“Does your mom always get weird like that?” she inquired between bites.

Brina and I nodded simultaneously.

“She doesn’t handle stress well,” my sister explained, which I thought was a pretty fluffy way to put it.

“She has never been very self-reliant, I think,” I added. “Uncle Adam always told her to leave the heavy thinking to him, and she didn’t fight him on it. So now, when she’s in a situation where she doesn’t know what to do, she kinda…freezes and waits for help that isn’t coming.”

“That’s effective,” Missy commented. Jasper leaned forward in order to elbow her gently. “What? I’m just saying.”

“Mom and Dad will know what to say,” Jasper assured me and grasped my hand.

“That’s what you think.” Missy jumped up. “I’m going to spy on them and report back. Afterwards we can play a friendly game of
Risk
. How about it?”

Jasper’s eyes widened in alarm. “Let’s not and say we did.”

His sister blew him a kiss, curtsied, and skipped out of the room, leaving the rest of us staring after her.

“I like her,” Brina said.

“She kind of frightens you into it.” Jasper grinned and made a big deal of adjusting his position, snuggling up against me. At Brina’s next words, I felt his entire body go stiff.

“I need to talk to you anyway,” my sister told him. “Um…something happened today. When I got home from school.”

“Yeah?” Jasper asked tonelessly. By the way Brina was averting her eyes, I could tell this wasn’t going to be a cute anecdote.

“There was an envelope in the mail. Blank, not addressed to anyone, so I opened it. There was, um…” Brina messed with the tips of her hair, clearly flustered. “Shit.”

“Spit it out, please,” I asked when Jasper went even more rigid, which I hadn’t thought was possible.”

“There were pictures in there.” Brina had gone scarlet. “Of…Jasper.”

When my boyfriend cringed, I turned my attention wholly to him and took him into my arms. “You know what this is about?”

Jasper nodded and buried his face in my chest.

“What kind of pictures?”

He looked up, and the glare he gifted me was scathing. “What kind do you think, Bry?”

Belatedly, I got it. “Oh,” I said lamely.

“I shredded them,” Brina hurried to assure us. “Like, hardcore shredded them. And mixed them in with the trash. They’re gone.”

But it wasn’t that easy, and we all knew it.

“Christopher took them?” I started stroking Jasper’s hair as I asked the question and got a nod in reply.

“Yet another example of my stellar lack of common sense.”

“No,” I said with emphasis, “yet another stellar example of the fact that your ex is a vindictive ass. It is so not your fault that he decided to start distributing private pictures of you.”

“He did
what
?” Missy asked from the door, voice icy cold. She stomped to the middle of the room and turned to us, dark eyes flashing. “That’s it. I’ve had it. I’m going to destroy that guy and use his entrails for a jump rope.”

“Missy—” Jasper started, but I cut him off.

“I’m in.”

“Me too,” Brina offered.

“What?” Jasper asked, sounding baffled. His sister ignored him.

“Excellent,” she said in an eerily spot-on imitation of an evil mastermind. “I could always use more minions. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go plot something.”

* * * *

I was feeling a touch of unexpected optimism when we got ready to leave late that evening. Talking to Jasper’s parents apparently had been a good idea after all. Even now, as she was chatting with Jeronimo while Lisa distributed one last round of cookies in the hallway, a small smile crossed my mom’s face every once in a while. She still looked tired and uncertain, but far less than she had before.

“Can you sleep over?” Jasper asked, looking up at me hopefully as he clung to me. We’d spent most of the evening cuddling, but even so, he was emotionally exhausted. “Please? Maybe? I don’t want you to leave tonight.”

“You’re welcome to stay, if Rebecca agrees,” Lisa said.

“I…I suppose that’s fine.” My mom turned her head to look at me and Jasper, hugging comfortably and tiredly.

“Oh, hey, Jas.” Missy tilted her head at her brother. “That reminds me. I needed to improvise some water balloons for a surprise guerrilla attack yesterday. It was important. So you’re officially out of condoms.”

My mom dropped her chocolate chip cookie.

I did not end up sleeping over that night.

Chapter Thirteen

Doom, Gloom, And Sunshine

“I’m going to kill my sister,” Jasper said. “Or I would, if I wasn’t far too worried she’d find a way to rise again as a zombie.”

“Sounds like her,” I agreed, though the last word was partially swallowed up by the yawn I couldn’t fight. It was nearly midnight. Since Jasper’s not so subtle attempt to spend more time with me had been foiled, I had gotten out my phone as soon as I’d finished brushing my teeth. After reaching his voice mail twice, I’d finally gotten him on the third try and been lying curled up under my covers ever since, just talking. But Jasper sounded aggravated about more than just his sister sabotaging the hell out of him, so I figured there was no use avoiding the topic.

“You’re still upset about that thing with the pictures, aren’t you?”

“Uh, yes, Bryson, a little bit,” Jasper replied acerbically. After several seconds of baffled silence on my end, he sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Bry. Fuck. I’m…this is all getting to be too much.”

“I don’t blame you, you know.” I yawned again. “Actually, given how fucked up this all is, you’ve been handling it remarkably well.”

He sighed again.

“Honestly, if not for you, I probably would have already locked myself in my room and had a nervous breakdown. You’ve been so good to me, sunshine. You should have lost your patience days ago and left me to deal with my own bullshit.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“See? That’s exactly what I mean. You don’t even hesitate; you just
give
all that to me. Do you know how rare that is?”

Honestly?
“No.”

“Well, you’re gonna have to take my word for it, then.” He was silent for a moment. Just when I closed my eyes and started racking my brain for something halfway intelligent to say to keep us going, he spoke again. “Writing you that letter in eighth grade was the best idea I ever had.”

“You’re gonna make me blush.”

“Good.” His voice was all silk.

My eyes popped open. “Um.”

“What?” he asked, a little breathlessly. I could swear there was a hint of subdued laughter in his voice.

“What do you mean,
what?
I thought you said no phone sex,” I croaked.

“Yeah, well, maybe I changed my mind.”

“Oh,” I said and sounded a little too squeaky for my liking.

“You don’t want to?”

“That’s…” I cleared my throat. “That’s not what I said.”

“Good,” he purred.

Heat poured through me so hard and fast I had trouble keeping from shuddering. I’d failed to notice how the moment had suddenly turned shockingly intimate, just that it had. And while I had no idea how to start something like this without feeling stupid, Jasper suffered from no such handicap.

“So,” he said, “are you in bed right now, sunshine?”

“Yes,” I whispered. My throat was utterly dry, and I had to swallow several times in a row before it felt less raspy.

“Mhm. Tell me what you’re wearing.”

“Um, pajama pants, pretty much.” I looked down at myself like I needed to make sure.

“No underwear?”

“No.” I drew out the word a little. “I don’t, um, I don’t usually—”

“I like it.” Still, his voice made me feel like silk dragged along my bare skin. “I just sleep in my underwear, usually. That’s all I’m wearing right now.”

Oh God
. “Yeah?” I croaked.

“Mm-hm. Of course, when it’s as warm as tonight, I’m always tempted to go without, you know? Don’t you get…warm in your PJs?”

Warm? I was having a goddamn supernova-level heat flash, and my chest rose and sank rapidly as I tried to breathe through it. I tossed off my covers, desperate for coolness.