seven
I meet Jasper two weeks after my 18th birthday.
Three days after that, we're fucking.
It's not like I'm a slut. I think. After all, Jasper is only the second guy I've ever had sex with, though I like to count him as my real first. We do it in the shed outside of his house in Port Angeles, where he sleeps when his parents kick him out.
Or so he says.
I have a sneaking suspicion he just really wants a clubhouse.
He goes to the school in Port Angeles, meaning I have to drive an hour each way to see the guy. He doesn't come to Forks because he says it's in the middle of nowhere, like somehow Port Angeles isn't in the middle of nowhere. I mean, they have a mall. Big whoop.
In fact, that very mall is where we met. Inside one of those pretzel shops in the food court.
He bought me one.
It was all very cute.
But the story is very boring, so who cares?
The first week of October, he takes me to the ocean. I don't think I ever truly returned.
It's night time, closing in on 11 PM. I've told Charlie that I will be spending the night at a new friend's house, to which he nodded and/or grunted about and then continued watching his basketball game. I drive to Jasper's house in Port Angeles. It looks like mine, only situated approximately sixty miles east.
He's waiting outside, blonde hair pushed back inside a beanie. He's all long and lean and pale, a gangly ghost.
"No cars," he says, wheeling his bike out from the side of the house. It's old and rusted, too many months spent waiting in the Washington rain.
"I can't ride a bike," I confess. It's actually a deep dark secret. I hardly ever admit it to anyone.
There are many important moments in my life I never really achieved. Learning to swim, learning to ride a bike. Hell, I didn't even learn how to properly spell my full name until halfway through the second grade. I don't blame anyone for it, really. It was just that my mom's mind was full of so much stuff. It was full to bursting. She couldn't have possibly thought about what I was doing all the time, what with everything else going on.
I don't mind.
"I don't have a second bike anyway," Jasper says, motioning to the handlebars. I push myself up onto them as gracefully as I can manage. (It isn't graceful.) He grabs hold of my waist and steadies me. The right hand lingers as the left steers.
We go over bumpy terrain and fingers dig deeper into flesh. We fly past houses and trees and roads. Cars drive past us, so close I can feel the rush of wind from each one. Jasper is carefree, riding effortlessly around potholes and cracks in the pavement. We weave and wind for what feels like minutes, feels like hours.
Finally, a small unmarked path appears from nowhere on our right. He turns sharp and graceful.
It is a small dirt path that leads straight to the ocean.
The rocky shore and the distant moon, the thousands upon thousands of stars.
He rides up to a tree with no branches and rests the bike against its base. He holds his hand out to me, the paleness of it glowing against the brightness of the moon.
"Come with me?" he asks.
I nod.
We step over the various rocks and fallen logs, little tide pools and rushing water. He doesn't miss a single step as I stumble along beside him.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
My breath fogs before me, hot in the cool night air.
"My favorite spot in the whole world."
He says this like it's a momentous thing. Like the size and scope of his world isn't limited to the top western point of the Olympic Peninsula.
"And you're taking me?" I ask.
"Wouldn't take anyone else."
"Why?" I ask.
"Because I love you."
We've been dating for a week.
"Oh." I pause. "Thanks."
"You're welcome."
He doesn't turn around the entire time we talk. We walk for a few more minutes, are breathing synchronized, our steps synchronized, our heartbeat synchronized.
"We're almost there," he says. We begin a steady, soft incline up a large pile of stones. Gradually, it gets steeper and steeper; until we're pulling ourselves up rock by rock. A fall from this height could be extremely perilous, if not fatal. But I don't care, for Jasper is on top and leaning over, one hand extended to pull me the rest of the way up.
I grab and he yanks, and together we tumble onto the wide, flat expanse of the uppermost rock.
Before us lay an absent moon and thousands upon thousands of stars. They're so bright they seem to scream at us, each fighting for the attention of our four small eyes. I try to take it in all at once but become overwhelmed. It is too much. It is too great.
"It is too beautiful."
"I know," he says. Next to me, he carefully licks a spliff shut. "I can't even look at it without this. I can't even take it in."
He inhales long and deep. Holds. Exhale.
He passes it over.
"Thanks," I breathe.
I inhale long and deep. Hold. Exhale.
We pass it back and forth until it's halfway down. He stubs it out against the rock and stiffs the rest of it in his pocket.
"For later," he says, for his eyes are red and his pupils relaxed, and the air around us is sweet yet spicy.
We sit several inches apart. We're not touching, but somehow I feel every part of him.
"Can I tell you a story about why I love you?" he asks.
"Sure," I say, because I know nothing about him or about anyone or anything. Not really.
"My neighbor across the street is sixty-three years old. For as long as I've ever known him he's been alone, with no family or parents or kids or whatever. He tends this same goddamn tree every day outside of his house. It's a weeping willow. When I was real young I used to want to go underneath it and make it my fort, y'know? But every time I tried he'd run out and chase me off with a bat."
He takes a breath.
"Anyway. He sucked. I thought he was the worst. But then my mom told me that when she first met him he had this wife. Apparently she was a good ten years younger than him and essentially a total babe. My dad used to watch out the window whenever she did her gardening and stuff. Anyway, one day she got pregnant and then went to get her pregnancy hospital shit done or whatever they even do, and turns out she had stomach cancer or whatever that's even called. So they took the baby away so she could get chemo or whatever, but she died anyway. And then he planted a weeping willow for her."
"That's horrible," I say.
"I know. And that's why I love you."
"I don't get it."
"Because it's so tragic, you know? I might as well love you now, for as long as I can, because tomorrow you might be gone and if I didn't love you already I'd never get a chance."
My brain is foggy yet clear, and it's with a completely sober mind that I say: "Well, in that case, I love you, too."
thats a true story. he lives across from my grandma's house. he likes to garden.