Page 88 of Born in the Spring

Jasper

My heart is doing backflips as I try to keep straight in my search for Mom. I’m walking on air, floating through the spaces between bodies, feeling like I’ve just lived a movie moment.

The guy pining for the girl finally got her.

And it’s not just my triumph; it’s everybody’s that saw Elara’s public claim on us, the hands of the ones happy for me clapping me on the back as I glide past.

Along with some murmurs of my brother, and I swallow hard at those as I move in an almost timid way under the first few claps, then lean into more that come. My smile only grows as I soak in this love, still tasting the sweetness of hers.

Someone bumping into my side halts me.

“Was that the big debut?”

Court smirks through a swallow of whatever drink’s in his hand when he gets a look at my face, and my laugh comes up from sheer adrenaline.

“Yeah,” I say as a breath, and he adds in his clap as a pat on my arm, that reminds me I have to keep moving. “I need to find my mom.” I look around at the people near me now and she’s nowhere in sight.

“Shit, uh…last I saw her, she was back there.” Court raises his glass toward the kitchen area, and that’s when I spot her carrying a tray of food to set at the front table. She has a hop in her step, which assures me that, while she’s making herself busy, she’s not having a hard time.

That’ll probably come tomorrow, for all our immediate family, but right now, she’s the embodiment of Christmas cheer. It’s in her eyes and in her smile, with mine now back on my face.

“But, hey, you—” Court cuts off his call as I shoulder through people to catch my mom.

I swipe the tray from her hands and she drops them with a smack against her pants.

“Oh, thanks, honey,” she rushes out before whipping back around, and the mini plates on the tray clatter together in my own rush forward to catch her again.

“Mom.” She slows as she turns to me, her steps still moving backward as mine advance, until she really focuses in on me in our double halting that has more plates clattering. “We have to talk.”

Her chest rises on a breath and she nods. “About you and Elara?”

There’s a stalling in my heartbeat I didn’t expect to be thereat her tone, the same drawn out one she used when she repeated ourmorningafter mine and Elara’sfirstkiss in this same space. With the same fixed expression I can’t read.

She knows.

And I’m assuming she’s known since that morning she saw us sleeping here.

That’s the only conclusion I can come to just based on her words, and her same look I’ve seen twice. Because she’s not letting me see how she feels.

“Yeah,” I say as another breath. “When. . .?” It had to have been then. Or maybe even sooner. It couldn’t have been now. She was in the back with these stuffed mushrooms I’m trying to keep balanced.

“You’re wearing her lipstick,” is what she says, saving my rambling head but still giving me no message of where her head is at.

“I tried telling you,” Court says, distracting for a moment as he rejoins me, but doesn’t stop, the comment a drive-by as I narrow my eyes after him.

When I look back at Mom, she’s gone.

A hand grips my bicep and I shift around into Elara’s touch, eyeing Vanessa walking up behind her, before I meet Elara’s seeking gaze, glinting with concern. And the sight springs my heart back in gear, as I don’t recognize it as a concern for us. She and I are solid. It’s the rest we’re now figuring out that’s stop-and-go. Like my mom.

“You found her?” she concludes herself, from the tray in my hands, but still asked as she glances off behind me to no Mom.

“She knows,” I tell her, and without my saying how, Elara’s eyes flit to my lips. I lick at them as she reaches up to rub themclean of her lipstick, my tongue skimming along her thumb, both of us in a brief pause at the contact, the curve in her mouth curving mine.

“How’d she seem?” she asks now.

“Like Mom,” I say through an assuring sigh before I add in my bit of uncertainty. “But I couldn’t exactly read her.”

Elara takes the tray off my hands, and passes it off to Vanessa like it’s a hot potato, then moves around me toward the kitchen area.

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