Page 75 of Born in the Spring

Elara brushes her arm against mine in greeting, her fingers doing a dance over the back of my hand before she stuffs hers into the pockets of her jacket.

Her question is an accurate assumption at my being weird and spying on my parents through one of the main lodge windows, my head angled at an opening in the curtains. I texted her to meet me under the lights, and she knew that meant here, and I didn’t have to say why.

And I have to stop myself from pulling her into me as I watch another part of my life come to its official end, at the near end of day, the time my father should be gone.

“It’s been ten minutes,” I tell her low, shifting my head right again as Dad falls back against the bar chair. Mom’s across from him, behind the bar, and her position hasn’t changed. She’s stayed leaned forward, her fingers picking at the edges of the divorce papers as they talk. It’s my father who can’t sitstill and gives my neck its exercise as I try to keep them both in my sights to not miss when something does change.

Mom’s lips are slow enough to read if they were closer, but Dad’s are as fast as his movements. He’s trying to plead a case. Defend his choices. Not a chance he’s trying to take them back. And Mom’s relented. Literally laying down her arms.

Relented to whatever outcome?

Not a chance he’s trying to take them back.

With another glance at the clock on the back wall, I see it’s now eleven minutes, and I won’t know anything until my mom either rips up the papers or signs them.

“What are they doing?” Elara asks in a murmur, her tone so conspiratorial and completely in this with me that I smile, these increasing minutes’ weight lifted off my chest for this moment.

And now I can’t stop myself from touching her as I guide her by the hips in my place at the window, staying close behind her as she spies.

“Your dad’s moving his hands like a juggler in a circus,” she reports with a scoffed chuckle, drawing out a normal one from me that I press into her hair.

Voices sound behind us and she folds out of my hold, glancing back at whoever is passing us, and I distract myself from her move back to my side with that split in the curtains.

Something’s changed.

My head shifts to the left to meet my father where he’s now leaned forward, his arms laying down beside Mom’s.

My heartbeat thuds in my ears as he wraps his hands around hers. As they hold each other’s gaze. As Mom’s mouth moves around some slowly said words.

My breathing builds with an undecided anticipation for them to land me on their deciding side of our future.

Elara grips my arm, drawing closer, as I wait.

I’m finally released, but only half relieved, when Dad removes his hands from Mom’s and she signs the papers.

Elara

“Jasper.” I whisper his name with a tug to his arm at the flinch of pain on his face, before his features soften into a form of acceptance.

I can’t guess what he’s seeing. His father has complicated his head and heart so much he’d have this same response to Gary staying or leaving again.

“She signed the papers,” he tells me, those battling emotions in the words, then slips from my hold to sigh back against the window. His head starts shaking as I’m returning my hand to my pocket, and he takes my wrist and puts my hand back on him, now on his other arm. “I want your touch.”

It’s a quick moment, the plea in his eyes as he squeezes to me and my squeeze back as I move in closer, before he looks out ahead with another sigh.

“My parents are actually getting a divorce.” He shifts on his feet, leaning more into me. “I’m grown.” He scoffs with another flinch of pain. “This shouldn’t. . .” He tilts me an understanding gaze. “This really is harder when you’re older,” he says to what I once told him about my own parents’ divorce.

I hug to his arm, fingers fisting his long sleeve, my chin rubbing into his bicep with my nod. “You’ve been used to them being together for longer.”

My voice sounds like it’s in a struggle against the positionof my neck, and Jasper watches me with a small flare in his nose and a tightness in his mouth, as I realize he’s trying not to laugh.

Then I realize how I look to him, wrapped around his arm like I’m holding it hostage to my chest.

When his brightened eyes trail over me, his lips stretching into a smile that prompts tingling memories, I press my blush, and my smile back, into the fabric of his shirt.

It’s a nice moment of reprieve for us both before I feel his body go rigid and I lift my face to the window.

“He’s coming out,” Jasper says as a warning, then switches us so he’s in front of me, protective in his stance as I follow him inside the lodge.

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