Page 40 of Crossroads
Again.
I don’t know what’s going on or how to make it stop—not that I want it to. It’s something I never saw coming. I thought my future was with Lucy—but my mind is fucked up about the way I felt when I ran into her last time.
It has nothing to do with her hitting me either. I wasn’t lying when I said I feel like I deserved it. I was an asshole.
But this thing with Emerson has me all messed up. I want to hate him. He’s everything I should hate, but I’m not so sure I do.
We splash around in the water, cleaning the cum and sweat off us, before climbing back out onto the shore and collapsing onto the grass, lying flat on our backs. I want to kiss him again, but I’m not sure how I feel about Kelly coming up on all that.
“We should get dressed,” he says, probably thinking the same thing as me.
“Yeah,” I agree reluctantly, tugging on my underwear and jeans, but then lying back down on my back and tucking my arm under my head and looking up at the sky.
He does the same, lying next to me with his arm under his head, but I can feel him watching me. “Tell me about your parents.”
I roll my head to the side, looking into his pretty blue eyes that sparkle in the sunlight. The sun is starting to set behind me, but it’s only illuminating him and those playful eyes more. “What do you want to know?”
“Are they good?”
I’d laugh at the strangeness of his question if I didn’t feel the worry behind it. “My parents are amazing,” I say on a sad sigh, turning my head back up toward the clouds in the sky. “High-school sweethearts. Friends before that. Married young, but it was all they ever wanted.”
He scoots a little closer to me, and I can feel him watching as he listens. “So why do I feel like they didn’t get their happy ending?”
“Kelly really didn’t tell you about them? Or Millie?” I ask, rolling to my side and propping my head up on my hand, my elbow resting in the grass. He shakes his head, and I believe him. “My dad got a job in the oilfield. Roughneck. He loved it. He was so happy when he went to work, it was almost like it wasn’t even work. And then he came home, and he was so happy too. But then it all changed a few years ago.”
Emerson rolls to his side too and looks into my eyes, like he’s reading my soul. I’d normally hate that, but I don’t. Not right now anyway. I never talk about this. Not even with Lucy. And now it just feels like it’s a poison inside me. It’s like I have the chance to let it out and I don’t want to miss it, so I keep going.
“My mom found out she was pregnant with Logan, and I guess they’d been trying for a long time to give me a sibling, so they were thrilled. I was excited, even though I was already a teenager. I was happy to see them happy, but then my dad hurt his back one day when he was at work.”
“Bad?” he asks carefully.
I nod. “But he brushed it off because that’s the kind of man he is. He thought he needed to get back to work, so he did. He worked in pain for two days before his boss finally told him he had to have someone look at him. By then it was just totally fucked.”
“Jesus.”
I nod my head. “He’s had five surgeries. But it’s like he’s an experiment or something. They don’t really know how to help him, so they just go in and poke and prod and fuck it up more. He’s always in pain. His nerves are freaking out on him constantly, and it hurts him so bad, he pukes. He’s thirty-eight, and they say he has arthritis and fibromyalgia and so many other things. All I know is my dad—my fucking hero—is hurting. All the time. And no one can fix it.”
“I’m so sorry, Jasper,” he breathes, and I realize he’s moved closer to me. I close my eyes and breathe him in, the smell of the pond water not entirely unpleasant, but somehow I can still smell his usually woodsy scent under that too.
“My mom tries to stay positive. She used to be a stay-at-home mom. She was always the one who showed up to all the parties at school. She made my lunch every day and put notes in it that made my friends tease me, though I think they were just jealous.”
I can feel him smiling, even though my eyes are still closed. His forehead meets mine. “I know they were. I’m jealous just hearing it.”
“Your mom wasn’t like that?”
His laugh is not a happy one. It’s cold and maybe a little bitter. “Hell no. She tossed money at me and told me to buy lunch most of the time. I’m not sure she even knew my teacher’s names.”
“Jesus,” I repeat his earlier sentiment and open my eyes to look at him. His dark hair is wet still, starting to curl a little. His pink bow-shaped lips turn up into a sweet smile when I ask, “How is she related to Kelly?”
“Right?” he says on an actual laugh, settling down onto his back again, but lying close enough to me that his arm brushes my side. “I asked her that. Kelly.”
“And?”
“Said their parents were super religious. Didn’t want my mom to go to college because she was female, and I guess my mom wanted that.”
“Gross,” I say because fucking yuck. “Did she get to?”
He nods, and I lie back down on my back too. “She did. She got everything she wanted. But then...”
