Page 65 of Jasper
“Wait. What?” He stammers indignantly. “I do not have a weird smile.”
I take the bear from him, deciding I like it, and walk away. “You show all your teeth. It makes you look more terrifying, not less,” I tell him over my shoulder.
He makes a disgruntled sound. As I’m shopping for boy clothes, I catch him practicing smiles in a mirror shaped like a large duck.
Jasper is wearing the same t-shirt and jeans he wore to the appointment, but now that the adrenaline’s worn off, he looks even more like what he is—a tall, broad, tattooed, and unapologetically rough biker. The woman with the giraffe has to walk past us to leave the store, and you’d think she was taking her final walk down death row or something.
The table is stacked with tiny bodysuits and matching socks. One has little motorcycles printed across the front. Jasper lifts it with two fingers and holds it up between us.
He comes back to me, carrying it. I hold up a blue onesie with little ants embroidered all over it. “What do you think of this one?”
He gestures to it with one hand, “Too risky. What if our kid has ants crawling on him for real? We might just think it was the outfit, and he could get eaten alive.”
I roll my eyes, “And I was worried about me being an overprotective boy mom.”
Meanwhile, Jasper has started foraging again, creating a little outfit of his own. It’s a pair of tiny black jeans and a black T-shirt with a teddy bear on it. Only the teddy face is made of soft brown fur.
“I’m getting this one,” he announces.
“You’re not even going to look at the price?”
“Nope. It’s for a baby. Do you think they charge by the inch or somethin’?”
I grab the price tag, shocked at how expensive it is. “It’s sixty-eight dollars.”
I don’t stop him because it’s not my place to tell the man what to do with his own money. He folds the little outfit over his forearm right along with the other tiny t-shirt he found. He carries them like he’s been doing this for years and moves on to the next display. I watch him pick through swaddles and onesies, his mouth pulled into a serious line.
“Do you even know what half of that stuff is for?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says confidently. “It’s baby stuff.”
“Well, Queenie and I have been shopping twice already. There isn’t much that we need that we don’t have.”
“We need the basket thingie for newborns.”
I squint, staring at him as my brain tries to understand what a thingie is. He swiftly jerks his chin to the far wall. I want to facepalm because he’s talking about a bassinet.
“Oh, we do need a bassinet, but it won’t fit on your bike.”
We continue moving through the store slowly. I run my hands along soft knit blankets and little cloud-patterned hats. Jasper picks up a pacifier clip shaped like a wrench and gives it a nod of approval. We eventually make it to the far wall where the bassinets are all lined up. One has a walnut frame and a mobile of felt stars spinning overhead.
“This one,” I say. “One day when we have your truck, we’ll come back.”
He doesn’t even ask whether or not I’m sure. Just waves over the cashier with the same authority he uses when sending prospects on a liquor run.
As she rings us up, Jasper pulls his wallet out and drops a credit card onto the counter. The woman behind the register gives him a hesitant smile.
“First baby?”
He nods once. “First son born into my club.”
She blinks, clearly not sure what that means. I don’t explain. I just stand beside him, close enough to feel included and watch. I like how matter of fact he is about the baby. His confidence is a real turn-on for me.
While she checks him out, he pulls out his cell phone and types out a quick message. When she hands him his credit card back, he takes it and the large bear. “I have a prospect coming to transport our baby supplies. I’m gonna scan the receipt and he’ll show it to prove he’s who he says he is.”
I smother back a smile at how he’s just moving through life, making up his own rules, and everyone just goes along with him. Like, I’m sure this store has a procedure for that.
We make it back to his bike and he pulls some straps out of his storage compartment and straps that bear down to his back bumper, right behind where I sit. By the time he’s done with that and we’re heading out, we see one of the prospects come into the parking lot with a pickup truck. Jasper jerks his chin at him as he passes.
