“Did you know a jasper is a kind of rock?” Annelise told him. “We learned about geology and geography and stuff in school. Isn’t that funny? Because you’re arockstar!”
Everyone laughed. Jasper lit up with surprise and delight in her cleverness.
“And we learned in geography about volcanos and stuff. And my principal’s name is Caldera. A caldera is like a steaming hot thing.”
“Boy, I’ll say,” Avalon said under her breath.
Finally providing an excuse for Eden to kick her.
And Jasper’s face, quite ironically given his namesake, turned to stone.
“So what happened?”
Mac and Gabe were sitting in the Misty Cat, as they often did after Veteran’s Hall meetings on Tuesday nights, in large part because open mic night was every Tuesday, and it was often inadvertently entertaining. Given the Misty Cat’s associations, Gabe would prefer another bar at the moment, but really, it was the cleanest and it had the best beer, and apart from Jasper making love to Eden right there on the stage, not much would make him more miserable than he was now.
Mac Coltrane was probably the only person in the world who knew how deep the thing with Eden went. This was the first chance he’d had to talk to Mac about it.
Gabe took a sip of his beer. “Jasper Townes happened.”
“Brutal.”
Gabe looked at him, dryly amused. “You’re not going to butter me up and tell me what a great guy I am and how I’m so much better than he is and I was a SEAL, for God’s sake, and just look at me?”
“No, man,” Mac said in all seriousness. “It’s Jasper Townes.”
That actually made Gabe laugh. Just one short “Ha!” however, because now that the initial anesthetizing numbness had worn off, everything really hurt. As if he’d been dropped from an airplane and his chute hadn’t opened, only instead of smashing his bones and organs it had smashed all of his emotions and his hopes and dreams.
There also remained the possibility that he had deliberately left the cord unpulled. As if he’d been trying to protect himself from something.
“So, um, how do you feel, exactly?” Mac was tentative.
“I feel,” Gabe said thoughtfully, “as if, maybe... I’ve had an organ removed, an important one. Did you know that all of your organs can function as a sort of kill switch, and when they malfunction they can stop your heart? I feel like my kill switch has been activated. Kind of like that.”
There was a beat of silence.
“Holy shit,” Mac breathed. Alarmed and impressed.
“But I’m sure I’ll feel better after a couple of beers,” Gabe said with mordant cheeriness. He raised his beer bottle in a sardonic toast.
“She’s not dating Townes? Or sleeping with him?”
He stifled a wince.Datingandsleeping. Both words were horrible. “She says no,” he said shortly.
“Then why wouldn’t you believe her?”
“Why, indeed? Why indeed?”
He in fact did believe her. That was part of the problem. He still couldn’t quite locate the source of the misery he was experiencing, and he was pretty certain a lot of it was self-authored.
Although it was possible he’d been a big enough dick that he’d driven her right into Townes’s arms for some patchouli-scented comfort.
His fingers clamped around the bottle.
But Eden was nothing like impulsive.
Then again, she’d done it in the truck cabin with the principal.
Which sounded like a pornographic game of Clue.