Who: Ruby and Jasper Where: Jasper’s House When: Early evening, Sunday, November 19 Status: Complete
Ruby had woken up that morning thinking about Jasper. It should have been weird, but it felt like the most natural thing, like he’d been there the whole time and she’d just now noticed and now that she had she couldn’t stop. She thought if she found a proper distraction, she might be able to push the feelings aside, but nothing seemed to stick. Every time her mind went still, her thoughts turned back to him. He’d been a good friend to her, one of her best friends, but there’d always been the possibility of something more. The only thing standing in her way was Jules.
It was Jules that kept Ruby from going to see Jasper first thing that morning. They weren’t exactly friends, but they’d stopped snapping at each other, and Ruby knew Jules made Jasper happy. But how happy could they really make each other in the long run? What would happen when Jules finally got tired of Jasper? Or Jasper got tired of Jules, since that was just as likely. Every nitpicky doubt that she’d had about them, things that she’d pushed aside and said were none of her business, came floating to the surface, and by the end of the day she couldn’t stop herself from thinking that she was the better choice. She could make Jasper happy. All she had to do was tell him.
Even though she was fully confident in her feelings, she was still nervous when she knocked on Jasper’s door. What if he blew her off? What if he laughed at her? Her brain wanted to say she’d be fine, she’d move on and find someone better, but just the thought made her heart ache. If she could just get him to listen, then he’d see that she was the one for him. Hopefully it would be that simple.
Jasper had had a nice day, mostly sleeping and then hanging out with Amelia and the dogs. Max and Rude had really taken to her, and they joked around about them being her dogs now. Gavin was still working by the time evening rolled around, and Jasper had gone ahead and ordered a pizza for them. Amelia had gone to take a bath and read for a bit before it arrived, and Jasper was just idly flipping through TV channels when the dogs alerted a second before someone knocked on the door.
Rude barked once, and Jasper stood up to head out of the living room to answer it, thinking it had to be the pizza arriving. He shuffled the dogs back so they wouldn’t scare the delivery guy. Jasper’s face was full of comical surprise when he saw that it was Ruby instead, and for a split second he half-expected her to have a pizza in her hands. “Oh, uh ... hey,” he said, giving a little huff and grinning. “Thought you were Dominos. ... everything okay?” Ruby didn’t usually stop by unannounced, but maybe she was there to see Amelia. Even as he asked, Jasper as moving back and gesturing her inside.
Seeing him there, and smiling, made Ruby’s heart jump in a way she’d never imagined, providing her with the confidence to keep moving forward. This was right, it had to be, there was no other way to explain what she was feeling. And maybe he even felt the same way, but hadn’t felt like he could say anything. Their timing had always been off, but maybe it was time to get them both on the same page. “Hey, yeah, not Dominoes,” she laughed lightly, pushing her hair away from her face. “Everything’s fine, promise. I was wondering if you had a few minutes. Like, to talk.”
Needing to talk didn’t usually go hand in hand with everything being fine, and Jasper’s brow arched up a bit further. The dogs were shuffling around behind him, eager to push past him and sniff at Ruby. It was probably time for them to go out anyway. “Yeah sure, uh ... come on in, we can talk out on the back porch? I need to let these morons out anyway,” he suggested. He could grab his hoodie, have a few smokes, see what was on Ruby’s mind, and then maybe she could have pizza with them or something. “Dad’s still at work, and Amelia’s in the tub.”
Ruby knew it wasn’t a great start, but she was pretty sure that ‘I think I love you’ was far worse. She wasn’t sure how to ease into something like that, especially with someone she wasn’t even dating, but she felt like she had to do something or she just might explode. So talking on the back porch was fine. Perfect, even. It seemed normal, even though nothing else did. “Sounds good,” she said, following him in and petting the dogs on the way. “Did she have fun at the party last night?” she asked, referring to Amelia. Ruby had really enjoyed hanging out with her, even if the night had seemed a little bit weird as a whole.
Blissfully oblivious to what was coming, Jasper led the way through the house to the kitchen, stopping long enough to grab his jacket and cigarettes and a pair of house shoes by the door. Ordinarily he might not bother, but if Ruby wanted to talk, they might be out there for a while, and it was cold. Jasper opened the door to the porch and moved aside to let the dogs gallop out. “Uhhh, yeah kinda,” he answered Ruby’s question with a little laugh. “We talked about it this morning, I think a lot of us were kinda ... I dunno, high on something from the dance. She met Jules, but it was a little weird at the time.” Jasper stepped out onto the small wooden porch and found a spot to lean while he tucked a cigarette between his lips. “Did you have fun?”
Had they been high? It didn’t feel like it to Ruby, at least not the kind of highs that she was used to, but things had definitely been a little bit weird. She just couldn’t put her finger on how, other than that she’d felt fantastic at the time. “Yeah,” she smiled. “Everyone seemed to be in a really good mood. It was fun hanging out.” There was a voice in the back of her head that wanted to know how things had gone with Amelia and Jules and what was so weird, but it was squashed down by the overwhelming urge not to talk about Jules at all. She was the elephant in Ruby’s mind, the one holding them back from all that they could be. Jasper just didn’t see it. “Would liked to have spent a little more time with you,” she said, laughing softly as she spoke.
That was an optimistic way to look at it, and if Jasper hadn’t been blurting out all kinds of personal crap and making his sister uncomfortable, he probably would’ve felt the same way. It sure hadn’t bothered him at the time, so whatever they’d been given, it had been pretty strong. Just weirdly asymptomatic. He wasn’t going to strain his brain about it though. He took a drag off of his smoke and offered the pack out to Ruby with a cocked eyebrow. What she said made him grin crookedly. “Yeah? I was apparently weird company, so maybe that was for the best,” he said with a sheepish chuckle. He couldn’t imagine straight up telling Ruby that he thought about fucking guys sometimes, or details about his and Jules’s sex life. Ugh, no thanks.
“I can deal with weird,” Ruby smiled, taking one of the offered cigarettes. Maybe that would help calm her nerves a bit. It might be a bad habit, but she’d do just about anything to feel normal at the moment. She took a moment to light it, inhaling deeply before blowing the smoke away from the both of them. “You know, I always wondered… I wondered why we were just friends,” she started, and then it was like she’d finally started, so she had to keep going, to get it out before she chickened out completely. If she didn’t tell him now, she’d just go home and pine over him like an idiot, like she’d been doing all day. “Like… it seemed like the best thing because anything else was bound to fuck things up. But the more I think about it, the more I think it was the wrong decision, you know? And I know this is completely out of nowhere, but there’s no one else I want to be with and it feels like if I don’t tell you—I mean, I had to tell you. I had to.” And she couldn’t even explain why. Her feelings had just been overwhelming and undeniable, regardless of how spontaneous they felt.
Jasper did not see any of that coming, and his first instinct was to smile when Ruby started, like she had to be joking. But the longer she talked, the more he caught on that she wasn’t joking. She looked earnest and almost hopeful, and Jasper’s chest started to feel tighter as his brow furrowed. He would’ve been a liar if he said he hadn’t thought about dating Ruby, of course, but he’d known her so long, he wasn’t sure how weird that would be. Not to mention the fact that he didn’t have very many real friends, and he wanted to keep the ones he did have. Jasper hadn’t had any real good relationships, so him fucking it up with Ruby had kind of always seemed like a given. And now he was with Jules. “Uh ... well ... fuck, Ruby,” he murmured with a huff, reaching up with his free hand to run fingers through his hair as he tried to put a real sentence together. “What ... I mean, like, where’s all this coming from now?” Jasper couldn’t help but sound a little bewildered.
While she didn’t expect him to run into her arms or anything that dramatic, Ruby had hoped he might be a little more receptive. Instead, he looked confused, which she would’ve known was reasonable on any other day, but today it just filled her with disappointment. “I dunno,” she answered, her voice a little higher than usual, uncertainty flooding in now that she had to deal with the consequences. “I just can’t stop thinking about you and— and I know I sound crazy, but am I really? It’s not that far out of left field, is it?” God, she sounded so desperate! Ruby hated it, this whole conversation, and wondered why she’d gotten so stuck on it, why her feelings felt so big that she couldn’t just let them go. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything, but I got this crazy idea in my head that maybe if you knew…? I dunno. I’m fucking losing my mind.”
It was pretty out of left field, because as far as Jasper knew, they had just always been friends with no unrequited feelings on either side. Ruby was talking like she’d been pining over him for what, months? Years? He was so confused, and Ruby sounded upset, which was pretty upsetting itself. “I mean ... it’s not ... it’s not like I wouldn’t go out with you,” he floundered, not wanting to hurt her feelings. “You’re hot and cool and everything, we just ... I dunno, I didn’t think you were into me like that? We’ve been friends for forever? How come you never said anything before?” Feelings like that didn’t just pop up overnight, especially not between people who’d already spent significant time together. The timing didn’t make sense, especially since he now had a girlfriend he loved and wanted to stay with.
The questions left her uncharacteristically flustered, in large part because she honestly couldn’t explain it to herself. Yesterday she’d been fine, if a little bummed that her date to the dance only said yes because he assumed she’d sleep with him, but even that hadn’t ruined her night. She remembered Jasper looking good at the dance, but not pining after him like she was now. There was no logical explanation for why she’d snap overnight and her inability to connect her feelings to logic left her tugging at a strand of pink hair in frustration. “I dunno. Your friendship’s always meant more to me than that. Most of the people who screw around can’t get back to that. It wasn’t worth it, but-- what the fuck is wrong with me today?” Forced to say it out loud, she could tell that something was wrong, she just didn’t know why. It felt like a punch to the gut, like her heart was breaking and she didn’t know how to stop it. Ruby stumbled back a step and dropped her cigarette, panic flashing in her eyes as she fought a force stronger than herself. “I’m sorry. I don’t-- I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Jasper was officially worried now. He straightened up from where he’d been leaning, his eyes and expression full of concern as he flicked his own cigarette away into the yard. He reached out automatically for Ruby’s arm to steady her. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he was saying, just wanting to calm her down. If it had been some other girl coming over to profess her love for him or whatever, he might’ve laughed her off the porch. But Jasper cared enough about Ruby to take her seriously. “Just ... take a breath. Maybe you’re like, still coming down from something last night? Like I didn’t feel high but everything seemed weird and I said shit I wouldn’t normally say, so ... maybe it’s still in your system. You wanna sit down?”
“I… I… Yeah,” Ruby said, her voice shaking. Sitting would be good. It would help her calm down. Though there was a part of her that thought she might cry and there was no fucking way she was going to do that here. Still, breathing would be good, so she let Jasper guide her to a place to sit. “I don’t feel high, but I didn’t last night either. I just feel… I feel crazy.” Because she loved Jasper, but he didn’t love her and accepting that was crushing. She just couldn’t explain any of it, like how she’d gotten it in her head to begin with. It was there when she woke up and she’d been unable to let it go. “What kind of shit did you say when you were high?” she asked, latching onto that, hoping this was just a really bad trip.
He shuffled over to one of the plastic chairs that served as their deck furniture and didn’t let go of Ruby’s arm until she was sitting. He’d just tossed one, but he felt restless enough to pull out another cigarette to light up. Jasper didn’t offer her one this time, she probably needed as much oxygen as she could get. That in mind, he stood back from her a little bit. “Uh, just ... super personal stuff, to Amelia,” he said, cringing slightly. Considering what Ruby had come over to tell him, he didn’t want to go into detail about how it had been details about his and Jules’s sex life. Or his own apparent half-gayness. Quarter-gayness? Probably not even that. Still. Awkward. “I was kinda like, not hiding anything from anyone though, it was a weird feeling.”
Ruby tried to focus, to pull herself away from panicking long enough to figure out what was going on. Was she experiencing what Jasper had? If so, she’d fought it. Telling him hadn’t come easily. “Why didn’t I tell you last night then? Was I even feeling this last night?” she asked aloud, rubbing her hands over her face and up into her hair. What kind of drugs did this to people? She felt so stupid, but it all felt so real, and it was frightening to think that her mind was playing tricks on her, that she couldn’t trust herself, even when she thought she felt fine. “You can’t tell Jules,” she said, eyes wide as she looked up at Jasper. “Let me figure this out. Cause I can’t— I don’t--“ Ruby stopped and took a deep breath. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone before and right now it feels so real, Jay. And it’s like an itch, the more I ignored it, the worse it got. But if it’s not real…” It was hard for her to imagine such a possibility, but she knew Jules finding out would be bad regardless.
Jasper just shook his head helplessly at the first part, because he didn’t have any answers for her. He felt really bad for her, and he was glad that he hadn’t felt compelled to tell anyone besides Jules that he was desperately in love with them ... that was the thing though, everything he’d blurted out had felt so true. And it still did. Was Ruby really secretly in love with him all the time? It made him feel guilty in the weirdest way, and he wanted to hug her but he knew now probably wasn’t the best time. He looked pained as she begged him not to tell Jules, because all this seemed like something he shouldn’t keep from her, especially if it went beyond today ... but he understood why Ruby didn’t want him to. “Okay, I won’t,” he said slowly, taking another nervous drag off of his cigarette. “Do you wanna ... I mean, is there anything I can do? To help? This all seems ...” Jasper trailed off, because he didn’t really have the words for how it seemed. Abrupt? Uncomfortable? Kinda scary? All of those, but more than that too.
Ruby didn’t think there was anything Jasper could do at this point, since she really didn’t expect him to spontaneously fall in love with her. If he’d felt the same way she did, she would have told him to break up with Jules, but this really wasn’t going the way she thought it would when she’d planned it out in her head. But then, she hadn’t realized something was wrong at the time, easily buying that her feelings were genuine when she didn’t have someone there to poke holes in them. “I should call my dad,” she said after a moment of silence. “I drove over, but… I don’t feel good about driving home.” She had this weird feeling that she might do something stupid, like drive off a bridge in remorse, which felt both insane and like the only thing she had left. That the thought even entered her brain was terrifying. “Can you wait with me till he gets here?”
She must’ve been really feeling bad if she didn’t want to drive herself. Jasper was pretty sure he’d never seen Ruby this upset about anything. Either the drugs were doing a delayed number on her head or something else weird was going on, because this wasn’t like her at all. “Do you want me to take you back?” he offered. At least Ruby wouldn’t have to leave her car at his house, then, or have to explain anything to her dad. “I can walk home after. Just so you don’t ... have to come back later, if you don’t want to.” Because who the hell knew how she would be feeling tomorrow? Or the next day? This was all so confusing to him. There didn’t seem to be much he could do, but he could drive her home at the very least.
She wouldn’t have asked it of him, pretty sure she’d put enough on him to last a lifetime, but the thought of trying to explain this to her father made her feel sick. If he thought she’d been drugged, there’d likely be a trip to the emergency room, plus one to the police, since someone at the school dance had done it. That would draw more attention to this mess, which was the opposite of what she wanted right now. “If you really don’t mind,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself. “My dad’ll freak out if he knows what’s going on and I really want to keep this between us for now.” If she could take it all back and keep it to herself, she would have, but they were past that point and all she could do was damage control.
It was cold out, but it wasn’t that cold, and it would probably do Jasper some good to get the exercise anyway. Or that was what someone responsible would say, anyway. “Yeah, definitely, I don’t mind,” he told her. Jasper took another couple of rushed drags off of his cigarette, then flicked it in the backyard and called for the dogs. “Come on, let’s get you home,” he added in a murmur. He was mostly just concerned, pretty sure this was some weird blip of ... something. But if it wasn’t? They would have to talk about it more. Later. He wasn’t sure he would be able to forget the intensity and desperation in her voice, that would be difficult to shake off, but he wanted to see how she really felt, a few days away from ... this. Jasper opened the back door to let them all back in. “Just lemme get some better shoes on.”
Ruby followed Jasper back into the house, her head cloudy from the entire situation. The whole thing had her shaken up in a way she’d never experienced and she just wanted to go home and hide now. She was praying that this passed, that it really was just the result of a bad trip and not reality because she didn’t know how she’d ever face Jasper again if she continued to feel this way. Love was supposed to be something wonderful, but she just felt awful knowing that it wasn’t returned and that she’d likely lose a good friend over it. That possibility made her feel even worse. “You should let Amelia know,” she said, breaking through her daze for a moment. “In case the pizza gets here.” Ugh, her timing had been horrible. Not that there was ever a good time for something like this.
“Yeah, I will,” Jasper told her. He’d already planned on it. Not to tell Amelia the details through the bathroom door or anything, just that he was running out for a bit, and she should be ready to open the door. Ruby hadn’t told him not to tell her, just Jules, but he already knew he wouldn’t. Not unless this blossomed into some kind of big problem. Jasper was hoping it was just a temporary weirdness or something. Those tended to happen in Point Pleasant. He disappeared down the hall to grab his sneakers and inform his sister that he was leaving for a few. He could already hear her splashing around as she got out and told him through the door that she could handle it. Nodding, Jasper hurried back to Ruby, briefly -- and a big awkwardly -- patting her shoulder before he led the way toward the front door. “Come on,” he murmured. “Where’s your keys?”
It was hard to imagine that this could get any more awkward. It was this that Ruby had always hoped to avoid, why she'd stamped out any feelings that threatened to bloom between them. Because, while Jasper was hot and she was sure they've have fun together for some limited amount of time, it would always result in something like this. His friendship was worth more than a fling, or a summer or whatever amount of time it might have lasted, and she hadn't wanted to lose it. Then, this morning, she'd gotten it in her head that she was in love with him, a feeling that she still couldn't shake despite the pain it was causing her, and she'd gone and done the one thing she'd always wanted to avoid. It made her sick to her stomach. "I drove the truck over," she said, fishing the keys out of her bag. Thank god for that. She couldn't have handled holding on to Jasper from the back of her bike. "I'm sorry," she sighed, her voice smaller than she was used to, almost shaking. "This isn't me."
Something hurt in Jasper’s chest at the sound of her. Ruby had always seemed so strong and sassy to him, just kind of devil-may-care and fun. He loved her as a friend, and while part of him thought that with the right circumstances he could love her more than that, he couldn’t really entertain that idea when his heart currently belonged to Jules. He hated that Ruby was suffering at all because of him though, sudden development or not. “Hey, c’mon,” he murmured, his brow furrowed as he gently took the keys from her. On impulse, Jasper ended up taking her hand instead and pulled her into a hug, firm but ready to let go immediately if she didn’t want it. “Don’t worry about it, okay? We’ll talk about it more later.” He patted her back a little awkwardly.
A hug from Jasper was the best and the worst thing at the moment. It was what she needed, the comfort and support, yet it also brought her close to tears. It had been forever since she last cried, years she would guess, but she was afraid that if she started that she wouldn’t stop. She hugged him back tightly, a lump in her throat as she nodded, unsure she could form words at the moment. This would be easier later, when her feelings for him had passed, as well as the fear. They could talk when she felt normal again, which would hopefully be sooner rather than later. “Thanks,” she said softly when she released him and at least attempted a smile. Maybe someday they would look back on this and laugh, but right now this was the best she could do.
For a fretful moment or two, Jasper was pretty sure Ruby was going to cry. He was bad at comfort, he’d never gotten much of it himself through his life, and even though he cared, it always felt awkward to try and make someone else feel better. Especially girls -- except Amelia, but nine year old problems had always been easy to solve. This one, not so much. He gave Ruby an extra firm squeeze before he let go, and returned her smile with a small one of his own. He cared about her a lot, and he really hoped they could sort this out. Hopefully when all the drugs were out of her system, or whatever was going on. Then everything would be okay. “C’mon, let’s get you home,” he murmured, reaching for the door.