Re: Jasper & Jules (& Gavin)
He shook his head hard and pulled his arm out of Jules’s grasp as he turned to look at her again, but he didn’t keep running, not yet at least. “Yeah I’m pissed, because I just found out about Clint and Ethan,” Jasper said, his voice strained and unsteady. “And from fucking Elodie? Ethan, really Jules?” A few tears spilled over and he swiped roughly at them. “Logan isn’t a threat to you, I’m not gonna -- not gonna settle down and have a family someday with Logan, for fuck’s sake. There’s so much about you that he can’t give me and would never want to, you know? It was just -- it was ...” He waved a hand, not really finding the right words for what it was. Not just sex, but not romantic in the same way he felt about Jules. He couldn’t seem to make her understand and it definitely wasn’t happening today, so he gave up that train of thought. “But Ethan and Clint ... don’t tell me that you wouldn’t be with a guy exactly like that if I wasn’t here, Jules. And how happy your mom would be about it, and how well taken care of you would be, and how much less bullshit it would be ...”
Elodie? How the hell had Elodie found out? That instinctive urge to storm back into the reception and find the other girl was strong. She had no idea what she would do, but it would probably involve grabbing hair and scratching nails. However, the mention of her mother drew an exasperated breath from her lips and Jules wished she could just close her eyes and scream. Scream until her lungs burned and her voice gave out and every pent up emotion she had been burying for the past few months was just depleted and gone. "Ethan isn't a threat to you either," Jules said, struggling to keep the desperation out of her voice. She knew he was insecure about Ethan but didn't he realize how insecure she was about Logan? It wasn't like Jules had ever hid it really well. "I don't know what kind of guy I'd be with if you weren't around and I don't give a shit what my mother thinks or what she would want. If I did, do you think this would have ever gone beyond what it was in the first place?" Jules nearly lifted her hand to touch him again but let it fall back to her side, not wanting to piss him off further. "I don't want either of them. I was sad and stupid and trying to figure out my own shit. All I knew and all I know is that I love you. And we weren't together anymore and I felt lost and I'm sorry."
Jasper didn’t really care what Ms. Cooper wanted either, it was just another way he fell short of what Jules deserved. Clint was from Overlook, Ethan obviously came from money, that rich boy smarminess just oozed off of him. God, it made his stomach turn to think about those big well-manicured hands on Jules’s bare skin. Had he made her come? She said it didn’t work but did she enjoy it? If Jasper had stayed gone would she be with Ethan? She’d brought him to Gavin’s goddamn house, another thing that rankled Jasper. Was this how Jules felt about Logan all the time? It sucked. They seemed like such different situations to him though ... maybe because he was on his particular side of it. All of this just sucked all around. The last part of what she said took a bit of the angry wind out of his sails. Jasper could certainly relate to being sad and stupid, that was pretty much his whole life now. Maybe it always had been. His shoulders slumped a little and he scrubbed at his face with both hands, trying to swallow the dumb tears back. Ethan probably didn’t cry in front of her. “What do you still love about me?” he asked her in a defeated mutter once he’d dropped his hands. “Because it can’t be ... this. Is it just a habit now? Or you want to keep believing it out of guilt?”