When my phone buzzes across the room, I ignore it. It hummed as I danced, cutting off the music in my headphones, but I didn’t feel like stopping. Whoever it is, this time he doesn’t give up. Dream again. With a sigh, I decide I’ve done enough exercise to give up. I sit back down, walk to the corner table with the big stereo, and pick up the phone.
Royal Alberta Ballet Co. appears on screen. They’re probably wondering if the lead dancer they’ve invested years of development and money into is done screwing around. I haven’t answered them about the spring season. I saw the email and just… didn’t feel like responding.
I slide the green phone symbol across the bottom of the screen and take the call.
Everyone was jealous of the hockey game Jasper and I played when we got back from Ruby Creek, so I spent the afternoon helping Rhett clear a shallow, very icy stretch of the creek near Beau’s still-empty house. to play some Christmas games of shinny.
As far as I know, Beau won’t be back until the new year. He told us ‘mild burns’, but since Harvey’s return, it’s become clear that mild might be an understatement.
I just know that he will be okay and that he will come home. Jasper is looking forward to seeing him.
I’m not sure the man you see now will be the same as he was before he deployed.
Rhett dropped me off at the main house ten minutes ago. It’s snowing, but the bench next to the wishing well is clear. The sky is so full of stars that I take a seat in all my snow gear, lean my head back and stare at the patches of bright light as I wait for Jasper to arrive.
Constellations. Planets. Satellites.
Everything is clearer in Chestnut Springs. Not just the stars.
I remember Jasper sitting in this very spot one rainy summer night. It was the night he told me everything. It was the night I danced for him because I didn’t know what to say. It was the night we became irrevocably tied to each other.
I hear the brittle crunch of tires against packed snow on the gravel main road, followed by the soft rolling sound of hitting the asphalt driveway leading to the main house. When bright white lights turn toward the house, my heart pounds in my chest.
I’ve known Jasper Gervais for eighteen years and I still get excited when I’m about to see him.
I still look forward to him coming home every day.
I still smile when I receive a message.
I will never get tired of him. I’m sure of that.
His SUV passes in front of me and he smiles at me through the window. He seems happy.
Happier than I’ve ever seen him. And I can’t help but hope that I contribute to their happiness.
That I make him happy. Because it makes me fucking happy.
He jumps out, dressed classily in a camel-brown pea coat over a charcoal gray suit. Brown dress shoes on feet. It’s pure sex.
“I’m coming straight from the airport,” he says as he walks around the front of his vehicle and looks at me as if it were his first meal in days.
I shudder under the intensity of his gaze. Its irises combine perfectly with the navy blue sky that covers us like a blanket. His long legs eat the ground and his dress shoes crunch on the compact snow.
-I can see that. You look very elegant, Gervais. I smile and twist a finger. Take a walk. Let me see that ass.
He giggles, a dull noise that I swear makes the air between us vibrate before he stands up and switches places with me.
“I prefer to hold on to yours,” he gasps, gives me a chaste kiss on the lips and places me easily on his lap.
My legs straddle his and his wide palms firmly grip each buttock as he looks into my face and whispers, “I’ve missed you, Sunny.”
I put my eye white.
“It was only two days.”
“Too long,” he grumbles, giving me his characteristic melancholy look. All you’ve done is fly, play hockey and come back.
-Yes, but I like that you are at my games.
” You’ve played better since you and I…” I move my eyebrows suggestively, and his fingers throb my ass.
“Are you trying to take credit for our victories?”
It’s science, Gervais. You can’t argue with it. You were sucking and now you’re not. Your winning streak is going to break records at this rate. My pussy gives good luck. The kingmaker. “No…” I raise a hand. The Maker of the Stanley Cup.
Jasper gives me a flat expression.
“I’m not calling your pussy The Stanley Cup Maker, Sunny.
I giggle, feeling like a girl and giddy sitting on the lap of my childhood love, in the snow, under a starry sky, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. And then I bend my head to kiss him, the cold tips of our noses touching. The stubble on his cheeks cuts through the fine fabric of my gloves and scratches my palms as I hold his handsome face.
When as a child I practiced my choreographies out here, I dreamed of kissing him, of his hands on me, of his warm and safe body under mine.
I thought I loved him then, but I’m not so sure. I was infatuated with him. And now? Now? Is different. We’re different.
“I’ve missed you too, Jas,” I whisper against his lips as I pull away to run my hands through his hair, trying to remember the last time he wore a cap. Maybe when you exercise? Or when we work together at home. Now the cap is more useful for keeping his hair out of his face than for hiding behind it.
It seems that he is no longer hiding. Maybe we both are.
“They called me today,” I continue, observing his bushy eyebrows and the fine wrinkles on his forehead.
-Yeah? His hands rub firm circles over the globes of my buttocks, warming me better than my thermal leggings.
A light snow falls and I watch as a crystalline flake settles on her dark eyelashes, suspended there for a moment until she blinks.
-Yeah. The Sugar Plum Fairy’s backup dancer from the Nutcracker is out with the flu and the lead dancer in the role has Achilles tendonitis that requires rest. I have been asked to take part tomorrow in the last performance before Christmas, since I danced the role last year.
-AND? Are you happy with that?
Being asked by the person you’re with about something shouldn’t seem like a big deal.
But now I realize that no one has ever asked me.
This is new for me. It doesn’t jump out to tell me whether or not I should be happy about something. He just asks me how I feel. As if what goes on in my head, in my heart, deserves your attention and respect.
And I think I love him even more for that.
“Yes,” I whisper, getting sentimental as I stare at him. I think so.
Jasper’s lips curve into a soft smile, still shiny from the lip gloss from the welcoming kisses I’ve given him. His dimples peek out from behind his stubble and I almost fainted on the spot.