Notes: So, what the heck is this, then? Well...a few people in the comments for the last post mentioned that they liked Jasmine, and I found myself agreeing that yeah, she's pretty cool. Then I started thinking about her perspective on things, how well she would know Ryan, what she'd be thinking of Ben, and then, well, this happened. It's a Jasmine POV on her relationship with Ryan and what she thinks of Ben, and okay, it's not perfect. I wrote it fast and I'm putting it up fast and I've still got to do my regular Love Letters post, so don't worry that this is taking the place of it. But I just had to write it, and then I just had to share. Consider this a bonus story:)
Title: Love Letters Side Note #1: Jasmine's POV
***
It took Jasmine Napuna exactly one month to go from meeting
Ryan Kuzniar to liking him, then to loving him, on to worrying about him, and
finally to mothering him. Mothering was
a strong instinct with her and Ryan looked like he could use it, and those
urges had shaped a lot of their interactions over the course of their
friendship.
Jasmine first met Ryan when he queried her about publishing
his graphic novel five years ago.
Coelocanth Press had only been running for eighteen months, and while Jasmine
had published three different web comics and a handful of small run prints of
some genre-defying stories, she hadn’t found a project to fall in love with,
not to mention the press wasn’t quite breaking even yet. Accepting email queries had mostly led to a
lot of frustration over some very stupid stuff, and Jasmine honestly thought
that if she hadn’t found Ryan’s work when she did, Coelocanth might have had a
short life span.
Reading the email was a pleasant surprise. Opening the attached artwork was a
revelation. Beautiful, haunting, even
the deliberately drab pictures seemed brighter for his use of light and shadow. It was nothing more than character sketches
and a few completed panels that Jasmine could already tell needed some work,
but for the first time in months the idea of doing the work didn’t make her
cringe. Instead it excited her.
She emailed back her acceptance, he emailed his thanks, they
started chatting and before she knew it Jasmine was emailing or texting Ryan
several times a day, and not just about his project. When she found out he lived in Boston, it
seemed natural to meet up. When they
actually came face to face, in a hip little coffee shop that she’d picked but
quietly abhorred, her first impression was, “This is the most adorable person
I’ve ever seen in real life.”
Dark, messy hair, unnaturally blue eyes and a smile that
seemed to consume his whole face, Ryan looked like he was still a teenager, not
a college graduate. He had a thin white
t-shirt on, and bandages on his left arm from his wrist to his shoulder. Jasmine looked at it assessingly as they
shook hands. “New tattoo?”
“Yeah,” Ryan said, grinning a little bashfully and running
his free hand through his hair. “I went
to the expo last week and fell in love with one of the designs, and the guy’s
trying to make a name for himself so he gave me a discount, provided I walk
around in short-sleeved shirts whenever I’m outside for a while.”
“I see.” Probably the
guy gave Ryan a discount because he was too cute for words, really, but
whatever made the kid happy. “Let’s get
a table and we can talk about the first book’s story arc.”
“Sure.”
Talking with Ryan was so easy. He was friendly, empathetic and listened to
her suggestions, although he didn’t agree with them all. Particularly when it came to the Phantom.
“Why the mystery?” Jasmine asked as she sipped her second
cup of tea. “You could make the Phantom
a real ally for her, instead of something that might be mistaken for a
dream. Janie is a great character, don’t
get me wrong, but if you plan to take this series as far as I thinkboth of us
would like, she’s going to need a strong supporting cast.”
“A big part of the appeal of the Phantom comes from the
mystery,” Ryan explained. “He’s supposed to be this ephemeral creature,
something between Janie’s dreams and her reality. He’s the hint of something greater, something
special. There’ll be plenty of other
characters to pad things out along the way, but the connection between Janie
and the Phantom is never going to be a personal one. Intimate, but not…y’know, personal.”
“Hmm.” Jasmine wanted
to argue some more about that, she wanted to get to the root of the Phantom and
find out what was really going on, but it wasn’t important for the first
volume. She could afford to bide her
time.
Janie and the Phantom’s
first volume was a shocking hit for Coelocanth Press. Jasmine did her best with marketing, but in
the end it wasn’t all that necessary—word of mouth had this book taking off
like a rocket in their relatively small circle of publishing. By the end of the first six months it was
selling well enough that Coelocanth was actually making a profit, and then the
unthinkable happened.
Neil Gaiman read it.
He read it and he liked
it, and wrote Jasmine to tell her so, completely without prompting. Given permission to use his praise for
marketing, she did so, which got them a lot more attention. After the first year, volume two was ready to
come out, and volume one had already been translated into Japanese and was
selling decently there over there as well.
Jasmine took on other projects; her press couldn’t subsist
on a single book no matter how good it was, but for Ryan there were no other
projects. Janie and the Phantom was his life, his fixation, and whatever he
used as his muse wasn’t wavering. It
took a long time to produce something with such thoroughness and detail,
though, and while the money was good it still meant that Ryan was basically
living in a closet, subsisting on ramen noodle and radishes (which he ate raw,
ugh, Jasmine couldn’t get her head around that) and wearing the same four
outfits in a rotating schedule, depending on how often he could get laundry
done. Jasmine saw it, and she hated it.
Ryan deserved a better existence, and asking him to move in with her was a
natural step.
It was never sexual between them, of course. Ryan made no effort to disguise the fact that
he was gay. Jasmine didn’t mind; she was
bi herself, and didn’t care who Ryan was fucking as long as he was safe about
it. They talked all the time, about work
and about everything else, and living together was a very easy transition. Plus, Jasmine could indulge her caregiving instincts
and feed him now, because goddamn, the boy was too skinny. Jasmine hated cooking for just one; she had a
large family living back in Guam and had been the oldest girl in a family with
seven kids, and cooking for a crowd was something she had learned early
on. She and Ryan got along beautifully,
and making room in her apartment and life for Ryan kind of felt like Jasmine
was getting a gift.
Some things, though…some things were a little odd. Like the fact that Ryan didn’t really
date. Or rather, he dated, he went to
clubs and talked up guys and occasionally brought them home, but he didn’t
often go on more than one date with the same guy. It wasn’t because his dates weren’t willing;
Jasmine could see that they were, most of them reluctant to leave once the
morning-after breakfast was done. Ryan
was sweet but firm about seeing them off though.
“Why?” she asked once after a particularly handsome guy was
shown the door. “He seemed like he was
really into you.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said with a little sigh. “I’m just not interested in something serious
right now.”
“Bad break-up?”
“Not…exactly.”
Jasmine took in the blush, the way he didn’t quite meet her
eyes, and figured it out. Unrequited love. Ryan was in love with someone, and that
someone wasn’t in the picture anymore.
Maybe an ex, maybe not, but whoever it was, their influence was strong
enough to keep him from starting over with someone new, at least for now.
Sad, but not her business.
Jasmine didn’t ask and Ryan didn’t tell, and things went back to normal
for a while. They worked on Janie and the Phantom, went out to clubs
together, Ryan got to know every member of her large family and Jasmine learned
a little bit about his. He didn’t talk
to them often, usually a phone call with his parents once a month and occasional
texts between him and his siblings. He
went home for a few days every May around his birthday, and spent one week in
Concord for Christmas. When he came back
he was pale and quiet and unhappy, and Jasmine plied him with good tequila and
better food and made him talk to her and her mama until Ryan was happy
again. So he didn’t get along with his
family and he didn’t seem to want a boyfriend.
Fine, whatever, Jasmine could handle that. She’d be the family he didn’t have, and
they’d commiserate over failed dates together.
Then she found out about The Letters.
The letters were a funny thing. When Ryan wasn’t working or playing or
teasing her, he generally had a book in his hand. He would watch TV with her but he preferred
books, and sometimes instead of a book, he read letters. The same letters, over and over. There weren’t many of them, and they were
well-worn, a little soft around the edges where they’d been handled, but
occasionally he Ryan got a large padded envelope in the mail from his brother,
and those days he was always manic and smiling, and wouldn’t come out of his
room for hours.
Jasmine assumed for a long time that the letters were from a
family member, but when she finally asked about it after finding Ryan reading
the same one—she could tell by the tiny stain on the top corner—over and over,
he ducked his head for a second, a sure sign he was embarrassed and trying to
decide what to say to her.
She tried to make it easy on him. “You wouldn’t read them so much if they were
from a family member, would you?”
“No…well, except they kind of are, I guess.”
Jasmine sat down next to Ryan on the couch, and he
immediately snugged up next to her. He
craved contact, and it wasn’t unusual for them to fall asleep in the same bed,
entirely platonic but undeniably close.
It made Jasmine wonder about his childhood, honestly. All Ryan ever said about it was that it was
“formal,” whatever that meant.
“So, who’re they really from?” she asked gently, stroking
his knee with the back of her hand.
“They’re from a guy named Benjamin DeWitt. He’s—so, okay, this is weird, but he’s my
brother’s pen pal.”
Yeah, weird…that was one word for it. “Your brother the football jock, ex-army guy,
tough cop brother? Brody has a pen pal?”
“I know, right?” Ryan
grinned. “Brody’s the last person you’d
expect to do this kind of thing, but they’ve been writing each other since he
was in elementary school. They’ve kept
it up for almost twenty years now, it’s like looking through a time capsule. Anyway, Brody kept all of Ben’s letters, and
when I was little I found them and started reading them for myself. I kind of got a little addicted to reading
about Ben. He’s just so interesting, you
know? He’s descended from Benjamin
Franklin, he’s a researcher and a historian, he lives in Denver, and I think
he’s writing a book right now. He got a
publishing deal last month, at any rate.”
“How do you know that?”
Ryan blushed and Jasmine put it all together. “The envelopes are full of letters, aren’t
they. Your brother gives them to you
once he’s read them.”
“Yeah.”
“Does Ben know?”
Because this was the kind of thing that a person might consider creepy.
Ryan shrugged. “I
have no idea. Probably not, but it
doesn’t matter. Brody and Ben are never
going to meet up, they only write letters.
Well, Ben writes, Brody’s too lazy to do that now, he usually texts. And since Brody’s never going to meet him,
the odds of me meeting him are next to none, so he won’t know.”
It seemed like kind of a thin justification to Jasmine,
especially considering how protective Ryan was of the letters and how invested
he seemed in Ben. Jasmine was pretty
sure that this was the mystery man, the one Ryan was fixated on, the reason he
couldn’t go past a first date with anyone.
Part of her wanted to encourage Ryan to just man up and go meet him
somehow, but more of her wanted to take those letters and hide them, or burn
them, anything to get them out of Ryan’s sight.
Because it was kind of hopeless either way, hopeless and strange and
yeah, a little creepy, and Jasmine didn’t want Ryan to waste his affection on
inanimate, paper, on a man who only existed in his mind and on the page.
But she didn’t say any of this to Ryan. That would have been cruel. Instead she
settled for distracting him. “Wanna
watch Game of Thrones?”
Ryan refolded the letter and put it aside. “Sure.”
And there was much delicious angsting.
Later that night when Ryan went to bed, he forgot to take
the letter with him. Jasmine hesitated,
staring at it for a long time before she finally picked it up. Just a peek, right? One look at one letter, what harm could it
do? She opened the letter up and started
to read.
Brody,
I’m
finally out of there! I didn’t really
know how I’d feel once I got away from my mother and got to college, but I love
it. Columbia is amazing, and New York
might as well be an entirely different continent for all the differences here. It’s like being let out of a prison without
even knowing you were a prisoner until you’re suddenly free. I feel like I can do anything here, be
anything here, have anything here. I
don’t even know what to want yet, but at least I’m not afraid to try anymore.
I—
Jasmine put the letter down abruptly. This was…man, it was intensely personal. Jasmine
was surprised that Ryan’s brother had been okay with him reading it even once;
the fact that he’d given it to Ryan
to keep was mind-boggling. From the
little Jasmine knew of Brody Kuzniar, he was pretty much a man’s man, all about
sports and beer and his work and his family.
He and Ryan weren’t close, but they had some kind of understanding that
Jasmine didn’t get.
Not your business,
she reminded herself. Jasmine left the
letter on the table, turned out the light and went back to her bedroom.
When Lenora moved back to Boston from Los Angeles with a
boyfriend in tow, Jasmine immediately introduced her one of her oldest friends
to her newer one. Lennie and Ryan got
along like a house on fire, and Grant was cool once he realized that Ryan’s
hugging and handsiness didn’t mean that he was trying to steal Lennie
away. Lennie and Grant looking for a
place to live turned into Jasmine and Ryan joining them on a quest for the
perfect apartment; the timing was perfect, their lease was about up and the
place that they found would save them four hundred dollars a month. They all moved in together, Lennie and Grant
rented a studio for their sculpting and metalwork, and things were good. Ryan never wanted for company, Jasmine had
plenty of people to cook for and they all got along beautifully. Life was sweet and fun and exciting, and if
Ryan sometimes took out a Letter and got that look on his face that Jasmine
hated, well, at least she was getting better at distracting him from it. With a little more time and effort on her
part Ryan might not go to letters written by a man he’d never met for comfort.
Then Brody died, and everything went to hell.
They were both hung over New Year’s Day, and had fallen
asleep together in Jasmine’s bed. Around
8 am Ryan’s phone started playing the Joey Ramone version of What A Wonderful World, his mother’s
ringtone. Ryan had just gotten back from spending
Christmas with his family two days earlier and it was strange for his mom to be
calling so quickly.
Ryan groaned and stuck his head under a pillow, tacit
permission to ignore it, and Jasmine tried to get back to sleep. But she called again. Then again.
By the fourth time, Jasmine rolled over, fumbled through Ryan’s clothes
until she found his phone and stuck it under his pillow with him. “Just answer her.”
“Mmmph.” Ryan lifted
the pillow up and sighed, then answered.
“Hey, Happy New Year, mom.” A few
seconds later he sat straight up in bed, all of his languor gone. “Why do I need to be sitting down? What happened, what’s wrong?” Jasmine sat up next to him and watched his
face. “He…oh my god. What?”
Ryan scrubbed a hand through his hair; tears were already appearing in
his wide, bloodshot eyes. “When? How?”
He listened in silence for a minute, then said, “Oh god, mom, don’t cry,
please, shit, don’t cry…” Ryan seemed to
suddenly realize that he was crying,
and he tilted his head up toward the ceiling and wiped his face. “Of course I’ll come back down. Jesus, how are Cheryl and the kids handling
it?”
Holy shit, this was serious.
Jasmine’s concern went from red alert to major overload when Ryan said,
“Have you…are there any arrangements for the funeral yet?” Oh god, someone was dead. Cheryl, that was Ryan’s sister-in-law…Brody,
then? Oh, no.
“Yeah. Yeah, I
know. Of course I will. Yeah.
I love you too, mom. I’ll see you
soon, okay? Okay…I know, I love you
too. I know…mom…” Ryan’s voice broke. “Mom, go be with Cheryl, okay? She needs you right now, the kids will need
you. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Okay.
I love you.” Ryan hung up the
phone and just stared at it for a moment.
“Is it Brody?” Jasmine asked hesitantly.
“Yeah,” Ryan said, his voice sounding kind of far away. “He was hit by a car this morning while he
was on patrol. He died at the scene.”
“Oh Ry, I’m so sorry.”
Jasmine leaned over and wrapped him up in her arms. Ryan let her hold him for a moment, felt the
tremors than ran through him, but he didn’t break down. The tears didn’t stop, but he was fighting
them.
“I have to go home,” Ryan said, pulling back way too
soon. His jaw was tight and he was pale,
but it was clear that he wasn’t going to let himself go. “I need to shower and pack. Can you get online and find me the quickest
flight to Concord?”
“Of course,” Jasmine agreed.
“But honey, is that…I mean, isn’t there anything else I can do? I could go with you, if you want.” She wanted to help him, wanted to be strong
and be there for him to lean on.
“It’s better if you don’t.”
Ryan leaned in and kissed her cheek, and Jasmine realized with a start
that she was crying as well, and Ryan was comforting
her. “I’ll be okay.” He got out of bed and headed for his room,
and Jasmine realized to her shame that Ryan was a lot tougher than she’d given
him credit for. She dried her eyes on
the edge of her nightgown, got up and headed for her computer. If Ryan could hold it together then so could
she.
He flew out that afternoon, silent and solemn and wearing a
suit that she’d never seen him in; Jasmine hadn’t even realized Ryan owned any formal
suits. The tie was nice, though; it
brought out his eyes. Ryan left and
Jasmine worried and promised that she’d call him every night.
The funeral was set for a week out. Jasmine wanted to buy Ryan tickets that would
bring him home right after, but she figured his family might need him
longer. The day of the funeral she
called in the morning, just to check in, and he sounded okay—subdued, but
okay. That evening, though…
“What happened?” she asked immediately after he answered the
phone.
“What do you mean?”
“You sound perky.
It’s a little weird.” Especially
weird in light of the fact that they’d buried his brother that morning.
“I…huh. I guess I
kind of am. Not, not happy or anything, but…” Ryan drew a deep breath. “Ben came to the funeral.”
“Brody’s pen pal?”
Ben who kept Ryan emotionally unavailable, Ben of the many letters and
no face time?
“Yeah. I sent him a
notice, but I didn’t really think he’d come.
He did though, and after Cheryl was a complete bitch to him I took him
out, and we sat and talked for hours and hours, and now I’m wearing his tie.”
“Wait, what?” Wearing
his tie? “Did you get laid today, Ryan?”
“No, Jesus!” He
sounded defensive and more than a little angry, and Jasmine felt like smacking
her own forehead. “I wouldn’t do that on
the day of my brother’s fucking funeral, and thanks for thinking so much of
me.”
“I’m sorry, that was so inappropriate of me,” she
apologized. “I’m just surprised, that’s
all. I never thought anyone would ever
meet him.”
“Me neither.”
Ooh, still terse.
Jasmine would have to tease it out of him. “Sooo…what’s he like? Is he as good looking as the picture in his
book?” Because of course Ryan had the
man’s book; he’d even read the damn thing.
“Even better.”
“High praise,” Jasmine said, remembering how Ryan had sighed
over that picture.
“I know, I didn’t think it was possible, but he’s so
handsome. And he’s smart and funny, and
he knows I read his letters and he doesn’t even mind!”
“Really? Wow.” That was rather gracious, all things
considered. “Nice guy.”
“I know, he’s almost too good to be real.”
“How did you end up with his tie?”
Ryan launched into the story and Jasmine settled back on the
couch, happy to listen but getting a growing feeling of nervous anticipation,
as though something inexorable was about to change their lives. She just hoped she’d be able to ride the wave
instead of getting pulled under.
Ryan came home after another week, and Jasmine figured out
pretty fast that nine times out of ten these days, if he was on the phone he
was talking to Ben. Benjamin DeWitt
became a tangible presence in their apartment; even Lennie and Grant knew about
him, and gave Ryan shit about his long-distance boyfriend accordingly, but Ryan
just shrugged off everyone else’s opinions.
He was stuck on Ben, completely enamored, and Jasmine was smart enough
to know that she didn’t want to draw a line in the sand for Ryan’s
affections. Maybe it would be good for
him, talking things out with Ben. Maybe
they could be friends. Maybe they could
even be more, although she doubted it.
When Ryan got a box in the mail full of the rest of Brody
and Ben’s letters from his mom he was over the moon with happiness. And Ben, man, somehow he just got it, knew the right thing to say and
kept Ryan happy, all without making him uncomfortable. Gracious, that was the guy’s biggest descriptor
in Jasmine’s mind. Gracious and kind and
clearly interested, or he wouldn’t be so tolerant of Ryan texting him at all
hours of the day and night.
That kind of commitment deserved a little boost, so Jasmine
took it upon herself to call up the organizers for the MileHiCon in Denver and
see if they were interested in expanding their panels to include Ryan. They were, and they even ended up paying his
airfare and hotel costs, although Jasmine had been ready to foot the bill and
just buy fewer groceries for a while, maybe pick up a couple of shifts at the
bar.
Ryan was rapturous about the news, of course. “I’m going to Denver?” he asked her when she
told him about the con. “Seriously?”
“Good timing, huh?” she asked.
“Really good timing.
Suspiciously good, in fact.” He
was trying to be cool about it but that grin kept breaking through, the grin
Jasmine loved, and that only seemed to be on his face lately when he was
talking to Ben. He came around the table
and threw his arms around her neck.
“Omigod, I love you so much!
You’re the best friend ever, you’re amazing, you’re perfect!”
“You’re babbling,” she said, but she hugged him back
happily. This was the Ryan she knew and
loved, not the quiet, reserved man who’d been managing his grief so carefully
for the last few months. “Are you going
to tell Ben?”
“Of course! He can
meet me there, we can…” Ryan’s voice
trailed off, and when he pulled away his expression was anxious. “Oh no, what if he doesn’t want to meet me?”
“Why wouldn’t he want to meet you?”
“Because, I don’t know, because we’re not…I mean, we’re just
friends, right? Because he doesn’t like
me enough to meet up with me, or because I remind him of Brody, or—”
“You and Brody are almost nothing alike,” Jasmine told
him. “Ben’s not spending all his free
time chatting you up on the phone because you remind him of his pen pal. He’s talking with you because he likes
you. Now go call him and tell him you’re
coming to Denver.”
“Okay.”
“Good.”
They stared at each other.
“Okay, I’m going.”
“Good, you should be going.”
“I’ll call him.”
“So call him
already!”
“But what if—”
“Oh, for the love of god, I’ll do it.” Jasmine reached around and grabbed Ryan’s
phone out of his back pocket and found Ben’s contact info, along with a
decadent picture of him in a suit. “Wow,
hottie alert.”
“Shut up,” Ryan said, snatching his phone back. “I’m calling, okay? I’m calling him.”
“Good.”
And of course everything was fine.
Jasmine heard almost nothing from Ryan during the con, not
that she’d expected to. He had panels,
he had Q and A’s, and he had Ben. She
was trying really, really hard not to be jealous of Ben. She went shopping with Lennie and pounded on
metal for a while with Grant and was finally feeling back to her old self when
she went to pick up Ryan at Logan International. And then when she saw him, she knew.
“Oh thank god,” she said as she walked up to Ryan, “you
finally got laid.”
“Say it a little louder,” Ryan told her as he opened his arms
for a hug. “Not everyone within a
hundred feet quite heard you, I’m sure.”
But he was practically vibrating with happiness, and Jasmine held him
tightly and even picked him up for a second.
“Omigod, stop!” Ryan laughed.
They hugged and he kissed her cheek and for a moment everything was
perfect.
“I take it the con went well then,” Jasmine said when they
finally separated.
“So well.
Unbelievably well.” They headed
for parking, Jasmine picking up the spare backpack that Ryan had somehow
acquired and that was probably filled with free schwag.
“That’s excellent. So
when is he coming out here? I want to
meet him.”
Silence.
“Ryan?”
“I don’t know.”
Uh-oh. “You didn’t
make plans to see each other again?”
“Not specifically, no.”
Jasmine must have looked as astonished as she felt, because Ryan got
defensive. “I’m sure it’ll happen, I
just don’t know when! He’s got a lot of
work to do getting stuff ready for his next book, and it’s not like we’re not
busy here, too.”
Ryan was very clearly just as miserable as he was happy,
which was strange but the kind of dichotomy he somehow excelled at pulling
off. Jasmine’s first instinct was to
steal his phone, call up Benjamin DeWitt and give him a piece of her fucking
mind for leaving Ryan in a state of uncertainty. Ryan wouldn’t thank her for that, though, so
she cleared her throat and changed the subject.
“Tell me more about the con.” He
did, and the ride home was bearable because of it. Ryan went straight to his room when he got
back, barely sparing a moment to hug Lennie and Grant, who both looked at
Jasmine curiously.
“Is he all right?” Lennie asked.
“Hell if I know,” Jasmine snapped. “It’s not like he’d let me do anything about
it if he wasn’t. I need to cook
something.”
“I’ve got chicken on the cutting board, I was going to
make—”
“No, I need to
cook something, Lennie!” Cooking calmed
Jasmine down, way more than working or exercising or drinking did.
“Then you can help me,” Lennie said calmly, standing up and
handing her Wii controller to Grant, who took it without comment. His stoicism was a balm on days like
today. “And don’t yell at me, please.”
“Sorry.” They went
into the kitchen and prepped the food in silence for a while before Jasmine
opened up and told Lennie what was bothering her.
“I mean, if he really loves him they would have had
something planned, right?” Jasmine demanded as she seasoned the rice. “What kind of guy lets his brand-new lover
fly away without setting up some kind of meeting?”
“They’re still learning about each other,” Lennie said as
she chopped up some bok choy. “The
relationship lines aren’t so clear yet.
I’ve been there. Heck, I wasn’t
sure Grant was going to come back to Boston with me until two weeks before I
left, and we’d been together for three years by then.”
“Why didn’t he tell you?”
“Because he assumed I knew, apparently.” Lennie rolled her eyes. “Men.
He was genuinely shocked to find out I was upset about it. He asked me why I would even think that he
was staying behind, since I was the love of his life.”
“That’s sweet…”
“And obnoxious, yeah.
Plus it took forever to figure out how to ship his pneumatic hammer
across the country.” They looked at each
other and smiled. “It’s got to be even
harder with two guys trying to figure each other out,” Lennie continued. “Ryan doesn’t like to ask for the things he
wants and who knows what Ben’s hang-ups are?
If it’s meant to be they’ll work it out.”
Ugh, patience.
Jasmine hated when people counseled patience, but in this case Lennie
was probably right. Her interfering
quota was already maxed out thanks to the con.
So she didn’t say anything when she heard Ryan ask Ben when he was
coming to visit, and she didn’t say anything when she realized that he’d stopped asking when Ben was going to
come visit. She didn’t even say anything
when she realized what Ryan was working on in his spare time, a haunting
portrait that was so filled with emotion that it could have been a map of Ryan’s
heart. Jasmine didn’t say anything and
Ryan was more affectionate than ever with her, needing a physical outlet for
all of the feelings he wasn’t expressing.
It wasn’t great, but at least the men were still talking. Maybe one day Ben would pull his head out of
his ass and realize that he had a good thing going with Ryan, but that even
good things needed proper attention if they were going to survive.
Then one day, all of a sudden, there was yelling and running
out of the apartment and the stunning surprise of Benjamin DeWitt, here in
Boston, holding onto Ryan like his life depended on it. Seeing them embrace actually made Jasmine’s
throat tight, which meant it took her a little longer to yell, “Hey! Quit fucking in the street, guys, get the
hell up here!”
Ben DeWitt, the author, the icon, the unconscious
manipulator of her best friend’s hopes and fears in the flesh. Well, good.
Time to see what all the fuss was about.
