Hostile for the Holidays

24. Stella

TWENTY-FOUR

STELLA

“Jasper’s not coming to your wedding,” I fume the second I walk in the house.

I hold onto my anger, because if I let myself be sad, then I’ll rush back across the street and cry in Jasper’s arms. The way he looked at me. The way he was gutted when I said I hated him.

I’d hoped it would make me feel better, but it did nothing to soothe the ache in my chest.

“Are you serious?” Sadie exclaims, hands waving near her head. “Oh, god. We’re going to have to redo the seating chart.”

I collapse onto the couch.

I’m wet and freezing in Jasper’s t-shirt from our fight in the snow, so I pull a blanket off the back of the couch and wrap it around myself.

Should I care about a fourteen-year-old drawing that isn’t even as good as I remember it being?

Probably not.

But it’s not about the drawing. It’s how cruel Jasper had been. And how his opinion, whether I wanted it to affect me or not, shaped how I saw myself as an artist. How at twelve years old, a time in life where one’s sense of self-worth is fragile and taking shape, yet one’s self-esteem is most often laid in the hands of peers that are struggling to find their own sense of self.

That moment with Jasper and my drawing, willing or not, is a core memory.

Jasper, bare and gently pressing himself inside me for the first time, is, too.

Fuck. How did everything go sideways so fast?

More tears cascade down my cheeks.

“Oh, Stella.” Sadie throws her arms around me. “It’s okay, we’ll figure out the seating chart.”

“It’s not that,” I sob. “I mean this in the nicest way, Sadie, but I don’t give a fuck about the seating chart. I just had a fight with Jasper. And we had sex. It was unbelievable. Like life altering because not only did I come but I think I might be in love with him but then he hurt me.”

“What?!” She rears back, eyes ablaze with rage. “Are you serious? Where? How? I will fucking murder him. They’ll never find his body.”

“No, he didn’t physically hurt me. Emotionally.” I press a hand to my chest. “My heart.”

She wraps me in her arms and rocks me soothingly while I cry.

Jasper framing my drawing. Finding out it was never destroyed and he had it all these years. His feelings for me and the fact that he was never really competing but only wanting me to see him. And I did see him. There were moments over the years where I wondered if there was something more between us but then we’d be right back to fighting and I’d feel silly for letting myself think that.

Because the truth is, over the last twenty years, through our rivalry and competitions, I’d slowly given him pieces of myself.

And tonight, I’d given him everything, only to be left with a bruised heart.