yours.

[19] Miles

After I pay with my phone, Jasper and I step off to the side to wait for our cones. I continue to make fun of Jasper's ice cream taste, and minutes later, we're called to pick up our desserts. Both cones are handed to me by the purple-haired employee I caught making eyes at me earlier, and I take them wordlessly before turning to hand one to Jasper. 

Our fingers brush in the exchange. He yanks his hand back as if burned, glancing away like he's too scared to meet my eye.

Friends, I remind myself, my gaze dropping to the sugary cone in my fist. We're just friends. Nothing else.

"Tell me what you think," I say, taking my first lick of my ice cream. I immediately relax, reveling in the sweet familiarity of the dessert. So good.

"Of what?" Jasper's stare is blank and slightly unfocused, and I watch as he slowly returns to me. "Oh, the... the ice cream?"

"Yeah?" I laugh a little. "What else--"

"Nothing, shut up," Jasper cuts in, his usual irritation recovering. He tastes the ice cream, and his expression slowly melts into one of muted satisfaction. "I like it."

"Yes!" I pump my free fist in triumph. "He likes it! Ladies, and gentlemen, he likes--"

"Stop, stop, no." Jasper ducks into the crowd in front of me, trying to create distance between us. I follow him to a less crowded section of the boardwalk. "Why do you love embarrassing me?"

"I don't--"

"You do. First with my father, then with all these people..." He huffs in frustration and glares up at me through dark lashes. "You hate me, don't you?"

The joking accusation feels like an unexpected knife to the gut, and I hurry to reassure him, "No, no, of course I don't."

But he's not done. "I mean, how am I even meant to see my father again?" he continues, taking an anxious lick of his ice cream. "He's going to start asking me about baseball, which I know nothing about, and I'm going to have to admit to lying..." I can tell he's getting pretty worked up, and I try to intervene, but he just keeps rambling. "And then he'll be angry with me, again--"

"Again?"

He seems startled by this simple confession and glances away, toward the vendor advertising airbrush T-shirts to our right. "Have you ever gotten one of these?"

I place a gentle hand on his back. Why, I have no idea. It just seems... right. "Your dad gets mad a lot?" I know I might be overstepping, but I just want to make sure he's okay. Which isn't strange at all, because we're friends, and friends care about each other. Right?

Jasper's muscles tighten under my palm. He looks up at me, eyes frantic, and a foreign sense of dread dawns on me. Like I've just realized something big and possibly urgent, but... I don't know what. "No?" he tries, and I lower my hand back to my side. It's clear he doesn't want to talk about this.

So, I motion to the T-shirt stand and ask, "Do you want one? I can buy you one if you want."

Instead of answering, he cuts in front of me, ducking between two people to exit the boardwalk altogether. I chase after him and catch up to him on the sands of the beach, twenty feet away from the tide.

"Way to give me a warning," I mutter, then follow his gaze out to the waves. He eats his ice cream absentmindedly, and though he's only standing two feet from me, he seems much farther.

"You grew up here?" he asks softly, and I nod. "Hmm."

I chew on the remains of my cone. "Yeah. It's always been cool. And summers are great, with times like this." I watch him warily as his gaze scans the horizon. "Ice cream. On the beach. With friends."

The last word seems to register with him, and he glances up at me, a new warmth in his brown eyes. "Really?" Something passes between us, some current I can't name. 

Bumping my shoulder against his, I repeat, "Really."

* * *

Done with our ice cream cones, we walk empty-handed to the edge of the beach. "And... that's pretty much it," I finish narrating. "The beach, the boardwalk--"

"What's that?" Miles points to a massive, vacant concrete lot up ahead. "I mean, what's it for?"

My mood darkens. "That's where the county sets up this carnival thing every summer. And they also do a Winter Wonderland near Christmastime, but it's usually too warm to really feel like 'winter.'"

"Have you ever been?"

The genuine curiosity in his voice surprises me. "Yeah, unfortunately. My mom makes me go with my sisters every year. It's just a bunch of Lesley crying and Chelsea being stressed."

"And you causing trouble, I'm sure."

I grin at him. "Only sometimes."

Jasper stares out at the lot. "When is this carnival meant to arrive?"

"A few days from now, I think."

"Okay." We stand there, looking out at the lot before Jasper walks on, back in the direction we came from.

I rush to join him. "Where are you going now?"

"Home," he says easily. "I'm hungry."

"We can get something out, if you want," I offer, stepping around a couple lounging on the sand. "We don't have to go back home yet."

Jasper eyes me. "Why do you never have anything to do? Shouldn't you have a job, or something?"

I shrug. "Don't need one." At Jasper's raised eyebrow, I amend, "Okay, I can't really... get one. And I don't want one, either."

"So you got rejected."

"Not many places are hiring," I defend. Which is, of course, a lie. Sorry I can't be like Chelsea and get some incredible "paid internship" at a huge corporation, I think wryly. It's not going to happen.

Jasper clearly doesn't believe me. Sticking his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, he continues along our path, his mind already made up about heading home. As for me, it's all I can do to follow him and hope the weird, anxious feeling in my stomach he's giving me goes away... sometime soon.