Secrets

Countdowns and Career Paths

Calvin lay wide awake as he heard his father talking to his mother downstairs. It was risky laying beside Jasper, who was still sleeping, while his father was home. Still, he lay there with an arm around him, flat on his back, listening to him breathe on his clothes. He would smell like Jasper for a while after this, he knew, but he didn't mind. He was happy his mother always came home before his father did, since he'd halfway woken up when she had come up to check on them. His blood rushed through his head, making him more tired than he already was, and he rubbed his eyes.

He wondered what Jasper must have been thinking when he buried his face into his pillow hours before. He wondered if he really should have given Jasper his journal that day like he said he would, instead of letting Jasper forget about it. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea. Jasper would forget he wrote poetry, and he wouldn't have to deal with Jasper knowing some of his innermost thoughts and feelings and queries. It had seemed so innocent, just letting him forget, but now, as he realized how deeply it had hurt Jasper, he wondered if it was such a good idea after all. He wondered if all the other little white lies would hurt Jasper like this if he knew, or the fact that he kept things from Jasper that he honestly had the right to know.

"Jasper?" Calvin murmured, touching his face from across the bed.

Jasper groaned and twisted up his face, covering his eyes with his arms causing him to squish his glasses onto the bridge of his nose. "Leemeelone," came his garbled response.

Calvin's lips spread into a grin as he lifted Jasper's arms off his face. "You can't sleep all evening, you won't be able to sleep tonight. You don't expect that we'll be up all night, do you?"

Jasper split his eyes open and squinted at him with a sidelong gaze. "I don't know, it's a sleepover, isn't it?"

"I guess, but that doesn't mean I don't want some sleep."

"You'll get some sleep, but I'd rather talk and play video games for awhile beforehand."

"Aren't you demanding," Calvin joked, pestering him further by prodding at his cheeks. Jasper swatted him away. "Come on, Jas, at least sit up." He smiled. "Please?"

Jasper sighed and propped himself up on his elbows. "Happy?"

"A little."

Jasper looked around Calvin's room, which like his own had a slanted wall due to being on the second floor. Posters of bands and old calendar cutouts were tacked and pasted onto the walls, class and team pictures hung in cheap black plastic frames, and a clock stuck to the wall beside his bed. It was truly a unique and personalized room, Calvin's little slice of himself in the world. Jasper sighed again and sat up a little further, pushing the blankets off him.

"Isn't your dad gonna be mad if I'm here? Didn't he banish me from his kingdom or something?"

"You can't banish a little prince from his own kingdom, Jas." Calvin smiled at him.

"This isn't my kingdom," he laughed.

"If we are a couple, doesn't that mean that it's bound be yours someday?"

Jasper twiddled his thumbs. "I don't know, depends on if you ask if I want your kingdom."

"You already have my heart."

"So I already have your kingdom, then?"

"What?"

Jasper laughed at him. "Your heart is a kingdom, Calvin, I was being romantic!"

"Oh!" Calvin lifted his hands in the air in realization, slapping his knees. "I see, then. Well played, little prince, well played."

"I have my moments," Jasper said, jokingly tossing his hair aside. He shifted and climbed into Calvin's lap, pushing him down gently onto his elbows, with his legs on either side of him. "The question is, do you have yours?"