Jovie & Bash

Eleven || Sebastian

|CHAPTER ELEVEN|

Announcing to my mother that Bash would be attending dinner with us the following weekend was more terrifying than getting on a bus with a complete stranger to see an out of town concert. It was ten times more nerve-wracking than a dozen college essays. It felt sort of like sleepwalking, but also like word vomit.

It was an emotional influenza.

"God, you should have seen the look on her face," I moaned in despair while I cradled my head in my hands. Bash dropped a kiss onto the top of my head and pulled out a chair from the library desks I was sitting at. "It was like she was looking at me for the first time-like she had no idea who I was."

"I don't need to come," he reminded me. One of his hands found my shoulder and squeezed. "In fact, it sounds like I might be better off keeping my distance."

I snatched at his hand and held fast. "You're coming."

He let out a breath and looked around him. Four o'clock and the sun was casting orange across the floor of the library, highlighting dust on every untouched book. Quiet page turning scraped near us as a curious onlooker made an excuse to listen in by pulling a random book off a shelf and pretending to be interested in it.

"Jovie, if you're trying to prove your loyalty-"

I shook my head. "No offense, Bash, but this isn't about you."

He glanced at his hand in mine, then back at me. Slowly, he pulled our hands to his mouth and kissed my knuckles. His eyes fluttered closed for a second, and then he looked somewhere else.

"I get it, you're stressed," he began gently. "But please don't snap at me. I don't know enough for you to become frustrated with me-and that's not for lack of trying." He rubbed his stubbly chin against my hand and met my eyes again. "I'm just trying to understand, okay?"

It was like a dart to my chest, his composed tenderness. There was an edge. One I hadn't seen before in Bash's voice. The sugary sweetness of new love disguised the tart hard candy that was hidden underneath, and my neglect had brought it forth.

The guilt stirring near the dart wound was like that damp cold you feel in your bones around late fall. "I'm sorry, Bash," I whispered. "The thing about my mom is that she's worse than I am-with the sharing and stuff...and while you're trying to figure me out, I'm trying to figure her out, and I'm lost. You're lost. We're all lost. And, I'm sorry. I didn't want to involve you. I never wanted you to meet her-and now you are because it's the only way I can think of that will make her...I don't know, feel something. Share something? It's...so complicated."

One corner of his lips turned up. "You're using me to get your mom to open up?"

I cringed at how horrible that sounded out loud. "Sort of-I mean, I genuinely like you, and this wasn't my, you know, master plan from the beginning or anything...you're just kind of convenient." My grimace only deepened, but Bash stood and leaned over to kiss the corner of my mouth.

"No relationship is a coincidence. I've been waiting for this." He steps around his chair and pushes it in. "I've got to get back to work, Jovial. Don't be a stranger."

With the book cart in the lead, he moved down the nearest aisle and disappeared. How he did it was beyond me. He fixed some things, left others undone, and held everything together with temporary bandages when he knew better than to dwell. I think maybe it was his way of creating his own perfect masterpiece fit for a storybook.

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My mother avoided me most of the week. We chatted politely at dinner and that was it for the first half of the week; but it was so uncomfortably tense I ended up spending the other half at Henry's to escape. However, Friday was the day she was meeting Bash, so I had to be there.