“No, no, nothing,” I said quickly. “Just that you guys all used to be really good friends? You and Meredith and Greg and everybody?”
Jasper seemed to consider that for a moment. “That would be a fair assessment,” he conceded, “yes.”
“And now?”
I was trying to give him an opening to tell me himself what had happened with his dad—I had a million questions, starting withWhat other shit are you keeping to yourself, exactly?—but Jas just shrugged.
“Now?” he said, crumpling up his waxed-paper wrapper and boosting himself to his feet. “Now we are not.”
When Jas saidget chips and stuff for later,I was picturing an actual supermarket, but instead we pulled into the jam-packed parking lot of a tiny specialty-food store, the kind of place with old-fashioned schoolhouse lights hung above the sandwich counter and plastic tubs of lobster salad that cost forty-five dollars a pound. “I want Pirate’s Booty,” Jasper announced as we edged our way down the narrow aisles, past wicker baskets of freshly made baguettes and displays of expensive Brie that smelled like the locker room at Bartley. The local public radio station piped in over the speakers, James Taylor strumming blissfully away. “Don’t you love Pirate’s Booty? It’s like eating cheesy Styrofoam.”
“I mean, sure,” I said dubiously. “I wouldn’t say that’s what I personally look for in a snack food, but you do you.”
“Oh, come on, how it squeaks on your teeth? How do you not like that?” Jasper grinned. The weird, tense energy that had been radiating off him ever since I’d mentioned what had happened at the bonfire had fizzled away, and just like that, he was himself again, good-natured. “Pirate’s Booty,” he said again, “and Bagel Bites.”
“And avocados,” I reminded him.
Jasper’s eyes narrowed in a way that made me wonder if possibly he was onto me insofar as his sister was concerned. “And avocados,” he allowed.
He peeled off to go get limes, which Wells had requested to make caipirinhas. “The guy spends one week going to clubs in Brazil,” Jasper muttered, “and all of a sudden he’s an international mixologist.” I turned down the chips aisle and almost crashed straight into the waitress from Red’s.
“Oh!” I said, raising a hand in greeting. She was wearing cutoffs and a V-neck T-shirt with the sleeves pushed up onto her shoulders, a bag of kettle corn tucked under her arm. “Hey.”
She looked over at me blankly. “…Hi.”
“Last night,” I reminded her. “At the restaurant.”
The girl raised her eyebrows. “Oh, don’t worry,” she said, “I remember.”
I cringed. I wanted to apologize, but what would I have said? If I was going to object to how Meredith had acted, I should have done it last night at the table. But I hadn’t, because I hadn’t wantedto draw attention to myself.Michael,I could hear my mom saying,that is small behavior.
“Right. Um.” I nodded at the kettle corn. “Good choice, anyway.”
Jasper came around the corner just then. “Linden!” he yelled. “Get Doritos.” Then he saw the waitress. “Hey!” he greeted her, like they were old friends. “It’s you. Listen, sorry Meredith was raised in a fucking barn and doesn’t know how to eat in a restaurant without embarrassing herself and everyone around her. You want to come to a party tonight?”
That made her smile, the same way girls always smiled at Jasper, like in spite of themselves, they were won over by his earnestness and his energy and his always-messy hair. “Maybe,” she said, slipping one foot out of her flip-flop and using it to scratch the back of her opposite calf. “Now you want to talk to me, huh?”
“I always want to talk to you,” Jasper said, smiling like he was asking for her vote in this fall’s congressional election. He looked like he was about to say something else when he suddenly remembered I was standing beside him, jerking his head in my direction. “This is my buddy Linden. He’ll be at the party too, but as you can see, he’s not as good-looking or charming as me. Linden, this is Aidy. I once saw her open a beer bottle with her teeth.”
Aidy laughed, warm and maybe a little embarrassed. “I’m sorry,that’smy defining quality in your mind?”
“Nope,” Jasper said immediately, and winked. “August House, nine o’clock.”
Once she was gone, I turned to look at him, shaking my head. “Iknewyou were checking that girl out last night,” I said with alaugh. “I didn’t realize you knew her, though. Like, from before she was our waitress?”
Jasper busied himself looking at all the different shapes and flavors of Wheat Thins. “I might have had a little thing for her at the beginning of the summer,” he admitted, “at which point Holliman realized I was interested and like, gave her the full-court press for the explicit purpose of fucking with me, because he’s a good buddy like that.”
I blinked, though it wasn’t like anything anyone had told me about Greg so far suggested he was a particularly steadfast monogamist.Incestuous,Eliza had said. “Does Meredith know?”
Jasper shrugged. “I mean, you saw her at Red’s last night,” he said, tossing a jar of salsa into the basket. “If you had a gun to my head, I’d say yeah, I think she probably copped the fuck on at some point.”
“So I’m sure she’s going to love that you just invited Aidy to the party, then.”
“Dude, it’s my fucking house,” he said cheerfully. “Besides, anything I can do to ruin that girl’s night is more than worth it, as far as I’m concerned.”
We finished our shopping, Jasper putting the groceries—all 314 dollars’ worth of them—on his parents’ account like it was 1942. “Hey,” he said as we loaded the bags into the trunk of the Land Rover, “you want to invite your friend tonight?”
“Huh?” I blinked. “Who?”
