Content and reaching an acceptable level of alertness, I fling back the covers and swing my feet over the edge of the bed, glancing back one more time at the ruffled sheets. I can’t believe we get to stay here. I can’t believe I got to sleep in Jasper’s arms, and I can’t wait to do it again. For now though I want to know where he is, so I stand and move lazily through the house.
Jasper is in the kitchen, wearing only his boxers—to be fair it is warm already—poking at a frying pan with a spatula. He’s so busy cooking, grabbing a pinch of salt, adding what look like chili flakes and scallions to the pan, and continuing to stir its contents, that he doesn’t notice me in the doorway. I lean on the doorframe and watch him for a moment. He moves from the pan to one of those hourglass-shaped glass pour-over coffee contraptions and tips some of the freshly brewed brown liquid into a stout ceramic mug, adding a dash of cream and sipping slowly. The toaster pops and he snatches out the piping-hot slices of thick, crusty bread, tossing them from hand to hand in the most adorable way, and goes about buttering them. The muscles in his back pop and move with each swipe of the butter knife.
As he turns back to the pan he must catch sight of me in his periphery, because without looking over he grins and says, “Enjoying yourself?”
“Just appreciating the view,” I say with a laugh and move from my spot in the doorway, crossing the living room to join him in the kitchen. “This smells amazing.”
“Hungry?”
My stomach rumbles on cue. “Totally.”
“Help yourself to coffee,” he says, switching off the gas burner and arranging the toast and what I can now see are the most perfectly fluffy, yellow scrambled eggs on two plates. Lastly, he grabs a large, deep-green avocado from a well-stocked fruit bowl and slices it in half.
“When did all this food get here?” I ask, pouring myself a mug of coffee.
“This morning. We had it delivered. You slept through the whole thing.”
“I was wiped.” The scent of the coffee wafts into my nose and I take a long, deep whiff. “Heaven.”
“What was that?” Jasper asks, spinning with two stacked plates of breakfast in his hands.
“Oh.” I blush. “Nothing.”
We head to the table outside, because as if we’re about to eat indoors when the weather is this nice. The sun is already hot and bright, and in the shade of the veranda the air is the perfect temperature. Jasper places my plate in front of me and sets his own down at the spot next to me.
“Nearly forgot,” he says, dashing back inside and swiftly reappearing with a bottle of hot sauce. “This stuff will blow your socks off.”
“If only I was wearing socks.”
He hands me the bottle and our fingers graze each other’s, sending sparks of electricity through me.
“Maybe it’ll blow something else off,” he says, making me nearly choke before I’ve even touched my food.
Jasper seems unfazed as he sits and goes about carving the flesh of his avocado half and mushing it into a cream on his toast. I do the same, although nowhere near as coolly.
Delightedly, I shovel the first fork of eggs and avocado toast into my mouth. “Thanks for cooking,” I say with my mouth full.
“No problem. I take it you slept well?”
“Like a baby.”
Jasper smiles and eats and I can’t help thinking something seems sort of different about him. His movements are more fluid, his posture looser, his rigidity gone, his hair more unkempt. He chews his food slowly, relishing each bite, as he stares out at the desert with big, open eyes. He seems…relaxed. And it occurs to me how strange it is that I’ve never seen him properly relaxed before.
“No wonder,” he says, then takes a large inhale. “It’s the air out here. It’s just different.”
So are you.
Beyond the shade of the patio sits the pool, looking perfectly blue and stupidly refreshing against the dusty-yellow backdrop. It’s the first time I’ve taken in the view in the daylight and it’s even more stunning. The pale, sandy-colored earth is dotted with green tufts of desert grass, spiky cacti rise like lizards leaning into the sun, and in the distance sit these amazing stone structures, like pebbles made smooth by rushing water—only on a much larger scale and in the most arid of climates. Farther off mountains, mauve-colored in the haze, line the horizon, and all of this rests beneath a vast, cloudless sky.
“I could stare at this forever,” I say, suddenly itching to grab my sketchbook and document this ridiculous landscape.
“Just wait,” Jasper says, “it only gets better.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, after breakfast we’ll go explore. How is it?”
“I don’t know what you put in these eggs but they taste like crack,” I joke. “Honestly so good.”
