“What do you think, Amira?” Jasper asks, rolling over the snowman’s midsection.
I’m hard at work on its head, but I pop mine up to look over at his pleasantly plump snowman tummy.
“Bigger,” Amira demands. Then she turns back around and continues to spray patches of snow she hasn’t made it to yet.
Jasper shakes his head, but rolls it through some more snow to beef up the snowman’s tummy. “I guess Frosty had a few too many Christmas cookies this year,” he remarks.
I crack a smile and steal a peek at Amira over my shoulder. “You don’t think your mom will be mad about this, do you?”
By the time we decided to make a snowman, Audra and Tom had already left the house, so they didn’t hear about our plan to paint it.
Jasper glances over at me, frowning slightly. “Why would she be mad?”
My eyebrows rise and I gesture to the yard behind me. “She’s spraying that stuff everywhere. It looks like an army was massacred on your mom’s front lawn.”
Jasper takes another look at Amira’s work and then shakes his head dismissively. “That’s not what blood looks like in snow.”
I blink at him.
He looks at me like he doesn’t understand how I could say something so crazy. “Blood’s red.” He gestures to the mess Amira is making. “That’s clearly pink.”
“Blood can look pink,” I mutter, grabbing a handful of snow and mashing it against my snowman’s head. If his middle is going to be bigger, I guess his head should be, too.
Jasper shakes his head. “Trust me, I just saw some bloody snow Monday. Definitely doesn’t look like anyone was massacred out here.”
I stop working on my snowman’s head and stare at him. “Monday? You were with me Monday.”
“Before that.” He gives the fat ball of snow one more roll toward the base, then he pats it down. “I think this is big enough, Amira,” he calls out. “If I make it any bigger, it’s gonna break when I lift it.”
“Okay,” she calls back sweetly, bending down to pet the snow in front of her.
Jasper shakes his head. “She’s so fucking cute. When we have these two kids you want, are we having a boy or a girl first?”
“Um… can we back up a little to the bloody snow? I wasn’t done with that topic.”
“I think we should have a boy first,” he says, since apparently he is. “Protective big brother and all that.”
I blink at him a couple more times, but when he doesn’t fall back and further explain about the blood he handled the day he met me, I give up. “That’s true, but if we have the girl first, she’ll be older and she can help out with the second baby.”
“Boys can help out with babies,” he says dismissively. “I was a boy, I certainly helped out.”
I guess that’s true.
Wait, why am I thinking about this like we’re actually going to have babies?
This joke was funnier before he kissed me senseless, now the idea of having babies with him is… well, still batshit crazy, but no longer amusing.
I know the concept should still seem ludicrous to me, but pretending to be a couple this week… it doesn’t feel fake. It feels like I really have gone home with my boyfriend to meet his family.
He wasn’t faking anything when he kissed me last night in the bathroom. It didn’t feel like we were pretending when we curled up on the couch and watched movies together with his sister and her boyfriend.
Jasper feels like my boyfriend, he just… can’t be.
Some part of me wishes the sanitized version of how we met was the truth. That Jasper was some normal man living in Chicago who just happened across my path.
It would be easier if I didn’t genuinely like him, but I do. It makes no difference to me, knowing all the bad things he’s capable of. Maybe that’s crazy in and of itself, but whatever he’s capable of, he has been totally honest with me.
He loves his sister. He loves the niece he just met yesterday.
He’s not bad; he just does bad things for a living.
I don’t know how he does those things, but I don’t believe he’s malicious, and I don’t think he’d harm someone innocent without good reason.
I don’t believe he would ever hurt me on purpose, but I still think he’ll do all kinds of damage if I let him.
Amira toddles over, bringing my attention back to the task at hand. She holds up her little squirt bottle—nearly empty, but somehow with enough tinted water left to make our snowman blush.
“You ready?” Jasper asks, lifting her up in his arms so she can reach the snowman’s head.
Amira nods enthusiastically, her finger poised on the trigger.
Then she starts shooting the water at the snowman’s face, but instead of aiming where his cheeks would be and giving him a friendly glow, she hits the area all around his mouth.