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The first thing Jasper notices about the Greenbergs’ home is the gate. The only other iron bars she’d seen usually featured at the opposite end of the housing spectrum, bolted into the stucco surrounding the single-paned windows of some apartment or other. Those hadn’t curlicued into some facsimile of ivy, hadn’t opened soundlessly when triggered by a keycard. But these do.
Next is the sheer enormity of the place. The sprawling lawn, the quaint little bench under a tree aged to perfection, the carefully-laid flagstone. A home rising up in marble and glass. Jasper chances a glance at Peridot, too tiny in the driver’s seat pulled up as close to the wheel as it will go; she’s sleepy-eyed as usual, wearing that look that’s slightly bored, as if to discourage others from asking anything of her. She drives with her hands at nine and twelve, coolly.
The garage is too big and too empty; the kitchen blindingly-bright and equipped with nothing but barstools; the stairs are carpeted so thickly you can’t even hear your footsteps. Jasper tries her best to make herself small, feeling ever so much like a tiger in a china shop.
Peridot’s room is darker than the others, forest green bedding and heavy curtains. A truly massive monitor sleeps atop a desk that takes up most of one side of the room. One bookshelf houses the books, SAT handbooks and C++ manuals. The other appears to be dedicated entirely to toys. Keen to snoop, Jasper bends down to investigate. Pokemon figurines organized by color; anime heroines in 1/16 scale on clear plastic stands; plushies slumped over one another congenially. There are hundreds of them, and Jasper can’t stop smiling.
If Peridot is embarrassed, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she wakes up her computer, clicks around a bit. Tsks at her unread emails. Jasper asks for permission to sit on her bed and is granted it with a lazy wave of the hand.
“Your house is really nice,” Jasper says, eyes wide.
While she’d be inclined to deflect the comment were it anyone else, Peridot likes it when Jasper praises her, so she smiles self-consciously. “Thanks.” She indicates the computer awkwardly, unsure whether to do so with her head or her shoulder and ending up using both. “You wanna watch anything?”
“Sure. You up for Community?”
“Yeah, man.”
The monitor is big enough to function as a television, and Jasper has good eyes, anyway, so they queue up some episodes and pile onto the bed. Jasper makes a place for Peridot within the half-circle of her arm, and earns a quick peck on the lips for her hospitality.
Jasper’s shoulder is a fine enough place to rest, but sooner or later Peridot always ends up with her head in her lap. It’s a perfect storm: the droning of the show; the jasmine scent of Jasper; Jasper’s fingers running lazily through her hair and down her back; her nasty tendency to stay up all night, kept awake by incomplete projects and the blue light of her computer screen, only to spend the daylight hours teetering along on a poorly-sustained caffeine rush. Before long she is dozing. Jasper continues to pet her, grinning at her with abject fondness.
She always apologizes when she wakes up, and Jasper never minds. It’s nice to be quiet with someone, she’ll say. Occasionally she might gently nag her, don’t stay up so late.
Yeah, yeah. Peridot will roll her eyes, touched that Jasper cares.
Yet this time, after the apologies are perfunctorily proffered, she pulls Jasper down to kiss her. Were she more sentimental, her mind might wander to fairy tales, but she’s far more practical than that: she kisses Jasper because she wants to, because it makes her happy, because she loves her.
They resume their little viewing party, pushing the other with their laughter. A box of cookies is procured, and Peridot grazes while Jasper clears the comforter of crumbs. The room grows dark around them until a switch is flipped, and then they are bathed in a warm orange light that is much too kind to everything about Jasper, really. Peridot never thought she’d have a girlfriend in her room, much less such a beautiful one, much less Jasper Akhave, laughing loudly without even bothering to cover her capped teeth. It makes her proud, but it isn’t like Jasper’s beauty is some sort of trophy, some proof of prowess. It’s a pride in her own evolution, at allowing herself to grow bored of hating people and discover that making someone else smile feels good. She wryly admits to herself that she may not, in fact, know everything.
This she does know: she knows that right now, nose-to-nose with Jasper in her bed that — until this very moment — has always seemed too big, she is happy. She is short, and soft, and childish, and not at all adventurous, and perfectly adequate. Shi Li Hua qua Peridot Rebekah Greenberg, it is what it is what it is.
Jasper has forgotten the great iron gate. She has forgotten the columns and the windows and the velvet pile carpet. She has forgotten nails raked down her back, and split knuckles, and bus stops. Mothers and fathers are vague impressions. What is clear is Peridot’s smile as she brushes Jasper’s bangs out of her face. What is clear is the heat in her chest. What is clear is the calm.
Peridot reaches over and turns off the light.