Tisper had been staring at the screen of her laptop, not working—just staring, while the endless white stared back at her. Three hours had been chiseled away, refilling her wineglass and prepping herself for a research paper that would never come. Maybe it was the television, captivating her every time the screen lit up with a new blaze of color. Maybe it was the boy who’d smiled at her in her morning lectures, or maybe it was Jaylin, coughing and hacking in the next room over.
She groaned and wedged her laptop onto her cluttered coffee table, dragging herself into the kitchen. Then Tisper selected a small glass from the cupboard and filled it halfway with milk, shuffling through her disorderly livin groom in her white kitten slippers to deliver the glass to her own nightstand table.
“Jay, did you use the spray at all?”
A small, pitiful sound groaned back at her from beneath the mounds of blankets on her bed.
“Jaylin.” She whipped the covers off and there Jaylin laid, curled into a human ball atop her mattress. He shuttered from the sudden lack of heat and twisted to look at her, hair wet to his face with sweat.
“Go away,” he croaked.
“Just drink the milk, you big baby. And if it hurts that bad, maybe try the throat spray I gave you.”
“I can’t stomach that stuff.” Jaylin’s voice was threadbare and pitchy, and he groaned as he pushed himself upright. Then he took the milk from Tisper and swallowed it down in a few painful grimaces. “More,” he gasped once he’d finished and Tisper took the glass away from him.
“Dairy will just cause more mucus and I don’t want your snot all over my Egyptian cotton. Why won’t you just try the tea?”
Jaylin grumbled out a phlegmy sound and jerked the blankets back up over his body to bury himself alive.
“You’re stubborn. A nice boy brought you tea. Drink the tea.”
From beneath the blankets, Jaylin squabbled back, “There’s no such thing as magic tea. It’s just grass water. It’s not going to help.”
“I’ll put milk and honey in it. Then you’re drinking the damn tea.” Tisper fled the room before Jaylin could argue. Setting the kettle for tea, she puttered over to the backpack he’d dropped by the door and yanked it up onto the counter.
“It’s in your bag, right?” she called out. And as she rifled inside, the first thing she found inside was the warm fleece of Jaylin’s sweater, then beneath that, a mesh bag. She tugged it out gently by the string-tie that held it closed.
“This is tea?” She wrinkled her nose and held it to the light. “Where are the bags?”
Then something caught Tisper’s eye. She took a second look into the pocket of Jaylin’s backpack, dragging out a sheet of paper. Tisper spared a moment to make sure no one was watching before she brought it up to her face and read the first line of his college application essay.
But something was off, Tisper thought. And as she read on, she swore there had to be a misunderstanding. This prompt was from last summer—they change it every year. Had Eduardo given him the wrong prompt?
At the rap on her door, Tisper nearly leapt from her skin, thrusting the papers back into Jaylin’s bag. She unlocked every latch and popped her head beneath the single chain that held the door from opening fully. Relief drew a breath from her when she found Matthew on the other side. She released the chain and swung the door open. “Come in.”
Matt strode in with his lumberjack boots and his heavy fleece jacket, and shed them both from his body once the warm had welcomed him. “Shit it’s cold,” he trilled, patting his cheeks with his gloves. “Went from eighty to forty in a week.”
Tisper turned to fetch the steaming kettle from its burner before the whistle began to blow. “Still think global warming isn’t a thing, dunce?”
“I’ve been enlightened.” Matt frowned, watching her spoon the leaves from the bag and into the small spherical steeper. “The hell is that?”
“Tea. Apparently. It’s for Jaylin, he’s got strep or something.”
“Ah, yeah. Where’s he?”
“Sleeping,” Tisper slammed her words into Matthew, her eyes aglow with some kind of motherly instincts. “If you try to rope him out of bed to go do something stupid—”
“No.” Matt had his hands in the air already. “I came to see you.”
Most girls would be flattered to hear a claim like that from a guy like Matt. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but there was a charm to Matthew Richards. One that had hexed Tisper into a first-love, first-heartbreak situation the first time around and she had zero interest in slipping back into that pit.
“No,” she answered before a question could even be tested.
“Just a movie.”
“No.”
“A walk.”
“No.”
“A drive around the block.”
Tisper sighed and popped the cap from the kettle, pouring the steaming water into Jaylin’s mug. “This is an apartment complex, Matt. And no.”
“Anything.” The urgency in Matt’s voice was gone now. Instead, it hit Tisper’s ear with a warm desperation. “Anything, Tis.”
Tisper stopped to watch the steam rise into the air and fade before her eyes. When she inhaled deep enough, she could taste the vapor on her tongue.
“Please.” Matt stepped closer and she could feel the cheap linoleum sink to his weight.
Tispers sighed through her nose and slid the kettle back on the stove. She’d been waiting for this talk. Dreading the moment it inevitably cropped back up into their lives. “I’m over it, Matt. You need to get over it too.”
Tisper turned to look to him and her heart snapped at the wounded look on his face. She couldn’t stop herself from reaching forward and framing it in her palms. “You’re a sweet, dumb boy, Matt, But it was a bad idea from the start.”
Matthew laughed, deep and drunk with sadness. “So I can’t fix this.”
Tisper took a deep breath from her nose and gave him a small, playful shove away. “Nothing’s broken, idiot. Things just change. Whatever that was, it’s over now so put on your big boy pants and start looking for a half-decent replacement, because I can’t stand that sad puppy dog look anymore.”
“A replacement?” Matthew pressed his back to the refrigerator and watched Tisper stir in a long string of honey. “I’m not looking for anything like that. I just miss you.”
“I haven’t gone anywhere,” Tisper said, bumping him out of the way and hurling the fridge door open to retrieve the milk. Matthew shut it again before she could even reach inside.
“You refuse to be in the same room with me alone,” he contended. Tisper was inches taller, but her thin slippers and slack posture put her at a disadvantage. She didn’t hate the way Matt bowed his head to look her in the eye, but she should have. “Tisper, the last time I remember spending any time with you at all was the camping trip—”
“When you got wasted and lost in the woods and cried about your dad?”
Matt went a bit pink at the neck. “I didn’t cry.”
“You absolutely did. Blubbered about how he’d never be proud of you. And do you remember what I said?” Before he could answer, Tisper went on, “No, you don’t. Because you were off your ass. But for your information, I told you I loved you and that I was proud of you. And I said Jay and I would always be your family and that’s just going to have to be enough, Matt. Because I don’t wanna do this again.”
The extra height Matt had on her sunk away. He was small and stocky again, just like high school—minus a few pounds of baby fat and his stupid Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy T-shirt. He looked every bit as sad, though. Lost in himself, the strange way he was sometimes.
After a silent moment, he shoved his hands in his jean pockets. “Wish I could go back. Stop myself from saying no.”
Tisper slammed the milk down.”It wasn’t that you said no. If you say no, you say no. It wasn’t the no, Matthew. How have you not figured that out yet? Being rejected by you was not what messed this all up!”
“Guys?”
The both of them turned to the ghostly shape of Jaylin, lingering at the threshold of the living room with Tisper’s pink duvet draped over his head. The corner tag stuck out against his forehead.
“What’s going on?”
“Matt stopped by to see how you were doing,” Tisper lied, pouring a bit too much milk into his mug. She set the jug aside and caught Matthew’s eyes for a fleeting moment. “He was just leaving.”
Wounded didn’t begin to describe the look on him now. “Yeah. Feel better, bud. Call me if you need anything.” Then Matthew was shoving the door open despite the fight of its rusty hinges, and without a wave or a smile or a glance, he was gone.
As the door clicked closed behind him, Tisper rushed to secure every lock in place. It’d been a nightly security measure ever since Bobby had started coming around. Tisper knew he was no threat, but she couldn’t help the ravaging insecurity she felt when a single one was left unlocked.
“What was that about?” Jaylin sniffled, shrugging the blanket farther up his shoulders until it covered his fevered cheeks. “You were yelling.”
Tisper sighed and shook her head, tending to his tea. “Tough love, that’s all.” She cupped his mug of by the bottom of the glass and rushed it to the only clean spot on his side of the coffee table. “There. Drink. I need to work on my essay.”
Jaylin held it in his hands, while Tisper folded herself down on the couch and wake her laptop from its brief hibernation. “I never really finished mine,” he said.
“Wasn’t that Eduardo guy doing all the hard work for you?”
“Yeah, but—” Jaylin stopped himself with a tough bite on his lower lip. “Would you go with me tomorrow? To Eduardo’s place?” he asked. “To turn down his offer.”
“Turn it down?” Tisper exclaimed, “Jaylin, why? This was so important! This was huge for you!”
“I have another way.” He hardly meant them, but the words jumped from Jaylin in a desperate effort to calm her. “I have another road into UW. And this one’s kind of a sure-thing.”
“Promise me,” Tisper demanded. Her eyes held Jaylin’s with little give. “You’re not just throwing away this opportunity. Promise me that.”
“I’m not,” Jaylin shrugged and tied his blanket tight around his neck. “I couldn’t give up—not when mom’s been this excited about it. But I can’t just block his number either. If I do that, he’ll show up at our front door and I’ll look like an ass.” For the first time, Jaylin took a drink of the tea. With a delightfully surprised expression, he tossed the mug back and guzzled heartily.
“Well I can’t go. I have class tomorrow.” Tisper sighed and kicked off her slippers, balancing her bare toes on the edge of the coffee table. “It’s not like he’s going to flip out on you for wasting his time. They’re like total bible thumpers, right? They’d just move onto the next kid, wouldn’t they?”
Jaylin tapped his fingers against the sides of his mug. Something in his eyes told Tisper he was lying when he muttered, “Yeah. You’re right.” But before she could question it, he thrust his mug forward and said with a grin, “More, please.”
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