Page 97 of After the Snap

“I need to ask you something.” I slide my fingers between hers, and she lets me, curling hers around mine while she waits. “I’ve been trying to figure out what you want from this without actually telling you what I want.”

Calliope watches me for a moment before her fingers tighten around mine. “And what do you want?”

“I want this to be real. I know neither of us planned any of this, but I don’t want to keep pretending I’m okay with not knowing what we are.”

Her fingers stay wrapped around mine as I hold her eyes.

“I want you to be my girlfriend.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Calliope

Hearing Jubal give a name to everything we’ve been doing makes me want to reach for the safety of not having one. I know I want to be his girlfriend, and I’m not naïve enough to lie to myself about that. What scares me is knowing the answer before I’ve had time to search for all the reasons wanting him this much might be a mistake.

He isn’t smiling now, and the quiet confidence I’m used to seeing in him has given way to something I’ve only started learning how to recognize. Jubal maintains such careful composure that I know it isn’t easy. He appears perfectly calm while directing all his control toward allowing me the space to decide what happens next.

I tighten my fingers around his, needing the contact even though he’s the reason my heart is beating too hard. Being with Jubal is easier when I don’t look too far beyond whatever choice is directly in front of me. Staying with him a little longer was one decision, giving him my number and answering his calls another. The dates, watching him play, missing him when he’s gone all happened one choice at a time, without forcing me to decide what those choices might eventually become.

Now I have to because labeling what this is doesn’t change how I feel about him. It makes pretending I can keep everything else contained almost impossible. A boyfriend exists in a world where my father has no idea the quarterback he trusts has been kissing his daughter, and where eventually keeping those parts of my life separated may stop being possible. Even worse, a boyfriend is someone I can lose, and that’s the part no amount of wanting him can make safe. Jubal hasn’t offered me forever when neither of us could possibly know what forever looks like from this couch. He’s only told me what he wants and left me free to decide what I want, which almost makes this choice even harder.

I look down at our hands and think about all the choices that brought me here. Jubal has never asked me to know where any of them would lead before I made them. He gave me his number without asking for anything in return, let me decide when I wanted to see him again, and every time I hesitated, he gave me room to figure out what I wanted instead of deciding for me.

There’s no answer waiting on the other side of this choice, though. I can search everything Jubal has ever said to me for some warning I overlooked and still never know for certain that he won’t hurt me. I can imagine every possible version of my father’s reaction and still don’t know which one I’ll eventually face. No matter how many risks I account for, I can’t protect myself from the possibility of losing Jubal without giving him up.

There’s still a part of me that wants to believe walking away first would hurt less. I know what it feels like to trust someone so completely that the possibility of being wrong never occurs to you, only to look back afterward and search every memory for the clue you missed. I spent too long trying to find the place where I should’ve known better because if I could find it, maybe I could convince myself I’d know better next time. Except there might not be a way to know.

Jubal could hurt me, and admitting that scares me because I’m already far past the point where losing him would be something I could shrug off and move on from. Saying no wouldn’t erase the weeks I’ve spent letting him become someone whose voice I want at the end of a bad day. It would only mean choosing to hurt myself now because at least this version of losing him would happen on my terms.

Jubal’s gaze moves over my face, and I know he’s probably finding more there than I want him to. He has gotten annoyingly good at that, but he still doesn’t try to interpret my silence for me.

“You’re thinking really hard, Pea.”

I laugh softly, loosening some of the pressure that has been building there. “You asked me a big question.”

I shift toward him until my knee presses against his thigh, and the closer I get, the easier it is to remember that I’m not choosing some imaginary future version of us. I’m choosing the man sitting here with me now, the one I knew before either of us understood how inconvenient knowing each other was going to become.

Jubal is still watching me, nervous enough that I can see the tension he’s trying not to let me carry with him. He could fill the silence or try to make the answer easier, but of course, he doesn’t. Apparently, when Jubal Duvall wants something badly enough to scare himself, he sits on his couch looking like he’s waiting for the fourth quarter to start and asks. He doesn’t know how this ends either, but he trusted me enough to ask for what he wants without knowing what my answer would be.

I’ve spent so much time trying to protect myself from being wrong again that I almost forgot trusting someone was never supposed to mean knowing the ending. My fingers tighten around his, and for the first time since he asked, I stop searching for one.

“Yes, Old Man. I’ll be your girlfriend.”

His breath leaves him slowly as his eyes close, and he just sits there holding my hand like he needs a moment to let my answer become real. When he looks at me again, there’s so much relief mixed with the happiness in his face that it almost hurts to look at him.

“You really wanted me to say yes,” I whisper, sliding my hand along his jaw until my palm settles against his cheek.

Jubal turns his face just enough to press his mouth against the inside of my wrist, and the tenderness of it makes my heart ache. “Yeah, Pea. I really fucking did.”

I close the distance between us and kiss him, needing to do something with everything his answer stirs up inside me. One of his hands curls around my waist while the other slides into my hair. His mouth is warm and familiar against mine, and I sink into the kiss knowing exactly how it feels to be held by him, to have his fingers curl against my side as I move closer.

When I finally ease back, I stay close enough that his forehead settles against mine. My fingers drift through the short hair at the back of his neck while his thumb moves slowly along my waist, and I let myself feel how different it is to be this close to him without a question sitting between us.

“My boyfriend,” I murmur. Hearing the words out loud sends warmth through me because they don’t feel nearly as frightening now that they belong to him.

“I really fucking like the sound of that.” Jubal’s smile brushes my mouth before he kisses me again.

I kiss him back with my hand still curled around the back of his neck, feeling his smile disappear beneath my mouth. I can't stop smiling myself, not when I can still see the relief that was on his face after I said yes. I thought giving him an answer would settle everything rushing through me, but being this close to him afterward feels almost too good to contain.