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The first thing she felt was this strange warmth. Her skin had always flushed in blotchy patches. Some part of her was glad it was only Jasper here to see it. The other part couldn't bring itself to care either way.
Thunder startled her into the present. Jasper was watching her expectantly. The beer was back in her hands, now. In the time Peridot was thinking, Jasper had almost finished it.
"It tastes like shit," she managed.
She stared at the bottle in Jasper's hands. The brown glass glistened off one of the candles. It looked like shit, too.
The rain almost sounded like hail. Maybe it was. Something about the situation--no power, stuck, alone, with Jasper--made her brave, made her daring. She wanted to take an uncalculated risk once, just once. Jasper might have been surprised she'd said yes, but she wasn't.
Even still, she hesitated--the silence hung in the air a moment too long, and she felt inexplicably as if she was on the precipice of something. Even with the moment she took to gather herself, her voice was quiet when she spoke.
"Can I finish it?"
Jasper wordlessly handed the beer to her, and stood up to get another for herself.
Peridot allowed herself a moment to appreciate how very uncharacteristic all this was, and to wonder why she didn't care. She could feel it hitting her with every passing moment.
Jasper came back with two. She set one on the floor next to her and kept the other in her hands. There was some mischievousness in her eyes that Peridot couldn't help but smile back at. She felt the last of her apprehension slipping away from her.
"Well, Peri, it's official," Jasper said. "You're a delinquent now."
"It was only a matter of time before I succumbed to your influence," she said. She wondered if beer always tasted this bad, or if it would taste better once she'd had more of it. She wondered what it would feel like to be well and fully drunk.
"I didn't think you had it in you," Jasper said. "You seem like the straight arrow type, you know?"
Straight. Peridot snorted inelegantly and took another swig. Jasper didn't seem to notice.
"Especially with the project," she continued, "and with your grades. I don't know, you've just surprised me, is all."
I surprise most people.
She didn't realize she'd said it aloud until she noticed that Jasper was nodding in acknowledgement.
"So, what is it that people, um… do, when they're drunk?" Peridot asked, hoping to change the subject. She wondered if she was drunk yet. If she wasn't now, she would be soon.
"Hmm."
Peridot wanted to laugh at the exaggerated way Jasper stroked her chin when she thought, so she did. The sound was strange--louder than she was used to.
After a moment, Jasper gasped, childlike, eyes wide. "We should play truth or dare."
"Yeah, okay." Like everything she'd said in the past twenty minutes, the words were out before she'd even considered them. It wasn't like she could have said no to Jasper when she looked at her like that, anyway.
Jasper crossed her legs and scooted forward, towards Peridot. She seemed to have had--maybe three?--beers, and Peridot was quickly finding that the alcohol made her happy and childlike. Peridot wasn't sure she'd ever seen Jasper this--this--
"You go first," Jasper said.
"Truth or dare?"
"Dare."
Peridot wasn't surprised. She looked around the room and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
"I want you to put that lampshade on your head." She couldn't even finish the sentence before she started to laugh.
Jasper reached out, grabbed the lampshade, and dumped it unceremoniously on her head. Peridot started laughing and couldn't stop until her stomach hurt, the sound of it strange alongside the sound of rain.
The thing about the lampshade was that it made it feel less invasive when she chose truth and Jasper asked her if she'd ever had sex.
"I haven't even kissed anyone."
Ordinarily, admitting this would have embarrassed her. Something about two-and-a-half beers made her feel not even a flicker of shame. And anyway, Jasper hadn't laughed at her, Jasper had just nodded, like that was normal.
"Dare."
It took Peridot a moment to realize what Jasper meant, and longer still to come up with something to ask her to do.
"Go outside and stand in the rain for at least, like, a minute."
"Can I take the lampshade off first?"
Peridot had forgotten she was still wearing it, and the reminder brought a fresh wave of hysterical laughter.
"Yeah," she said once she had collected herself.
Jasper seemed to like the rain. She turned her face up towards it, stretched out her arms. There was something terrifyingly beautiful about it--she could feel the image searing itself into her memory.
When they got back inside, Jasper didn't even ask if she wanted truth or dare this time.
"Tell me something you've never told anyone before," she said.
It was a long list. A hundred options came to her at once, but only one of them spilled out. "I want you to kiss me."
Peridot had said it before she could swallow the words. She felt her face turning an even brighter shade of red, coupled with some longing feeling she didn't dare touch, even now.
Jasper didn't move or speak. Just when Peridot was sure Jasper would refuse, she scooted forward and then she was holding Peridot's face in her hands.
There was the slightest twinge of a nervous flutter in Peridot's stomach--somewhere, some part of her thought something along the lines of oh my god--and then Jasper kissed her.
Somewhere beneath the aching want that bloomed within her the moment Jasper touched her, Peridot registered that kissing was wetter than she thought it would be. She registered the tiny circles Jasper's thumb made on the side of her face, as if Peridot needed soothing, as if she was some fragile, breakable thing.
Peridot was awake, she was more sober than she'd been all evening, but her mind was soft and pliant clay and Jasper was electric and she had short-circuited.
She realized when she felt cold that Jasper had pulled away. She made some pathetic, needy sound, and took two fistfuls of Jasper's soggy shirt to bring her back. In response, Jasper pressed her up against the back of the couch and kissed her again, and again, and again.
Jasper's mouth wandered down to her neck. Peridot tilted her head back and closed her eyes.
"I don't even like you," she whispered.
"Good." She could feel the vibration of Jasper's response on her skin.
She's probably right, she thought. Too much of this would burn me alive.