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“But your food’s so good,” I say.
“I hate cooking.”
“What do you like doing?” Hakim asks her.
“Not cooking.”
Jasper slouches over to one of the booths. Usually I take a spot at the counter next to Hakim, but some impulse of sympathy, or maybe just the desire to talk about Tarantino, prompts me to sit opposite Jasper instead.
“What’s your favorite movie?” I ask him.
He’s silent so long that I think he isn’t going to answer. Then I realize he’s considering the question with more deliberation than I would have expected.
At last he says, “Predator, The Mirror, Inglorious Bastards,The Big ShortandThe Irony of Fate.”
“Not bad,” I say. “I loveThe Big Shortbut I feel like nobody else has watched it.”
“I watch it every year,” Jasper says. “To remind me what happens when people get greedy.”
“Yeah, and what do you watchPredatorfor?” I grin. “So you know what to do when aliens start hunting us?”
To my surprise, Jasper smiles just a little. “That one was my brother’s favorite.”
I’ve never heard Jasper mention his family before.
I want to ask him about his brother, but I don’t want to step in anything when we’re finally getting along at least a little bit.
Alla brings us a couple of burgers without waiting for us to order. She already knows what I like, and I guess she figured Jasper would want the same.
Jasper lifts his burger and takes a bite, chewing gingerly because of the plastic wrap along his jaw. He just expanded his skeleton tattoos, covering the left side of his face with a perfect approximation of the lower mandible and teeth beneath.
“Shit, that’s really good,” he says.
He puts his burger down a moment later, looking out the window listlessly.
He’s been a wreck since the thing with Zigor.
“I have a brother, too,” I tell him. “Damian.”
“I know. I’ve heard you talking to him on the phone.”
“He’s younger than me. He goes to Kingmakers next year.”
“Isaak was older,” Jasper says quietly. “I idolized him.”
“What was he like?”
“Smart. Confident. Aggressive. He wasn’t a dick though—even though I was five years younger. He protected me.”
That sounds a lot like Adrik. Many things are coming clear for me in this moment.
I should probably shut up now. But I can’t stop myself from saying, “Adrik told me what happened to your family. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t give me sympathy,” Jasper says, looking at his hands in his lap. “I don’t deserve it.”
“Everyone deserves sympathy.”
Jasper gives a bitter laugh. “Adrik didn’t tell you everything.”
