"Remember that chicken mushroom thing that we made?" Jasper wonders randomly on Thursday night.

I nod and then laugh a little bit at the memory of our little food fight dinner when we moved in to the apartment. "We are not doing that again."

"I'm not saying that we should," He defends. "But it didn't turn out that bad so we could do something like that. Like, we could make steak or something."

"You want steak?"

"I do. Just me and you, let's make steak," Jasper says, standing up from the couch where he's sitting beside me. "I'll look up some recipe on the internet and we can go get the ingredients at the store down the street and it'll be delicious."

"Is there a special occasion?" I wonder but I follow him, grabbing a sweater before we leave the apartment to go to the store because Jasper wants a steak.

"Not really but you're not with Scott and I'm not with Conner tonight, so we should do something just you and me, for fun," He explains to me as we get in the truck.

"Okay then," I agree with him. "Let's cook steaks then, weirdo."

"I'm glad you see things my way, now look up how to cook steaks because I have no idea how," Jasper tells me once he's on the road. "Maybe something with peppercorn, that sounds good."

"Just steak? If you want a fancy dinner, we can go all out with like, I don't know something else that's fancy. Green beans or something like that," I suggest.

"Green beans aren't fancy, Jo," Jasper tells me with a small laugh. "What about truffle macaroni and cheese?"

"Do you really think that we can pull that off?" I ask him with raised eyebrows. "Truffles sound fancy."

"I think it's just mac and cheese but you just add truffle oil," He tells me with a clueless shrug. "It's just fancier than normal mac and cheese because you put the word truffle on there. I have no idea, just look it up."

"Okay, okay, Mr. Bossy-pants," I chuckle as I pull my phone out and pull up Google to look up how to cook truffle mac and cheese although I'm sure no matter how easy it is to make, we're going to mess it up and it'll be a disaster. Oh well, though, our food adventures are always interesting, I'll give them that. "We'll figure it out."

"That's the spirit," He chirps.

When we get to the grocery store, Jasper helps me pick out a good recipe for the mac and cheese and then we go in to the store and find all of the ingredients that we need and then we go to the meat area and try to find the right type of steak although we have no idea what we are doing so we have no idea what kind of steak to really buy. Of course, Jasper looks it up online and we go for what looks the closest to the picture.

"Okay, so we both want our steaks medium rare," Jasper says as we start looking for the seasoning or whatever to cook the steak with.

"So we'll probably get them well done before we realize that we've overcooked the steaks," I joke, stepping onto the cart and pushing myself forward and gliding down the aisle.

"You know, your distrust in me is a bit disheartening," Jasper tells me with a laugh. "We won't burn the steaks."

"And you know that because we're such talented chefs?" I raise my eyebrows at him. "Have you even ever cooked a steak, Jas?"

"It can't be that hard."

"That's what you said about the chicken and then it came out without any crust," I remind him.

"Steak doesn't have crust," He defends. "So that won't happen this time."

"But you get my point," I say, teasingly rolling my eyes at him. "But you know, I'll just let you go for it. I'm sure it'll be delicious."

"It will be delicious," Jasper assures me. "And you will love it."

"Well, assuming I'll be making the mac and cheese, I can't say the same thing about that. I'm sure it'll go wrong ten different ways."

"I'll still eat it," He tells me. "And I'll say it's delicious no matter how awful it really tastes."

"I know you will," I confirm with a nod.

We get the rest of the ingredients that we need for the fancy dinner and then while we're checking out, my phone starts to ring in my pocket so I get it out and see that it's my mom calling, which I kind of expected considering we haven't talked in a few days.

"Hello?" I answer her.

"Jo, darling, hello. How are you, dear?"

"I'm fine. Me and Jasper are about to cook dinner," I tell her as I help Jasper bag up all of our newly bought food.

"Oh, you're not with Scott?" She wonders.

"No..." I say slowly. "It's a weekday and he has late classes on Thursdays. Why do you ask?"

"Well, it's just that I talked to Sienna and she said that you two are getting very close," My mother says to me, pretending to not care that much but I can tell just how much she's dying to know about me and my boyfriend. I don't talk to her much about Scott because I think that it's weird and she always tries to warn me about the negatives of a relationship. So most of the information she gets about my relationship with Scott is from what Sienna tells her.

"Yeah, we are," I confirm awkwardly. "We don't spend every day together though and we both have classes."

"Oh, alright," She sighs. "How are your grades coming along?"

"They're good. They haven't changed since I talked to you on Tuesday," I say with a small laugh. "What's up?"

"Nothing," She says quickly. I have my phone wedged between my cheek and shoulder as I help Jasper load the groceries into the truck and then we're driving back toward the apartment. "It's just... Sienna just has me worried about you."

"Why? I'm just fine, Mom. What's she saying?" I prod curiously, having a bad feeling about this because her voice is getting that I'm-about-to-try-to-manipulate-you edge to it.

"She's just telling me how much you like this boy and it's worrying me," She explains. "You went all the way to Georgia against my wishes, and you risked a lot to go out there so I just would hate to see you get distracted now that you have a boyfriend."

"Scott isn't distracting me from my schoolwork, Mom," I assure her, grateful that she can't see me rolling me eyes at her. "My grades are fine. If anything, he's helping them. Inspiration and everything."

"So you two are having sex?"

"What?" I shriek, taken completely by surprise by that statement, and Jasper gives me a weird look. "Why would you think that?"

"You just said 'inspiration' like you're having sex," She tells me as if that actually makes any sense at all.

"I did not," I argue, knowing that if my mom thinks that I've had sex with Scott that she'd probably drive all the way out here just to give me a five hour lecture on the importance of abstinence. "I just meant that I can use him as a model and stuff." I blush at the memory of Monday and the shirtless pictures I took of him then. "And how I used the old house here in Georgia for inspiration for my Broken Doll collection. You know, just inspiration. Not sex."

Jasper laughs, of course, but I just softly hit his shoulder and ignore his laughter as much as I can as he pulls into the parking lot of the apartment building. I hold my cell phone between my cheek and shoulder again to help him carry the groceries into the apartment.

"Fine," She sighs. "I just hope that you wait until marriage for that kind of thing. You're way too young to be having sex. I think that you're too young to have a boyfriend too but I know that you won't ever listen to me about that."

"Sienna was younger than me when she met Penn," I remind my mother.

"I know that, and I thought that she was too young too," She refutes. "But I let it go with her because she had to grow up a lot faster than she should have in many ways other than her love life. You, however, I worry about."

"You don't have to worry about me. Being with Scott isn't a bad thing. I love him."

"You don't know what love is, sweetheart," She tells me with a sad sigh.

And you do? I want to hiss at her because obviously, she thought that she loved my father because she married him and had two kids with him and thought that he was amazing before he started beating her. I know that it's too harsh to bring that stuff up though, so I don't say that. "So what if I don't? I know that I think that I love him and that's good enough. Maybe we're just dumb teenagers and maybe it'll crash and burn but that's just a risk that I have to take and that's fine."

"That's a reckless mentality," My mom warns me. "You need to be more careful."

"Mom, if you're just going to lecture me about dating Scott, you can just stop now, alright? I'm not going to break up with him just because you're hesitant," I mumble. "But either way, I have to go now. I'm helping Jasper cook dinner."

"Don't hang up just because I'm trying to protect you," She whines pleadingly. "I just want to see how you're doing out there. How's Jasper?"

"Jasper's fine. We really are starting dinner. I'll call you later tonight, alright?"

"Okay then," She mumbles and then she hangs up without a goodbye or an 'I love you' or anything, she's just gone.

I sigh and then push my phone into my jeans pocket before joining Jasper at the counter to organize all of the ingredients and prepare them for whatever the recipe calls for.

"She found out about you and Scott?" He wonders in amusement.

"I told her that we were together at the beginning and she yapped my ear off for an hour about how stupid that is. That I could get hurt. Like no shit, relationships can suck ass sometimes but that's not going to stop me from trying. It hardly ever stops anybody. But anyway, she just assumed that we're having sex because I told her that I can use him as inspiration. Does that sound sexual?"

He shrugs. "I mean, I guess it could be."

"Jasper."

"What?" He laughs. "I saw Titanic."

"Okay, inspiration doesn't mean that I'm going to draw him naked," I say with a small laugh of my own.

"But what's the big deal anyway? You are having sex, aren't you? So why are you so butt hurt about her thinking that you're having sex if you are?" He wonders.

"Have you ever met my mother?" I ask him, starting to boil some water on the stove. "She'd fly out here just to make sure that I never have sex again in my entire life. It'd be an absolute nightmare."

"Right, yeah I guess you have a point there."

"I know that I do," I chuckle. "I mean, I love my mom to death but she can just be so intolerable sometimes. Especially when it comes to any type of decision that I make. Photography? Pointless, not even art. Georgia? I'm going to fail miserably. Scott? It's going to crash and burn. She can never just be happy for me. Ever. She always has to point out the negatives."

"I know," He assures me and he does know considering he's known me since I got to California when I was seven and he's known my mother for just as long so he knows how she can get.

"How are your parents? Have you talked to them lately?" I ask him, trying to get the focus off of me and also because I really want to know. He doesn't talk about his parents a lot although I'm sure that he talks to his mother sometimes.

He just shrugs and he pulls the two steaks out of their packaging. "I talk to my mom a lot and she's doing fine. My dad still won't talk to me though. He's still not over the whole homosexual thing."

"Fuck him," I decide. "Fathers are crap."

"I kinda like mine," Jasper says. "I mean, I know that he's a homophobic dick but other than that, he's a really cool guy."

I nod in agreement because his dad really was pretty cool before Jasper came out to him. I'd always thought that it was his mother that would freak out more but his dad is still just throwing an absolute fit and I hate him now. Even though I liked him for so long, I hate him now for hurting Jasper's feelings like he does. "Okay, well I guess that only my dad is crap then."

"What about Scott's dad? Didn't he cheat on his mom?"

I shake my head. "Nope. His dad is incredibly nice and it was just a misunderstanding. I don't know the details of it, I just know that he didn't actually cheat on her and that they have everything cleared up now. Anyway, what about Conner's parents? Do they know that he's gay?"

"They do," He confirms. "And they're super cool about it too. When Conner told them when he was fourteen, they already kind of suspected it but after that, they read books about the LGBT community, they started talking to other parents and they drove Conner to rallies. They even went to Pride with him."

"Have you met them?"

Jasper nods but he looks away to hide his blush, but I can still tell that he's blushing even if I don't see it because his tell when he's blushing is that he turns his head to the side. "Yep. Really nice people."

"Jasper Lindsay," I say with a gasp and then a wide grin. "I thought that you two were just flinging."

"We are, it wasn't anything. They came home early from an anniversary trip and we were at his house," He explains, reading the recipe very intently on the steaks.

"Did they invite you to dinner?"

"Jo," He mumbles.

"My, oh my," I sing teasingly. "And Conner was okay with that and everything?"

"You're blowing this way out of proportion," He tells me. "We had pizza, it was no big deal at all, alright? Conner and I aren't serious. We're actually probably about to break up."

"What? Why?" I wonder with a frown, mixing some of the ingredients for the mac and cheese.

Jasper just shrugs and starts preparing the slabs of meat. "Well, we're going out to dinner tomorrow night and he said that he has something to tell me and I can tell that it's either really good or really bad so he either is going to tell me that he wants to try the whole thing with labels and everything, or he wants to cut it off completely because we're starting to want different things."

"He'd be ridiculously stupid to break up with you, Jas," I assure my best friend.

"Thanks for that," He chuckles. "I'm sure that he will though considering he really seems to hate the idea of being tied down."

"But being tied down to you would be so magical," I say. "I mean, he has seen you shirtless, right?"

Jasper offers me a small smirk. "Not everybody is as easy to persuade with the male anatomy as you are, Jo."

"You say that like I'm insanely sex-crazed," I accuse him, tossing a try macaroni noodle at him with a small laugh.

"Are we already starting that?"

"Starting what?"

"I was trying to keep the kitchen clean this time," Jasper says with an evil side grin on his face as he picks up some of the peppercorn seasoning that he's been coating the steaks in.

"I didn't start anything," I say quickly and I start to run away but I don't get very far before there's seasoning in my hair.

So naturally, we start flinging food at each other. I don't think that we can ever make a meal without it ending in a food fight or something. It's just an unbreakable habit for us, I think. Or maybe it's just a tradition that we don't want to break. I'm not sure. Either way, once the macaroni is in the oven and the streaks are on the grill thing, I'm covered in steak sauce and seasoning and Jasper is coated in cheese sauce and some truffle oil.

We call a truce when I have to check on the macaroni just to make sure that it hasn't burnt yet and then I try to wipe off as much of the food as I can.

"Now we have to clean all of this up," I sigh, looking at the mess we made in the kitchen.

"Considering that you're the one that started it, I think that you should be the one to clean it," Jasper tells me but I know that he's just joking.

"I didn't start anything. It's not my fault that you can't handle getting hit with one little noodle," I say with a small laugh. "We will both clean it up."

"Fine," He sighs dramatically. "But I still know that you started it, you can't turn that on me, missy."

"Whatever you say, Jas," I sing. "Anyway, other than dinner with Conner tomorrow, what are the plans for the weekend?"

"Working mostly. I have a big project to get done by next week so I'll probably be working on that most of the time. What about you, how's your portrait assignment going?" He wonders curiously.

"Good," I nod in confirmation. "I just need to do touch ups on Scott's shots and then I'll compile them and turn them in."

"Did you touch up mine too? But my face is perfect," He says with a whine.

"I completely agree," I assure him with a small laugh. "But the lighting in my room isn't perfect so I had to give your skin some color and then I made your eyes a little bigger."

"I have small eyes?"

"No," I sigh. "You're beautiful, it's just the business of portraits. Not my favorite type of photography but whatever. You should probably check on those steaks."

"Oh, right. They should be done soon, do you want to go all out on the fanciness and unfold the table or are we just eating in the living room?"

"Let's just eat in the living room, I don't feel like getting the table out," I mutter, feeling tired from all of the hard work on cooking this nice dinner that will probably taste like feet. And also dealing with my mother which, even just over the phone, is exhausting.

"Jo," Jasper just says my name when he opens the grill and I hear a sizzle. I join him by the counter with a loud groan.

"Please don't tell me that you burnt these steaks, Jas. I'm seriously starving now and I don't feel like going out again to get takeout," I tell him as he cuts open one of the steaks.

"It's perfect," He tells me with a proud grin as he shows me the inside of the steak and it's not black or bright red, it's just a light pink which is exactly how I like my steak.

"You did it!" I shout excitedly as he moves the steaks onto a plate and then we high five as I go over to the mac and cheese in the oven as it's about to be finished as well. "Let's hope that our winning streak continues with the mac and cheese."

We both watch with incredible suspense as I open the oven and pull out the small pan with the mac and cheese topped with toasted bread crumbs on top.

"It looks delicious," Jasper tells me.

I don't feel as encouraged. "We have to try it first," I say, handing him a fork. I take a small bite of the mac and cheese and blow on it for a moment before putting it in my mouth.

"Jo, this is delicious," He says after tasting his own bite. "We actually fucking did it."

"I can't believe we pulled that off," I say with a laugh. "We can't pull off mushroom chicken but give us some steak and truffle oil and we are good to go."

"Our culinary success was bound to happen at some point," Jasper says and then we start making our plates full of food. "Considering how long we've been trying to actually succeed at making a complete meal. We will celebrate with a movie."

And so we sit down in the living room with our fancy steak and truffle mac and cheese, both cooked to perfection and before we start eating, we send pictures of our dinner to everybody we know. I send a picture to Sienna, my mother, Haven, and Scott just to brag about our culinary abilities.

"We should cook this for Conner and Scott sometime," I suggest. "It'll be like a super-romantic double date or something, it'd be so cute."

"Assuming that Conner doesn't dump me," He mumbles.

"Assuming that you don't dump Conner," I correct him, nudging me with my shoulder. "Because nobody can possibly be stupid enough to let you go, no matter what."

He offers me a small smile as a thank you and I lean over and kiss his cheek. "I love you a lot, Jo."

"Of course you do, I'm your best friend," I say jokingly before I take a bite of my mac and cheese and then say, "And you're also my best friend so obviously, I love you a lot too, Jas."

-----------------------

Song: I Can't Not Love You by Every Avenue
Picture: Fan cover by DylanBonnet