Page 71 of Even After Sunset

Of course, I was probably about four-foot-nothing back then. Still, they were definitely high.Definitelytaller than the two-foot flames we’re sitting in front of right now. To be fair, we’re limited because we’re confined to using a two-foot wide fire pit.

I find a little patch of red coals toward the edge of the fire and hold my marshmallow just over it. The marshmallow-to-embers distance is key, I learned early on. It’s everything, actually, when it comes to roasting the perfect marshmallow. Jax never got this, though. And watching her now, she still doesn’t. Whichdoesn’t make any sense, because she’s so damn meticulous about everything else in her life. Why drop her standards at a perfectly roasted marshmallow?

She holds it almost directly in a flame. Right at the tip. I can already see it starting to blacken and it makes me cringe. Maybe this is how Jackie feels every time I drop the F-bomb.

“What are you grinning at?” she asks.

I shake my head, still smiling.

“You,” I say, motioning with my chin toward the fire. “You still suck at roasting marshmallows.”

“No, I don’t,” she shoots back.

And then her marshmallow bursts into flames.

I chuckle and she side-eyes me as she whips her stick out of the fire and starts blowing on the charbroiled mass.

“You distracted me,” she accuses, once the flames are extinguished. “Anyway, it’s still fine. It’s totally edible.”

It’s totally not.

But apparently Jackie’s inability to accept failure extends even to marshmallow-roasting.

“Okay. So eat it, then.” I push.

“I will.”

She turns the stick slowly, studying the black blob that is slowly slipping off the end.

“Like, this week or…?”

“Shut up. I’m waiting for it to cool off.”

She’s totally stalling.

I bite down lightly on my lower lip and raise both eyebrows at her in a look I’m hoping makes it obvious I call bullshit.

“What?” she asks indignantly. “I am!”

The message conveyed by my look was clearly received.

The charbroiled glob slides off her stick and lands with an unceremoniousshlop!on the blanket between us.

Jax looks down at it, then back at me.

“Shoot… I was excited to eat that.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was! It was roasted just the way I like it: crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside.”

We both look back down at the marshmallow carcass. Then I scoop it off the blanket with the tip of my finger, pick out a piece of fluff, and pop it in my mouth.

Jackie’s jaw goes slack with shock as I chew slowly, still watching her.

“Burnt on the outside…” I say, as she schools her expression into one that is more indignant now than disgusted.

“Annnnd….” I swallow, nodding gravely. “… Burnt on the inside, too.”

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