Friends Are Benefits, part 2
Over the next few weeks, Jason and I actually started becoming friends. We still bonked heads once in a while, because he still didn’t know how to communicate. Sometimes he’d give orders instead of making a request. Other times he’d be sarcastic and passive aggressively make his preferences known. I always addressed these moments, calmly, reminding him that I’ve never given him any reason to think he couldn’t just tell me or ask me things.
We talked a lot, though, mostly about relationships. I hadn’t known this when I’d first met him, but by now, I knew that he was pretty notorious at faire for playing the ladies. (He apparently identified us by numbers in the catalog). He could be very charming, and he was smart, so it was a witty kind of charming that I found very attractive. And he was and is very talented and good-looking (think a shorter, thicker Jason Momoa).
He never confided anything really deep or personal in me, but I felt like I got to know him a lot better than I had. At faire, he came across as confident and flirty. Living with him, I learned that he really wasn’t all that confident. Some of the things he told me women said and did to him really shocked me. To me they were such blatant examples of abuse or disrespect. He just kind of shrugged it off.
My birthday was coming up, and Rick had told me he had permission to come stay with me. I asked Jason if he was ok with that and he said he was. I’d gone back to Sacramento once or twice to see Rick and hang out, but I had stopped texting him as often because I realized that I was developing feelings that I shouldn’t, and that when Rick didn’t get back to me, it felt like rejection.
When Rick got to our apartment, I introduced him to Jason, and then we went back to my bedroom. He told me that he’d noticed that my texts had dropped off and that he knew why. I asked him what he thought was the reason, but I don’t remember what his answer was. I just remember that it wasn’t correct. I told him about feeling like every time I sent him a text, I was setting myself up for rejection. He said that he understood and that he’d try to be better about getting back to me right away. We had a fun evening and went to bed. Before we went to sleep he told me, “now you know, I don’t get birthday presents for ‘friends.'” My stomach tightened up. I hadn’t given a single thought to what birthday present he might give me. Rick saw me tighten up and said, “Aww, you’re disappointed, aren’t you?”
I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t about the gift. It was about the reminder that I’m “just a friend.” My voice quavered a little, and that makes me angry when I show emotion without meaning to. So I basically just said, “no, I understand. I’m just tired.” So much for communication.
In the morning, I heard some rattling out in the living room. I climbed over Rick to go use the bathroom. When I opened my bedroom door, I found that there were large objects hanging from the wall, covered in garbage bags. They had signs on them that said, “Happy Birthday, Jenna!” Jason stood in the middle with a wide grin on his face.
I said, “What did you do?” 
Jason said, “look and see!”
I unwrapped the first one. It was a print of a painting by one of my favorite artist, Lord Frederick Leighton, called “Painter’s Honeymoon.” It was one of a few prints that I’d brought when I moved in. I didn’t have frames for them, and the apartment was too nice to just hang posters, so I slid them behind a sofa. They were really meaningful works to me. The Primavera because I’d learned about it in my Humanities class and I treasured everything about it, and Painter’s Honeymoon because Leighton was the first artist I’d discovered on my own. Jason had had them framed and hung up in the living room, each wrapped with a note saying happy birthday.
To the day that I sit here writing this story, thirteen years later, no one has ever done something so sweet and thoughtful for me as a birthday present. And I do have some pretty amazing and thoughtful people in my life.