Welcome to Trainwrecks: Season 2 (2005-2006)! If you haven’t read Season 1, please start there! Trainwrecks is a free-to-read fiction serial that follows a group of six Seattle-adjacent friends from the year 2004 to the year 2015. Join Luna Cruz, Sebastian Velasquez, Dimitri and Victoria Hale, Duke Kingston, and Jasmine Nolan as they stumble their way from adolescence to adulthood, falling in love, making mistakes, overcoming their pasts, and staying together through it all.
For series introduction, character profiles, relationship charts, and general orientation, check out the Table of Contents!
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Autumn was Jasmine’s favorite season of the year. Others may have seen it as the death of everything, but she, like the authors of the New Testament, preferred to think of it as a temporary sleep. While the rest of the school fled to their buses or cars, she sat outside on one of the benches in front of the main building, soaking up the golden sunlight and anticipating the oranges, reds, and browns that would spread across the surrounding trees in the coming months. She breathed in deep, and the crispness of the air filled her with peace.
When she opened her eyes, Destiny Castillo stood in front of her, arms crossed under her chest to emphasize her already impressive bust. “Hey Jasmine.” Her stick straight brown hair had been streaked with blonde highlights over the summer.
Jasmine smiled at her. “Destiny.” Back when they were freshmen, Destiny had been a hopeless wannabe, imitating everything Jasmine and her best friend Latricia did to try and graft herself into their friend group. Her simpering had amused Latricia endlessly, and she must have won her favor, seeing as Destiny had assumed the position of Latricia’s right-hand woman after Jasmine’s fall from grace. “How are you?”
Destiny looked as if she’d been insulted. “Good.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Been hanging out with Sean.”
Jasmine’s smile faded. Her cheek and ribs ached with the phantom pain of bruises long healed.
“You almost ruined his life, you know, saying all that shit about him being out of control? He’s a good guy.” She flashed her a catty look. “I’ll treat him way better than you ever did.”
Jasmine stood from the bench. Destiny’s eyes widened and she uncrossed her arms, probably anticipating a fight. But Jasmine didn’t care about Sean, and she certainly wasn’t about to fight anyone for the chance to go out with him. She cared about this girl, so desperate for attention and love that she would go after a boy who had physically assaulted Jasmine her sophomore year and would have killed her if Sebastian hadn’t come to her rescue. “Date someone else.”
“You can’t tell me what to do anymore,” Destiny snarled.
“I’m not trying to boss you around. I’m trying to help you.”
The haughtiness left her face for only a second before she scoffed and backed away from her. “Whatever.” And she walked off to her bus just as Sebastian came running out of the school building.
“Sorry,” he said. “Zach and Vince were trying to convince me to join their Magic the Gathering club. I told them I haven’t played since seventh grade, but…” He peered into her face. “You okay?”
Jasmine could have caused a scene. She could have run after Destiny and begged her not to go out with Sean, not to give him the time of day, not to hand him the opportunity to abuse another girl. But the unfortunate thing about girls like Destiny—Girls like us, Jasmine’s younger self whispered—was that they often learned their lessons the hard way. Making a scene wouldn’t solve anything. It would only push Destiny deeper into Sean’s arms.
But she couldn’t stand by and do nothing, either.
Jasmine dug into her backpack for a pen and ripped a corner of a page out of her notebook. She scribbled her phone number down and ran onto Destiny’s bus. Half the kids stared at her in surprise. The bus driver snapped at her to get off if she didn’t have a note. But Jasmine ignored them and walked up to Destiny, who looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Here.” She grabbed her arm and pressed the scrap of paper into her hand. “Call me if you ever need to talk.” And she turned and jogged away before Destiny could protest or insult her.
Sebastian waited for her on the curb. “What was that?”
She slung her arm over his shoulders and pulled him towards the parking lot. “I’ll tell you on the way to work.”
~*~
Jasmine had joined Whitney Cruz’s dance studio over the summer. She’d been dancing since the age of four, when her parents had enrolled her in a traditional Chinese dance academy after much begging on her part. The subsequent obsession with her own body, paired with the adoration of everyone who watched her perform, had played an enormous role in hyperinflating her ego, and after she converted to Christianity, she’d given up dancing altogether for fear that it was no longer appropriate for her.
But Sebastian’s mother had helped her see things in a different light. “Dance is a form of expression created by God. If King David danced before Him with all his might, then why shouldn’t we?” Furthermore, she explained, movement was good for the body, and Jasmine might have found it helpful to channel her restless energy into a healthier outlet.
And so she’d started dancing again, allowing Mrs. Cruz to instruct her in ballroom, jazz, and even Zumba. She always slept better after coming to the studio: fewer nightmares, less craving for physical contact, no insomnia. It was a form of therapy she hadn’t realized she needed.
She also got the chance to watch Sebastian at work. It was one thing to be told the biggest emo kid she knew was a skilled dancer, and another thing to see him, hoodie off, breezing through such complicated footwork that even she wasn’t sure she could keep up with him. And his body. Goodness, that physique. Strong arms, toned abdomen, muscular legs, tantalizing back and shoulders. If the girls at school ever learned what Sebastian looked like under his many layers of clothes, they’d lose their minds.
“Nice having him all to ourselves, isn’t it?” her younger self said as she watched him lead a class of older women through warmup stretches.
Jasmine rolled her eyes. “Keep it in your pants.”
“What? I’m just saying.” She made a frame around Sebastian with her fingers and licked her lips. “I wouldn’t mind having a taste of that.”
“You don’t even like him.”
“I can be wrong sometimes.”
Mrs. Cruz came out of her office to take over the class, and Sebastian joined Jasmine at the row of chairs along the back of the studio space. He stopped short when he saw the open book in her lap. “Is that a Bible?”
“No, it’s the Yellow Pages.” She smiled at him.
Jasmine imagined her younger self scooting over eagerly as Sebastian took a seat in the chair next to her. “The book of Isaiah. Good choice. Having fun reading all about the destruction of Israel?”
“No,” she said, “but I am having fun going through the Old Testament and highlighting every time God gave people advanced warning before He judged them.”
“Scandalous.”
“I know. How dare I paint a merciful picture of the Old Testament God.” She closed the Bible and slipped it into her backpack. “I started while I was in Maryland for the family reunion. It’s gotten me thinking about a lot of things.”
“Like what?”
“Like you.” She sectioned her hair out and began braiding it. “And your reasons for leaving the church.”
They’d talked about it plenty of times before. Sebastian wasn’t shy about accusing God of killing his birth mother. He and Dimitri were alike in that they believed in the existence of a higher power, but they didn’t believe in His goodness. How could God be good when they’d suffered so much?
Jasmine understood them. She could have easily held those same beliefs, considering all that had been done to her in the past. Where had God been when she was drinking and partying and being abused? If He loved her so much, why hadn’t He stopped those things from happening to her? But then she thought about how hard Dimitri had tried to help her, how many ways out she’d been given that she’d ignored in her arrogance. How her parents, instead of kicking her out of the house, had cut back their work hours, found her a therapist, sought justice on her behalf, and tried to be there for her when she needed them. She thought about how Pastor Ken’s wife had seen her that first time she’d visited the church and assured her she was welcome there. How Sebastian, who’d once known the Lord well enough to believe Jasmine had been changed by Him, ditched his friends to take a chance on the Whore of Renton. And how the past two years of her life had been filled with friendship and love and abundance, even though she hadn’t deserved it after spitting in God’s face so many times.
Sebastian looked amused. “I’m curious to hear your opinions on my personal life.”
“Don’t make it sound so bad.” She twisted her hair around and around. “I just think you haven’t given the Lord a fair shake.”
“I used to be His number one fan boy.”
“And then you changed your mind when His ways actually turned out to be higher and loftier than yours.”
Sebastian laughed. “Careful, Jazz, I’m your ride home, remember?”
“You wouldn’t leave me here. You’re too kind for that.” She looked him in the eye. “I don’t have a right to tell you how to feel about your mother’s death. It was bad, and that’s never going to change. But when you asked yourself where God was in all of that, did you even bother looking for Him, or did you just assume you’d been abandoned?”
They stared at each other for a long time. Jasmine broke eye contact first, worried that she’d pushed him too far. But she couldn’t say nothing, either. Her conscience wouldn’t let her be quiet. “God always gives us a way out before disaster comes.” She let go of her completed braid. “You should think about how He spared you, too.”
Sebastian leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out in front of him. Jasmine grabbed another section of hair and started braiding, hoping Destiny hadn’t thrown her phone number out the bus window on her way home. They sat together in silence through the duration of the dance lesson, and when it was time to leave, Sebastian drove her back to Renton, no questions asked.
Author’s Note: The tension between Jasmine and Sebastian begins…
*vibrating in anticipation*
I feel for Jasmine, though. I can't imagine this will be easy for her ><
I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS THIS EPISODE HELP
I'm so happy to see Jasmine reach out to a girl who's walking down the same bad road she did, and I'm proud of her for challenging Seb, but man... I'm scared...
It's nice to see Jazz and Seb at work though!
(Also wheezing at how Seb is fully becoming the thirst trap like you said lol)