Disclaimer: I don't own Ten Inch Hero or the characters, blah, blah, blah, feeble attempt at legal CMA.
After closing the grill for the night, Priestly caught a ride with Trucker but had him stop at the corner so he could saunter over to the park. It was windy, and the crowd seemed thinner than the week before. He could already hear the music, and it sounded like someone decent was playing. Something alternative and a little emo, but still tolerable. He just started walking the same loop as the week before, figuring Jude would eventually pass by. He listened to the music while also listening for any warnings from behind. The only warning he got, though, was a sudden smack on the ass that made him nearly jump out of his shorts.
Jude bounced backward on her wheels so that she faced him again as he walked toward her, and she waited for him to catch up. The corner of his mouth popped up at her satisfied smirk.
"Free to Lay?" She read his latest shirt, styled after the Frito Lay logo. "What happened to the one you were wearing this morning?"
He shrugged. "I was sweating like crazy working on the rental place, so I changed before work."
"How many jobs do you have?" she asked, tipping her head to the side.
"Just one. Beach City Grill. The other thing…that's just a favor for a friend." Although, truthfully, if he was going to make it on his own he was going to have to think about a second job to supplement his income.
"I've been to Beach City Grill before," she nodded. "Good sandwiches." She rolled off the sidewalk, gesturing to him to follow. A group was just leaving, vacating a picnic table. Jude stepped up on the bench to sit on the table top and began removing her skates, shrugging out of the backpack she wore. Priestly settled next to her. "I have three jobs," she told him.
"Yikes," he said. "I can barely keep straight with just the one."
She shrugged. "Well, one is seasonal, down at the boardwalk. I run the bumper cars two or three days a week. I teach tourists to surf Saturday and Sunday mornings. And I groom dogs for Paw Zone on weekend afternoons. I'm trying to save for school."
"You going to UC?"
"Nope," She shook her head. "Bryn Mawr. It's a women's college in Pennsylvania." She laughed at the look on his face. "It's a family tradition," she shrugged. "So, I just wanted to be up front about that," she said, her eyes serious in the dim light from a nearby globe light. "I'm leaving in September, so even though I enjoy running into you…" She trailed off. "I don't believe in long distance…things. They don't work out," she shrugged.
"Well," Priestly answered slowly, understanding what she was saying, "it's only the middle of April. So we can have some fun before you go, right?"
Her mouth quirked upward at the corners, her expression taking on a relieved cast. "Right," she nodded, slipping on a pair of Vans before tucking the skates in the backpack. They sat on that picnic table just talking for about a half hour before Jude said, "Hey. Let's walk over to Joop's for some ice cream."
"Joop's? Where's that?"
She smacked his thigh. "I'll show you. Best ice cream in town. Seriously."
When she stood, he was startled to see that off her skates, she was still nearly as tall as he was. Of course, a lot of her was leg. He hated the term Amazonian, but even he had to admit…it fit her. She was tall and solid and strong. Not at all overweight, but not what anyone could refer to as delicate. He fell into step beside her as she started walking toward the southeast corner of the park.
Joop's was a tiny little storefront two blocks away from the park with a walk-up window and no indoor or outdoor seating. You just went up to the window, ordered, paid, got your order and got out of the way. The lines were long, the patrons impatient for their frozen fix. Jude ordered a two scoop waffle cone with mint chip on the bottom and cake batter on the top. Priestly ordered a single scoop of butter rum in a cake cone.
Jude licked her cone, her eyes on him expectantly. Priestly thought about refusing to taste his ice cream just to see what she would do, but watching her watch him while she licked her ice cream made him suddenly and distinctly uncomfortable, so he turned his attention to his own cone, half biting, half licking it.
"Awesome," he said after rolling the soft lump of cool, buttery ice cream in his mouth until it melted. "Tastes like a frozen butter rum lifesaver."
She grinned, catching a glob of ice cream that missed her mouth and slid down her chin. Watching her lick the goop from her fingers also made him edgy, so he turned his focus back to his own dessert, only glancing up at her when she nudged him and tipped her cone toward him, offering him a taste. He took one, and she tested his.
"Wow," she said, her eyebrows rising. "I've never had that one. It does taste just like the lifesaver."
"And that tastes just like frozen vanilla cake," Priestly nodded. "I think you might be right. This is some of the best ice cream I've ever had."
They made their way back to the park. Lightning flashed out over the ocean and the wind came and went in gusts. Jude looked up into the darkness. "I think we might get rained out," she said when the lightning flashed again, allowing them to see that the sky was thick with clouds.
"Maybe," he said, hearing the soft growl of thunder.
The crowd on the lawn had thinned out since they'd left for Joop's, but the band was still playing, so they decided to stick around to listen. Since they'd been sticking to mostly superficial stuff, Priestly was surprised when Jude asked,
"So, what's the deal with your family?"
"The deal?" he asked, stalling.
"Well," she shrugged, "my mom freaked out when I dyed my hair black last year because I wasn't eighteen yet and her rule was always 'not until you're an adult'. She made me grow it out, and she wanted me to cut off the black part as soon as it was long enough, but before it got long enough, I turned eighteen. I was just wondering if your parents were anything like my mom and how they reacted to your hair."
Priestly smirked up at his hairstyle of the day. He'd begun alternating between his normal Mohawk, liberty spikes, and just a super messy tousled style. He kept using the dyed gel every day, but in various colors. Today his hair was set in blood red liberty spikes that matched the red of his copycat logo tee. "This came after I left home."
"Where's home?"
"Latimer," he answered, wishing he could find a way to change the subject. The ice cream made him think of his Mom, anyway, because of the homemade vanilla they made each summer. He didn't want to go there.
"Where's that?"
"Mississippi," he answered. "What about you? Where are you from?"
"Daughter of two native republican Californians. A rare breed," she added. Then she shrugged. "I'm in my 'rebellious phase'. That's what my mother says," she snorted. "She's a psychologist specializing in human development. She's always putting people in neat little boxes with neat little labels." Jude gestured with her hands as she spoke. She stuck her tongue out and sighed. "Who knows? Maybe I am."
He studied her in the next flash of lightning. He thought about telling her about his father, but he didn't. He just let her go on about her mother and father, who divorced when she was fifteen. "What about your father? How did he react to your hair?"
She made a face. "He thought it was cool, and his girlfriend did, too. Mom almost killed them both when they bought me the serpent tattoo for my 18th birthday."
He chuckled. "That's cool," he said, studying it more closely than he was able to before.
"I'm thinking about having my nose pierced," she said cheerfully. "But I think that might actually kill my mother, and I'm not sure I want her dead. I just want her to realize this is my body, you know? It's up to me what I do to it and what I wear on it."
He nodded. He did know. all too well. He grew up feeling the same way and feeling just as irritated as she seemed to when other people tried to impose their own shit over such matters.
They both jumped as a loud crack of thunder split the sky and the first few raindrops began to fall. He looked up at another flash of lightning. Looked like the storm was almost right over them. "I'm staying just behind the park," Priestly said, pointing at Trucker's back fence in the distance. He realized with some embarrassment that Trucker probably had some sort of back gate and rather than walking from the corner as he'd done that night, he probably could have just gone through there, instead. "Or can I walk you to your car?"
"I don't have it," she shook her head. "I skated here."
"All the way from your aunt's?" he asked in disbelief.
"No. My house is in the neighborhood behind Joop's!" she called out as the raindrops became a downpour.
She followed him to Trucker's back fence, where in the next flash of lightning he found the gate. When he reached up for the latch, he discovered Trucker had it padlocked and realized too late it was probably to keep out burglars. "Up for a climb?" he asked, already vaulting up to the top of the fence, grateful that instead of having dog-ear style boards Trucker's were flat with a rail cap.
He took her backpack and reached a hand down to help her. Coming down the other side was considerably easier since it had the cross rail. They slid a little on the wet grass since Trucker's lot sloped downhill and when they made it to the deck, they were both soaking wet. Trucker's porch light was on and of course the motion light had kicked on. Priestly winced wondering if Trucker was asleep and whether it was going to light up his bedroom like the fourth of July. Jude looked at him and laughed.
"You look like you're bleeding all over the place."
He glanced upward and touched his spikes. Oddly, they were still mostly in place but the color had obviously bled. He thought about going through the house dripping red droplets everywhere and about the fact that they might stain. Not good. He ducked out of his shirt, grimacing at the thought of possibly ruining it with the red gel color, but he'd take that over ruining anything of Trucker's. Priestly quickly wound the shirt around his head and tried the sliding glass doors. Locked. He should have realized.
The gate leading from the front of the house to the back yard was also padlocked, which Priestly hadn't considered. "Wait here," he said as he pulled himself up on the gate, "I'll go around and unlock the door." Jude nodded.
Priestly grabbed a couple of dark colored towels from the linen closet in the hall bath on his way through the house before passing Trucker's closed bedroom door. He figured Trucker was up because the guy seemed to be a light sleeper and the storm was loud, but there was no light visible under the door. He pulled the dowel from the track and slid the door open, handing Jude one of the towels. "C'mon in," he whispered.
"Roommate?" she whispered back.
"Yeah," he nodded, putting his finger in front of his lips. She nodded.
He took her into the guest room, flipping on the light and closing the door.
"You surf?" she asked, checking out the Endless Summer poster. He shook his head.
"My roommate," he explained, toweling off his hair. The sponging destroyed what was left of his spikes, so he just rubbed like crazy until his hair rearranged itself into the messy style he wore when he was late or feeling too lazy to 'hawk it.
"God, I'm freezing," she said toweling off, and he realized her teeth were chattering.
"Shit," he said. "Let me get you a shirt."
Priestly grabbed a long sleeve tee from the closet and passed it to her. Before he knew she would do it, she pulled her clingy red top right off. His eyes were instantly drawn to her belly button. "Holy crap," he mumbled, mesmerized by the belly ring with the dangling charm. Cherries. She laughed and threw the towel at him. "That is super sexy," he breathed helplessly, catching the towel.
"Turn around," she said, gesturing in a circle with her hand. "I need to take my bra off, too."
He gave her a wicked grin but turned back to the closet to grab himself a dry shirt. He chose a black one, pulling it over his still damp hair. That way any color transfer would be invisible.
"Okay," she said.
He grinned. "You look cute in that," he said after glancing at it. In large letters, it read, Life gave me melons. The tiny fine print below it said, (I'm dyslexic.) He laughed at the unintended double entendre of the first statement. "Good thing the second sentence is there," he chuckled, "Otherwise, you'd just look like you were bragging."
She looked down, holding the shirt out to read it. She laughed. "Oh, my God. I'm so glad my mother will be asleep when I get home. Knowing her, she'd completely miss the fine print."
Priestly offered her his army jacket. "Let's go sit out on the front porch and wait for it to stop raining."
Sitting on the top step together, they just watched the storm for a few minutes. Jude broke the silence.
"Priestly?"
"Hmmm?" he asked, looking over at her.
"Are you ever going to make a move?"
He blinked at her in surprise. Of all the things she might have asked... Her eyes danced in amusement as he realized she'd been giving him signals all night...her greeting, the ice cream, pulling off her shirt without asking him to leave.
"Hell no," he joked. "I'm a gentleman." When she barked out a laugh, he gave her a mock wounded look. "Ladies first," he dared her huskily, watching her eyes darken.
Her hand snaked around to the back of his neck, drawing him closer to her until their foreheads were touching and he could feel the heat of her breath against him. Her lids slid closed as her mouth fell against his. His last thought as he took it deeper was that his current t-shirt was dead on: The road to Hell is paved with everything that feels like Heaven.
A/N: Since this is rated 'T', that's all you get! I'm already pushing the envelope on the language, based on the ratings descriptions. Shoulda thought about that before I rated this. Oh, well. Use your imaginations! ;p Although to be clear, Priestly still has too much of his upbringing in him to take it "there" with Jude yet. (Don'tcha love the silliness of me giving backstory on a fanfic? HA!)