Flowers and Compliments- Joe Toye x OFC
"What about you, Jen? You got some fella waiting for you back in Wilkes-Barre?"
Jennifer looked up from her pitiful hand of cards, schooling her face into one of complete and utter confidence before shaking her head at Malarkey.
"Not anymore," she murmured.
"Ouch, why does that sound like it was a messy break up?" Muck grimaced.
"Like you know anything about messy break ups," Penkala snorted. "You've only ever had Faye and you two are like something out of a girly romance novel."
"Shut up," Muck rolled his eyes. "I'm right though, aren't I?"
"Yep," Jennifer reached for another card, wishing that the memory of that afternoon didn't still hurt.
"Only a fool would cheat on you, Jen," Guarnere muttered, reaching for another card of his own.
"How did you know he cheated?" she asked, tucking her blonde hair behind her ear. It was still wet from her shower and it felt nice to have it loose from the confines of the tight bun she had to wear all day, every day.
"Old Gonorrhea just knows these things," he shrugged. "And I also know you're better off without him."
"I know that too," she smiled. "And I aint upset about him anymore; just upset that I let myself get taken for a ride by an idiot with a small dick."
"Couldn't have been much of a ride then," George commented, drawing chuckles from everyone else.
"You can say that again, Luz," Jennifer laughed.
"So how'd you find out he was cheating?" Don asked.
"Caught them together when I went to his place to surprise him," she answered as she concentrated on her cards, deciding which move to make next. "He told me it was my fault for putting on weight after my mom died 'cause of all the crap I was eating to make myself feel better, and that he needed to fuck other girls 'cause just so he had something to think about when he was fucking me. When I told him we were over he said I'd never meet anyone else who would ever want me so I'd better get used to being alone for the rest of my days."
"What a jerk," Perconte muttered.
"That's putting it mildly," Guarnere clenched his jaw angrily.
"It's fine, guys," Jennifer reassured them. "I'm over it. I had a lucky escape."
"Still though, Jen, no one deserves that," Muck reached across the table and squeezed her hand with a warm smile. "Especially not you."
"Yeah, and one day you'll come across a guy who will treat you right," Penkala said.
"And one who appreciates that ass," George grinned.
"And those boobs," Perconte added with a smirk.
"And that smile," Guarnere winked.
"And those come to bed eyes you're always throwing at me," Penkala included.
"You guys are gonna make me blush," Jennifer snorted even as her cheeks and neck started to flush pink. "And on that note, I'm out guys."
"It's between me, you and Gonnorhea then, Toye," Muck announced. "Care to throw down a few more bucks to make this more interesting."
"I'm gonna win anyway so why not," Joe agreed, throwing some notes down on the table.
"You sure about that Joe?" Jennifer smirked. "'Cause your left eyelid is twitching."
"And?" he glared at her.
"Nothing," she shrugged, trying to pretend she didn't feel uncomfortable under his venomous gaze. "It's just that your left eyelid always twitches when you're lying… or when you're mad."
"That right?" Joe muttered. "Well, maybe I am mad. Mad that instead of just having a boy's card game, we're sitting around gossiping like old women listening to you fish for compliments 'cause some guy who was probably only stringing you along anyway got caught with someone else."
The silence in the room was deafening as everyone looked at Joe open mouthed and wide eyed.
"I'm done," Joe threw his cards down; the winning hand and stood up. "Do whatever the fuck you want with the money."
And he was gone before anyone could even say a word.
"Don't listen to him, Jen," Perconte frowned at her. "He didn't mean it."
"Mean it or not, he's gonna get an earful for it," Guarnere growled, standing up.
"Leave it, Bill," Jennifer put a hand on his arm and swallowed down the lump in her throat. "He just… I shouldn't have joined the game tonight. We all know Joe likes poker night but that he doesn't like me, so I should have stayed away. And I definitely shouldn't have tried to joke with him."
Whether it was because she was a female, or whether it was because she had proven them all wrong by getting through training and getting her wings, she didn't know. All she knew was that Joe Toye didn't like her one little bit.
Convincing the rest of the company to accept her had been a slow and gradual process, but now Jennifer could say with some pride that she had warmed them all to her one by one until she felt like there had never been a divide there in the first place.
All except for Joe, anyway.
She didn't know why he didn't like her, and apparently neither did anyone else. In fact, she'd heard them asking Joe that same question when they thought she couldn't hear. His answer was always vague and snappy, shutting down any further enquiries into his detestation of Easy's female.
"It's Easy's poker night and you're part of Easy," Bill argued. "So if Joe's got a problem with it then that's on him, but it don't give him the right to go off on you like that."
"I know but if you go out there and bash him for it, it's only gonna antagonise him further," Jennifer was insistent. "I don't care if Joe hates me or not, I just care that he'll cover my ass once we get wherever we're going and I'll do the same for him."
She hoped that Joe would at least do that but part of her wasn't entirely sure. She supposed that only time would tell.
… … …
Jennifer reached for the bucket and vomited into it again, the guys closest to her grimacing at the noise and at the smell. Eugene reached out and rubbed her back soothingly and when Malarkey appeared with a wet cloth to put on the back of her neck, she smiled gratefully.
"I can't wait to get off this boat," she groaned, right before she vomited again.
"I can't wait to hear her stop complaining," Toye muttered, swinging his legs over the side of his cot and standing up. "I can't listen to it any longer."
Throwing his cigarette onto the ground, Guarnere scowled and watched Joe meander through the gangway before deciding to follow him, shooting Jennifer a sympathetic glance as he passed by her.
Joe was snarky and cantankerous, and that was oddly part of his charm. What you saw was what you got, but his treatment of Jennifer seemed almost out of character for the man that Guarnere had come to know, and he wasn't putting up with it any longer.
"Hey, what the fuck is your problem?" he grabbed Joe by the shoulder and pulled him to stop.
"I need some air," Joe shrugged him off and made his way up the staircase towards the top deck.
"I'm talking about Jennifer," Guarnere was hot on his heels.
"What about her?"
"You know what," Bill spat. "Talking to her like a piece of shit all the time when she aint even done nothing wrong."
"Bit like how you talk to Liebgott," Joe muttered.
"Aint the same and you know it, Joe. Liebgott and me argue but I don't hate the guy; not like how you hate Jen."
"I don't hate her," Joe leaned over the railing and stared down at the murky waters below. "She's just… irritating."
"Irritating? Jen?" Guarnere frowned. "Luz and Perconte are fine but apparently Jen is irritating?"
"Can't help how I feel," Joe shrugged, and that was when Guarnere saw it.
"Fuck me," he choked out a laugh at himself because he had no idea how he had never noticed it before. "You don't hate Jen at all."
"I just said that," Joe muttered.
"Yeah but what you didn't say was that you fucking like her. You know, like her, like her."
"Shut up," Joe turned to walk away, which told Bill he had hit a raw nerve.
"No, you're gonna shut up," Bill stopped him by standing in front of him and poking him in the chest hard. "All this time you've been treating her like shit 'cause you got a thing for her. Despite what your dad mighta told you, Joe, that aint the way to get a girl. They like flowers and compliments, you dumbass."
"I don't like Jen," Joe still refused to admit it. "And if you say a fucking word to anyone that's to that effect then don't think I won't come at you, Bill, 'cause I fucking will."
"Oh, you don't gotta worry about me saying nothing, Joe," Bill smirked. "But you keep talking to Jen like shit then you're never gonna have a chance with her when you decide to finally man the fuck up and do something about how you feel."
Joe waited for Bill to disappear before he let the scowl fall from his face to replace it with a grimace of disgust; both at his behaviour towards Jen and the fact that Bill had finally seen right through it. Which meant it was probably only a matter of time before someone else did.
He wasn't sure exactly when he first started to like Jen as more than just another one of Easy. Maybe it was when she proved herself to be strong enough to actually be part of Easy by taking everything Sobel threw at her time and time again. Or perhaps it was when she showed herself to a good person over and over by taking punishment meant for others in the company, or by being for them when they needed a friend; and even after some of them hadn't been that to her when she had first needed one.
All he knew was that whenever he saw her laughing with Luz or Bill, he wanted to punch them in the face because he wanted to be the only one making her face flush the way it did or her eyes twinkle like stars in the night sky. And when he saw her talking with Muck or with Doc, he felt jealousy rear up inside of him that they got to spend that time alone with her, hearing about her life before Easy and about her hopes and dreams for after it.
He knew he couldn't tell Jen that he liked her because if by some small chance she liked him back, it wasn't like they could do anything about it anyway. And if they did, and they got caught, Jen would be sent packing. Something that would have been a travesty given all of the hard work she had put into becoming one of them.
No, he needed to continue to maintain an emotional distance from Jen. For his own sake. But most importantly, for hers.
… … …
Jen heaved when she stepped into the cubicle, wondering what she had ever done wrong in life to be awarded the opportunity to clean shit from a toilet that hundreds of men used daily. From the cubicle beside her, Toye did the same.
"I swear to fucking god…" he muttered angrily.
The last time she had done latrine duty had been back at Fort Benning, and she had been lucky enough to do it with George and Perconte, so despite the disgusting nature of their task, between the three of them they had laughed their way through the torture. There was no chance of that happening today. Not with Joe, who, despite the fact he had stopped being as nasty to her since they had arrived in England, barely acknowledged her unless he absolutely had to.
Which was why her eyes almost bugged out of her head when she heard a question come over the cubicle to her.
"You heard from your folks recently?"
"You talking to me?" she asked before she even realised it.
"No, to Sobel," he muttered sarcastically. "Yes, I'm talking to you."
"Why?" she frowned.
"Well it's this thing called a conversation. I ask a question, you answer it and then maybe you ask me a question and so on."
"Alright smart ass," she rolled her eyes. "Usually the only reason you talk to me is to berate me, so excuse me for being somewhat taken aback."
She mistook Joe's silence as annoyance when in actual fact he was trying to deal with his embarrassment at being such a jerk to her for all of this time. He was about to open his mouth and apologise when she spoke first.
"Do you think you'll ever not hate me?"
He blinked, pausing in his toilet scrubbing and willing away the heavy feeling in his chest at her words.
"I… I don't hate you, Jen," he rasped.
"See the guys all say that too," she laughed dryly. "But I know that's just 'cause they feel bad on me. I won't lie, sometimes I feel bad on me 'cause of how much you hate me."
"I don't hate you," he repeated. "I just… I really don't hate you, ok?"
"But you don't like me either?" she laughed awkwardly. "It's ok, I'm difficult to like sometimes."
No, you're not, he thought. You're funny and you're kind and you're interesting. You're strong and you're beautiful.
"Who says you're difficult to like?" he asked.
"My mom," he heard her smirk. "My dad. My stupid ex."
"Well parents don't always know the real us," he murmured. "And as for your ex… he's an idiot with poor taste so I wouldn't put any stock in his opinion."
"I think that's the closest you've ever come to complimenting me, Joe," she laughed properly now and the sound made his stomach flip. "Don't do it too much, Toye, otherwise I'll start to think you actually really do like me."
You have no idea how much I really like you.
"Yeah, well, we can't have that, right?"
… … …
Luz was having far too much fun painting Jen's face, and even though he could tell she was desperate to smack his hands away she just stood there and allowed him to do as he pleased. Joe could see by the way she was looking at George that she was trying to memorise everything about him, just as was trying to do about her in that moment.
Not that every little part of her wasn't already seared into his brain, from the small freckle underneath her right eye to the scar beneath her chin; the one he overheard her telling Eugene she got from smashing into the kitchen table as a child.
"You're gonna regret it if you don't tell her before we go Joe," Guarnere appeared next to him.
"I aint gonna regret anything, Bill, 'cause she's gonna be fine."
"Oh, I know she will," Guarnere scoffed. "She'll be the one making the Germans cry if they get too close. No, it's you I was talking about."
"Your faith in me is blinding," Toye rolled his eyes.
"Just tell her, yeah?" Guarnere gripped him by the shoulder and gave him a gentle shake before walking away.
Guarnere made it sound so easy. Maybe it was so easy. He told her, she was happy, they kissed and then they agreed to put their feelings on hold until the war was over.
Yeah, right. It was anything but easy.
As though she knew that he was looking at her, she turned her head and stared right at him, smiling tentatively, still somewhat unsure of the new dynamic between them; the one where he no longer behaved like a complete jackass to her but instead either mostly ignored her when the others were around or made polite and somewhat friendly conversation when they were alone.
Nodding back, he didn't wait for her to do anything else. He simply turned and walked away, looking to get lost amongst the rest of the men who were preparing for the jump.
The jump that they would be both relieved and annoyed to find out was cancelled. Which was how Joe came to find himself strolling the perimeter of the airfield, as far as he could go without the MPs coming for him, and a place where he could be alone with his thoughts for a while.
It seemed that someone else had the same idea though.
"And here was me thinking I'd be alone out here," Jen muttered, and Joe could see the streaks down her face that told him she'd been crying.
"I can go and-"
"Stay," the crack of her voice made him sink to the floor beside her without so much as another thought.
Neither of them spoke for a while. Instead Joe offered her a cigarette, cupping his hand around the flame of the lighter as he lit it for her, the light casting a soft glow on her glassy eyes and slightly reddened nose.
"Are you scared?" She broke the silence first. The question was so quiet that he almost wasn't sure he heard it until she laughed at herself dryly. "What am I saying, you're Joe Toye. You ain't scared of anything."
I'm shit scared of losing you.
"What?" She turned to frown at him and he realised, with horror, that he'd spoken aloud.
The way Joe saw it, he had two options at that moment. He could lie or he could-
"I said I'm shit scared of losing you," his eyes bore into her own with an intensity that crackled around them both with such tangibility they felt like they would get an electric shock if they did little more than breathe. Shock be damned, Joe lifted his hand to cup her cheek, his eyes tracing her full lips a second before his thumb followed suit.
"But you don't… we're not…" she was struggling to understand, even as her breath hitched and her eyes darkened when Joe's face neared hers. "Joe, you hate me. Well, alright don't hate me anymore but you tolerate me and I-"
"Jen, shut up," Toye ordered gently moments before his lips descended on her own with a confident tenderness that was a complete oxymoron yet was exactly what she imagined kissing him would be like.
Because Jen had imagined kissing Joe Toye a lot. At one point she'd imagined kissing all of her boys because that was just what girls did. But the only one that she imagined kissing as she lay face down on her pillow night after night, that didn't make her feel like she was imagining some incestual sin, was Joe.
It didn't matter that she thought for the longest time he hated or that after their latrine duty he was just being civil towards her out of guilt. No, all that mattered was that whenever she saw him or heard him, her stomach would churn and her heart would race. It was rather pathetic but it was what kept her going when Sobel was busting her ass or when homesickness was killing her. Well, her infatuation with Joe and her top tier friendships with everyone else.
"I've never had a girl be less enthusiastic about a kiss before," Joe's face was unreadable as he pulled back and looked down at her. "If you didn't want me to kiss you, you could have just said no."
"Sorry," she grinned awkwardly, her cheeks flushing pink. "I was just thinking about how times I've imagined this and now it's actually happening."
"Hang on, you've thought about me kissing you?" It was Toye's turn to frown.
"Once or twice," she shrugged, and Joe knew by the way she scrunched her nose that she was lying; had seen her do it enough times when she had gotten caught stealing Luz's cigarettes or Martin's chocolate bars.
"Even when I was being a prized asshole to you back in Toccoa and Benning?"
"Hell, that just made me think about it all the more. What you laughing for?" she scowled when Joe let out a snort and laughter rumbled from deep inside of his chest.
"'Cause for once I think Guarnere might be wrong," he shook his head as he reached for her again. "Not all girls need flowers and compliments."
