bitter bite

Why did Oliver have to scare him like that? Jules knew he was right. He avoided Josie like the plague now. To bad, he couldn't get an injection of some kind to ward her off. She really wanted to see him, again.

First he'd make up excuses that he had something to do or being tired. But she would only buy it for a time. It felt like only a few hours since he'd seen her. Seriously, she was sexy, but just sixteen and he was nineteen. He'd wanted to ask when she'd be seventeen. Perhaps Josie would be 17 soon, but no, Oliver was so right, he didn't need to get mixed up with her, and yet she was like a small prize to be had. Almost, anyhow.

Perhaps, they could just hold hands.  They could go to movies. It would be nice. Of course, that would be so hard. As if something wasn't already hard, just thinking about her. God, he was such a slut, thinking such thoughts. It disgusted himself.

"For fuck's sake! I don't really care about you, you know." He finally laid it on the line. He didn't want to. Yes, she finally got him alone. He was out back taking a smoke, since Oliver frowned on him smoking in the entrance of the shop, on main street. Actually, Oliver disliked the habit, and Jules had just about given it up..until now. He needed something to help brace him, for the fallout. "I was lonely, and..and I took advantage of you."

Josie squinted as if she knew this was coming.

"You're so damn easy." He told her, of course, he knew it was about him as he talked. He licked his bottom lip looking up as her as he was squatting in his apron on the plush grass out back. "You shouldn't be that way. You go off with blokes all the time, I bet. Tease them, don't you?"

He knew he hit a nerve. "I know you wanted me to have a go at you. You're not much a romantic, are you?" He pursed his lips a bit as he sucked in his cigarette with the need to get through this.

She was speechless. Jules gave her a devious grin. He got up and crushed his cigarette out with his thick  sneakers. Jules never looked back. He wanted to. But it was too much to see the hurt in her eyes. He gritted the emotion that perhaps spread through him as much as it did her. How could he be so mean?

He raced upstairs, jerked off his apron and fell right into bed, stifling a scream in his pillow. He thought of the things he'd said to Collette. He'd been heartless. Funny, none of the harsh words came back to him. He knew he lost it, with her. But he never touched her. Although, the sting of her slap still stayed with him, even now.

He was bad news. He knew it. His teeth clenched hard as he looked at his fingernails, all cut short and smoothed over as if groomed for hands of a baker. But there was just the one. His pinkie, sharp like a knife on the left hand. Weren't the finest criminals left handed?

Jules blinked tears gazing at his left hand. Actually, it was the pinkie he stared at like an old friend. He thought of the first time. It was when some boys cornered him in the school yard when he was seven. He'd kept his nails sharp for protection. He'd sliced his cheek open just to show them how sharp his fingernails were. Good old left Pinkie.

Jules remembered how the boys thought he was weird. His mum never asked what happened. Nobody ever asked. He winced hard as he pressed the pinkie with the sharp nail into the inner side of his right arm, just a bit lower from the wrist. Such a naked part of him, he generally left hidden.

He watched the little dots of blood appear on his pale skin. Jules smiled with satisfaction. Not quite an orgasm, but good enough.