almost the talk

"Are you going to tell me what's up with you and Jonah?" Jules asked Hayley in a video chat a few days later. Obviously, she'd spent the weekend with him. What did she say to her Dad? To get away with something like that?

"What is it, you, want to know?" She was all Miss Serious. Studious in those intellectual black glasses of hers. She really needed to be off to Hogwarts now.

"Just tell me. What did you do to Jonah?" He kept serious. They were alone. He thought it best to do this while Willow was out. Jules set back in his chair with his arms crossed. Hayley laid across her bed, her face practically stuck in the monitor.

"Just a hand job." She wasn't kidding.

"That was all?" Seriously, it was too much information, but he did his best to keep a straight face. It was what girls did. He remembered them even doing more than that when he was his age, but he didn't want to think of his sister, that way. Besides, he'd grown up with a rough crowd.  He wanted to think of her as the eternal virgin, but perhaps that was the way a virgin remained that way. It was a difficult conversation to keep going.

"All right. A blowie, too." She finally confessed.

Jules choked into a coughing fit. She did nothing for the cold he was fighting this winter that had hung on with a blasted cough.

 He turned away just then, not wanting to know her expression. He could not keep a straight face. He took a breath, tried to remain calm. He really didn't need to know this.

"Really?" Jules finally manage a serious stare at his sister.

"Dunno, if he liked it, because I never really tried it." She winced hard.

"Did he... put you up to it?" Jules winced as if this was an interrogation he didn't know if he could handle properly.

"No, of course not." She frowned as if he'd think Jonah would be pushy and what not. "He's my man, you know, and..and I had show him..I could."

Jules winced. Truly, she thought this.

"I dunno, everybody else is doing it." She shrugged.

"All right I get it! But, this..this is..do really want to be this serious, with Jonah? Honestly..." Jules scowled. She went to a far better academy than Jules ever did. Weren't they suppose to be talking about revisions and such? He wanted her to stay the little sister he knew.

"So?" She acted as if it were nothing new. "I've been hearing about it since..forever, haven't you?"

Jules cleared his throat, it was definitely a topic he didn't want to discuss anymore with his little sister.

"I just think you should not be in a hurry to impress..someone, OK?" Sound advice? Wasn't it? "You have plenty of time, you know.."

"Oh, God..must you?" She looked angry about it. "I'm not a baby. I'm not a virgin if that's what this is about. True, it was quick and dreadful. Its not like that with Jonah."

"But he's older." Jules winced hard.

"Jesus, as if I didn't know." She mocked. "He's really sweet, and..and if I can do these little things for him, and he knows I care. I'm not rushing it."

"Yes, you are." Jules begged to differ. "You, keep to your studies. And not so much into Jonah. Will you, now?"

"Yes, I will. Stop sounding like Dad." She winced hard.

"Mum..ever talk to you?" He asked thinking she should have a serious talk with her daughter.

"Yeah, of course, she talks about you. And your Dad." She shrugged as if it wasn't a big thing.

"My Dad? What are you talking about?" His mum never mentioned his dad. Never.

"I take it, they're seeing each other, these days." She was a bit tight lipped.

"Seriously?" He winced hard.  What else was his mother keeping from him?