“Hey, why the grumpy face?”
“I’m not grumpy,” I said grumpily.
“Yeah, right.” Nate laughed. “What’s up with your hands, anyway?”
“Had a fight with Ricky at the bar. He threw a bottle at me, and I cut myself with the shards. Hunter and his friends were there though, so they helped me.”
“Hunter as in Hunter Adams, the guy who looked like he wanted to kill you yesterday?” Nate asked, of course only focusing on that part of the story.
“More like Hunter Adams, the guy who is still trying to. I have to go to detention with him today after school.” I groaned and bumped my head against Froggy.
Nate frowned incredulously. “What? Jules Hatcher, who never does anything forbidden and already feels bad if he doesn’t greet someone in the hallway needs to go to detention? Jules Hatcher, who never fails an exam? Jules Hatcher who—”
“Yes, me, Jules Hatcher!” I interrupted him before he could go on.
Nate just laughed. “So, spill the beans. What did you do?”
I bit my lip as the embarrassment returned. “Mrs. Charleston thought I made out with Hunter,” I mumbled.
“Excuse me, what was that?” Nate teased, looking like he was going to burst into laughter. “I didn’t quite catch that.”
“It looked like I made out with Hunter, okay?” I nearly shouted and buried my face in my hands so I didn’t have to see the stupid grin on Nate’s face.
“Bro, what the hell.” Nate squealed. “Tell me everything.”
As if to make everything even more embarrassing, Emily decided to join us at this exact moment.
“What’s so funny?” she asked and sat down on my other side, leaning her head against my shoulder.
“Nothing,” I said just as Nate said, “He got detention for supposedly making out with Hunter Adams.”
I glared at him while Emily looked at me. She didn’t seem to know whether to laugh or frown. “What? You made out with Hunter Adams?”
“No, of course not.” I sighed. “The emphasis is on the word supposedly, okay? It just looked like it when Mrs. Charleston saw us, and she didn’t seem to like what she saw.”
Now Emily was laughing. I could feel her body shaking next to me.
“That got me worried.” She grinned and playfully swatted my arm.
“No need to, babe,” I said with a thin smile and slung my arm around her shoulders.
“Guys, we should probably go inside. Class is starting in ten minutes,” Nate said and got up.
We followed suit and made our way up the stairs and to our classroom.
In the corridor, Emily said goodbye to us. “Bye then! Jules, do you wanna hang out at my place later today?”
I nodded. “Sure. I’ll come around after detention.”
“Okay.” She smiled. “Have fun with Hunter.”
Before I could reply to her sarcastic comment, she was already gone.
“Are you coming?” Nate asked, bumping me with his shoulder. “Don’t wanna get even more detention for being late, do you?”
I followed him with a scowl. This was going to be a long day.
Chapter 5
The detention room was still deserted when I arrived, except for the entirely uninterested old teacher who was sitting there with his laptop. He didn’t even look up when I approached to take one of the detention sheets.
“Hello, Sir,” I said and took one from the desk.
The teacher slowly looked up and said in a kind of annoying, monotonous voice, “What’s your name?”
“Jules Hatcher, Sir.”
He just nodded—I watched with fascination as his chin wobbled in the process—and wrote my name down. Then he looked back down at his laptop, and I didn’t know what to do.
Should I just sit down or was there something else I had to do?
He hadn’t dismissed me yet, and I really had no idea how detention worked.
After a few seconds, I decided to just sit down. I walked to the furthest corner of the room, where I collapsed into a chair and looked at the clock. Detention would probably take one hour. I assumed and internally growled in frustration. One hour could feel like an entire day when you were at school.
Five minutes later, a girl with more piercings than most students at my school had brain cells entered and shot me a disinterested glance. Little by little, the room began to fill with the kind of students I usually avoided, and I began to feel a little uneasy.
Ten minutes after the official beginning of detention, Hunter walked in. He knocked on the teacher’s desk with a smirk and took a detention sheet.
The teacher narrowed his eyes at him. “Hunter Adams, as usual. Where are your two friends?”
Hunter just shrugged casually. “I don’t know, probably spraying graffiti on your car.”
The teacher actually looked out of the window with a concerned look. Meanwhile, Hunter glanced around the room to find a seat. I tried to make myself as small as possible in my chair, but of course, he spotted me and came over to me with a smug expression.
“Look at that. The little delinquent is already here!” He pulled up a chair from another table and slumped down on it so close to me that I could smell his aftershave.
I didn’t respond and simply inched away from him, not sparing him a single glance.
Next to me, I could hear Hunter laugh.
“What?” I snapped and turned my face to find him looking at me, clearly amused.
“Nothing,” he said with a wide grin. “It’s just funny how easy it is to annoy you.”
“Maybe you’re just an extremely annoying person.”
He shrugged and said, “I heard worse. Come on, sugarpie. Try a bit harder.”
“Can you just stop calling me that? I’m trying to fill out this stupid detention sheet, and you won’t stop bothering me.”
“Oh, I see,” Hunter said, and the look on his face made me realize that I just said something I was going to regret. “You’re already getting all hot and bothered because of me.”
I turned my face to hide my flushed cheeks.
Hunter only chuckled. “Fine, let’s have a look at the detention sheet then, huh?”
I didn’t respond and just looked down at the paper.
“First question: Why am I here for detention?” Hunter read. “Because I nearly made out with Jules Hatcher, that hot piece of a boy next to me.”
I watched speechlessly as he scribbled the words down.
“Because I supposedly kissed another student in public before school,” I muttered.
The next question was: Why did I do that?
“I did not and never would,” I muttered, jotting those words down.
“Ouch.” Hunter laughed next to me and continued. “Because, as I said, he’s one hot piece of a boy.”
Next question: What could I have done differently?
“Never even talked to him,” I said.
Hunter didn’t say anything, but I could see him writing something in his hasty, barely legible writing.
Maybe I should’ve really kissed him.
“Very funny.” I frowned and looked at him.
He just smiled this strange smile of his and quickly signed the page.
“You’re not really handing that in, right?” I asked in disbelief as he got up.
“Watch me.”
And before I could do anything to stop him, he walked up to the teacher’s desk and put down the piece of paper. When he came back, his only comment was “You know, I usually don’t fill in these sheets, but this was fun.”
I scowled at him and got up to hand mine in. All the way to the desk, I could feel Hunter’s gaze on me, burning holes in my back. As expected, the teacher still didn’t look up, and I got an idea.
I reached out, wanting to take Hunter’s sheet before the teacher or anyone else could read it. But before I could even get my hands on it, the teacher suddenly looked up and said, “Leave this sheet where it is.”
I quickly pu
lled my hand back. “But, Sir. Nothing that he has written is true…”
The teacher took Hunter’s paper with a curious flicker in his eyes. I watched in horror as he put on his glasses and began to read, first Hunter’s then mine.
When he was done, he looked up at me with a faint smile. “Well, I think the two of you should maybe just talk about this crisis in your relationship. Everything can be fixed when you’re just willing to talk about it.”
“What?” I asked, startled. “No, no. It’s not like that. I’m not…We’re not a couple.”
“Does he know that, too?”
I nodded firmly. “Yes! He’s just making fun of me.”
The teacher shook his head, again, sending his chin into motion. “Regardless of whether he’s serious or not, I’ll keep this sheet, and yours too. It wouldn’t be the first relationship drama in our file.”
With that, he went back to working on his laptop.
Sending one last longing look at Hunter’s sheet, I returned to my seat, finding an annoyingly cheerful looking Hunter waiting for me.
“So you couldn’t get Captain Doublechin to help you?” he asked contentedly.
“No, he doesn’t—Oh my God. Captain Doublechin?” I asked and couldn’t help but chuckle a little.
Hunter’s expression immediately morphed into one of exaggerated surprise as he pressed one hand against his chest and dramatically declared, “It’s the year 2018. Apocalypse has broken out. Humanity is becoming extinct. Fireballs are raining down onto the earth. Jules Hatcher laughed at a joke that I made.”
After a few seconds of staring at him, he added, “I’m slightly disappointed it was about such a stupid joke, though. Every day, so much good content just spills out of me, and you decide to laugh at this. What a shame.”
Just then, the bell rang, and I rose to my feet at the speed of light. My bag was already thrown over my shoulder.
“Too bad. I would’ve loved to hear more of that good content, but I’m afraid I have to go,” I said and walked past him, my shoulder slightly brushing against his chest as I went.
He just shrugged and followed suit, quickly catching up with me. I felt kind of uncomfortable, walking through the corridors and out of the building with him. It just felt weird. When we arrived at the parking lot, I turned around to say goodbye, but Hunter kept walking straight towards my car.
“What are you doing?” I shouted after him.
“Well, what do you think?” he replied, not even turning around.
I frowned and walked after him until I reached Froggy. Hunter was standing next to it, fishing his car keys from his pocket.
“Please, sugarpie. I’m not following you.” He smirked and pressed a button to unlock the car. The lights of the shining black Audi TT RS next to Froggy flashed twice. “Not everything’s always about you.”
“Oh.” I breathed and eyed his car.
Of course, the Audi belonged to him. Perfect guys have perfect cars.
Next to it, Froggy looked even shabbier with its horrible green color that was starting to peel off and the rust spreading from the front door.
Broken guys have broken cars. That’s how things worked.
“I should really go now,” I said. “My girlfriend is waiting for me.”
For a moment, it seemed like Hunter wanted to say something, but then he just nodded. “See you around.”
Without looking at him or his perfect car, I got into Froggy. With the engine rattling, I rolled out of the parking lot, just to see Hunter pass by, his car running quietly and smoothly on the asphalt.
I saw him nodding at me, but I pretended I hadn’t seen it and made my way to Emily’s house. She lived in one of these little brick row houses, the ones with painted window shutters and geraniums in buckets hanging below the windows. When I rang the doorbell, her mom opened the door, a warm smile on her face.
“Hello, Jules! How nice to see you again!” she exclaimed and hugged me tightly, which was always a bit awkward because I was way taller than her and she had to stand on her tiptoes to be able to wrap her arms around me. “Emily is in her room. Do you want some cookies, or a sandwich, maybe?”
I declined politely and went up to Emily’s room, which was located on the second floor.
As usual, when I came in, she was listening to music while reading. She had her headphones on, but the music was so loud that I could still hear it when I entered.
I had known Emily since we were in elementary school together. Back then, she had forced me to play Barbie with her on the floor in front of her bed. Later in middle school, we had hung out together with Nate. All three of us were best friends. That was until she confessed her crush on me one year ago, and from that moment on, we had been dating.
Everything about her room was familiar and cozy. I had seen this room in all its stages: from the pink children’s room, then when some of the furniture had changed, and the walls had been plastered with posters of pop singers, to now. Even the scent, a mix of Emily and perfume, was familiar, and it immediately put me at ease.
Emily was lying on her bed, completely lost in her book, flat on her stomach with her chin resting in the palm of her left hand while she flipped the pages with the other one. She didn’t notice me when I came in, so I walked over and lie down next to her.
“Oh, hey!” she said, and a smile lit up her face while she took off the headphones. “Sorry, I didn’t even hear you coming in.”
“I noticed.” I laughed and rested my cheek against her shoulder to glance at the page she was on. “What are you reading?”
She turned the book around to show me the cover.
“Is it good?” I wanted to know.
Emily rolled onto her side. I did the same so that we were lying in the same position, mirroring each other. She was so close that I could feel her warm breath brushing my face.
“I don’t know yet. It’s a bit unrealistic. The main characters, a boy and a girl, are always fighting. I mean, when you love each other, it’s not like that, is it?”
She fell silent for a moment, and I reached out to push a strand of brown hair back behind her ear.
“Just look at us. We don’t fight often, and when we do, it’s never for long. Because we love each other…right?”
“Of course,” I said softly.
She inched closer, and a second later, her lips found mine. I kissed her back and watched her close her eyes as she slung an arm around me.
And suddenly, the kiss changed.
She began to kiss me more roughly, more wildly. She got to her knees and her hands locked behind my neck. But it still didn’t seem to be enough, so she came even closer until she sat on my lap, her knees on both sides of me, and pushed me down into the pillows on her bed.
“Emily?” I asked, my voice sounding strangely insecure all of a sudden.
I never got an answer. Instead, she began to pull her shirt over her head, revealing a black lace bra.
I gulped, which she seemed to interpret as a good sign, so she proceeded to take my shirt off too. In a matter of seconds, the situation had changed from the sweet, innocent kiss to this strange, risky make-out session.
“Em, what—”
“Shh.” She cut me off, placing one finger against my parted lips. “Relax, Jules.”
I sat completely still as she began to trace my chest with her cold fingers, placing kisses here and there. Nothing about this situation felt familiar or cozy anymore.
And I didn’t like it.
My eyes widened as she began to trail her fingers down my chest, from my collarbone to my bellybutton…and further. My breath hitched in my throat as her fingers fumbled with the clasp of my belt.
“Emily, stop,” I choked out with my eyes closed and pushed her fingers away.
I didn’t open my eyes when she backed off. Not until I heard a strangled sob.
I looked up and saw her, sitting on the edge of her bed, her face buried in her hands. She was still in her bra and jeans, and I could se
e her entire body trembling.
Gulping, I crawled closer until I sat next to her. Tears were streaming down her face, dripping down her chin.
“Why?” she asked between two sobs. “Why don’t you want me?”
Every word felt like a punch in my face.
“Emily, I…I do want you…but I just…I can’t do this.”
“What?” She finally looked up at me. “What can’t you do? Have sex with me? Do more than just kiss me?”
I remained silent, completely helpless.
I can’t fix this now.
“It’s been one year, Jules. We’ve been together for one year now, yet we haven’t done anything more than kissing. Are you not attracted to me? Is it that?” More and more tears spilled out of her eyes—a fountain I couldn’t stop.
“Em…It’s not because of you. It’s because of me. Something is wrong with me, not with you. I just…I can’t do this,” I said, my voice shaking as I got up from her bed and quickly put my shirt on.
Before I left, I hesitated for a moment, looking over at her, but I knew there was nothing I could do to make her feel better, so I headed out of the door without saying anything. I nearly fell down the stairs as I tried to get out as fast as possible and didn’t reply to Emily’s mother when she asked why I was already leaving.
All the way home, the only thing that was stuck in my mind was the image of Emily, sitting on her bed with her head buried in her hands while her body was shaking with sobs.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Chapter 6
That night I couldn’t sleep.
All I did was toss and turn in my bed, dwelling and pondering and not being able to shut the thoughts out. For one minute, I was freezing and pulled the covers all the way up to my chin, then it was too hot, and I yanked them off me. A few minutes ago, I had also taken off my shirt, feeling like I was burning up. It was a vicious cycle that I couldn’t get out of.
I was tired but at the same time, wide awake because of all these thoughts buzzing in my head like an angry swarm of wasps. I thought about Emily and how I was going to apologize. And then I thought about Hunter and how weird everything was when he was around. I hated thinking about him because, in the end, I became even more confused and frustrated.
Why You Shouldn't Lend A Bad Boy Your Clothes Page 4