A Break

Jude fidgeted a bit, the nervous energy very obvious. A part of him was telling himself to just end it there, but another part of him--a part helped in no small part by Alma's own aura--made it hard to leave it alone.

So he got the mental kick he needed, even if he wasn't quite sure he wanted that mental kick.

"There's someone else I might... I don't know. Talk to about stuff. Only it's probably not going to ever reach the point of asking them out, and honestly? The whole thing's kind of embarrassing."

Kind of a lot embarrassing, and his cheeks were starting to flush.

"If I'm being honest, this feels like... like an unnecessary conversation. Because i haven't even decided if I'll say anything. But I don't want to get caught off guard."

Jude didn't mind the rambling. In a weird way, he kind of found it endearing, mostly because he did the same thing. Got passionate about something and than rambled on about it until he thought oops, maybe I'm irritating them and stopped himself.

"Basically, he... is someone from my own world. And I thought he was hot, and I liked parts of him, but it wasn't exactly as simple as that. And then..."

Jude grimaced.

"And then someone just told him I liked him. So now I'm in that position where I should probably... address that issue. Rather than just letting him sit around with hearsay."

He really wish he didn't have to talk about it at all, but that was... cowardice, really. Avoiding the problem and hoping it would just go away.

And there was the confusion, which he should have known would come because he'd just... skipped around the whole thing. Jude scratched at the back of his neck, showing his nerves, then shrugged.

"Probably. I think... I think I should probably just clarify things. Because I don't want that... misinformation floating around. Is it stupid I'm thinking about that while also thinking about asking Lucianne out? I feel like I'm juggling too much, but I don't want to... ignore anyone either."

The whole thing was complicated. Really complicated.

"I guess closure is better. Even if he pulls back really hard, I think I'd be happier than sitting on the what does he think, does he think I'm crazy? I don't even know exactly what he got told, and..." Jude trailed off, giving a small wave of his hand before leaning forward.

"I really, really hate misinformation. I'm big on... honesty. On telling people things and being up front. Which I guess is one of the reasons I was drawn to you in the first place. Not just you wear your heart on your sleeve, but... you don't lie to people either. It's not a big... tangled web of lies and half truths and misinformation. You just seemed very... honest."

Maybe he was wrong about that, but it was always the impression he'd gotten. That Alma was the sort of person who'd sit you down and tell you something wasn't working out rather than jerking you around.

There was the guilt. Not so much guilt because it was true, but guilt because he'd let things go long enough that she thought they were true. That he was so bad at explaining things that... well, that she'd think that. That she was a second choice.

"No," Jude said quickly--probably too quickly, because it was one of those nos that you just blurt out without thinking. "I'm sorry - I should have... been better at explaining things. Been more... open, I guess."

Jude shifted uncomfortably, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck.

"I actually... liked you first. Like, I thought you were hot, which is a thing that happens, but honestly I've seen so many hot-but-dangerous people in my life that just being hot isn't... enough, I guess? But then you were so..." He struggled for a moment with the word, trying to find one that fit Alma. "Intense. Helpful. That stuff you did with Shale... that really helped him out. It was good. But..."

The blush was there. The embarrassment. Not just the you were hot blush, but the I fucked up blush.

"I... hadn't done anything with anyone. Literally no one. I held hands with a girl once in middle school and that was it. Not a kiss, not anything past a kiss. And the idea of sharing... I wasn't sure if I was up for it. So I kind of filed you away as It'd be really nice if you were single and left it at that."

Jude raked his hands through his fingers, not quite looking at Alma. The guilt was still there, and talking about it wasn't really letting it get away.

"But I kind of realized that I couldn't keep... doing what I was doing. That I was starting to obsess over it. Any time anyone made a sex joke--which is all the time on this island--I got flustered. Any time anyone flirted, I found myself thinking about stuff. I got caught in the... the 'every teenager is having sex and I'm not' train of thought. So I decided that I should just... get it over with. I asked a friend, who I knew would know what he was doing, and who I could trust wouldn't... I don't know. Make it bad? Tell everyone? Who I could trust in general. And he told me not to develop feelings, but here we are anyway."

Which was, as best Jude could tell, his relationship with Broen in a nutshell.

Don't catch feelings.

"So its... it's unspoken. But it's not a first or second choice thing. It's... I guess not knowing? The not knowing bothers me. I don't know what he wants or what he knows or how he feels. I'd be happier with an outright no and some spit on my face than I am right now. But if he said yes? If he said that, actually, he secretly loved me all along and thought we were soulmates, and he wanted to be just with me, and couldn't I break up...?"

Jude let the words hang for a moment, catching his breath.

"I'd tell him no. I'm not going to give you up to be with him. It's not like that."

It didn't even occur to Jude what Alma was drinking until he saw the red on her lips, and his brain went oh right, vampire. She'd drank a few times in front of him (albeit never from someone), and Jude was... well, he had a hard time mustering a solid opinion on the whole thing. He sort of recognized it was probably the sort of thing he should really care about, but... well, it seemed fairly minor when he routinely sat down at the community center with people who were munching on pieces of human femur.

"That was kind of the plan with you," Jude said. "That you were so far out of my league but at least it'd be a way of putting myself out there, and then you were like 'sure, you're pretty nice, why not?' and I was left scratching all my plans off and wondering how I'd managed to end up with the student council president."

Maybe getting with the prom queen or getting with the head cheerleader was the more traditional 'made it to the top of the school food chain', but Jude had always rested firmly on the nerdy side of things, and that meant... what, student council? Head of the debate team?

Her last question caught him off guard, and Jude's cheeks went right back to pink. Any amount he'd managed to recover was firmly tossed out the window, because while he could manage hearing sex jokes, having to think about his own sex life was... well, maybe he was still a bit behind.

"If I'm being honest, I never really thought about it before Manta Carlos. The way my life was set up, I couldn't really have a girlfriend. I couldn't do the whole... dating a girl and bringing her home. I had too many secrets, and I felt like it was unfair to act like I was letting someone in but not be able to open up to her, so I just... pretended like it wasn't a thing. I didn't think about it much. It was only after I got here that I thought... there's no point in waiting, is there? There's no prize for waiting until you're married, especially when, back at home, I didn't think I'd ever get married."

Jude's own goals and desires were... muddled, to say the least. He'd wanted to get married. He'd wanted kids. But he'd felt like it wasn't an option for him, not really. Maybe meeting someone through work down the line.