Page 128 of Dirty Like Jude
When I was a boy, I was picked on for being too scrawny. Too quiet. Toobrown.
So I gotbig.
I got a loud bike. I hung with a loud-as-fuck band, and loud-as-fuckfriends.
I fucked women who wanted me, and I did not take my brother’s sloppyseconds.
Any woman I was ever even gonna consider getting serious about was gonna be mine and no oneelse’s.
And Roni Webber had gone ahead and disqualified herself, three timesover.
* * *
2:06 am.
I was still sitting in the dark, on my back porch. I’d run out of weed a while ago and it was cold as shit out. And still, Isat.
Because six years had gone by since that morning in Roni’s apartment, and here the fuck wewere.
Time hadpassed.
Life waslived.
Women came andwent.
And I’d grown the fuck up. I’d like to think so,anyway.
I didn’t necessarily buy into the club’s views of women or the rules surrounding the treatment of themanymore.
I definitely didn’t give a fuck what my brother thought of Roni anymore. At least, I sure as fuck didn’t care about hisapproval.
But was I stilljealous?
Was I stillsore?
More important: was I really gonna let what happened in the past ruin whatever this was betweenus?
Because of all the things that had changed in all these years, my feelings for her neverhad.
Chapter Twenty-One
Roni
It wasthe eve of Christmas Eve, and Jude and I weren’ttogether.
I was at a Dirty party at Zane’s house in West Vancouver with Jessa and babyNick.
Jude was who-knew-where.
We still weren’t talking, which was probably more my fault than his. I hadn’t seen him since the documentary screening at Jessa’s a couple of nights ago, where we hadn’t even spoken. He’d left early, but he’d texted me later that night. Like around 2:00 amlate.
Been thinking we shouldtalk.
I didn’treply.
Really, what did we have to talk about at two in themorning?
I was done with our text-and-meet-up-for-sex relationship. I really didn’t want to be Jude Grayson’s conveniencefuck.
