jude can feel jenny getting more rattled by the second. he can see the visual metaphor in his camera brain, the getaway scene of a movie ; anger darting about the room intercut with a bullet shot like a ping pong ball between gas canisters in a warehouse, their whistling holes a monsters inc scream tester set to full sensitivity. he should be compassionate, should be doing everything in his power to cool her down, slow her roll, remind her of what she has to be grateful rather than the elusive promise of a night alone, but there’s only so much back-rubbing and there-there-ing he can do before it starts to feel redundant. “ i fuckin’ like you ! ” jude fires back, firm line etched between his brow, hands dropping from her waist to whip through the air. so much for attempting to distract her. “ i like you. why does it matter what other people think ? ” bold words coming from a guy who can’t divorce himself from other people’s opinions of him, whose always framing himself through the lens of what ‘the boys’ must think, whether it’s the ones in the villa or the ones back home. but the truth is, it does matter — relationships in here are everything, and not just the romantic ones. the people in here are the difference between safety and a flight home, so it’s natural to worry about what they think.
“ look. i get it. i do. ” he’s still pacing a little, though he slows to look at her, meeting her gaze head on. “ i get mad stressed, too, thinking about who hates us and shit. about the bridges i’m burning to keep us afloat. ” josh, miles, charlene, adela, naomi. all of them felt like they could’ve been jude’s mates, but the jenny of it all makes it difficult. it’s weird, because even though his behaviour those first few days of casa was objectively shitty, it feels like as soon as he’s got his act together, nobody wants to be his friend any more. it’s not fair to blame that on jenny, but she’s definitely partially responsible. “ obviously, i want us to have friends and that. i want you to have people you can talk to about shit that aren’t just me and angel. but like… ultimately, it doesn’t matter. ” because ultimately, mates aren’t what they came here for. maybe his heart wasn’t in the right place when he came in — not for love, but to fuck about and have a fun summer, which he’s done — but he also came here to get over lana, and since coupling up with jenny, it feels like he’s barely even thought about his ex. jenny’s completely eclipsed her, eclipsed everyone who came before her, to the point where if she told him she wanted out, he’d up and run with her this second. “ in a few days we’ll probably be all back at home with our mums anyway, and it won’t matter who liked who. it’ll be irrelevant. so just… try and keep a level head til then. ”
jude closes the distance between them, taking her face in his hands, planting a kiss on her forehead, on the tip of her nose, and finally one on her lips, like some weird sign of the cross like his mam does every time they pass a catholic church. “ don’t be daft, you silly mare. ‘course i don’t regret it. ” she talks about costing him this thing like they even had a shot at winning in the first place. day-by-day it feels like they’re coasting, clinging by the skin of their teeth to a shot at the final, but the closer they get to it the less he actually cares. “ i mean, yeah, maybe at one point i thought i wanted to win this thing. buy my mam a new house so she can stop havin’ to pack up forty-eight years of her life into boxes every nine months, just gettin’ shifted wherever the council put her. like, yeah, it would be sweet if i could do that, and got to travel and shit, or buy an actual car instead of pootling about on the fuckin’ vespa. the money would be great. but that’s not what’s important. ” he tucks a soggy lock of hair behind her ear, not stopping to question if it’s snot or tears ( he doesn’t really care at this point ) and bops his finger against the end of her nose. “ this is what’s important, jen. ” maybe it’s true that being with her has made his time in here harder than it would’ve been if he were with someone else, but he doesn’t want his time in here if it’s not with jenny. “ at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if you’ve cost me this experience or not. ‘cos the way i see it, i’ve already won. alright ? ”
once her emotions start storming like this, fighting them is trying to swim upstream during a hurricane. it’s easier to hang her head and ride it out to the messy aftermath, or better yet, avoid letting herself go there in the first place. now she’s halfway deep, fiercely clinging to each word out of jude’s mouth with a white-knuckled grip to keep from spiraling any further. there are things he says that don’t land quite right and gnaw deeper into her insecurities—acknowledgments that he’s been dwelling on her same fears that she’s costing him friends and making his experience here a constant challenge. but even when she’s shrinking away, he’s fighting for her. he’s looking at her and the raw frustration pouring into each declaration that he does fucking care is her anxious equivalent of sucking on a lemon wedge or pressing ice to her chest. it shocks her nervous system back, steadies her heartbeat, and scoops up the voice in her head to kiss it calm. for a minute her mind feels entirely blank, like she got a little lost in the rewiring, but then she comes back, blinking dumbly at jude and beginning to feel every bit as silly as everyone thought. she’s still disappointed that they didn’t get the hideaway and a bit angry at everyone for it, but it’s manageable, not tangled up with every single fear she has about their relationship and her own worth.
she shakes her head, winding her arms around jude’s waist and uses his chest to towel off her tears before angling back to look at him. her boyfriend. not someone to pass time with in the villa, but someone she actually gets to take home after. someone she probably never would’ve crossed paths with if so many things hadn’t lined up for them, and wouldn’t that have been a real fucking shame. she frees a hand to trace a finger over the slope of his nose and along the tendon of his jaw that cuts across his cheek, then up to the muscles that furrow his brows and down to the bow of his lips before her eyes land back on his. “...you drive a vespa?” and then she smiles, tiny and shy, tucking her face against him with a groan that’s half laughter at her own expense. “juuuude.” there are things she wants to say and things she should say and things she doesn’t want to talk about at all, so she just presses a kiss to his chest, then another, peppering them up his throat until she reaches his mouth, his chin pinched between her fingers to deepen it until all she can taste is him. maybe this is her meditation. “alright, c’mon. i want to go in the fort. or—should we hijack some wine first? we can pull an all nighter and tell each other our deepest darkest secrets,” singsonged with a smirk. “and then i can thank you over and over and over again for putting up with me.” she presses up onto her toes to nip his bottom lip between her teeth. “and then a pillow fight, obvs.”
