20. Scotty
Scotty
WHATEVER SHE WANTS TO GIVE
Afew nights later, Juliette and I are listening to some music while she paints.
We haven’t discussed what happened between me and the Helsing, which I appreciate.
We don’t need to. What’s done is done. A dark night of the soul, I guess they’d call it, if I still had one.
That’s what I adore about Juliette. She just …
gets it. Gets a lot of things. I guess that comes with the territory when you’re as old as she is.
Not everything needs to be a complicated dissection.
She never psychoanalyzes me. Not like Eli used to.
I get up to turn the record over to the other side, and she sets her brushes down.
“You never told me the end of your story,” she finally says.
I freeze in place. “No, I didn’t. But you didn’t tell me the end of yours, either.”
She tilts her head as she stares at me for a long, pensive moment before wetting her lips. “I suppose not. Would you like to hear it?”
I nod. “Only if you’re up for it.”
“I wouldn’t have offered if I was not,” she says with a shrug, then she turns around completely on the crate and hugs her knees to her chest.
Sometimes I forget just how much of a badass she is, because when she’s perched on the crate like that, she looks just like a normal girl.
Small. Delicate. Totally huggable, too. Since our night at the drive-in, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about touching her.
Making her squirm and sigh again. Making her come felt like a privilege, almost, one that I wish I could earn again.
But whenever I try to bring up the subject, she just shuts down.
A one-off, then, I guess? Probably doesn’t want to make our friendship weird, which I respect. I’ve had friends with benefits before, and it was fine. I’d rather be something else to Juliette, but at this point, I’ll take whatever she wants to give me.
I flip the record over and let it play, then sit down on the cloth in front of her. “Then I’m all ears.”
“Where were we?” She taps one of her claws against her bottom lip. “I suppose you would like to know what happened to my sire in the end? I’m afraid it’s rather anti-climactic…”