Chapter 9 - Chapter Nine

It was, needless to say, very awkward at breakfast the next morning.

“Good morning, Mr. Green and...Charlene.”

Tia’s dad grunted his good morning and Charlene gushed hers.

Jet paused. “Good morning, Tia.”

“Morning”, she mumbled.

“There are croissants and pancakes, Jet,” Tia’s mother said. “Help yourself to some.”

“I’m...really not that hungry, Mrs. Green.”

“But you come to our café every morning, dear.”

“I must’ve lost my appetite some time during the night. Can I just have a coffee, please?”

“Sam, pour Jet some coffee.”

Tia’s dad muttered something about being a slave (yes, again) but obliged.

“Thank you, Mr. Green.” Jet downed his coffee. “I’ll...I’ll see you at school, Tia.”

“Mm.” As Jet walked past her, Tia grabbed the sleeve of his shirt. “I thought you worked on Thursdays,” she whispered.

“I do,” he replied.

“So I’m not actually going to see you at school today.”

“No.”

“Right. Okay.”

Jet bit his lip. “I’ll see you later.” He waited until Tia’s parents weren’t looking and stroked her cheek once again with his long fingers before disappearing out the front door.

Tia sighed. This was going to be a long day.

~

“Well someone’s looking all depressed and miserable,” Carrie remarked.

“Thanks, it’s good to see you too.” Tia plopped herself down in her chair.

“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked. “Is Jet not at school again today?”

“Nope.” She hadn’t told them about Jet moving in yet. She was debating on whether she should tell Sarah. Not Carrie or Gary, because Carrie would make some sarcastic and snarky comment and she had a feeling that Gary would be jealous.

“Where does he go anyway?” Gary asked, curious.

Tia shrugged. “Don’t ask me.”

“Well we can’t exactly ask him now, can we?”

“Yes, you can. I don’t know every single thing that’s going on in his life, okay?”

“Note to self: do not irritate Tia Green today unless feeling suicidal.” Gary sat back in his chair, writing down what he said in big capital letters on a piece of paper.

Tia picked up whatever was nearest to her and threw it at Gary. He dodged and the wad of paper sailed past him and hit Cheryl Bailiff on the shoulder.

Cheryl whipped around and glared. “Who threw that?” she asked, her eyes flashing.

Tia grimaced. This was a bad day. Cheryl dogliff was on the loose. “Sorry. It was supposed to be for Gary.”

“But it didn’t hit Gary, did it? It hit me.”

“Yes. Sorry.”

Cheryl stared down at where Tia was sitting with contempt. Tia knew the dark sunglasses she was wearing put Cheryl off a little, and she felt a bit safer.

“Do that again next time and I’ll make your life a living hell,” Cheryl hissed before turning around and stalking away.

Gary gave a low whistle. “dogliff’s in a bad mood today.”

“No!” Carrie drawled sarcastically. “Really?”

“She’s hit a new low,” Tia observed as Cheryl stormed past a poor boy in Year Eight and knocked all his books down into the pond.

“And that is why the pond is dangerous and should be removed,” Carrie said, sniffing.

Gary laughed. “The only reason you don’t like that pond is because you accidentally tripped and fell into it last year.”

Carrie glared at him and he shut up immediately.

At recess, Tia dragged Sarah off into the toilet and told her about Jet staying at her place. Sarah shrieked and jumped up and down like the bubbly excited airhead she was.

Tia shushed her. “Shut up, otherwise everyone will know.”

“That’s so great!” Sarah whispered excitedly. “You’re living with Jet Renn.”

“I have something else to tell you, but you have to promise not to tell anyone and you have to promise not to scream.”

“What is it? What is it?”

“Jet kissed me last night.”

Sarah gasped.

“Then he said it was wrong and that he shouldn’t have done it.”

Sarah ignored the latter comment. “He kissed you?” She opened her mouth to scream, but then remembered that she wasn’t allowed so she started hyperventilating.


“Calm down, Sarah,” Tia said drily. “It’s me he kissed.”

“It’s you who kissed?” Carrie demanded, walking into the bathroom.

Tia and Sarah exchanged a look.

“Gary,” they said simultaneously. Huh, talk about in sync.

“He what?”

“You heard us,” Tia said.

“Gary kissed you? When?”

“Uh, yesterday after school.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Carrie demanded.

“Because…well…” Tia trailed off.

“Because we thought you had a crush on him,” Sarah blurted out.

Carrie frowned. “Are you serious?”

Sarah and Tia both nodded. It was true; they had suspected that Carrie had a crush on Gary. They also suspected that Gary had a crush on Tia.

“Well?” Tia asked after a while. “Do you like him?”

“No. Not really.” Carrie went and sat down next to them.

“Not really? So yes?”

“No, just not really.”

“But it’s not a no.”

“No, it’s not.”

“So you do like him, just not enough to admit it?”

“Something like that.”

Sarah patted her back. “Well I’m sure he likes you too,” she said, sharing another look with Tia.

“Yeah, whatever. I don’t actually care.” Carrie stood up. “You want to go? Recess is almost over.”

~

At lunch, Tia was going out with Carrie, Sarah and Gary. They had just stepped out of the school building when they almost walked into Jet.

“Hi.”

Tia blinked a few times. “What are you doing here?”

He shrugged. “It’s a school day, isn’t it?”

“But…okay.”

“Can I have lunch with you?”

Tia licked her lips. “Well, I kind of promised my friends that I’d have lunch with them…”

“Then can I join you guys?”

“Uh, sure. If my friends don’t mind, then—”

“We don’t mind,” Carrie and Sarah trilled from where they were behind her. Next to them, Gary was trying to keep the scowl off his face.

Jet grinned. “Well, it’s settled then.”

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” Tia whispered to him on the way to the restaurant.

“My next shift starts at three.”

~

It was a mix of awkwardness and discomfort over lunch. The only ones who didn’t seem to notice were Carrie and Sarah, who were flirting with Jet. Jet smiled politely and answered their questions, but couldn’t take his eyes off Tia, which made her blush. Gary was glaring at Jet, and stiffened every time Jet came anywhere within a foot of Tia. Tia was trying to ignore the flirting, the eyeing, the glaring and the stiffening.

She sipped at her water and when the waitress came to take their order, Tia simply handed her menu over to the waitress and said “I’ll have whatever Jet’s having.” This of course, pissed Gary off to no end while it made Jet’s day.

He smiled from where he was sitting next to Tia and moved his hand so that theirs were just touching. Nobody else noticed—except for Gary, who was now so stiff that Tia was surprised he didn’t break in half.

She heated up considerably when Jet shifted his hand and twined his fingers with hers. The warmth from Jet’s hand spread to her left hand and up to her cheeks.

“Is it too hot in here, Tia?” Sarah asked from across the table. “You look a bit flushed. Maybe you should take your jacket off.”

Carrie nudged her—very unsubtly. “Drop it,” she said, sotto voce. “They’ve got a bit of action going on. But I suppose you should take your jacket off for that as well,” she added in her normal voice.

Tia flushed bright red. “Guys, shut up.”

Halfway through their meal, Jet let go of Tia’s hand and stood up, saying that he remembered he had something to do and that he was sorry that he had to leave so early. Sarah and Carrie giggled and accepted his apology gracefully. Gary muttered something along the lines of “Thank God, finally”. Tia didn’t say anything.

As Jet walked past her on the way out, he mouthed to her that he’d see her later on tonight.

~

Jet obviously had a long shift, so when Tia’s mother asked her where he was, Tia simply shrugged and said that he was out with his friends.

“I hope he doesn’t come back drunk,” Tia’s mother said, worried. “It would be a bad influence on you.”

Tia rolled her eyes. “Please, mom, you know I don’t drink. Not since I…fell into the well.”

“Is that why you don’t go out anymore, honey? There aren’t that many wells to fall into out there.”

“No. I just…don’t feel like going out anymore,” she said, not wanting to tell her mom that there was no need to go out at night when Jet would come and visit her. Especially now that he lived here.

“Maybe you should get Jet to take you out some time.”

“Uh, yeah, I’ll ask him about it,” she said, having no intention whatsoever to ask him about it. Ever.

The doorbell rang then, and her mother rushed to answer the door. Tia looked down at her watch. It was ten thirty. Yep, that was Jet off work all right. She rushed up the stairs and into her room. She opened up her Maths homework (it was the only piece of homework she hadn’t finished yet…she had no idea how to do it) and stared at it, trying to make sense of the numbers and the symbols and wondering how the hell they were supposed to form a particular number.

She sighed and then randomly wrote down some numbers. She was bound to get at least one right. Right? She left the book open, not bothering to even close it and went to go take a shower.

When Jet came into her room later that night, she pretended to be asleep. He sat down on the side of her bed, watching her as if he knew she was pretending and was trying to catch her out. She kept her eyes closed and her breathing steady. After a while, she felt another soft stroke on her cheek before feeling him get up off the bed and heard him starting to walk out the room. There was a slight pause, a little scuffling before the footsteps resumed, and at last, the door closed.

~

Tia woke up to her alarm clock ringing loudly in her ear on her bedside table. Without even looking, she slammed the alarm clock down again and again until it stopped ringing. She lifted her head from the pillow and looked at the clock. She came to the conclusion that she may have broken the clock.

Oh well.

She stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom that was on the landing to brush her teeth. It was locked. What the hell?

She banged on the door. “Dad, is it you?” she yelled. “Get your butt out of there right now! Dad!”

The door opened.

“Geez,” Tia muttered, looking up. “What took you soooooh…ah.”

It was Jet. A towel around his waist—and nothing else. With water dripping from his hair onto his body, which was, Tia did not fail to notice, great. She dragged her gaze reluctantly away from him.

“Uh.” She pushed past him, into the bathroom, closed the door and locked it. She was suddenly feeling hungry. She wanted breakfast. Preferably pancakes. And maple syrup. And maybe with Jet on the side.

Mmmmm.

She pushed the thoughts away and started brushing her teeth vigorously. For a long, long time. When she got out, everybody was already at the breakfast table and had almost finished breakfast.

“You certainly took your time this morning, dear,” her mother said.

“Sorry.”

Jet finished off his coffee and stood up. “I’m going to head off to school now,” he announced.

“Have a nice day, dear,” Tia’s mother said.

“I will. Thank you, uh, Charlene.”

“Wait, Jet, why don’t you take Tia with you so that she doesn’t have to go alone?”

“Mom, I’m going to take ages,” Tia protested. “Jet can leave first.”

“No, it’s okay,” Jet said, sitting down again. “I can wait.”

Tia bit her lip, frustrated. “Mom, tell Jet that he can leave first.”

“Tia, he’s right in front of you. Surely you can tell him yourself.”

Tia looked away.

After breakfast, Tia went upstairs to pack her bag for school. She was about to dump her Maths book—still open from last night—into her bag.

Whoa, wait a minute. She grabbed the book and flipped it to the right page. Those weren’t the random numbers she scribbled in. That was not her handwriting.

Then she realised. Jet had stopped on his way out of her room last night to look at her Maths homework and found out that she’d been filling in random numbers and had taken it into his room and redone it.

Very sweet. But still, that kiss was wrong for him. And he still thought that he shouldn’t have done it. So no go.

“Bye, mom, bye, dad,” she called out as she went out the front door.

“Bye, Tia,” her mother called. “Bye, Jet.”

“Goodbye, Mrs. Green. Charlene.” Jet followed Tia out of the house.

As soon as the front door had closed, Jet grabbed Tia’s arm.

She whipped around to find his lips on hers, kissing her roughly.

Whoa-whee (that, by the way, means that it’s a surprise but it’s also a very good and exciting surprise). “Wha—”

“You’ve been ignoring me,” he said, pulling abruptly away from her.

“No,” she breathed, wondering whether she should pull him back and kiss him. “I haven’t.”

“You haven’t been talking to me.”

She decided against it. He was kind of pissing her off now. “Yes I have,” she argued. “I talked to you at lunch yesterday.”

“Only when I talked to you first.”

“How is that a problem?”

“You pretended to be asleep last night to avoid talking to me!”

“Well, I didn’t know there was something you wanted to talk to me about.”

“Well, there was.”

“What is it?”

He let go of her arm then, looking down and kicking his shoes against the ground. “I…I just wanted to say that…what I did…I still think I shouldn’t have done it, but I can’t stop thinking about it, either.”

Right. Well. Okay. “Um.”

“I wanted to do it, even though I shouldn’t have.” He looked up, his blue eyes piercing through her. “Do you understand what I mean?”

“Um. Yes.” Not really.

He licked his lips nervously. “I…” he trailed off, not knowing what to say. “I’m never at loss for words. Never. But with you, I…I always am.”

“Right. Okay.”

He ran his hand through his hair, frustrated now. “Can’t you give me something more constructive?”

“Um…”

“That’s not very constructive.”

“God, give me time to think,” she snapped.

“You’re not supposed to have to think,” he snapped back.

“Then what the hell am I supposed to do?”

He threw his hands up in frustration. “This!” He grabbed her again and kissed her.

Whoa-whee. Again. His lips softened and Tia’s knees buckled beneath her, but that didn’t matter, because Jet was holding her up.

When he finally let go, she took a step back, dazed. “Oh. Right. That would be…very constructive, wouldn’t it?”

“Very,” he agreed.

Tia looked down at her watch. “I would do that very constructive thing that you had in mind, but we’re going to be late for school.”

“So?”

“I don’t like being late for school. Just because you don’t go to school half the time doesn’t give you an excuse to be late.”

“You’re going to have to do that constructive thing I had in mind later,” he called after her.

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