Page 83 of The Plus One
“What about teenage Indira?” Jude said, rubbing his cheek against her curls and nudging her thigh with his.
She snorted. “My sexual awakening? ProbablyMoulin Rouge!,” she said, biting on her tongue as she smiled. “Seeing Ewan McGregor singing in suspenders changes a person.”
“Wanna know a secret?” Jude asked quietly.
“Always.”
“I’m wearing suspenders with my groomsman suit.”
Indira nodded calmly. “Doyouwanna know a secret?”
“Of course.”
“I will definitely be jumping your bones at the wedding.”
They both started laughing, a giddy joy buzzing around them. Jude was overwhelmed with the feelings that flooded him, soft and sharp and so decadent, he wasn’t sure what to do with them, if he even deserved them. But God, did they feel good.
Indira was his softest spot, and he never wanted to let go of the happiness in this moment.
“What’s in there?” Indira asked, nodding her chin at a stack of old shoeboxes by Jude’s nightstand.
He frowned as he thought. “I don’t actually know,” he said, sliding off the bed to grab the boxes. He flicked open the lid.
It was filled with a hodgepodge of crap—movie tickets, plastic dinosaurs, a sample of Usher cologne, and some passed notes between him and Collin.
As he rifled through, he noticed more and more items with Indira’s rounded, bubbly scribble. Notes she’d shoved under Collin’s bedroom when they were very young, telling them to be quiet. Others from when the Papadakis siblings shared a room, telling them toenter at their own risk, specific memos to Jude to go home or lick lead paint. Always the charmer.
He’d never realized just how many mementos he’d kept of this woman. Granted, quite a few were thinly veiled death threats from a disgruntled tween, but they’d moved him enough to keep them some twenty-odd years nonetheless.
“Isn’t this lovely,” Jude said, handing her a torn piece of notebook paper. “Who knew you were such a poet?”
A Haiku about Jude Bailey
By: Indira Papadakis
Jude. Rude. Fucking screwed
Socially, he sucks asshole
Personally, gross
Indira’s eyes glided over the lines.
“I can’t believe I didn’t major in literature,” she said, fixing him with a forlorn frown. “So much talent, wasted.”
“Oh yes, you’ve really deprived the world,” Jude said, nodding. Indira dug her toes into his thigh, pulling a laugh from the center of his chest.
“We better get downstairs,” he said, as he flicked through more random mementos. “My mom doesn’t tolerate dinner delays. Or my dad,” Jude said, laughing lightly.
Indira stood up. “Say no more. I’m still in ‘impress the parents’ mode.”
He shook his head, smiling up at her. “You’ll have to be on your best behavior. Even that might not be enough for their precious son.”
“You’re annoyingly adorable and simultaneously intolerable,” she said, tugging his hair lightly before walking to the door. “But fingers crossed, all the same.”
CHAPTER 28
Jude
