Sweet Tooth (Twd x Male Oc)

Chapter 84: Season 7 ~ Productive

POV ~ Jasper ~

Early the next morning, Joey and I hide the stolen pomegranates in a deserted music room. They'll rot in a desk until nothing but the fruit flies give away their location. Because I was wrong before — I'm not sweet surrounded by bitter, or if I was I'm not anymore. I'm a pomegranate left out in the sun, rotted, too. Not too much trouble but a lost cause all together.

Joey and I are skipping school, so we have time to kill in the classroom before it's not suspicious to be seen on the grounds. I put Joey's T.Rex album on the stereo. It's a little loud, but we don't fret too much because this is not an uncommon classroom for the senior kids to spend time in. Not today though. Today the door is locked and the curtains are drawn so nobody can see in and Joey and I dance and we sing and we smoke the leftover weed Jerry gave me, and it gets us so high that Joey doesn't seem worried at all when he decides to kiss me again. He doesn't even hesitate. And neither do I.

We stumble over desks, wrestling off our clothes, and stagger into a heap on the floor together, and by the time school is over and I am supposed to be at the stables doing chores and Joey is supposed to be with his goats in the pen by the gazebo, instead we are still here in the classroom, stretched under a desk together, tangled and naked, his body on and in mine, with the old eighties rock music drowning all our sounds anyway.

I don't even feel bad about what we're doing until it's over, when Joey rolls off of me, all sweaty and breathless and chuckling, and I just lay here on my stomach, numb, with my cheek against the floor — not exactly feeling like I'm not in the room, but like I wish I wasn't.

It was his first time. I guess it was mine, too, unless I count Dan raping me in that dark and dingy laundry clost as a first time. I sit up on my hands and knees, slowly, with a bad, regretful feeling in my stomach. To cope with it, I find a lighter and a pre-rolled joint inside my boot, wiping sweat from my chest and tears from my face as I light up with the joint between my lips.

Joey trashes the evidence of what we just did. I get another shameful feeling in my gut. I don't know why. I pull on my underwear and a shirt, then sit on the floor for a minute with my back to him, smoking more and taking in the music and waiting anxiously for that feeling of the world melting through and through and through itself to make things better again.

"Maybe we should open a window," he says. "Although, maybe we shouldn't. People will go ape if they smell it from outside."

'Ape' is the kind of thing Jerry says. I pass the blunt over politely and Joey smokes, then lays back to put his head on the carpet, looking pleased with himself, until he reaches out and touches my hip. I flinch. I don't mean to. Awkwardly, I shuffle away a little. Joey grabs the stereo and turns off the music.

My world goes grey in silence and I mumble, "You killed T. Rex."

Joey huffs a chuckle, then reaches out for the joint. I pass it over. He smokes it, then snubs it out against the carpet.

"Hey!"

"You can finish it later," he says. "For now, we need to let the clouds in the room fade."

I feel him put the joint behind my ear for me but I don't see him because my eyes are shut.

"Jasper," he says, "are you hearing me?"

I'm no good at conversation like this, when I'm this high. I start collecting the rest of my clothes.

"I've got chores," I say, pulling on my pants.

Joey's eyes follow me to the door. "You are leaving me?"

Tugging my sweater on over my head, I turn and look at him and I register the disappointment on his face.

"I mean, I'll see you around," I say, swallowing nervously.