CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Jude
Izzy knocked quietly on my bedroom door then stuck her head in before I could tell her to go away. I knew I should have locked the door, not that that would have stopped Izzy. If Izzy wanted in, she would get in. And if she couldn’t somehow unlock the door, she’d just get Earl to smash it in.
She called out to me in that sing-song voice of hers. “Hey, Jude, that was Professor Moss at the door. Again.”
“I don’t want to see him,” I said, my head buried beneath the covers. “I don’t want to see anyone.” I suddenly remembered how she had treated me in the dream. I growled at her under my breath. “And I’m pretty pissed at you right now!”
The room was dark even though it was after three in the afternoon. I had the blackout shades down and the curtains pulled tight. The only light in the room was the red glow of the numbers on the digital alarm clock on the nightstand: 3:12 PM.
I heard Izzy take a deep breath and walk into the room, leaving the bedroom door open wide enough to let the light shine in from the hallway. I felt the bed bounce as she climbed in next to me. She lay behind me and looped her arm around my shoulders to spoon with me.
“You can’t stay in this cave for the rest of your life, little bear,” she said softly in my ear, giving me a good squeeze. “And this whole ‘I’m so depressed’ thing is getting pretty old. So how about you crawl out of your hole and go take a shower while I heat you up a nice can of soup.”
“I don’t want soup and I don’t need a shower,” I said angrily, sticking my head out from under the covers to glare at her. My hair was greasy and matted to my head. Izzy was right. I reeked of sweat and self-pity.
“Uh, you might not need soup but you could sure use a shower,” she said, playfully shoving her nose against my hair and taking a deep whiff. “Lordy girl, you’re starting to smell like an old sock. My nose is pretty pissed off at you right now.”
“Then get the fuck off me!” I snapped, trying to push her away. “Just get out of my room and leave me the fuck alone!”
I heard her take a deep breath as she pulled her arm from around me. “You’re going to force me to do something I don’t really want to do,” she said.
“Go. Away.”
“You’re making me take drastic measures, missy. This ain’t gonna be pretty.”
I pulled the comforter down a little more and glanced over my shoulder at her. In the darkened room, I could just make out the outline of her dark face. She was not smiling. Fearing the answer, I asked, “What are you going to do?”
Without another word, Izzy jumped to her feet on the bed and started bouncing up and down as if she was on a trampoline. She grabbed the comforter and jerked it off my naked body, wadding it up and throwing it to the floor. As she bounced up and down she started to sing with her hands swaying in the air.
“YMCA! IT’S FUN TO STAY AT THE Y-M-C-A-A!!”
“GODDAMMIT, IZZY!” I screamed at her as my body bounced up and down on the bed, my big tits flouncing on my chest. “Fucking stop it you crazy bitch! Get off my fucking bed!”
“You fucking stop it!” she roared, still bouncing. “IT’S FUN TO STAY AT THE—"
“Stop what? I’m not doing anything!”
“Y-M-C-A! Y-M-C-A-A!!”
“Izzy!! Stop what??”
“Stop blaming yourself for everybody else’s problems, you crazy bitch!” she said, bouncing, panting. “It’s not your fault Keith Calloway is a fucking psycho asshole piece of shit! Stop feeling sorry for him and stop feeling sorry for yourself!”
“I’m not!”
“Bullshit! And stop avoiding Holden Moss, you moron! The guy really cares for you!”
“How the fuck do you know that?” I asked.
“Because he just told me he does!” She stopped bouncing and started breathing hard. She put her hands on her knees with her feet straddling my hips, huffing and puffing as she looked down at me. “Fuck, I might need a doctor. And why are you naked?”
“You just don’t understand, Iz,” I said, ignoring her question and glaring up at her with tears in my eyes. “Keith was a good guy. He had a wife and kids. A home. A good job. A good life. I fucked all that up. I fucked him up! I’ll never forgive myself for that!”
“That’s bullshit,” Izzy said, lowering herself to sit on my belly. “Keith was always fucked up, even before you got involved with him. You just gave the psycho son of a bitch something to focus on! You did his wife and kids a favor!”
“No, no I didn’t,” I said quietly. “If I’d never zeroed in on him… If I had never gone into that classroom intent on seducing him…”
“Jude, for pete’s fucking sake, nobody knew the guy was married,” Izzy said, reaching down to brush strands of red hair from my face. “Do you think you were the first student he ever fucked?”
I blinked at her. “No, he told me he had sex with other students.”
“So that’s on him,” Izzy said. “He hid the fact that he was married. He screwed more girls than just you. You just happened to be with him when he got caught by his wife! The guy is a lying, cheating, fucking asshole, Jude. Stop beating yourself up over this cocksucker! He’s not worth it.”
“I’m not so sure,” I said, sniffing back tears.
“What I know is that you have a wonderful man who is worrying himself sick over you,” Izzy said, putting her hands on my boobs and giving them a playful squeeze. “And you’re letting these perfect titties go to waste when that man could be squeezing and kissing them for you.”
I grinned and pushed her hands away, covering my tits with my arms. “Are you sure you’re not a lesbian, Iz?”
“Fuck no, girl, I ain’t munching on your red rug so don’t bother asking,” Izzy said, moving her hands to my cheeks. She squeezed her hands together, pooching out my lips. “I just love the fuck out of you, that’s all.”
I smiled with tears in my eyes. “I love you, too, Iz.”
“Good. Now, get your ass out of this bed and into that shower. Then get your ass over to Holden Moss’ place before he worries himself sick over you.”
She crawled off the top of me, then grabbed my bare feet to pull me off the foot of the bed. She took my hands and pulled me up, then directed me toward the bathroom and gave my bare ass a slap.
“I gotta say, though,” she said lustfully as I walked toward the shower. “If I was a lez-bee-on-it I would be all up in your shit.”
“That’s good to know,” I said, turning around and putting my hands on my boobs to shake them at her. “Hold that thought. If things don’t go well with Holden I might come back here looking to switch teams!”