Page 9 of Steel & Jenna
Jack’s eyes narrowed playfully. Lillyhatedgreen beans. They weren’t his favorite either, but they were better than going to bed hungry. Plus, there was no way Lilly could eat an entire can of beans and wieners. He’d get her leftovers too. The other cans he grabbed he’d place in their hidey-hole. Better to stock up when they could.
After opening the cans, Jack handed Lilly hers and then picked uphis spork to start to eat his. The tasteless, watery veggies were not appetizing in the least, but it was food.
“Jackie?”
He looked up from his can of green guck. “Yeah, Lilly?”
“Will you read to me tonight?”
Heat warmed his soul. “Of course.”
She looked into the backpack, careful to keep her open can of beans and wieners away from her precious gift. “What book is first?”
“It’s calledThe Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.” He’d read the book in fourth grade reading class.
“What’s a wardrobe?”
Jack had to think for a minute. “It’s like a closet. But, like, it isn’t attached to the wall.”
Lilly looked over at the cardboard box they had in the corner where their clothes were kept. One day last year, the small dresser that had been there had been gone. Jack didn’t know why his dad would take their dresser, along with all of their clothes, but he had. Jack also wasn’t stupid enough to ask him what happened to it. He was just grateful that his stash of money hadn’t been inside it.
It did occur to Jack that his dad might have been looking for his money and had broken the dresser in his haste to find it. Maybe his dad took the dresser to hide breaking it?
Either way, they no longer had a dresser and it had taken a chunk of Jack’s money to get them both enough clothes from the thrift store to last the rest of the school year. But Jack didn’t have the cash for another dresser or the ability to get it back to their trailer.
A discarded cardboard box from outside the grocery store had become their dresser ever since. And Jack had found a new place to hide his money than the hole inside his mattress, which was where it had been at the time their dresser had disappeared.
“Do you think Jenna has a wardrobe?”
Jack nearly choked on his bite of green beans at his sister’s question. “Jenna?”
“The girl from town. I heard her tell you her name was Jenna.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. Lilly should have been too far away to have heard that. “What else did you hear?”
“That you’re meeting her outside school on Monday to show her around. I think she likes you.”
Heat crept up his cheeks. “Why do you say that?”
“She kept looking back at us while you were getting us on your bike. She kept looking at your butt every time you bent over.”
That time when he coughed, there were no green beans involved. Could he really trust his sister’s point of view on this? What did she know about love and butts anyway?
Probably the same amount as you do, dumbass, Jack’s subconscious chided him. Jack was well aware what sex was and that many of his classmates were doing it. Hell, there was a pregnant girl in his high school last year. Jack was pretty sure she was a junior or senior, but didn’t know her personally enough to say which.
At fifteen, sex was on his mind. A lot.
But his priorities were vastly different than his classmates’. While they had parents to take care of them and their siblings, freeing up their minds for things like sex, fun, and friends, Jackwasthe adult. He had to take care of Lilly and that superseded any carnal desires.
That didn’t mean he hadn’t taken himself in hand whenever he had an alone moment. Hell, most mornings were awful because he’d wake with an erection but didn’t have the ability to take care of it with Lilly in the room. He didn’t even trust his dad not to do something while Jack was occupied in the shower, so Jack took Lilly into the bathroom with him. Now that she was getting older, he knew what others might say if they knew. A fifteen year old boy had no business being in the bathroom with his six year old sister.
But he would take any awkwardness that occurred while sharing the bathroom space than to have her alone and vulnerable. Her safety was more important than him getting time to himself so he could masturbate in the shower.
They had a good routine down. The bathroom wasn’t large enough to give them their own corner, per se, but they were good at turning their backs on the other to give a sense of privacy. Jack knewnothing about girls’ bodies and what their needs were. They had not taught that to the boys in health class, so Jack had gotten a book at the library to help him. Thankfully, they had a good number of years before Lilly hit puberty and would start her period. They would be long gone from this town and away from their father by the time that occurred.
Jack had been taking care of Lilly for so long, including changing her diapers, that he knew how a girl’s body was different than a boy’s before his classmates. But he hadn’t known what it meant or why they were different until health class the year before. He was careful enough to hide his body’s biological reactions to, well,anythingfrom Lilly. And keeping his showers cold to save the hot water for Lilly helped.
The fact that his dick twitched in his jeans at the mention of Jenna did not help. Lilly didnotneed to know what an erection was and certainly not because she had seen her brother’s. Jack carefully shifted to hide the growing problem.
