I opened my mouth, considered and shut it again. Nope. There was absolutely no way to talk my way out of this one. Sex god, AKA Jude, just stood there with a sexy smirk on his face. He laughed. “It’s ok. It’s not the first time I’ve been mistaken for a girl. Every time we had a new teacher at school I got in trouble when she marked the roll for answering for somebody else. It always took me ages to convince her that I actually was Jude.” He shrugged. “My parents had an affinity for The Beatles.”

“I’m really, really sorry.”

“It’s ok. I didn’t catch your name though.”

“I’m Emily. Although you could just call me shit for brains if you want, that too would be quite appropriate.” I said. You couldn’t get a red redder than my face right then. Sex god held his hand out. “Well should probably just start again. Hi. Nice to meet you. I’m Jude. I’m a boy.”

I shook his hand, absently noticing how nice it was. “Nice to meet you. I’m Emily. I’m a girl.”  

Jude nodded in mock seriousness. “I’m glad we got that sorted out.”

I looked at the floor. “Me too.”

“So Marge said you want to volunteer here.” He said, shaking his hair out of his eyes. I looked up at him. “I could see definite advantages.” I replied. Shit. Tell me you didn’t just say that Emily. What the hell is wrong you, you fucking retard? Jude seemed completely oblivious though. “I know what you mean. It’s incredibly rewarding helping out the people who come to this centre.”

Nice, thoughtful and a sex god. What are the odds? “Well what would you need me to do?” I asked. “Marge asked me to sort out these games…”

“Well yeah. We do need help running the store side of things. At the moment it’s just me, Marge and Nick. But I’m always so busy counselling and Marge flits between helping me and helping Nick with the store, so we could really use you help…” he trailed off hopefully. I bit the inside of my cheek. On the one hand, the idea of working in a store without being paid really didn’t appeal to me. On the other, Jude was really sexy. I wouldn’t actually be helping anyone who was really in need. Except for Jude –who’s a sex god. So which one out? My pride and selfishness or my hormones? Take a guess. I sighed inwardly. “What do you need me to do?”

Jude beamed at me, and suddenly I wasn’t minding working so much.

I spent a couple of the best hours of my life with Jude at the centre. He showed me where everything was and what to do. I was just about to go when he called out to me. “Emily!”

I turned. Jude walked towards me, a sheepish smile on his face. “I’m so sorry to do this to you…but Nick has just called in sick, and Marge is super busy tomorrow morning. If you’re not busy…would you mind coming in tomorrow morning for a few hours? It’s just that, I’m flat out tomorrow, and I could really use your help. It would just be the two of us.”

Just the two of us? “What time?” I asked, perhaps a little too quickly.

“Is eight ok?”

I normally sleep in on Saturday’s… “Eight’s fine.” I said, smiling brightly.

“Brilliant.” Jude grinned at me. “See you tomorrow then.”

I gave him a little wave and turned around to go. Weak. A voice in my head sang.

“Shut up shut up!” I said out loud, waving my hands around. You’re so weak. He smiles at you and you agree to whatever he says? “I’m helping the community.”

Sure.

I was fifteen minutes early the next morning, and was sitting on the front step when Jude arrived. For the past ten minutes I’d been watching two tiny worms crawl their way across the front step. “Emily!” he said in surprise, sweeping his hair out of his bright blue eyes and looking at me in surprise. “You’re early.” He commented. I shrugged and stood up. “Early bird catches the worm.” I replied, looking down at the worm I’d accidentally just squashed. What an excellent start to my community service – I’d just murdered something. I picked the other one up and let it crawl across my finger.

Jude nodded and unlocked the door. “True.”

“So what do I need to do today?” I asked as he snapped on the lights.

“Well, basically I just need you to man the store. Your worm mates can help you out.” he added with a grin. I just gave a stammering laugh, then turned around and cursed myself. “What will you do?” I asked in curiosity.

“I’m booked flat out today. Because I’m the only qualified councillor here, we have to take bookings. People do come in off the street, but generally I can only see them if it’s a real emergency.” He said, pulling his bag off his shoulders and setting it down on Marge’s desk. “Is it like a doctors surgery? Do I need to let you know when people come in?” I asked. Jude laughed.

“Sure. If you want. Some of them won’t give their name though, so don’t push it. Just come and get me.”

My pleasure. “Ok?” he asked, sweeping his hair back again. I nodded.

“Great. I’ve got some paper work to do, so I’ll be back here.” He said, gesturing to the screened off area. “Just let me know when someone comes in.”

I nodded again. Jude gave me one last smile and disappeared. I let out a long breath and sagged against the desk. Hmm. So what do I do now?

I walked over to the pile of games Marge had introduced me to the day before and slowly started picking through them. God this is boring. There has to be a way to make this more entertaining. I wish I had someone to talk to. Hey. A CD player. Wonder if this works. I walked over to the CD player on one of the tables and checked it over. It looked ok. I found a power socket and plugged it in. It sluggishly came to life. Digging through my bag, I pulled out my discman and took my Radiohead CD out. I put it into the CD player and pressed play. It played; sounding kind of tinny, but you can’t have everything. I’d just gone back to the table when someone walked through the door. I looked up in surprise. “Hi.”

The girl looked up sharply and gave me a very small, nervous smile back. “Hello.”

I walked over to her slowly. “I’m Emily. Are you here to see Jude?” I asked curiously. She nodded. “Uh, well come on through.” I said, not really sure what else to do. The girl followed me timidly, wringing her hands as she walked. I knocked lightly on Jude’s door. He was frowning over the paper in front of him, resting his forehead against his hand. He looked up as I stepped into the room. I saw he was wearing glasses. They suited him. “What’s up?”

“There’s someone here to see you.”

Jude’s expression immediately cleared and he stood up straight away. “Amelia. Come on in. thanks Em.” He said. I took this as a dismissal. I felt kind of hurt, but then realised what he’d called me. Em. He gave me a nickname! That was a sign of true love if ever I’d heard one.

I worked straight through until lunchtime. Four more people came to see Jude. None of them were very friendly, and two of them looked like they needed a damn good wash. By 12:30 I was bored shitless. Jude hadn’t had anyone else in an hour or so, so I figured I could go and see him. When I went to knock on the door though, I stopped. He was rubbing his eyes tiredly. He looked really sad. “Are you ok?” I asked quietly. He looked up in surprise. “Oh yeah. I’m ok.” He smiled slightly. “Part of the job, depression.”

I didn’t know what to say. Jude shook his head and smiled again, this time more brightly. “Right. I’ve had enough. Lunch time. Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“There’s an awesome little café down the street.”

“Are you just going to close?”

“I don’t have any one else to see until 2:30.” Jude replied, standing up and placing his glasses on the desk. I shrugged. “Ah, ok. Let’s go.”

I waited for Jude to lock the door and then we walked down the street together. We were seated at a little table outside. You could just see the ocean. I grabbed a straw off the table, ripped the paper off and stuck it in my mouth. “So.” I started. “What’s the Jude story?”

“The what story?”

“The Jude story!”

“You mean, tell you about myself?”

“Yeah. That.”

Jude smiled in amusement. “Well. It’s the story. Of a lovely lady. Who was bringing up three very lovely girls…”

“And were you one of those lovely girls Judith?” I asked. I rolled my eyes. “You stole that story from the Brady Bunch! My friend Charlie does the same thing; only he starts out with the first chapter from Harry Potter. He tells people he lives in a cupboard.” I told him. Jude laughed. “Ok. Well seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“My name is Jude Harrington. No middle name. I’m an only child. Both my parents died when I was little. I just turned 21. I currently live with my grandmother, no not in a cupboard, before you ask,”

I shut my mouth. Jude smiled and went on. “I’m a Sagittarius who enjoys long walks on the beach, flower arranging and knitting.”

I raised my eyebrows. “How Tonya Toddman of you.”

Jude grinned. “Indeed it is. What about you?”

“Wait, we’re not done with you yet. Are you at uni or something?”

“Yeah. I’m in my last year. I want to be a social worker. Youth worker, actually. “

“How’d you get involved with the centre?”

“I applied there. I wanted to get some hands on experience before I finished my degree. I did their training, which you don’t have to have a uni degree for, and they let me take over basically.” He shrugged. “No one was really bothered with it. But it’s amazing how many people in this area need help, and there was no one around to listen. So I decided that I wanted to help.”

“What made you want to help in the first place?” I asked curiously. Some of the brightness in Jude’s eyes went out. “My best friend committed suicide five years ago. I was about your age maybe. She had been battling with depression for ages, only no one knew. She didn’t tell any one. She didn’t ask anyone for help.” He shrugged again. “And maybe if she had, maybe if there had been someone to help, she would still be here. So that made me want to help. I wanted to help other kids before they turned out like Kirra. And I love it. I couldn’t think of anything else that I’d want to do. It’s so rewarding.”

“But it makes you sad.” I said, thinking back to the way I’d seen Jude earlier that morning. “Sometimes it does.” He agreed. “I have days where I think life absolutely blows. But then someone will come into the centre, and they’ll have no home, or no money or they’ve just lost someone close to them or they’re being abused and I come back to earth. I have it a lot better than so many others. It’s such a wake up call when someone comes in and tells me a story that just breaks my heart. The unfairness of it all gets me so angry and sometimes I get so depressed. But then I tell myself that I’m helping these people, and without me they’d have no one. So that makes it worthwhile.”

I sat there in silence. Jude smiled at me. “What?”

I looked at him. He had beautiful features. Incredibly bright blue eyes, shaggy, pitch black hair and high cheekbones. He was tall and thin almost to the point of delicateness, but he didn’t look like a beanpole, and I don’t think I would have described him as lanky either. Even though he was so slight he had an air of strength about him. I would describe him as lithe. All of his emotions were conveyed by his eyes – he was like an open book. They say eyes are the window to the soul and that was certainly true with Jude. He radiated empathy and compassion and even though I’d known him less than 48 hours, I could already tell he was just a beautiful person. I could so easily fall in love with you.

Jude laughed. “Emily, what?” he asked again. I smiled and looked at my hands.

“It’s weird hearing you talk. You make me feel so bad.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t care enough. I’m your typical rich girl. I live in my own little bubble, completely obsessed with my own world and nothing else. Nothing else matters to me. Not the plight of someone else, not the hardships that undeserving people have to suffer, nothing. I’m so sheltered I hadn’t even realised that stuff like this goes on in this area. How sad is that? I have so much more than most people, yet I look at you and it seems like it hardly matters to you what you have or don’t have.  You want to help other people with their problems, and I want to sweep them under the rug so I don’t have to listen to them. I’m selfish…and I hate it.”

Jude smiled. “You’re not nearly as bad as you think you are.”

“I am.”

“You’re not. Because if you were really a bad person, you wouldn’t have admitted all of that.”

“I’m a bad person with a big mouth and a tendency to talk about myself too much.” I said. Jude laughed. “Really you’re not. Honestly Em. You’re here now aren’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re helping out at the centre. You’re helping the community. That doesn’t seem like something a selfish person would do to me.”

“But I am only here for my own selfish reasons. I was having a shitty time. An incredibly trivial shitty time, but it seemed like a shitty time to me. So I wanted to help other people with their problems so I could forget mine, but it’s probably a good thing you didn’t let me near people with real problems. Who wants to hear a bored rich girl whining about her stupid ex-boyfriend?”

Jude smiled. “I really don’t think you’re a bad person Em. Just sheltered. Maybe you have a little bit of growing up to do.”

I looked up at him. “Will you help me Jude? I want to be able to help other people.”

“You want to become a councillor?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Could I sit in in one of your sessions or something?”

Jude’s face fell. “Oh man. I don’t know. People could get a bit funny about that. The last thing I want to do is drive some of them away.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. It was a stupid idea.”

“No. It wasn’t stupid.” He looked at me from under his fringe, considering. “You really want to do this?”

I nodded.

“Ok. Well maybe I can ask a few people tomorrow if they’d mind you sitting in on a few session. How’s that?”

I smiled. “That’s perfect. Thank you Jude.”

He just gave me a half smile. “You’re welcome.”

Forget could fall in love with him. I think I already am.