Wanna Be Yours

chapter eleven: jude

August 17th

Friday 1:32 am

"No, no, no!" Jude groaned as she pressed stop to the instrumental version of Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now by The Smiths.

Their rehearsal up until then had been okay, not perfect, as Jude wished. Not life-changing, as she intended. But just okay. Which, despite Jude's disappointment, it felt like it could be worse considering Jude and Cardan.

But, if Jude had to list everything that was wrong with the performance and narrow it down, it would come to a total of two words:

Cardan Greenbriar.

Cardan, who had begun this entire endeavor with his swift attitude, his sly comments, and his arrogant personality, was beginning to lose energy and motivation, and when Jude paused the music, he instantly looked irritated.

Truly, it hadn't gone horrible, just as the rest of their workday hadn't been disastrous. They argued and they bickered, but nothing major...

Until, of course, Jude paused the song for the fifteenth time, gave him a scalding look, and said, "You missed your cue, Cardan. Again."

"Does it matter?" He snapped, "I'll do it tomorrow! We were sounding good."

"We were sounding mediocre, seriously, do we need to do more vocal warm-ups?"

Cardan opened his mouth and closed it, and for a brief moment, she was sure she saw his eye twitch.

Taking one deep breath, he said, "No, Jude. There are just about enough, 'Mama made me mash my M&M's,' I can handle before going clinically insane."

"This isn't going to cut it," Jude complained, rubbing her face with the palms of her hands, "none of this is good."

"Whatever do you mean? We were doing fine! Tomorrow we'll do better."

"No! It wasn't—This isn't... It just isn't good."

Cardan stared, shaking his head, "Yeah well, with that stinky attitude of yours, nothing will be good!"

Jude snapped her head towards this insufferable man so fast, she might have pulled a nerve, "Excuse me?"

"Your attitude is atrocious! And I am tired. We can't keep pushing ourselves—"

"We will push until we are done until we're done."

Jude stared at Cardan fiercely, they stayed here for a bit. She watched his face trying to come up with an answer and watched, noticed, how anger was coursing through him. Watched his breathing, deep ins, and outs. And Jude might be insane in thinking this, but she thought that she saw the way he was trying to hide it away. Trying to swallow down his frustration, trying not to show that he was getting mad.

When he smirked, it was forced, a poor show of distracting Jude from that specific moment. He noticed that she had noticed.

And then, to completely throw Jude off, he winked, and said, "Do I look pretty?"

Jude felt like strangling him, "I despise you. Anyways, we need to get this down."

"Ugh! Again!? From the beginning?"

"From the beginning," Jude sighed.

"I am going to hear this song in my nightmares."

"Good, maybe then you'll stop forgetting the lyrics."

"Oh, come on!"

Jude shot him a glare. She made sure to make it as threatening as possible.

He shivered before putting both hands up, "Fine, fine, let's do it again."