Hokays, my New Year's resolution was to publish more than two new one shots. So here is numero uno. Disclaimer: I don't own Victorious. Nor will I ever, according to the universe. Grrr…
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Sometimes she thinks Beck's right about the best love stories being the most tragic. (But most times, she likes to tell herself it'll all work out in the end)
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She kisses him first. They're on the beach for the Kick Back, because the school was closed for renovations, and Jade's at home sick, and his face looks so perfect in the sunset. She tangles her fingers in his hair and pulls him to meet her lips.
She figures that he'll be the good boyfriend and pull away, and they'll never speak of it again, but he kisses back.
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And so the story starts.
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She thinks that maybe, if she wasn't so different (crazy), maybe Beck would love her like he loves Jade. But she pushes the thought out of her mind as he runs his hands up and down her sides. She tangles her fingers in his hair and pretends that she can't taste coffee and spearmint gum on his lips.
Mostly because she knows that's what Jade drinks and chews almost pathologically. But it's also, slightly because she feels guilty that she's sleeping with her best friend's boyfriend. Sometimes it makes her feel so guilty, she pushes him away. Tonight is not one of those nights. She doesn't protest as her pulls her shirt over her head.
Later that night, when they're lying pressed together, she whispers, "Do you think you could ever love me?"
She doesn't get an answer.
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Her heart feels like a bird at times, but usually it just feels like it's breaking.
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Her head hurts more than it usually does on the mornings that Beck sticks around for her to wake up. He'll shower while she's sleeping and get dressed in the 'emergency' clothes that he keeps stashed at the bottom of her drawers and wait until she wakes. And he'll keep waiting until she's showered and dressed and taken her medication.
He jumps out her window and she walks out the front door and waits while he starts his car. They swing by to pick up Jade and it's such a damn lie that she can barely stand herself. Of course Jade sits up front with Beck because they're Jade&Beck and she sits in the back because there isn't a Cat&Beck. Never was and never will be, much as she likes to pretend otherwise.
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Love is patient, love is kind, love is one big giant lie.
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When they're alone, he whispers that she's beautiful, that she's special. He tells her that she's his angel, his very own angel and that he doesn't know what he's done to deserve her. She doesn't know what she's done to deserve this.
She can't even hold his hand at school, or kiss him in public without fear that someone they know will be there and will tell Jade. She thinks that her mom was right when she told her that she was going to follow family tradition and find a boy to love that she can never have.
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It's the first time she's followed any family tradition. She thinks that she liked it better when she refused to be like her family.
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When he's talking to Jade, it's always Babe this and Babe that. Jade is his babe, his girlfriend that he loves to hate and hates to love. But he speaks to her much gentler, with Darling this and Sweetheart that. She's his darling, his scarlet letter. She thinks that that's a much better role to play than a babe.
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But usually, she wishes that he could call her darling and sweetheart in front of their friends.
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She's afraid to talk to Jade after nights that she's spent with Beck, because she feels like the guilt will make her mouth move of its own accord and spill every secret she's kept since they were fifteen. But thankfully, Jade takes control of the entire conversation before the guilt has a chance to takeover and ruin the world she's built up, brick by brick.
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Or was stick by stick? Maybe it was straw by straw… All she knows is that the Big, Bad Wolf always blows it down.
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They've been doing this for two years now, this little dance that only they know the steps to, when Jade tells her she's pregnant. Her heart seizes because she knows that the father is Beck (because Jade's a bitch, not a slut). Beck comes by later to explain himself to her, but for once she slams the door on his face.
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His hauntingly sad face, the face that she fell in love with. (Is it really love if she wants to kill him?)
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He keeps coming by until she finally lets him in, and then it's an explosion of hungry kisses, and roaming hands and when they're spent, he pulls her close to him. He tells her that this is the last time, that he has to be a father now. She tells him that she doesn't mind. He smiles and kisses her forehead and she tries to pretend that it doesn't tingle after he's gone.
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Sometimes she wishes that she and Jade could switch places, just once.
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It's ironic, she thinks, that this has to be the one test she passes. She thinks that she belongs on a reality show, a real one, not that stupid 'The Wood' show that they did once. She doesn't tell anyone, but she thinks that Jade has an inkling. So, she leaves.
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Funny, but she'd always thought that someone would be willing to chase after her.
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Two weeks later, there's a knock at her hotel room door. She has an insane hope that it'd be him, but when she opens it, it's Robbie that pulls her into a hug. He tells her that he loves her and that her leaving showed him just how much. And she kisses him to shut him up.
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She thinks that maybe she learned it from Beck.
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He marries Jade. She should've expected it, in fact, she did expect it, but it still feels like someone shot her through the heart. Jade's already had her baby, a little boy that they name Alexander, while Cat is nearly full term. She's told Robbie that the father is an ass and doesn't know about the baby, which really is the truth, in a way.
They've been living together for a while now, and while he's eating cereal and scanning the paper, he comes across the announcement and tells her. She reacts like it's a good thing and pretends like the child she's carrying isn't smashing her heart to bits even before it's born.
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It seems that it's already taking after its father.
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Robbie proposes to her. She says yes. They get married at the courthouse, no fanfare or white dress for her. She wouldn't be able to fit it anyway. He's wearing a sweater that she'd given him for Secret Santa one year and a pair of tattered jeans while she's in the closest thing to a wedding dress that she's got; a pale yellow maternity dress.
Her water breaks after she says I do (almost I don't).
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She doesn't wonder if this was the way her life was supposed to happen, because she's trained herself to ignore that little voice inside her mind that whispers, you messed up.
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Her little girl, ahem, their little girl, is amazing. She looks like Cat, thank God, so there are no questions from Robbie. She sings like her mother, looks like her mother, but acts like her father. On and offstage. She lives up to her name, Phynix, and rises from the ashes of her failure in whatever she has tried. They call her Nikki, because Cat thinks she looks like a Nikki at times. Nikki comes home crying one day, sobbing out that a boy from her class, Alex Something-or-other called her weird.
Robbie is irate, and Cat is worried, but it's the other kid's parents that arrange a parent-parent-teacher conference. Robbie has his arm around her shoulder, and she's wringing her hands, but nothing could have shocked her more than the two adults sitting across from the teacher. Jade is curvier (childbirth, she knows, because her own body has the exact same curves) and her hair is shorter, with no colored streaks. He looks older, with early gray starting and a few lines starting to etch into his forehead.
Jade jumps up and pulls her into a hug. It seems that age has mellowed her. Beck stands and shakes Robbie's hand. The teacher has them sit and tries to get them to discuss why they're here, but the conversation drifts to the past eight years. She's careful not to meet Beck's eyes. Beck invites them out to coffee, but apparently Jade has some scenes to film and Robbie has a business meeting, so Cat obliges, if only because she feels bad about him being alone.
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She thinks that she's doomed herself to forever hating herself. (And most of the males on the planet. But that's extra).
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It goes back to how it was before marriages and kids and mortgages and jobs and car payments. That first day, while their spouses aren't around and their kids are at a weekend program, they check into a motel (she never thought that she'd be that woman) and it's all fervent kisses and guilty eyes.
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Maybe this is how it was always supposed to be.
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Robbie's shot in a robbery gone awry. He's dead on arrival. She thought that, maybe because he never really had her whole heart, she wouldn't hurt so much, but she still feels like someone just ripped the ground out from under her feet. Her daughter sobs into her shirt and she's not much better.
Tori and Andre (married, with twins on the way) and Jade and Beck (well, we all know where they are now) show up and Cat thinks it's kind of sad that it took someone dying to get them all back together. No one knows quite what to say.
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She doesn't really even notice the way Beck is watching her, she's too busy holding her little girl.
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She moves Nikki and herself to Massachusetts, new town, new life. Nikki doesn't speak to her for a week, and she feels like she's slowly losing her mind. She's only twenty-nine, a widow and a mother and she might just be pregnant again, and now her daughter, the only thing that brings unadulterated joy into her life refuses to say a word to her.
She offers to buy anything for her, offers to take time off from her job as a daycare attendant, offers to do anything, and finally Nikki starts talking to her again.
Her first words to her in a week are, "I miss Daddy."
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She can't tell her daughter that she misses him too, mostly because they're not talking about the same man.
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She's forty-two, having lunch with her daughters, Nikki and Mia, ages twenty-five and thirteen respectively, when she's sees him again. He's sitting with his son, twenty-five, and his wife, forty-three, and two other kids, presumably their children.. He spots her and says something to Jade. Jade looks over and waves, slides out of her chair and walks over.
Niceties are exchanged and she introduces Mia to Jade and Beck and Alex, both of whom have joined to group. The other two children are introduced as Lucas (seventeen) and Lilli (thirteen). They're apparently on vacation, visiting family in the area.
They chat for a while, and Mia goes off to discuss whatever teen sensation happens to be big now with Lilli, and Nikki and Alex walk away to reminisce about their grade school escapades, and Lucas just floats off. She looks at them, and suddenly she realizes how old they all are. They're much too old to be playing silly games like this.
Jade hands her a slip of paper with her phone number and email on it, telling her to keep in touch. When they all leave with children in tow, she drops Nikki off at her apartment and Mia off at her friend's house and drives back to her cold, empty apartment.
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Suddenly, she wishes she was young again, wishes that Robbie wasn't dead because of that damn job he'd gotten to support a wife that was unfaithful and a child that wasn't his, wishes that she'd never kissed Beck that day in freshman year.
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Beck comes by when Mia's out. He pulls her face up to meet his lips, much like she did to him, all those years ago. But this time, she knows where it leads. So, she pushes him away and closes the door. She steels her nerves and sits down at her computer, a dinosaur by Mia's description, and digs out Jade's email from the bottom of her purse, and starts to type.
Jade comes by the next day. As soon as she opens the door, she's slapped. Jade hisses, "You've ruined my marriage and my children's lives. How can you live with yourself?"
"I don't." Before Jade walks away, Cat calls out, "For what it's worth, I sent him away yesterday. And I feel horrible for lying to you, for all these years." Jade whips around, but she doesn't look so much furious as she does tired.
Jade asks, "Are they his? …Your daughters. Are they his?"
"No." Jade sighs, and her shoulders slump.
She walks away and Cat breathes, "They're mine."
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Beck used to say that the best love stories were the most tragic. She understands what he means now.
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YAY! Bat angst! I'm so proud of myself. Anyway, I'd be much obliged if you review, preferebly with more than 'So cool'. :)