things start slipping downhill the day tori vega shows up at school, all flash and glitter and the prettyfuckingperfection that jade west has never had or wanted.
\.\
for a while, things are fine. they spilt a couple of times, when she's too pissed off to look at him for a second longer and he's too exhausted to fight anymore, but it never lasts. they're back together before the week's over. just like always.
but she knows there's an undercurrent of something w r o n g.
\.\
summer starts and she pretends not to feel it.
vega disappears and they spend lazy days in his rv watching horror movies and full house, and nights trying not to touch each other in his too-hot, too-small bed.
he drags her to some stupid carnival and pulls her into a photo booth. he keeps the first couple of sets of pictures, where they're both laughing so hard their stomachs hurt, and she's kissing him. she keeps the others. it might be funny, someday, to pull them out and think about the time they had sex in a photo booth. they go home (his rv is the only home either of them have ever known) and curl up in his bed, oblivious to the heat, and she swears she's never been happier. (damn, he's turning her all mushy)
she's enough of a cynic to know this kind of perfection doesn't last.
\.\
they break up on the first day of july. he claim that he's sick of her shit, and tells her to leave. she rips off the necklace he gave her for their first anniversary and hurls it at him.
she turns, walks away, and doesn't look back.
that's that.
\.\
she destroys her phone because every time she looks at is she remembers that it's full of his pictures and texts and the voicemails she never remembers to delete.
her parents are furious, but she feels better without his voice haunting her.
she gets a new phone that's clean and doesn't have any traces of beckandjade inside of it.
\.\
in the backseat of the escalade she 'borrowed' from her father, she fucks some guy that she meets at a bar she's too young to be in, and laughs in his face when he says he'd like to see her again sometime.
she thinks idly that beck might be disappointed in her.
she doesn't care, and that must mean she's moved on.
(liar)
\.\
beck replaces her within a month and she's almost proud.
(because vega, really? that's just fucking cruel, something she would do.)
\.\
she thinks she's the only one who sees that they're just the same.
(of course they are. beckandjade blend into each other so seamlessly that sometimes it's still hard to tell where one stops and the other begins)
\.\
she dyes her hair black and gets another tattoo and starts school like nothing's different.
beck walks into class with vega and all she feels is bored.
cat tells her she's sorry that beck broke her heart. she reminds cat that she doesn't have a heart to break.
(she's a fucking f a n t a s t i c actress, by the way)
\.\
months go by and she calmly, systematically removes every piece of beck oliver from her life. every note he passed her in class that she may have kept hidden in her dresser, (almost) every picture, every little thing that proves their relationship was real goes up in flames in her back yard. she watches the small mountain of beckandjade burn, takes a swig from the flask she's taken to carrying with her, and forces herself to forget that she didn't get rid of everything. (and she never will)
\.\
beck watches her sometimes. it's not that she watches him, because she doesn't. (honestly)
she sits with cat and andré (because cat was her friend first and andré's hurting too bad to deal with mr. and mrs. fucking perfect) while he sits with vega, and even though they're wrapped up in their perfect little life, he watches her.
it gives her some sick sense of satisfaction to know that yeah, he still wants her even when he (ditched dumped deserted dismissed dropped destroyed) her. he deserves to fucking suffer.
she takes a drink and stares straight through him.
\.\
when she slips silently out of the janitor's closet (once practically reserved for beckandjade) followed closely by some senior who's name she doesn't care about, she can see his grip on vega tighten, until he's practically crushing her perfect little hand.
(she'll never admit it, but she still loves making him jealous)
\.\
he shows up at her house at four in the morning. like most nights, she's perched on her roof, smoke curling up around her and a bottle in her hand. he says he wants to talk to her and she replies, lazy and bored, that she doesn't want to listen, and if he doesn't get the hell off of her lawn she'll call the police.
ten minutes later, police sirens roar around the corner and whisk him away.
she wonders hazily if wanting to get him arrested means she over him yet.
(not even close)
\.\
she goes to school with the world's worst hangover and no coffee.
he catches her outside of the entrance, face blank, but with sadfuriousdesperatedetermined eyes. she tries to shove past him, but he won't let her. for a moment they watch each other. (for half a second, they're in the eye of the hurricane that's been tearing through their lives for months)
he breaks the silence, after what feels like centuries. "what the fuck was the last night?"
and before she has time to come up with a complete plan of attack, they're off, shouting at each other like they have a hundredthousandmillion times before. later, she won't remember it, only bits and pieces.
"i apologized a million times, i know you got the messages i left." (she didn't, she ran over her phone to get away from his voice whispering iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou from her voicemail) "oh, yeah because your apologies mean so much when you're off fucking vega!" "you don't understa-" "don't you dare tell me what i don't understand" "i love you, you know that, i've told you a hundred times, that hasn't and won't change."
\.\
she stops, frozen for the moment by the complete sincerity in his voice.
(she's not vega- she knows when he's lying)
\.\
she kisses him, and her world realigns.
A/N; meh, this. jade is my favorite, but i don't feel like i did her justice at all. so boo. but whatever. there you go, jade's pov of 'maybe this time'. the ending's abrupt and weird and i sort of hate it, but i'm glad it's done so it's not sitting there pressuring me to finish it anymore.