Summary: "she doesn't understand how people know when they are in love. the only way she can know is if she tries ." jade centric, jadebeck, jadecat , jaderobbie, jadeandre, jadetori, jadetrina
Author's Notes: I own nothing.
.-.
The first time he says i love you is when they're fourteen years old, and making out in the back of Jade's father's car.
She doesn't know what love is, because had never experienced it before, but she knows it is important. She knows it is the vital part in a relationship, but she doesn't know if she feels it. She's just a kid, after all. She's inexperienced and naive. She doesn't know what to say back.
So she mutters a 'same here' before running her hand up his shirt as she continues to passionately make out with him.
.-.
They're cuddling in his rv, watching some romantic chick flick that he convinces her to watch. She doesn't find it entirely endearing, but she watches it.
(for him. it's always for him)
He turns to her, and whispers softly in her ear, 'i love you'. But this time, she knows how to respond. She feels like she knows what love is like, and she knows it is with him. He is her true love.
(after all, they have been together for two and a half years without many problems).
She smiles softly at him, placing a hand on his thigh. "i love you too," she murmurs in his own ear before turning back to the movie. She feels his arm curl around her waist and she can't help but chuckle (she doesn't giggle like a schoolgirl) when she falls into him. She cuddles closer to him, and can't help but think how perfect their relationship is.
Then again, nothing's perfect.
.-.
It's during one of their off periods when she finds herself macking lips with trina vega. She doesn't even fully understand how it happened (something about acting and practicing to kiss a chick to land some role), but it's happening, and she isn't sure how she feels.
All she really knows is trina's lips taste like blueberry lipgloss. She hates blueberries.
.-.
It's graudation day and she sits beside some guy she doesn't even know. She gets her diploma and walks off the stage, simple as that. She's the last of their group to go up, so everyone is waiting for her, smiling and waving.
All she can see is beck's arm around tori as if she is his property. It stings (it always has), and she can't take it anymore.
So she kisses robbie shapiro fully on the lips for a good minute. He tastes better than trina, but his kiss is more sloppy.
She doesn't like it one bit. He doesn't seem to either. She smirks at the gaping ex and his bobble head girlfriend as she prances off to steal some kid's water.
(later, she will blame the kiss on nostalgic feelings or whatever)
.-.
She goes to ucla with cat and andre. The others split off to different schools (beck and tori at nyu, trina studying at Berkeley and robbie off in maine). Once in, she doesn't speak to cat and andre much. She prefers to stick to her new friends. But even she knows that high school has impacted her more than she wants, and she finds herself meeting up with cat at a party. Some guy tries to dry hump her, but she pushes him away and leads cat away to a more quiet and secluded area.
"This is amazing jade, I mean, really awesome. I've never been to this kind of party before," cat gushes as they sit next to each other. Alright, so both of them have been drinking a bit. She just knows that being here with a familiar face is wonderful, but it brings back memories of beck (curse that two timing jerkface) and she can't help but sigh mournfully. "What is it?" cat probes. She shakes her head, because she doesn't know what to say.
"nothing cat," she tells her. cat keeps blabbering on, though, about sunshine and ponies and it starts to get on her nerves. She just wants cat to shut the hell up; plus, the three beers she had had didn't help her cause.
So, she leans over and closes her mouth on cat's in the middle of her sentence. Her lips taste the best; they taste like cotton candy and sunshine (and how somebody's lips can taste like sunshine, she doesn't know; they just do) and it isn't a bad kiss at all. This is her second time kissing a girl, but she finds that it's not as bad as she thinks.
The thing that freaking terrifies her is that cat starts to kiss her back. She forces herself to pull away and act like it never happened, and cat gladly does the same.
The incident is never brought up again, but she is always thinking about it. Always.
.-.
beck tells her that she doesn't know what love is, nor is she capable of loving. She wants to remind him about high school and how they were together all four years, so how could he say that? So, she lies to him about her loving somebody else and them being so happy together, and he asks her who, and she says the first name that pops into her head, which happens to be the person that just walks around the corner with beck's bobble headed girlfriend.
andre looks shocked and so does she, but she brushes it off as she pulls him into a romantic kiss that seems to last forever. His kiss isn't bad either; actually, she seems to feel at least something when she kisses him (unlike robbie and trina and cat) and she doesn't pull away. To her delight, neither does andre. It may be because of his undying love toward tori, but nonetheless it feels good to be getting back at beck with no strings attached at all. And when she finally pulls away for air, she can't resist a smug smirk when she sees beck's jealous face and tori's teary eyed one. Good, she decides triumphantly. That'll show them.
andre looks just as smug as she does, and they shoot a look of triumph at each other.
They win. For the first time in their lives, they win against tori and beck. And it feels great.
.-.
She's twenty seven now, and a famous Broadway star along with cat. Everyone else doesn't get the luck that they have. tori's an actress/singer in Hollywood, but the others don't fare as well. andre's a struggling music composer, working two jobs as a deejay at a new york club. robbie has a failed ventriloquist act in California, and trina has gone to rehab three times. As for beck? Well, he is married to some famous porn star and they're living it up in Italy. Yes, Italy. She doesn't speak to anyone, besides to cat, anymore. So it's a complete surprise when she gets home at midnight after a show to find tori vega in her apartment, soaked to the bone and looking like she just cried a river.
"What are you doing here, vega? Aren't you recording your ninth award winning song or something?" she snaps as she sets her things down on the floor before moving toward the kitchen for a drink of water. tori follows her like an obedient puppy but doesn't say a word. Fine, she thinks miserably. Two can play at the silent game. She has been playing since high school, after all. She gets a drink and gulps it all down and then moves toward her bedroom before the other girl finally speaks.
"I need you, jade," she whispers, which makes her halt in her tracks. The famous pop star sounds incredibly sincere, and scared in a way, and it freaks her out. She has never heard tori sound so vulnerable and alone, and she turns to face her. It also makes her cave and ask what's wrong, but then it wouldn't be her. So she shrugs and turns back around, but doesn't move another step.
"Please, jade, please. I know we've never been good friends-" tori starts before she cuts in.
"We've never been friends. You stole my boyfriend, need I remind you," she snaps but tori seems unphased. Without a word, tori hands her a DVD.
"If this gets out, it'll destroy my career," she admits before telling the Broadway star of the unfortunate night with a sleezy director who taped their escapades and is threatening to put it out over the web to destroy her. She doesn't really know what to say to tori; it's not her problem that she had romantic escapades with some twenty year older guy and now is being blackmailed for sex. Screw you, she wants to scream at the bitch that destroyed her life. But yet, she doesn't. In fact, she turns back to tori, sighing deeply.
"fine, but what can I do to help?" she asks, watching as tori sighs in relief.
"Just...talk?" she suggests and jade sighs as she leads her into the living room, even though it's midnight and she has to go in to work at seven in the morning for rehearsals, but she chooses to stay up with tori and talk.
.-.
It's a week later, and tori is still at her apartment, but she is getting used to it. It's actually kind of comforting, coming home to somebody, even if it's her mortal enemy. She's starting to get to know the famous Hollywood star better, though, and she isn't as bad as she thinks. tori tells her about the time when beck dumped her for that porn star (three years ago), and she discusses all of the times that they broke up in high school (twelve official times, four hundred unofficial ones).
It's weird, but she feels like she is actually bonding with tori, and actually getting along with her. It's a Sunday night, around ten, and she and tori are actually bonding (through alcohol of course, but still bonding).
That night, something changes between them. It somehow starts out from sarcastic comments and snappy remarks, turning into teary, sappy stories to clawing at tori's shirt (not out of anger, per say) and throwing her roughly down on her bed. Ok, so she may be slightly past tipsy, probably even past drunk, but she doesn't really care. She hates reminiscing, because it brings back unwanted memories, and tori is just right there, and she's had dreams about girls for a month now, and it seems like the only way to get her frustrations out. She's been sexually deprived for two effing years; she needs some action, even if it's with little miss vega.
But not even tori seems to mind; either from the alcohol or from utter stupidity, she doesn't object. She allows tori to stick her tongue in her mouth as she grips tori's back. She remembers clothes flying off of their bodies and a lot of noise that night.
She wakes up at eight in the morning to find tori beside her, sleeping. Okay, so she definitely freaks out, and yes, she does have a minor heart attack when she sees their clothes strewn out across the apartment, but she knows what she's good at, and what she's not.
She's not: good at dealing with feelings.
She is: good at running away from her feelings.
So, she quietly gets dressed, leaves a simple note for tori and leaves.
tori,
I expect you to be gone by five o clock this afternoon. Or I will call the police and release the video to the world myself.
jade
.-.
When she gets home at promptly five that afternoon, the apartment is tori-free.
.-.
She gets calls from tori, and e-mails from her. She ignores all of them and sends an e-mail to tori, stating that if she contacts her once more, that video will go viral faster than the speed of light.
She stops getting messages all together.
.-.
She moves to canada one year later, after her Broadway show finishes its tour, and she has nothing else to do. She wants to take a break from acting and singing and stuff, and her aunt Carol lives in Vancouver, so she stays with her for a couple of months while she adjusts and finds a cute, little house way up north.
She's never been a social person, and the peace and quiet in a little town seems like something she would like to try to live in. So, she does.
It works for about a year and a half before she gets completely bored and moves back to new york.
.-.
She doesn't keep in touch with any of her high school friends. High school is over, anyways. It's not long after moving back to new york when she decides to find love. She doesn't understand how people know when they are in love. The only way she can know is if she tries, so she dates around.
She's thirty one when she meets the man of her dreams, adam kendall, who is a obstetrician. A year later, they are married. Two years later, they have a little boy named julian. She's perfectly happy with them, and she wouldn't change anything in her life.
.-.
She does see all of her friends one last time after this. She sees cat together with some guy in a gym when julian is barely a year old, and she sees robbie in some club doing a ventriloquist act two months later. She spots trina in a magazine about washed up wannabe stars, and she sees andre when julian is five, deejaying for some rap artist performing in new york.
She sees beck on television two years after this. He's divorced from his porn star wife and is married to tori now, with a child on the way. In fact, both of them are on television, discussing tori's latest movie and beck's role in it. He's over forty years old, and unfortunately he still looks good. His hair has grown longer and darker, and his body is a lot scrawnier than she remembers, and his wife is so perky and happy and she absolutely detests it. She has a hand on her five month pregnant stomach, and she almost throws up at the sight.
They look so fricking perfect, and everyone seems to l-o-v-e them together. She feels like screaming at the tv, and she feels like punching something. So, she does both. She kicks and screams and throws a fit at her age until all of her frustrations are gone, and she stands in the middle of a tornado-like mess and she breathes heavily as she stares at the broken tv. All of a sudden, a smile begins to grace her lips and it just keeps getting bigger as she opens her mouth and releases a full blown laugh. It sounds manical and evil, but she doesn't really process it as she throws her hands up, letting every frustration go and just allows herself to laugh at the ridiculousness of everything in her old life. She laughs at how she could have ever loved beck, and she laughs at the one night stand with tori (she's not even gay), and she laughs at the failed small town move, and she just laughs.
And when adam comes home with julian and they see the mess that she is calmly cleaning up, and they ask her questions, she just laughs and tells them not to worry; that she had a minor freak out but she's better now, and she truly is.
She feels free and wonderful and just great, because she can finally move on from her past and finally focus on the beautiful future she has with her husband and her son.
For the first time, she is loved, and she loves every moment of it.
Ok, so I have no idea where this came from. It kind of started off differently and this kind of...morphed into itself. I had no control in its direction.