Jade sat up and lit a cigarette – a small ember glowing in the dim room. Traces of lipstick still clung to her mouth as she pulled in the first lungful of smoke.
Tori sighed beside her in a tangle of flowered sheets (her own, of course, not Jade's), still trying to catch her breath. Jade snickered, and took another drag. She then offered it to the brunette.
"No, thanks." Tori declined, shaking her head. "You never smoke when we're at school." she observed, and even though she knew full well that she needn't ask permission to touch, she still seemed slightly hesitant as she reached up to play with one of Jade's brightly hued locks of hair.
Jade gave a small laugh in her throat, and purposefully blew a small puff of smoke at Tori, who waved it away, irritated.
"I only smoke when I screw."
Tori gave her an affronted look. "So is that what we're calling this?"
Jade reached out to tweak Tori's nose.
"Oh, I could call it other things," she taunted, with that patented Jade mock-sweetness coming through.
Tori rolled over onto her stomach, facing away from Jade. "Is that what you and Beck call it?" she muttered.
Jade flicked the ash off the tip of her cigarette and shrugged, then lay down on her back.
"I call it 'ensuring that Beck gets what he wants and otherwise stays out of my way'." She purred into Tori's ear. "And what he doesn't know won't hurt him."
Tori faced her again, and was silent for a moment before asking,
"Jade, why are we even doing this?"
The other girl put out her cigarette in a glass of water by the bed.
"Because your sister begged your parents to take her to see a Broadway casting director in New York City, and we have the house to ourselves."
"I'm being serious," Tori told her, "I mean all of it. This time, and all the other times…why?"
Again finding it easier to make light of things she didn't feel like actually dealing with, Jade shrugged. "Well you'd been fucking me with your eyes for months, and I finally decided to take pity on you."
Choosing to ignore that accusation, Tori went straight for the heart of the matter. "So that's all this has been about?"
"Pretty much."
"And this is how it ends up every time we do this. God, I hate you so much," Tori groaned angrily.
"No you don't." Jade chortled, lazily tracing circles on Tori's bare shoulder with her fingertip.
Still clearly annoyed, Tori brushed her hand away.
"…No, I don't. Because this wasn't a 'pity fuck' and neither was the time before that, or the time before that. I just don't know why you have to make everything sound so…crude, and…and meaningless."
Defeated, Tori sat up and moved to the edge of the bed, wrapping her arms around her own thin form, which was illuminated by the pale light from the window. She hung her head in silence, her tangled hair hiding her face. Jade moved towards her after a moment or two, and softly, maybe even tenderly, smoothed her hair away from her face.
"You know how when we met, I got mad every time you were around Beck?"
Tori gave her a withering look, before resuming the activity of staring at her knees, still keeping her back to the girl who so often made her feel this way.
"What does this have to do with anything?"
Jade pressed on, scooting herself right up against Tori, so she could watch the other girl's face as she spoke.
"You probably thought it was because I didn't want you to steal him away from me…but it totally wasn't. You were right about one thing though."
Now she had her full attention. Jade hugged her knees and rested her head against Tori's back. When she spoke, her voice was full of frightening honesty.
"I was jealous, alright? I didn't want you to want him, because I always wanted you...I just hated how much I did…how much I still do, okay? So maybe you can try to put up with me, even when you think this doesn't mean anything…because now you know."
Tori turned around bashfully, and Jade grabbed her face for an emphatic kiss. As it usually did with them things quickly escalated – because after all, they only had so many hours left in the weekend.
