A/N: Reason for my absence? A mixture of work and laziness. But alas, I return with another installment of whatever this is.

Am I a bad friend for not telling Jade about what happened with me and Cat? You know what, don't answer that.

She was busy, that's all. She had a boyfriend to maintain, and I didn't need to bombard her with my feelings. All our friendship had come to at this point was me listening to her talk about Beck. There wasn't anything wrong with that, it just got annoying after a while. Like, I would try and tell her about how my parents were going to go on some anniversary trip and it would just be me and my sister alone for a week and then she started talking about how Beck wants to buy an RV so that he won't have to live with his parents anymore. Then, she told me that she thought it was a great idea because then her and Beck could have some "privacy." Her face practically turned into that smirk emoji when she said that.

A few weeks went by, and almost all of our conversations revolved around Beck, and then, they started getting into fights, and our conversations still revolved around Beck after that.

The first time they'd quarreled, Jade called me, and it was like eleven o'clock and it was a Tuesday night. We had school the next day. And she was all, "Robbie, can you come over?"

But I said, "Jade, it's eleven PM on a school night, no."

And then I heard her sniffle, and that's when I realized she was crying. So I went to her house and she told me that she and Beck got into a fight because he told her that she overreacted sometimes, and Jade was shocked by that, she actually was. She thought it was preposterous for him to think such a thing. I'd mastered the ways of Jade West long ago, and I knew to keep my mouth shut and agree with Jade that Beck had no right to say something like that.

The thing about Jade is she seems all tough and independent to people that don't know her. Honestly, she's really fragile. She needs someone to cherish her. And she does overreact sometimes and she likes things her way but she's very brave and strong at the same time. She can be really caring, if she likes you. She's really hard to figure out. It was after witnessing the aftermath of a handful more fights between Beck and Jade did I realize that it was going to take Beck a while to understand that.

Was I supposed to give Beck lessons about Jade or something? Was I supposed to quiz him on all of her coffee preferences? (She prefers French roast because it's not light, with just a sprinkle of sugar and a splash of cream. Sometimes she takes it black, but that's only if she didn't sleep the night before and looks like she's dying, though you never tell her aloud that she looks like she's dying. Never buy her coffee from McDonald's, or any gas station, and if you get her a coffee from Starbucks, it better not be any frilly shit. She's not pretentious, it's just that Starbucks genuinely sucks. Starbucks is to coffee as McDonald's is to burgers.) Should I translate what every one of her glares mean and what he needs to do when she does them? This boy was pretty much clueless about how to really handle Jade; all he'd been doing the past few weeks was fucking her. And that simply wouldn't do, because Jade was so much more than that.

Since I was friends with both Jade and Beck, I was able to see both parties after these fights, and let me tell you, Beck did not seem upset at all. He would be totally chill in class and at lunch, like nothing happened. Maybe he knew that Jade had already told me that they had temporarily broken up because of a fight (did I mention that happened? Well, that happened) and then he knew that Jade had already told me that they had gotten back together four days later. Beck is a distant character. I don't think he likes emotions or expressing them too much.

Maybe Finn was getting the backlash of these fights. Maybe those two have been secretly hooking up this whole time. It wouldn't surprise me, honestly.

Anyway, are you wondering about Cat? Well, I'm about to talk about her. Hold your horses. She wasn't my girlfriend. Not for real, anyway. You know, we hadn't gotten to "that level" yet. Also, why are people trying to split relationships up into levels? This isn't Super Mario.

But we talked on the phone, like, every night, and every night my sister would knock on my door and tell me to shut up because she's trying to sleep and Cat would just giggle and we would hang up. And when we'd hang out, we'd try to go out and do actual date-like things but we'd never find a place and then we'd end up just driving around, and one time we found a place to park and we made out. Real talk—that actually happened. I never thought something like that could happen to me, but it did.

After that, we decided to not waste gas money if we were never going to be able to decide on a place to go, so we would just hang out at each other's houses. Cat had convinced me to start watching romantic comedies. She also told me to call them romantic comedies instead of chick flicks. By hanging out with her, I have been able to finally watch gems such as Say Anything, Legally Blonde, 13 Going on 30 and Clueless. We were in the middle of A Walk to Remember when she turned to me and said, "Would it be weird to change my relationship status?"

I froze, as I was not expecting a question like that to come up in the middle of the cheesiest movie that had ever been made, but then I just said, "No."

That made Cat smile. "Right now?"

I shrugged, "If you want."

Cat took out her phone and did it right then, and that's when I remembered that I hadn't told Jade anything about any of this yet. But it was too late, the deed was done, and a few minutes later, I was getting a call from Jade.

"Hello?" I answered as nonchalant as I could, getting up from the couch Cat and I were settled on and scurrying to a room that was quieter.

"Relationship?" Jade was nearly shouting, her voice piercing and firm.

"Yeah."

"I had no idea?" She was putting emphasis on like, every word.

All I could say was, "Sorry."

"Sorry?"

"I know I never told you…"

"Yeah."

"But you were busy with Beck."

"So?"

"And maybe I wanted to keep something to myself for once."

There was a long pause after I said that, and I couldn't tell if that had hurt Jade's feelings or not. She finally said, her voice a lot calmer now, "I'm happy for you."

"Really?" I furrowed my eyebrows, even though she couldn't see that.

She exhaled, "Of course."

Another pause occurred before I could bring myself to say anything, and when I did, I just said, "Thanks." Then, I told her that I better go, because me and Cat were watching a movie, and then I could hear that smirk emoji in her voice when she asked what movie, and I made one up, because I knew that she would laugh if she found out we were watching A Walk to Remember.

I must say, I really underestimated Jade. I thought that she would be super nosy about me and Cat, but all it took was me rudely telling her that I wanted to keep something to myself, and she backed off. She also stopped talking less about Beck, and that may or may not have been because she thinks another reason I didn't say anything about Cat to her was because she was talking about Beck all the time. Also, her and Beck had gotten through both their "honeymoon" phase and their "fight about everything" phase. They were in their "falling in real love" phase, and I know, because Jade told me. She really told me that she thought she was in love with Beck. I just said, "Wow." Which wasn't very supportive at all.

Weeks were passing, and weeks turned into months, and next thing I knew, I was having a girlfriend. Like, a real girlfriend. Because for months, all Cat and I did was hang out, and make out, and text at school even though we weren't allowed, and she met my parents and my sister, and I met her Nona and her mom, and we were turning into a real couple which was seriously uncalled for. We didn't go through a "fight about everything" phase like Beck and Jade did, or really the "honeymoon" phase, for that matter. At least, not the way that they went through their honeymoon phase. They had a lot of sex during that phase (although I don't think they lightened up much when they moved out of that phase, anyway), whereas Cat and I didn't at all.

Whether or not we were in the "falling in real love" phase when we finally did have sex isn't even that important to me. In fact, none of these phases are important to me. This is just like the levels thing.

But this is where the weird part happens because we actually had sex. It was kind of awkward the first time because we both had no idea what we were doing. We lost it to each other, if you want to put it that way. And I was kind of nervous, because I didn't want to make her uncomfortable, so I kept asking, "Are you okay?" Like, I couldn't stop asking that. I'm an idiot. I'd take off a layer of her clothing, and then I would ask her if she was okay, and she would just giggle at me and say she was.

And oh my god, no one told me how confusing condoms were? Okay, maybe confusing isn't the right word. But when your hot girlfriend is kissing your neck in that place where she knows it drives you crazy and you're caught up in everything because you've never experienced anything like this before, it's kind of impossible to put a condom on for the first time. Cat just giggled again at my struggles.

She giggled a lot, actually. A lot more than I expected. The whole thing wasn't what I expected at all. Actually, I don't know what I was expecting. But it wasn't anything like what actually happened. Yeah, Cat giggled sometimes, and other times she didn't, but we still were being pretty quiet because we were in her basement and her brother was two floors above us and he could come down to the first floor for a Gatorade at any moment. She left scratches on my back and hickeys on my collar bone and I was so whipped for her. They acted as battle scars to show that, "Hey, I had sex recently!"

Overall, I think we had a pretty good first time. Do I sound like a top critic on sex? Eight out of ten, would bang again. Hey, that rhymed.

We obviously got some more practice in later on. That's when I learned how weird sex was. It's just that it's really intimate, I guess. I can't imagine being a prostitute or something. Part of what I think makes sex really great is that most of the time, you're experiencing it with someone you really care about. And I really cared about Cat. Maybe even loved her. I don't know. I don't really like thinking about that. But it's true.

A/N: whaT IS THIS I AM SO SORRY

I know this ended kind of weird but I know what I'm doing next. It's k. It's k.