Fresh Start at Life

Disclaimer: Don't own Victorious

A/N:

Chapter 10 (Protective Best Friends)

Art Appreciation was fascinating and Ms. Prose seemed like a really nice and intelligent woman. Trina was going to enjoy this class and was glad to have selected it despite not knowing what else to choose. Initially she wanted to do Tae Kwon Do, but Lindsay informed her whenever she registered for her classes that Tae Kwon Do was no longer taught on campus-which meant the only way to learn martial arts was through the club.

Not that she had to learn it, but it was good to refine her skills and learn whatever else was left to be taught. However, if the black belts were the teachers and she had to choose between Jason, Lindsay or one of the ones she didn't know to spar with, she would prefer Lindsay. Despite that, Lindsay was always busy and wouldn't really be the one that she could spar with, leaving her with Jason.

With how he could get her worked up, going off of her last two run-ins with him, she wasn't too sure if it was advisable. She knew he wouldn't do anything she didn't want him to, but really it wasn't him she was worried about. During their very active relationship she enjoyed more than just his time with her and when they separated it was devastating, pining away for him as she had did not do well for her urges to see him again.

That said, being around him could be very dangerous, but not in the life threatening way. It was more playing with fire than anything else.

"How was your first day of classes?" Lindsay asked as Trina sat down at her booth in the Mesquite Café. With Lindsay were the other two roommates. Trina sat beside Lindsay and shrugged while dropping her heavy backpack on the ground.

"Well I'm glad to take off the pack for a while. My classes were fun, but I really didn't wake up until my second class." Lindsay frowned at her and she swept her fingers through her hair. "I mean I went to my first morning class, was a little bit sidetracked and regained focus during my second class while almost ending up late."

"Almost? How in the hell could you almost be late?"

"Let's not question that." She didn't want the girls asking too many questions about Jason, especially not with how protective Lindsay was. The girl was a fighter, and everyone would be together tomorrow. The last thing she wanted to see was him hurt because of her.

Lindsay gave her a skeptical look and slowly reached for her drink. "Something's up with you and I can tell. So quit hiding it!"

"I don't want to talk about it." She shifted uncomfortably and folded her hands over one another. She looked guiltily to Lindsay's agitated expression and bowed her head.

Trina understood her best friend's frustration, and perhaps her pain as well. This was a girl she'd entrusted her entire life and soul to, someone that had always been there for her. The one that knew her more than anyone else.

It was Lindsay that learned first about her grandfather's abuse, her father's ignorance. It was Lindsay that heard about that first boyfriend of hers that abused her, she was the one that got her out of that situation.

Surely, if Trina wouldn't tell her if something was wrong, Lindsay might think something was wrong with herself. This wasn't the case. "Linds, I'm sorry, okay?" Lindsay raised an eyebrow and turned her back against the wall, crossing her arms in the process. "It's not that I don't want to tell you, I just don't know what to make of it myself and I'm afraid of how you'd react. I mean, nothing's really wrong, things are just weird for me."

Lindsay's face softened and her lips fell momentarily. When she spoke, it was so quiet Trina almost didn't hear her. "Does it have to do with seeing Jason the other day?"

"Something like that." She perched her left cheek onto the palm of her hand and moved her eyes to her right hand, which was placed on the center of the table. "I've built a wall for myself, something nobody's been able to get through, see through or even touch."

"That much is obvious."

"I'm afraid I can't control myself around him, Lindsay. I look at him and it all comes crashing back-everything I felt. The desires, the feelings, the-"

"Whirlwind?"

"Tornado's more like it." Tornado Jason, she couldn't help but to chuckle at the unofficial nickname. It was easy to grasp, how she could just get sucked up into his path, with everything else flying away in his wake. "I was never expecting to see him again."

"You know I'll leave it alone, right?" Lindsay pat her over the hand and smiled kindly at her. "You can tell me anything you want and I won't bother him. I promise. Okay?"

"Okay."

Michelle waved at them, "One question. Who is Jason?" Trina chuckled nervously as Lindsay shrugged.

"An ex of hers-or, he is an ex isn't he?"

"It's complicated," Trina answered. How could she explain it? He still had feelings for her, so it appeared, and she might still be crazy about him but she wasn't sure. She didn't know what she wanted or where she wanted this to go with him, but she wasn't ready to kick him to the curb. "Not so sure if I can call him an ex or not. We're not really together, but…"

"You two just need to talk things out," Francine added. How could they? It seemed the one subject they were avoiding, or she was avoiding, was talking things out with him. She wasn't ready to do that. "Let him know how you feel."

"I don't know how I feel. Right now, seeing him again is just…" It was making her question a lot about herself, about everything she knew. He was still able to take her breath away, still able to hold her in place without even touching her. All that was inside of her was screaming for him, but she wasn't about to give him that satisfaction of knowing this.

No matter how smart he thought he was, she was smarter.

"Anyway let's focus on something else, anything else."

"Okay." Michelle glanced between the two of them and her eyebrows curled up into her long bangs. "How did you and Lindsay meet? We've been wondering."

"Long story," Lindsay laughed. Trina rolled her eyes and pointed towards her friend.

"I thought she stole my lunch box, she thought I stole hers. This was back in the third or fourth grade. We thought the bully stole ours so we went and Lindsay kicked the bully's ass and because I was there, I wound up going to the principal's office with her. Our moms showed up later with the lunchboxes…"

The girls cracked up and Lindsay bowed her head. Looking back on it now, it was a funny memory. Lindsay had always been a fighter, or at least, as long as she knew her. Even as a kid the girl's parents had her in karate. So when they were searching for their lunchboxes, Lindsay was ready to put a stop to the school bully's problems and Trina was tagging along.

It hadn't been the first time they met, so much as the first time they really talked or spent any time together. They had classes with each other before then.

Thanks to Lindsay's brash reaction, they both got in trouble for instigating a fight, but their moms had convinced the principal to let them go with a warning. "I promise you," Lindsay laughed sheepishly and covered her mouth with her hand. "I have never gotten into another fight-"

"Not true."

"-At school!" Lindsay pointed to her and Trina laughed. "Junior high was tricky, yes, and high school was no walk in the park. But I swear I kept my cool."

"You beat the shit out of my first ever boyfriend. And you wonder why I didn't want to tell you about Jason!"

"Well, Jason can hold his own. That first boyfriend? He was a piece of trash."

Marcus was his name. He was a scrawny kid with long black hair that covered one eye and liked to act like he was a depressed maniac. She dated him, god knows why, when she was thirteen. He was interesting at first, and after managing to make her connect with him, he showed his true side.

He was disrespectful, boisterous, constantly shouted profanities at her and called her terrible names. Soon the verbal attacks became physical and controlling, to where he'd start slapping her, then full out punching her.

When Lindsay caught wind of this, she stormed into his house where she was and immediately went on the attack. It was bad enough she suffered abuse from her grandfather when she wasn't dating this lunatic.

After getting rid of him, Lindsay began to teach Trina some self-defense tactics and getting her interested in martial arts. This, of course, led Trina into attending a martial arts camp where she met Jason.

Lindsay had moved before then, but persuaded her to go by constantly telling her how amazing of an experience she could have. So, Trina instead attended the camp rather than going out with some other guy, Ross, who'd just asked her out. That guy had seemed relatively nice, so she was upset about missing out, until Jason won her over.

"Thank god Lindsay didn't kill any of my other boyfriends. You remember Danny?" Lindsay pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes. Danny was the one that came between them after Marcus. He dated Trina, then dated Lindsay, playing them both like a fiddle. Lindsay was so close to beating him up after the fight she and Trina wound up having over him, but she managed to calm her friend down somehow.

"What about him?"

"He actually dated Tori a few years ago. Dated Cat after that, then tried to go back to Tori."

"That boy doesn't know when to quit-I still think someone should have capped his ass." Lindsay cracked her neck to the right and glared off to the side. "So. Did you date anyone after Jason? I know you had a couple guys before him."

She counted her fingers, squinting in thought. "Well you know about Marcus, you know about Danny." Those were only the first two. "You moved just before I turned fifteen, and when I was fifteen I dated some guy named Randall. He was boring, though."

"No creeps?"

"No, I don't think so. After Randall, he spread rumors about me because I dumped him. So many guys didn't want to give me a chance. I thought I was going to get a date with some guy, Seth, when I was seventeen-but it turned out he paid Cat and Robbie to sing me a song about how he didn't want to go out with me."

"Ass."

"Yep. There was this jock that was a couple years older than I was, named Ross, he wanted to go out with me but I turned him down when I went to the camp."

"And you met a much nicer jock?" Lindsay smirked suggestively and Trina laughed. She hardly considered Jason to be a jock. There was still a difference between athlete and jock-Jason was an athlete.

"Jason was the best man I've ever been with. Hot too." Her cheeks reddened and Lindsay laughed.

"I still don't see what you see in that man." Lindsay turned her hand into her gaze and shrugged. "I'll stand down though until you figure things out. After guys like Marcus and Danny, I don't want to see my best friend hurt again, but if you say he won't hurt you."

"He won't, at least, he hasn't."

"He broke your heart didn't he?"

"Well, that might have been a misunderstanding. I don't really know all the details." She rubbed her neck and closed her eyes. "He hasn't done anything to warrant being attacked by an overprotective best friend, so please, don't do anything to him."

"I won't. I'll be watching though." She laughed and agreed, of course nothing less was expected of the woman.

"I'm a bit rusty and I need a recurring sparring partner. I'm left with two options. You or Jason."

"Well you need someone that's always there, I'm not always able to attend meetings. So…"

"So it's Jason." She exhaled sharply and tucked her thumb beneath her left. "I was afraid of that."

"Just go for another partner if you're uncomfortable with him."

"I'm not, and I don't know any of the others."

"He'll make you train with them too, you know. It's good to switch up opponents so you don't get too used to fighting the same person."

"Yeah, but I guess I'll let that happen as it does." In the meantime, she was going to get some studying done. After all, all three instructors had given some material in their lectures. Dr. Paddack wanted them to read a trial, Dr. Lindemann spoke of the early railroads starting up in the 1860s and Ms. Prose had gone over some renaissance paintings.

Tomorrow she'd have extra with Dr. Lindemann's Western Civilization class. Adding all that studying to her friends and this martial arts club, her schedule was full.

As a little gift for the holidays I'll give you some extra stuff.