You're going to hate me for this.

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Jade awoke to find that the inside of her head had been hollowed out, and filled with molten lead. She shook her head to clear it, which turned out to be a very, very bad idea.

"Ouch."

This felt distinctly like a hangover, which meant she'd been drinking the night before. But where?

A club. There had been a club. And there had been music, and drinking, and talking, and drinking, and dancing, and drinking, and fighting, and...

Whoa. Wait. Back up. Fighting. Oh, God.

That asshole from college had been there. And Tori had started a fight with... everyone. Fuck. That wasn't good. That didn't bode well for next semester. What else?

They'd been thrown out. Well, they'd been asked to leave. Then they'd been thrown out. They'd walked across the parking lot and Asshole's car had been there.

She groaned. And Tori had smashed it up. Jesus. It's always the quiet ones. Always the quiet ones who get a few drinks inside them and go rampaging through town, starting fights, trashing cars, kissing people...

She sat up, suddenly. This turned out to be an even worse idea, as her head collided with what turned out to be the underside of the table. She lay down again, to let the throbbing subside.

Tori had kissed her. Tori had pushed her up against a wall and kissed her. Just like that. No prevarication, no shyness, no nothing. Just wham, bam, thank you ma'am. And then she'd run off.

She lay there, puzzled. In her admittedly limited experience of kissing people outside nightclubs, one thing tended to lead to another, but it was difficult to imagine the chain of circumstances that would lead from there to her current situation underneath this table. Unless Tori had some weird furniture fetish.

So then what? They'd come back to the apartment. Yes. She remembered crashing through the door, laughing and shoving each other. Tori had snatched up a bottle of wine, and backed away into the bedroom, grinning, beckoning her with a finger and a bite of the lip, and Jade had followed.

No wait, Jade hadn't followed, Jade had fallen over something. Tori's monster purse, a purse so big that by rights it should have had its own apartment, or at least be contributing to the rent. By the time she'd untangled herself, grunting and cursing, Tori had disappeared into the bedroom. She'd dragged herself in there on her hands and knees, the purse still clinging to one leg like an tenacious giant clam, to find...

To find Tori asleep, flat out across the bed, bottle of wine seeping gently into the bedsheets. She'd tried to rouse her, but Tori had just mumbled something like uuvoojade and buried herself deeper into the damp covers.

Damn it. She'd reversed back out of the bedroom, still on all fours, and made it as far as the table, at which point her body had said, right, that's it, nap time, and she'd passed out.

Well, that's okay, then. All present and correct. Everything accounted for. All you've got to do now is wait for Tori to wake up, remember all that, and then you can both spend the rest of the break in crippling embarrassment until Tori goes back to college, and then you can never speak to each other again. Marvelous. Job done.

No wait, you dunce. Think about it. Tori likes you. She likes you enough to kiss you, anyway. Although she was drunk. She's probably kissed lots of people while drunk. But at least it was voluntary this time. Maybe this is it.

Or is it? Maybe she only kissed you because you remind her of Carla. Maybe she was just feeling sentimental, horny for her ex. Maybe you're just a stand-in, and she'll want to forget it.

She said she had a crush on you. But she also said it was over. Damn it.

Maybe the safest thing to do is... Mexico. That's it. Just pack a bag, and head for Mexico. That way there a chance, just a chance, that you'll never have to...

A sound echoed through the apartment, a long, keening wail, like an animal in pain. Either they'd picked up a wounded elephant on the way home and left it dying in agony on the bedroom floor, or Tori was awake.

"Jade," A voice cried, plaintively. "Help me."

She struggled to her feet in alarm, catching her head another brain-rattling blow on the table, and stumbled towards the bedroom. "Are you all right?" she said breathlessly, as she opened the door.

"I think I've gone blind."

Jade relaxed. Tori had, during the night, managed to turn herself upside and now had her head wedged into the sheets tucked into the foot of the bed. Jade took hold of them, and pulled them back to reveal a sprawl of brown hair.

"Better?"

"Aargh! Turn it off!"

"What?"

"The light!"

"It's the sun, Tori," Jade said. "I can't turn it off. People will complain."

"Then turn it down."

She sighed, and crossed the room, pulling a curtain across the window. "There."

"'nk you." Tori mumbled into the mattress.

Jade sat down on the bed, not entirely sure how to bring up the previous night. She reached out and began to absent-mindedly stroke the other girl's hair, eliciting a sound that was half groan, half purr. "Tori..."

She stopped stroking, aware that this might seem over-familiar, but a slight twitch of the head and a series of insistent little grunts indicated that she should carry on. She did so, and the purring resumed.

"What did we do last night?"

Jade's life suddenly seemed a lot more complicated. "You don't remember?" she said, guardedly.

"Not all of it."

"How much of it?"

"None of it."

Great. "Well," Jade began, carefully, "we went to a club..."

"Did we?"

"Oh, come on, Tori. You must remember something. You cut your shirt up."

"In a nightclub?"

"Before the nightclub. You wanted to look... hotter."

"And did I?"

"...Yes."

"And then what?"

"We went to the club, had a few drinks, danced a little, and the we came home."

"And that's it? I didn't do anything stupid?"

Jade pulled a face. "Um..."

"Oh, God."

"It was nothing, really."

"Really?"

"Well, not nothing, nothing. But it wasn't all bad."

"All? What do you mean, 'all'?"

"Er…"

"No, wait, don't tell me. I don't want to know."

"Oh. Okay."

There was a pause. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Tell me!"

"You want to know?"

"Yes! No. Hold on, just tell me a little bit. Just give me the gist of it. Just a hint."

"Right, well, there were some people there that I knew..."

"I said something embarrassing, didn't I?"

"Not as such, no."

"Thank God for that."

"You just started a little bit of a fight, that's all."

"A fight?"

"Not really a fight, more an... altercation."

"What sort of altercation?"

"The sort where there's a fight."

"Crap." Tori pressed her face deeper into the mattress. "So what happened?"

"Nothing major. Security broke it up. And then they threw us out."

"We got thrown out?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, man," Tori moaned. "I've never been thrown out of anywhere."

"Really?" Jade said. "You couldn't tell. You must be a natural. You took to it like an evil, flappy, quacky thing to water."

"Fuck."

"Close."

"So we just came home?"

"…Kind of."

"Will you stop doing that."

"I'm just trying to break it to you gently."

"Well don't. Just give it to me straight."

"Okay, you smashed up some guy's car in the parking lot."

Tori's head shot up in horror. "I did what?"

"Hey, I was as surprised as you are."

"But… but… why would I do that?"

"It's a long story," Jade said. "You were defending my honor."

"I was... What honor?"

"Hey!" Jade stopped stroking and poked her in the ear. "You know, it's a good job I'm not sat right here, Tori, otherwise I might take offence."

"I'm sorry. Don't do that. It cost me five bucks in donuts last time."

"No, it cost me five bucks in donuts. Which I still haven't had back."

Tori's head fell back to the bed, and she dragged the covers over her head. "Please tell me that's the end of it," she mumbled from beneath them.

Jade took a deep breath. "Actually, there was something-"

They were interrupted by a muffled beeping noise. The phone. They looked at each other. Nothing good ever came from a text first thing in the morning after you've been out drinking the night before.

"Who is it?" Tori whispered.

"I don't know."

"Maybe it's the police," she said. "Oh, God. What if it's the police?"

Jade rolled her eyes. "The police rarely arrest people by text, Tori," she said. "It's not really practical."

"But..."

"'OMG, Ur busted. LOL. Smiley face, handcuffs.'"

"Then who?"

"Why don't you have a look and find out? Read the phone, Tori, read the phone."

"I don't know where it is."

"Well it's got to be in there somewhere." She shoved a hand under the covers and rummaged around. "Maybe it's under this pillow."

"Jade?"

"What?"

"That's... not a pillow."

Jade whipped her hand out, and her face reddened. "Sorry."

"It's fine," Tori said. "Maybe it's down here." She reached behind her. "Got it." She pulled it out and held it an inch from her nose, squinting at the screen.

"Who is it?"

Tori didn't answer for a moment.

"If it's that guy that came over when we were at the bar," Jade said, "I told you not to-"

"It's Carla."

She said it flatly, with no emotion, but the look on her face was enough to twist a knife in Jade's gut. She watched as Tori scrolled through the message. All this time she'd been lost in a fantasy where the only people who existed were her and Tori, where happiness was only a question of making a move, but now she realized it would never be that simple. Tori was fresh out of a relationship, a serious relationship, her wounds still raw after an acrimonious split made on a surge of adrenaline. She and Beck had come back from worse - apologized, carried on, made it through another six months. She was faced with the awful possibility that all of this was only temporary, that she was the rebound, the rebellion, the giddy taste of freedom before Tori went back to Carla. That last night's kiss was only Tori's revenge, a dish to be served up coldly as Carla's punishment later, a bargaining chip in their relationship. She'd done the same herself, once, when Beck had strayed. And although two wrongs had utterly failed to make a right in the end, it had given her back a little self-respect to let him know that she had other options.

Was Tori that calculating? Probably not. But she'd feel a whole lot better, a whole lot more able to forgive Carla's indiscretion, knowing that she was one up on her. Nothing would stick in Carla's throat more than knowing that Tori had gone straight out and had almost-sex with the one person she hated most in the world. Or had at least been willing to, had been one rogue handbag strap away from actually doing it. Man, it would almost be worth going back to Carla just for that. Hey, look what I can do! I am Tori, hear me roar! She had both the moral high ground and the ultimate threat should Carla step out of line again.

She resolved to keep her mouth shut about the previous night unless and until Tori brought it up. Any awkwardness between them would only make the idea of going back to what she knew more attractive to her. She gritted her teeth.

"What does she want?"

Tori blinked. "She says she's sorry. She wants to talk."

"Right." Jade picked at a corner of the sheet. "And is that what you want?"

Tori hesitated. "I don't know," she said, eventually. She bit her lip and looked up. "Do you think I should?"

No of course you shouldn't, Tori. You should drop the phone down the lavatory, change your number, and forget she ever existed.

"I don't know, Tori," she said, quickly. "It's up to you." She got up and walked out of the bedroom, leaving Tori still staring silently at the phone.

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Damn it, just when you thought things were getting easier. So, will Tori reply?

'What fresh hell is this?' is how Dorothy Parker used to answer the phone. Try it, it's fun.