Robbie Gets Crushed
Robbie knocked on the door of Beck's trailer and was startled when it was yanked open by a girl who'd once said she only tolerated him – and he'd been sure there was an implied "barely" in there somewhere. He knew it shouldn't be a surprise to him that in the morning Jade was where her boyfriend slept, but he truly hadn't been expecting to see her. Beck's text had just asked Robbie to come over, that he wanted to talk. He hadn't said anything about Jade.
"Beck?!" Robbie called, raising his voice. Then in a more moderate but nervous tone he said "Hi, Jade."
"Oh, get in here, Shapiro," Jade said, standing aside so he could enter, which he did, his eyes darting around until falling with relief on Beck.
"Hey, Robbie."
"Beck."
"Have a seat."
"What's..." Robbie began, remaining standing.
"DOWN!" Jade snapped, and Robbie's butt hit a chair.
"Jade..." Beck said, a gentle reproach in his voice. Exasperated, Jade rolled her eyes at him but then changed to a softer tone, or what passed for one from her. "Thank you for coming."
"What's this about?"
Jade sat down next to Beck so they were both across from Robbie.
"We gotta talk about Cat."
"What about her?"
"We found her after the CowWow man; she got really upset."
Robbie looked at Beck, his mouth almost falling open.
"Why?" Robbie asked. He didn't know if they knew Cat and he had kissed and he didn't want to offer it if they didn't. He already had a sinking feeling he was the reason she was upset but he was hoping to put off learning for sure. He knew how protective Beck was of Cat and Jade sometimes acted as if Cat were the only other person she cared about besides Beck, so he figured they were there to warn him off.
Internally, he was holding his hands around his heart, waiting for it to be broken.
After seeing Cat's frightened escape from the CowWow on her bike, Jade mentally debated whether to follow her or buttonhole Robbie to find out if he had done something gross. She quickly decided on the former. Shapiro could wait. She told Beck they had to leave and they hurried after their friend.
Jade opened the door to Cat's darkened bedroom. Cat had given her a key to her house once when she was spending the night, and forgotten to ask for it back. Jade hadn't reminded her, she'd anticipated it might come in handy one day. She'd asked Beck to hang back until she was sure Cat wasn't walking around bareassed,,, which wasn't out of the question.
"Cat?" She called.
"Jadey?"
"Yeah, it's me. Where are you?"
A lump sat up under the comforter on Cat's bed.
"I'm turning on the light, okay?"
"Kay – Kay."
Jade smiled and flicked up the light switch.
Cat gasped.
"You forgot to close your eyes, didn't you Cat?"
"Maybe."
"Are you okay now?"
Cat opened one eye, then the other, and smiled. "Hi, Jadey!"
"Hi," Jade said, smiling back. "Beck's here too, can he come in?"
"Yeah! Hi, Beck!"
"Hey Cat."
"You can come in, honey." Endearments were not something Jade usually dropped when others were around, but Cat and Beck were within the magic circle.
"What are you guys doing here?"
"We were worried about you, hon."
"Aw, Beck, that's so sweet, but you didn't-"
"Why'd you leave the CowWow so fast and suddenly, Cat?" As usual Jade got right to the point.
"Well, y'know, I'd bumped my head and I wasn't feel-"
"Cat -"
"-Robbie kissed me."
"All right, Robbie!" Beck started to say until Jade shot him a death glare – and with her that wasn't necessarily just slang. Not for the first time, Beck marveled inside at the version of his girlfriend that Cat somehow managed to bring forth. He loved Jade, loved her spiky passion...but with just him and Cat, she was suddenly the big sister, who might be mean to her own little sis' sometimes...but god help anybody else who tried.
"C'mon Jade, you know he ad-"
"Did you want him to kiss you?" Jade asked, ignoring him but making a mental note for punishment. Jade knew Cat's feelings about Robbie were confused to say the least. She really wasn't sure whether the nerd was due for a verbal stabbing or if Cat's eyes were about to turn into hearts.
"Well I wasn't expecting it...but I did like it," Cat said quietly. "And I kissed him back."
"So why did you -
"Hey Beck, did I show you the sculpture my brother made out of Pop – Tarts?"
"Uh, no, Cat, you didn't."
"C'mon, then! It's in the kitchen." She got up from her bed, dropping the comforter and revealing that she'd changed from her CowWow dress into white footie pajamas.
"Cat -" Jade said with a warning.
"See he decided Brown Sugar Cinnamon was a better medium than raspberry - "
"Cat," Jade said, "we need to talk about this."
Cat whirled around almost out the door and suddenly sat down.
"I don' wanna," she said, so small she almost couldn't be heard.
Jade knelt down next to her friend, and putting her hands on Cat's legs, she waited for the redhead to meet her eyes. Finally, she said, "Cat. You have a crush on Robbie. It's okay."
"No! I can't, I -"
"Cat...what did you tell me you did when you heard he was gonna take another date to the dance?"
"Well, I -"
"Cat..."Jade had learned a long time ago that repeating Cat's name was a good way to keep her focused. Even when she wasn't confronting feelings she'd never addressed, she could be scatterbrained.
"I broke a chair in the black box theater."
"After you asked me to hide you before he could even ask you and when he showed up at my locker you panicked so bad you spouted some nonsense about Dick Cheney of all people? We went through this at the dance, Cat. You didn't want to be Robbie's date - "
"But you didn't want him to bring another date. That's not fair to him, Cat."
Jade shot Beck another look but this one he returned. "I'm sorry, Jade, but I know how it feels to a guy when a girl's jerking you around." Looking as if she'd forgotten all about Cat for the moment, Jade said, "That better not be about me."
"I'm your puppet and I love it."
"I want to be fair to Robbie!" Cat broke in.
"Then I think you should make up your mind up," Beck said, returning his attention to her, "if you want him to be your boyfriend or not."
"I..."
"And if you don't, you need to be okay if other girls do."
"I-I can't be Robbie's girlfriend," she whispered.
"You can," Jade said, with a gentleness only the people in that room ever heard, "but only if you want to."
"It's not that I don't want to be..."
"Then, what - "
"What if we get together and...we...hate it?"
"Why would -"
"Seriously, Jadey, you know I don't have the best decision making skills -"
Jade started to open her mouth. Beck saw her tongue sharpening and quickly interjected, "- in relationships." She gave her boyfriend a grateful smile. She knew Cat needed to be carefully handled, but sometimes an opening was just too hard to resist.
"Yeah," Cat continued, oblivious to or ignoring their exchange, "and sometimes, when we break up, there's a look they get in their eyes that's like...they hate me. I couldn't stand it if Robbie looked at me like that."
Jade knew the boys Cat was remembering.
In her time, she had broken a couple of hearts. She never meant to, but she did. It wouldn't do any good to remind her that had been Junior High School when boys had a surfeit of vulnerable pride and everything feels like an over-dramatic music video. Cat was so cute and sweet (and was such a flirt) that of course boys were drawn to her to offer her their hearts. But she hadn't known what to do with them and so a few times a nice boy's heart ended up unused and forlorn in the corner of an emotional attic where Cat kept the things she wasn't ready to deal with yet. (Her brother took up a lot of space in that attic.)
"Cat, Robbie would never-"
"But what if he did, Jade?...He's so nice, and he-"
"Jade's right, Cat. Robbie's not a jerk."
"Well -"
"He's not *that* kind of jerk," Beck quickly overrode his girlfriend.
"What do you think would happen if I went out with Robbie, Beck?"
"Well I think Robbie worships the ground you walk on, so -"
Cat gave a little squeak and pulled her knees up under her chin. Jade hissed at Beck, "Not helping her!"
"See, Jadey? Robbie thinks I'm, like perfect or something and when he finds out I'm not, cause I am not and you know I'm not, and he thinks – did I tell you about the song he wrote for me – he's gonna, it'll all-"
Cat was beginning to tremble and hiccup-cry. Jade's eyes widened as she looked at Beck. This was bad. She moved closer to Cat and put her arms around her. "Don't let him hate me, Jadey...please don't let him hate me...I couldn't stand it...PLEASE don't let him hate me..."
"God...you're really terrified, aren't you?"
Cat just kept crying. Jade had seen Cat in a lot of emotional states, as Cat had seen her, but this was a new one. It scared Jade almost as much as Cat herself was scared.
Cat a wreck in her arms, she looked across at Beck and shook her head.
"Robbie," Beck said, "it's not gonna happen." He got up, patted Robbie's shoulder and went for the fridge behind him.
"What -"
"You and Cat."
"Well maybe you don't know she and I kis-"
"We know about the kiss, Robbie." Jade looked very tired.
"Then how -"
"She's not ready, Shapiro. She's terrified."
"Of...me?"
"No...and yes. She does like you Robbie, you mean a lot to her. That's the problem. If you were just another cute boy she met at the beach -"
"Another?" Beck silently mouthed at Jade from behind Robbie's back.
"-that would be easier for her. Caring about you means what you think of her is important to her; your feelings are important to her."
Beck sat down next to Jade again, handing her a can of punch, offering Robbie one, and when the other boy shook his head no, opening his own.
"Are Cat's feelings important to you, Robbie?"
Eyes down, he nodded. He was now looking so dejected that Jade decided – more because Cat liked him than because she herself cared, she told herself – to throw him a bone.
"Look, Robbie," she began, "Do you still want to be Cat's friend if you can't be her boyfriend?"
He looked up and met her eyes. There were tears in his own, but there was also determination.
"Yeah. Of course I do."
"Well, you still can be. But you have to really be her friend, Robbie. You can't just be...biding your time waiting for her to show weakness."
"Jade, I would never - "
"Don't make promises to me, Robbie," she said, a firm look in her eyes, "there's only two people I trust and you're not good looking enough to be either of them."
"Cat wants you as a friend in her life, and we love Cat and want her to be happy." Beck said.
"So...go on and be a friend to her."
"I will," he said earnestly.
"-I wasn't done. Be a friend to her. Just know, that we'll be watching you."
"And if we get the idea that your love is anything but pure and chaste from afar," Beck said in a friendly but not – kidding tone before taking a sip of punch.
I should never have let him take me to that Man of La Mancha revival, Jade thought, before adding, "Do you have the number for an ambulance programmed into your phone, Robbie?"
"No, but it's just 9 – 1-"
"If you're even thinking of not being as good a friend to Cat as she needs, do yourself a favor and make that a one – tap call first. Understand me?"
"Yes, Jade."
"Are you afraid of me?"
"Yes, Jade."
"Good boy."
This story is to be continued in a Sam & Cat fic I'm now writing. I still feel like the new boy here but I've learned enough to say: A few follows, favorites or reviews will go a long way...