16. After Me Comes the Flood

It was barely one o'clock. Though she'd just showered that morning, Jade left her clothes in a heap on the floor and slipped into the bathroom. She removed all the color from her face and her hair and let the hot water pound against her back. The sound did little to distract her from her thoughts, and the smells of the shower products made her feel nauseated.

Jade roughly dried her hair with a towel, her head flipped upside down until it felt heavy with blood. She stood suddenly, and her vision deteriorated into a blur of gray spots for a fleeting moment. She dropped the towel on the bathroom floor and as she turned out of the room, she had a sudden moment of realization — no one would be picking that towel up tonight. That towel would be there when Jade woke up the next morning. It would not appear, clean and folded, back on the bathroom shelf. If she wanted that towel again, she'd have to wash it and fold it and put it away herself. Somehow that small epiphany was enough to make the world seem like it had stopped spinning. How am I supposed to—

Jade was jerked out of her thoughts by a crash from downstairs, followed by muted voices. She silently snatched her pointiest scissors from atop the dresser in her room and snuck to the staircase. Soundlessly placing down one foot at a time, she made her way down the steps, scissors poised like a knife in her fist. But when she reached the source of the voices — the living room—she found that a weapon wasn't really necessary. Not a physical one, anyway.

"What is this?" Jade snapped.

"We're sleeping over!" Cat announced brightly. She was currently in the midst of covering the entire room with pillows and blankets (a process she called "cozying" and took very seriously).

"Excuse me?!" She looked to Beck, who was watching Cat amusedly from the couch. "You just invited yourselves over?"

"Well," he said a little sheepishly. "Plan A was for you to go to Cat's, but this was Plan B."

Jade sighed angrily through her nose, vaguely resembling a dragon.

"So you just broke into my house."

Beck pursed his lips thoughtfully.

"Sorta, yeah, I guess we did," he finally decided casually. Jade crossed her arms.

"Can I make cupcakes?" Cat asked suddenly.

"No."

"Yes."

Cat decided to listen to Beck's answer and scurried off to the kitchen.

"I figured you wouldn't want to be alone with either one of us," Beck confessed.

"Maybe I wanted to be alone by myself," Jade countered haughtily.

"Maybe. But I wasn't going to allow that."

"You weren't going to allow that? Oh, right, because I need your permission to—"

Cat reappeared suddenly.

"Oooh, Jadey, what movie are we gonna watch?"

"I thought you were baking cupcakes."

"The oven's preheating! Now, what movie?"

"I don't care," Jade sighed, rubbing her forehead.

"How about Bambi?"

"No," Beck said.

"The Jungle Book?"

"No."

"Tarzan?"

"No."

"What about—"

"You know, Cat," Beck interrupted. "Why don't we pick something that isn't a Disney movie?"

"Finding Nemo?"

Beck sighed. Mothers died in every one of those choices.

"Why don't we just see what's on TV?" Jade suggested tiredly.

"It's the middle of the day," Beck said. "All that's gonna be on is soap operas."

"Then find one in Spanish," Jade ordered, chucking the remote at Beck and settling on the other end of the couch. He flipped to the Spanish Language Channel to find Luz del Nuestro Amor, which looked promising. Jade snatched a blanket from the floor and began snipping away, letting squares of thin fabric float to the floor as Lola discovered Alejandro kissing her sister and pushed them both out a window.

"I wonder what the verdict was," Jade mused quietly as the ambulance came for Lola's sister.

"Not guilty," Beck assured her.

"You know that for a fact?" she asked, surprised.

"No," he admitted. "I just know."

"You just know."

"Yeah. Like I said before. A gut feeling."

"That's stupid."

"Maybe," Beck chuckled. In the dramatic silence between Lola and her (former) fiancé, the two could hear Cat singing in the kitchen.

"I guess I should go make sure she isn't setting the house on fire," Jade said with a sigh.

"I'll be sure to tell you how Lola and Alejandro work out."

Jade smiled just a little as she stepped over the shredded blanket pieces and walked to the kitchen, her scissors snipping the air rhythmically.

"Jaaaaaaadey!" Cat shrieked happily as her friend came into the kitchen. "I'm making chocolate cupcakes!"

"Not red velvet?" Jade asked, genuinely surprised.

"No you like chocolate, and I'm gonna put espresso in them! Also you don't have any red food dye."

"Yeah, my mom thinks it's—" Jade didn't finish that sentence. "I'll find some wrappers."

Jade popped the white cupcake papers into two muffin tins as Cat finished up the batter, the redhead somehow getting a fair amount on her face. The two girls poured the dark liquid into the tins, and Jade put them in the oven and set the timer. When they went back to the living room, wiping (and licking) batter off of their fingers, Beck was leaning forward on the couch, enthralled with the soap opera, now on its second episode.

"What's going on?" Jade asked, resuming her former place on the couch as Cat curiously picked up the tattered remains of the blanket.

"Alejandro cheated on Carmen," Beck informed them. "With Carmen's husband."

Cat gasped and Jade smirked.

Four episodes later (at the season finale with Alejandro's wedding with José), Jade's phone buzzed itself off of the table by the door. The vibrating stopped before she could get off the couch, so Jade let it go with a wave of her hand. When Cat went to fetch more cupcakes from the kitchen a few minutes later Jade's phone buzzed again.

"Jadey, your phone is ringing!" Cat said as if no one could tell. Jade's phone was in one hand, a plate of cupcakes in the other.

"I don't care," Jade said, eyes on the happy couple onscreen.

"It's Adam," Cat said, looking at the caller ID. "Should I just tell him you're busy?"

Jade leapt off the couch and snatched the phone out of Cat's grasp, Cat thankfully saving the cupcakes before they fell to the floor.

"Hello?"

I, oh, must go on standing

I'm not my own

It's not my choice