Sunday passed by without much fanfare.
Nicole accompanied her to the urgent care in town, where a doctor with an M&Ms tie and a jovial smile informed her that there was a hairline fracture in her middle finger, right above the knuckle.
He had taken her hand in his own and looked up at her with a smile that didn't manage to hide the concern in his gaze as he inspected her injuries. "How did you say you injured yourself, young lady?"
"Hit a punching bag a little too hard," she had answered, and Nicole shot her a look over the doctor's shoulder that she ignored.
"Right," he said, the smile faltering just an inch, and then he sent her home with a splint and some antibiotic cream for the scrapes on her palm and a card with the phone number for a domestic abuse hotline printed on it.
The card went right into the trash as soon as they left the building.
The rest of the day was spent watching terrible Netflix shows and ignoring the pointed looks that her roommate kept shooting at her from over-top of the textbooks she tried to pretend that she was studying from.
Once it hit dinnertime, Tori wasn't overly surprised to find that Nicole didn't bother to ask whether she wanted to go to the dining center or not. Even though they hadn't really discussed what had happened in any real depth (not for lack of trying on Nicole's end, of course), they had agreed that laying low was probably a good idea. After all, Pat was still out there somewhere, and...well, Tori wasn't about to ask Jake to protect her.
Not anymore.
They had two orders of pad thai delivered for dinner, which they ate in almost complete silence, save for the re-run of an old Friends episode that Tori had pulled up on her laptop. Dessert was a pouch of stale Skittles that they split between them.
She went to bed about an hour after the Skittles were gone, feigning exhaustion with an exaggerated yawn and stretching of her arms above her head. Nicole questioned it, of course, since it was only a little after ten and she wasn't exactly one to go to bed early, but Tori just shrugged and pulled the covers up higher over her shoulders.
She didn't try to fall asleep, though. Sleep meant dreaming and dreaming meant seeing him and she was tired of even thinking about that.
So she faced the cinderblock and alternated between reciting the chronological order of Lady Gaga's hits (she had an exam the next day and she was not going to fail) and focusing on the tendrils of pain that seemed determined to make themselves known every time she flexed her hand.
Monday morning meant biology class, which meant that Tori didn't even bother to set her alarm.
It wouldn't have mattered anyway. Nicole's alarm went off fifteen minutes before hers did, so she never really needed to have one set. She only did so just in case she somehow managed to get in an extra few minutes of sleep after Nicole's alarm went off.
But those extra few minutes weren't needed, because it wasn't like she had slept to begin with; not in any real capacity, at least. There had been a few fleeting moments where she glanced at the clock on her phone and then checked it again a little later and instead of a few minutes, three hours had gone by, but she was pretty sure that that didn't count as sleep.
"Tori," she heard Nicole say, but she didn't budge.
A hand on her shoulder. A gentle shake. "Tor, you're going to miss your class."
Tori let out a heavy sigh but didn't move. "Sucks for my class, then."
Nicole was quiet for a moment. Her hand was heavy on Tori's shoulder and Tori desperately wanted to tell her to stop touching her, to just stop touching her, but she bit her tongue and squeezed her eyes shut a little tighter.
"Look, I know that it's been...you know, a really terrible weekend, but you can't just start skipping class and stuff, Tor."
Sure I can, Tori thought, but she didn't voice it. Instead, she pulled the covers up to her chin, the movement causing Nicole to finally move her hand off of her. "Jake is in that class."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
She heard the shuffling of Nicole moving away and let out a low, inaudible sigh of relief.
A few minutes ticked by, and Tori began to wonder if Nicole was running late for her own class. She almost asked, but then she heard her roommate walk towards the door. She heard it click open, accompanied by the dull roar of the rest of Sawyer 3 getting ready for the day.
"You can't avoid him forever, you know," Nicole said. Then she was gone, the heavy door closing tightly behind her and cutting off the echoes of the rest of the dorm.
"Yeah, well...I can try," Tori muttered, finally opening her eyes.
Skipping biology was one thing. One class probably wouldn't kill her (she hoped). But she had that quiz in her History of Pop class and she really couldn't miss that, so she forced herself out of bed around ten.
A shower ensured that the very last remnants of the weekend were washed away.
It wasn't the first time she had showered, of course; she had spent a good hour on Saturday night standing beneath the steaming spray and had scrubbed and scrubbed at her face until the lipstick was gone and the streaking stains left behind by seemingly-endless tears had been stripped away. The latter was harder to do since she couldn't seem to stop crying, even as she scrubbed harder and harder until she was almost-sure that she was bleeding. Her legs had been jelly, knees knocking together as she struggled to keep herself upright, and she had scrubbed even harder until she fell against the side of the stall with a startled sob.
That morning's shower was much less dramatic. Seven minutes was all it took to get in, wash, shampoo, and condition. There wasn't any makeup to scrub away, and there wasn't a single tear shed, and when she finished drying her hair she found that she still had an hour before she needed to get to class.
She spent that hour adjusting and re-adjusting the splint on her finger and ignoring the way her phone screen lit up every time she got a text.
(She thought she saw Jake's name on that last one and the knife twisted even deeper)
The quiz went about as well as it could have. She knew the material, but holding a pencil proved to be more difficult than she had anticipated. It dropped from her grasp more than once, and she could feel the stares of her classmates on her back every time she bent over in her seat to pick it up.
Walking to and from the conservatory was the worst part. She kept her head down but her eyes up, scanning the face of each person that she could see. Every loud noise and unexpected laugh from behind her made her want to freeze and hide. Every guy with dark-hair in the distance made her heart thud a little louder and her legs want to start to run, just run.
Mondays also meant that she had rehearsal, but she had already emailed Professor Walker and told him that she wasn't feeling well.
It wasn't a lie, really. She didn't feel well. Her stomach twisted painfully every time her mind drifted towards anything unrelated to her classes or whatever show she happened to have pulled up on Netflix, and her head ached, and...well, Jade would be there. And she definitely wasn't prepared to see her.
She was pretty sure that she would never be prepared for that.
She didn't want Nicole to worry about her even more, though, so after her dinner of left-over pad Thai, she grabbed her backpack, waved goodbye, and went to the practice rooms.
The plan was to practice the piece she had been assigned in her piano elective until the time that rehearsal normally ended. Then she'd go back to Sawyer and go to bed and figure out whether or not she was going to get up for class in the morning.
That was the plan, at least.
What she hadn't counted on, though, was that the other practice rooms would be empty and therefore the normally loud conservatory halls were quiet.
Everything was so, so quiet.
It didn't prove to be a problem at first. The quiet would go away as soon as she started playing, after all. That's what she kept telling herself as she pulled her sheet music out of her bag, placing the paper on the piano before taking her seat on the bench. It wasn't until her hands were splayed out on the keys and she had begun to play the first chord that the pain went radiating through her hand and she realized that playing the piano was going to be next to impossible.
"Son of a bitch!" She stood up and looked down at her hand, at the metal and foam wrapped around her finger, and-
(You fucking cunt!)
-and the heat was rising in her chest, a fire that spread to her stomach and her limbs and her head and she slammed her hands against the keys. There was no chord in the sound; no sequence of notes that made any sense or melody that would have redeemed it. There was only the brief anger of the hit, the rage of the notes that didn't fit together, and then only the quickly-fading echo in her ears.
She stared down at the piano, at her hands still pressed tight against the keys, and then she slammed them against the keys again. And again. And again. Obscenities poured from her mouth, words that she wouldn't remember later and that she hardly recognized as they flooded out of her, and she slammed the keys and relished in the pain stabbing through her hand because at least it was something other than the guilt and rage that consumed her.
"Fucking-" A slam against the right side, the higher octaves piercing her ears. "Piece of-" The middle, the notes less piercing but every bit as enraged. "Shit!"
The last hit hurt worse than any of the others before it and she cried out in pain and anger, clutching her hand to her heaving chest and backing away from the piano. Her back hit the wall and she slid down it, crumpling to the floor with tears pouring down her face and regret sour in her stomach.
She lied when Nicole asked how rehearsal went.
Or maybe it wasn't a lie. She just said that it went well, and for all she knew, it had gone well. Just because she didn't actually happen to be there didn't mean that it didn't go well.
Semantics.
Her phone buzzed three more times that night, but after seeing Jade's name on her screen the first time, Tori shoved it aside and didn't bother to look at it again.
She inspected her broken finger later and decided that it didn't look any worse than it did that morning, so she put the splint back on and popped an Advil before crawling into bed.
Sleep came after a few hours of tossing and turning, and with it came the dreams.
They were different, this time.
This time, the face of the woman being pulled away sometimes looked a bit like her own.
Tuesdays meant music theory and her piano elective. She went to both of them, and when her piano professor asked if she was still able to play with her broken finger, she nodded and said it wouldn't be a problem.
(The lie tasted bitter on her tongue)
Nicole's Tuesdays tended to be busy, so when she wasn't in class, Tori had the room to herself. She thought that she would appreciate the quiet, but she should have known better.
She had just started to try and go over her biology notes when she remembered the tears streaking down Jake's face and the guilt slammed into her, taking her breath away.
So she put the biology notes away and reached for her History of Pop notes. There wasn't a chance of Jake being associated with those, after all.
It was fine for a few minutes, but then she started going over a section on Lady Gaga's fashion choices and she was reminded of the hideous pink outfit that Mason Thornesmith made Jade wear for the Platinum Music Awards. It didn't take much for her mind to jump to the water, to her hand on Jade's chest and the taste of coffee in her mouth and her own voice whispering promises of safety mixing in with Jade's doing the same and fuck.
Tori tossed the notebook aside, barely registering how it splayed open as it hit the wall. But it was too late.
She didn't want to think about it. She didn't want to think about it. She didn't want to think about it. Thinking about it meant that she would have to acknowledge that she broke her boyfriend's heart, and it meant that she would have to acknowledge that she was absolutely terrified that Pat was still going to find her or Jade, and it meant that she would have to acknowledge that the only thing she wanted to do was find Jade and kiss her senseless because it was the only thing that felt right.
But she couldn't do that. She shouldn't have ever done it. She shouldn't have kissed her forehead on the beach, and she shouldn't have kissed her at the creek, and she shouldn't be thinking of Jade West in any way other than as a friend because that's all they were.
They were friends. They were finally friends.
She couldn't let herself fuck that up more than she already had.
Wednesday brought with it the same problems that Monday did, with the exception that this time she knew that she couldn't avoid them.
Biology was the first hurdle, and it was a big one.
Nicole walked her to her class even though her own morning class was in a different building. Tori told her that she didn't need the escort, but Nicole had ignored her protestations and gone with her anyway, which Tori was secretly grateful for.
But Nicole couldn't exactly go into the class with her, and after she hugged her goodbye outside of the classroom, the nerves that had been momentarily quelled came surging back and she almost fled right then and there. She was actually about to turn tail and go back to Sawyer when she saw the professor approaching. Her reflexes weren't quick enough to turn away so that she wouldn't be spotted, so she found herself forcing a smile onto her face and staying put as her professor came closer.
"Ms. Vega! Are you feeling better?" Professor Rodriguez asked, just as jovial as always. Tori wished that she could hate that about her; wished that she could bring herself to hate her just a little for being so fucking happy, even when she was talking about things like epigenetics and epithelial cells.
But, she couldn't. Instead, she nodded and forced her smile to grow another inch. "A little, yeah!"
"Good!" Professor Rodriguez opened the door and held it open for her. "You can probably get the notes you missed from your classmates, but if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask!"
Tori tried to hide the fact that she was sure she was going to be sick as she stepped into the classroom. "Thanks, Professor," she said, her face aching. "I'll be sure to do that."
Professor Rodriguez smiled back at her and gave a little nod before she walked over to the lectern. Tori took that as her cue to turn away and so she did, the smile sliding off her face just as quickly as she had put it on when she saw that Jake was already there, sitting in the same seat that he had sat in since the beginning of the year.
The seat next to him was taken up by his backpack, though, and between that and the way that his notes were sprawled across the tabletop, the message was clear: That seat wasn't available anymore.
She forced her eyes away and swallowed past the lump in her throat and tried to search for another seat. She found one in the back of the room, but she had to pass by him to get there. She didn't look at him when she walked by. Couldn't.
The class started a minute later, which she was thankful for because it at least gave her something to focus on that wasn't the constant ache of her guilt. The seconds drug on and on, though, and she couldn't help but glance down at Jake every now and then.
He never looked back.
Biology was hard.
Rehearsal was sure to be harder.
Skipping it wasn't really an option though- tech week was only two weeks away and her understudy was all-too-eager for the chance to take over her role, so even though the thought of eating glass was slightly more appealing than the thought of having to face Jade, Tori found herself standing outside of Reede.
She normally showed up to rehearsal about twenty minutes early, just so that she would have time to look over the sections of the script that she knew they'd cover that day (and to have a few minutes to hang out with Jade, of course), so it felt strange to be showing up with only about two minutes to spare. It meant that she had less of an opportunity to get cornered by Jade, though, and she would do just about anything to avoid that.
A glance at her phone's clock told her that she really needed to get inside the building, so she swallowed the fear in her throat and pushed through the doors and walked towards the doors that opened up into the theater and pushed through those, too.
She had hoped for an inconspicuous entrance, but Professor Walker looked up the moment that she stepped into the theater. "Ah! Miss Vega! How wonderful to see you! Are you feeling better?"
She nodded and plastered the smile onto her face like it belonged there. "I am, thank you, sir."
He beamed at her, and she forced herself to focus on him rather than the piercing blue-green eyes that she knew were trained on her from somewhere else in the room. "Excellent! That's excellent news." He turned back to the rest of the cast who, even from the top of the theater, she could tell were rolling their eyes. "We're going to start with Act three, Scene two, today. Hamlet, Players, get on stage! Polonius, Horatio, Rozencrantz and Guildenstern! Get ready in the wings. You too, Gertrude, Claudius and Ophelia." He clapped twice. "Let's go, people!"
Tori felt the color drain from her face as she processed which scene Walker had assigned. Scene two was the play within the play. She didn't have many lines as some of the other actors, but that wasn't the problem.
The problem was that the scene had Ophelia and Hamlet up close and personal. Very up close and personal. And that meant, of course, that her hopes of avoiding Jade were about to be completely dashed.
But she was an actor. She had been trained for years in the art of slipping on a mask and pretending that her own self was nonexistent. So she forced down the bile that had risen in her throat and walked down to the stage, dropping her backpack into the seat at the end of the third row back before she ascended the stairs and made her way backstage.
It was only when she was standing behind the curtain, hand brushing against the heavy velvet as she turned back towards the stage, that she finally let herself look at where she knew Jade would be standing.
Jade stood in the eaves on the other side of the stage, head turned towards the guy playing the First Player as he said something to her. As Tori watched, she nodded and said something back before she began to turn her attention back towards the rest of the stage. Tori looked away quickly, pretending to find something interesting in a loose strand hanging from the curtain.
"Is everyone ready?" Walker called from his seat in the front row. He didn't bother waiting for an affirmative answer before he clapped once. "Begin!"
Tori waited a moment before she lifted her eyes again, giving enough time for her to be certain that Jade wouldn't be looking at her.
"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue" she heard Jade say, and she felt the muscles in her shoulders relax a tiny bit because she could do this. For fuck's sake, it was Shakespeare. She didn't need to say a single word that wasn't already written and waiting on the tip of her tongue.
It would be fine.
Even though it was a simple scene in the scheme of the play as a whole, without the drama of the soliloquy or the flashiness of the final act, it was still impressive to watch as the lines flowed out of Jade like they were her own words; still impressive to watch her command the stage like only she could. The other actors were fine, too, Tori supposed, but compared to Jade...well, there just wasn't any competition.
Tori hated how her heart beat a little faster as she watched Jade give Hamlet's commands to the players. Hated how it shoved aside some of the guilt for just a moment. Hated how badly she wanted to run her hands through those dark tresses and-
-and the actors next to her were moving forward, and she realized that she had been stuck inside her own head for much longer than she thought, because it was time for her to be on stage.
"How fares our cousin Hamlet?" she heard Tyler, the actor playing Claudius, ask. Tori followed the rest of the actors onto the stage, taking her seat on the chairs waiting for them. She hadn't blocked this scene much, so she tried to focus her attention on the placements of all the other actors as they ran through their lines.
(Tried to focus on anything other than the fact that she and Jade were mere feet apart)
"Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me," the girl playing Gertrude (Tori was pretty sure her name was Cindy, but she had never really spoken to her much so she couldn't be sure) said.
"No, mother," Jade replied, and Tori felt the knot in her stomach twist in a combination of apprehension and anticipation. "Here's metal more attractive."
Tori looked up to see Jade standing in front of her. "Lady, shall I lie in your lap?" Jade asked, and Tori's mouth went cotton-dry. Jade's tone was light and playful, just as it had been when they had last rehearsed the scene
(before, Tori thought)
but the playfulness didn't extend to her eyes. But before she could really focus on the implications of that, Jade lowered herself down to the floor so that she sat at Tori's feet, and Tori remembered that she was supposed to be speaking.
"No, my lord," she replied, and Jade-
(Hamlet, Tori reminded herself. It was Hamlet, not Jade)
-lounged backwards, her head coming to rest on Tori's lap.
"I meant my head upon your lap?"
Tori swallowed and tried to focus on the lines she had gone over so many times before. "Ay, my lord."
A smirk on Jade's face, a smirk that was so fucking familiar that it was easy to forget that it didn't truly belong to her. "Do you think I meant country matters?"
Tori shook her head and made every effort to keep her hands placed far away from Jade's hair. "I think nothing, my lord."
"That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs," Jade said. The knot in Tori's stomach moved a little lower, burning with Jade's words, and the self-loathing surged back to the surface.
"What is, my lord?" She tried to sound as neutral as she could, Ophelia refusing to give in to the sly suggestions in Hamlet's words, but she wasn't sure that she was successful.
"Nothing," Jade said, the smirk growing just a little bit wider. She shifted, settling between Tori's legs just like her character was supposed to do, and Tori wished she could run.
Instead, she let her hand come to rest on Jade's head, being mindful of not getting the splint caught in her hair as she began to scratch the scalp beneath her fingertips. "You are merry, my lord."
"Who, I?"
"Ay, my lord."
"O God, your only jig-maker." Jade relaxed a little more into her lap, the weight of her head settling deeper against Tori's leg. "What should a woman do but be merry?" She gave a little half-nod in Cindy's direction. "For look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within these two hours."
Tori's fingers found a lock of scarlet amidst the dark brown strands and she almost faltered as she realized that the violet that she had just been getting used to was gone. She swallowed and pushed forward. "Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord."
"So long?" Jade asked, tilting her head back so she could look at Tori better. Her eyes were questioning, finally matching up with Hamlet's demeanor, and Tori nodded. Jade looked at her for a moment longer, the questions in her gaze failing to disappear, and Tori knew that if any of those questions were actually asked of her in that moment, she wouldn't be strong enough to deny a single thing. But then Jade was looking away and she could breathe a little easier. "Nay then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables."
Jade's face turned slightly, her cheek pressed against the inside of Tori's knee. Tori took a deep breath and tried to stop focusing on the heat surging in her gut. "O heavens! Die two months ago and not forgotten yet?" Jade gestured towards the emptiness above her with one hand. "Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year." She turned her face again so that she faced forward, her head tilted up just enough for her to be able to just barely see Tori's face. "But, by'r lady, he must build churches, then, or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is 'For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot!'"
"And entrance music!" Tori heard Walker shout from the stage, followed by the briefest of trumpet solos, and then Jade's attention was being pulled towards the players entering from stage right and Tori was able to let out the breath that she hadn't realized she had been holding.
The players put on their play, the scenes of love shifting into scenes of betrayal and treason, and Tori found that the only thing she could really focus on was the fact that her fingers were still running through Jade's hair. The strands were so soft between her fingertips, so different from the slightly-coarse hair that she had grown accustomed to touching in tender moments, and-
The players were exiting the stage, and it was her turn to speak again.
"What means this, my lord?" she asked, hoping that her words didn't betray the way that her mouth had gone dry and the way that her heartbeat couldn't seem to stop making its presence known against her chest.
God, she hoped Jade couldn't hear it.
"Marry, this is miching mallecho. It means mischief," Jade replied, and Tori was glad that their characters weren't looking at each other in that moment.
"Belike this show imports the argument of the play."
Another actor entered from stage left and Jade gestured towards them. "We shall know by this fellow. The players cannot keep counsel, they'll tell all."
Tori gave a small nod in the actor's direction. "Will he tell us what this show meant?"
Jade nodded. "Ay, or any show that you'll show him." She turned her head towards Tori ever-so-slightly, her cheek pressing against Tori's leg again. "Be not you ashamed to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means."
I think I know what it means, Tori thought, and she tried not to blush as she forced the thought away. "You are naught." She shook her head and turned her attention towards the actor now standing to their left. "You are naught. I'll mark the play."
"For us, and our tragedy," the actor began, and Jade turned towards him as well, allowing Tori to scream internally for a moment without having to look at the face causing her such turmoil. "Here, stooping to your clemency, we beg your hearing patiently."
He exited stage-right, and the screaming in her head intensified for a brief moment because fuck she forgot that he only had like, three lines, that wasn't enough time for her to pull it together.
But then Jade was rolling her eyes with a sigh and Tori was brought back down to Earth. "Is this a prologue or the posy of a ring?"
Couldn't have said that better myself, she thought.
"'Tis brief, my lord," she agreed.
Jade paused, and Tori felt the heat lingering low in her stomach match the heat on her cheeks when a smirk pulled at the corner of Jade's mouth. "As woman's love."
Fuck.
The players, a king and a queen, entered the stage again, and Tori was granted another brief reprieve when Hamlet's attention was supposed to be pulled towards them. She was thankful, because she wasn't sure that she could handle that smirk anymore without either bursting into tears or kissing her.
God, she was so incredibly fucked.
"Cut!"
Every actor's head shot up at Walker's voice, surprise written across every face. Jade immediately sat up, and Tori tried not to feel disappointed by the sudden absence of her head against her knee.
"That was excellent! I just have a few notes, and then we can take it from the top again," Walker said, and Tori bit back her groan.
They ran through that scene another three times and each rendition hammered in the sickening realization that she wanted Jade West.
Really, really fucking wanted her.
Rehearsal usually took around two hours, but that night they went for an extra half-hour that felt like an eternity.
But when Walker clapped his hands and dismissed them all for the night, Tori realized that she didn't want rehearsal to end because at least during rehearsal she could pretend to be somebody else, with problems that weren't her own. She didn't want to deal with the problems outside of that scope, and she certainly didn't want to deal with the woman clad in a leather jacket (how many of those did she own, anyway?) who had turned towards her with an expression that sent a chill down Tori's spine.
"We need to talk," Jade said, and Tori swallowed hard before forcing as neutral of an expression that she could muster onto her face.
"Nothing to talk about," she said. She began to walk forward, headed for the stairs that led off of the stage, when she felt fingers curl around her upper arm and-
(a hand on her arm, fingers biting into her skin)
she froze.
She knew Jade was speaking to her; could hear the words being aimed in her direction, but their meanings wouldn't register because there was a hand on her arm and the heat was rising to the top of her skin and she needed to run but she was stuck to the floor.
"Let go of me," she heard herself say, the words foreign in her ears. When the pressure on her arm didn't change, she took a deep breath and tried not to cry. "Please."
The hand released, and she immediately started moving forward again, intent on getting out of that theater, just getting out. She managed to get down the stairs and out into the aisles, her hand robotically reaching for the strap of her backpack as she passed by it. It was on her shoulder a moment later, and she could hear footsteps behind her.
"Vega, come on!" she heard a voice say, a voice that she knew was Jade's, but she kept moving forward. Had to keep moving forward.
Then she was pushing through the double-doors at the top of the theater, and then through the ones leading outside, and then she was running.