A/N: Sorry for the long wait, but here's chapter 3!
"Son, your zipper."
"Jiminy!"
Mr. Gibbons looked at a text he'd just received and remarked, "Huh, looks like the earthquake didn't affect the building that the banquet is in. I should probably get going, I'm already late. Do you kids think you can still stay here and watch Coober for me?"
"I guess so," Cat replied, still a bit shaken from everything that happened earlier.
"Yeah, I can stay," Jade nodded.
Beck slowly began backing towards the door as he explained, "Actually, Robbie and I have another... thing." Jade rolled her eyes as Robbie confusedly began walking towards Beck.
"I'll walk you boys out then," Mr. Gibbons said with a smile, oblivious to the tension in the room, "I should be back around midnight or so. You girls have fun!" The three of them walked out of the front door, conversing with each other about buying Robbie new pants. Sighing, Cat sat on the couch with a tired look on her face and stared down at the ground.
As she sat down next to her redheaded friend, Jade scoffed, "I'm glad they're gone. Can you believe how condescending Beck was the whole time he was here?"
"Really?" Cat asked in disbelief, looking up at the girl.
"What? Do you not think he was condescending?" Jade wondered.
"You're really complaining about Beck right now?! My mom could've been fired if that earthquake didn't hit and it totally would've been your fault!" The smaller girl shouted. Jade was being so incredibly selfish and Cat was tired of trying to pretend like things were fine.
"Cat, calm down. I fixed it," Jade tried reasoning.
"But you didn't!" Cat said, standing up. "I texted Robbie and he hired someone to come fix it, and then you fought with him and broke something else!" She felt the rage building up inside of her stomach. Before Jade had a chance to argue, Cat screamed something else,"I'm literally always there for you! But whenever I ask you one tiny little thing, it's always 'No, Cat. It's fine, Cat. You don't know what you're talking about, Cat.' All I wanted was to hang out with you and watch TV shows and maybe make some popcorn or something but did that matter to you at all? No! Of course, it didn't matter because it wasn't something that you wanted to do!" Cat stood before her with anger in her eyes and an expectant look on her face. For a moment, Jade was speechless. She hadn't expected her friend for fly off the handle like that.
After staring at Cat with a shocked expression, Jade uttered, "Well I-I mean... It's not like I was trying to break the dude's stuff!"
"Well, you weren't trying not to!" Cat fired back. "Why won't you just apologize?!"
"I'm sorry!" She yelled, sarcastically. After seeing the dissatisfied look on Cat's face, she stood up and shouted frustratedly, "What the hell do you want from me?!"
"You're so infuriating! Why do you always have to pretend that you're right all the time?!" The redhead screamed, her head tilted slightly up in order to lock eyes with her friend.
"It's not a new thing; I'm not acting any different, so why are you so pissed off about it all of the sudden?!" Jade questioned angrily.
"Because!" Cat spat back, not quite sure how to answer the question because, in all fairness, she had a point. Jade behaved like this all the time and Cat never complained. But even though she didn't complain about it, it still bothered her every now and again. The two had been friends since elementary school and though Jade was always a bit closed and standoffish, they'd always had a fairly open relationship with each other. No, they didn't talk about every single issue, and no, they didn't have heart-to-hearts every other day, but they did talk all the time. The conversations they had were important. Even if they were talking about something silly like a television show, the conversations were long and memorable and made them feel closer to one another. Somewhere along the road, in the past few years, they stopped talking as frequently. Their conversations grew so few and far between that when they finally did talk to one another, they weren't quite sure what to say. They still called themselves "best friends," but they interacted like acquaintances. Cat didn't really know where she stood with Jade anymore. She didn't know what kind of relationship they had now, and that scared her. She was afraid that the answer would be, "No relationship at all." She supposed that's why she'd become so upset. It was just another instance of Jade avoiding a conversation they'd definitely be able to have three years ago.
"Because why?!" Jade shouted, clearly agitated with how vague her answer was.
"Well, I just... Like..." She mumbled, the fire in her voice almost completely gone. Cat's gaze fell to the floor as she struggled to find a way to explain her feelings.
"Spit it out!" She demanded. Her tone was audibly just as harsh, but Cat felt it soften up a bit.
Frustratedly, Cat looked back up at the raven-haired girl, "We never talk about anything! Nothing really important, at least. And like, sometimes..." she trailed off distractedly, averting her gaze once again by looking around the room at the damage caused by the earthquake.
"Sometimes?" Jade questioned with nothing more than a slight annoyance in her voice as she watched the girl look at everything in the room but her eyes.
"Well, sometimes it's like... I feel like you don't really think of me as a friend, and that really sucks because you're like the best friend I have," Cat paused for a second as she locked eyes with Jade again, gauging her response. "Because, like, everything feels sort of one-sided and stuff. I always tell you how I feel about like, everything, but whenever I ask you about stuff, you always change the subject or something. And like, you don't ever really apologize for anything."
"Cat, I-"
Sitting back down and cutting Jade off, she continued, this time her eyes aimed at the broken coffee table on the floor, "And sometimes it's fine and it doesn't bother me that much because, like, I get that it's not totally your thing but, it's like, sometimes it really hurts my feelings because you, like, don't treat me any different than you treat, like, strangers and stuff." Cat took a deep breath and sighed.
"I didn't really know you felt like that," Jade admitted, sitting down next to her friend.
"Well, you never asked," Cat replied matter-of-factly, turning her head to look at the person next to her.
"I think of you as so much more than a stranger. You really are my best friend, but it's just, really difficult for me to open up to people, Cat," Jade explained.
"But, that's what's so frustrating! You used to open up to me all the time!" Cat said standing back up, beginning to pace back and forth. "We used to talk about everything, and now, it feels like we haven't even had a real conversation since, like, before you started dating Beck." Still pacing, she looked at her hands and played with her thumbs nervously.
Jade's eyes followed the redhead around the room as she tried to explain, "We grew apa-"
"And it's so stupid because, like," Cat was rambling now, so lost in her thoughts that she hadn't heard Jade try to speak, "Now, it's like, I'm always nervous around you and I feel like if I say one wrong thing, you'll hate me or something and I know that's dumb but it's hard not to be afraid of you hating me." The redhead's breathing became shakier and she began talking even faster. "I hope you don't hate me now for yelling at you and stuff because I'm not really mad - I mean I was a little bit but I'm not really any more - I just miss being able to talk to you about stuff besides like movies and music and I miss you because we used to hang out all the time but then we stopped hanging out as much when you started dating Beck and now everything's all weird and stuff and I just miss my best friend." The last few words of her rant were muffled as she brought her hands to her face and began crying into the sleeves of her sweater. The thought of losing her best friend made Cat extremely uneasy. She was unable to stop convincing herself that she was ruining their relationship. Cautiously, Jade stood up and made her way towards her friend. Sympathetically, she put one hand on Cat's back and tried to console her.
"Can you just... not cry? Please? Stop crying, our friendship is fine. I swear, it's going to be fine. Don't cry," Jade pleaded, clearly unsure of what to say. None of her words really comforted Cat. This made Cat almost certain that their friendship was over because, usually, Jade was always able to comfort her. As she kept crying, Jade continued, "I'm sorry, okay? Really. I've been a really shitty friend to you and I ditched you for Beck and it wasn't cool and I'm really sorry. Stop crying, please, for the love of God. We're going to be okay, Cat, I promise. I'll stop being bitchy, okay?" Feeling, slightly more confident, Cat took a deep breath and wiped her tears away, still shaky.
In between sniffles, She managed to respond, "You're always bitchy." Jade removed her hand from the girl's back and spun her around to see a slight smirk on her face.
"Are you faking?!" Jade yelled irately.
"No!" Cat answered with a sincere look on her face. She began to feel a million emotions at once. She walked over to sit in an armchair as Jade followed her, standing and staring incredulously. Cat really was sad, but maybe Jade's poor attempt at comforting her actually helped. "I really am sad," the girl insisted, her smile gone and her gaze falling towards the ground.
"Then why are you making jokes?!" Jade asked running her hands through her hair, visibly stressed out.
"I wasn't, you really are a bitch," Cat stated frankly, still staring at the ground.
"Dude!" Jade exclaimed. She knew Cat meant no offense, but she was frustrated with how impossible the redhead was being.
"Well, I don't know!" the girl defended after looking back up at Jade and seeing the annoyed look on her face, "Feelings are hard!"
"What do you want?!" Jade said, more demanding than asking.
"I just want to talk more and have like, real conversations like we used to have and I want to be best friends again and I don't want us to keep drifting apart and I want things to stop being awkward," Cat explained all in one breath.
Taking time to think, Jade walked over to the couch and sat down. Solemnly, she stared at the floor for a brief moment before raising her head and locking eyes with Cat. The look in Jade's eyes told Cat that she understood what she was trying to say, which is why Cat was satisfied when Jade sighed and responded, "Alright, yeah, fine. I'll be more open and honest and stuff or whatever. Can we stop having this stupid talk now?" The room felt lighter as Cat stood from the chair and walked over to sit next to Jade.
With a bright smile on her face, she looked at her friend and said, "Yeah, we can stop," before giggling softly and admitting, "That was a weight off."
"Yeah," Jade agreed as Cat sniffled, trying to control a runny nose. "Do you need a tissue or something?"
"Probably," Cat admitted.
Jade stood up and walked away, explaining, "I saw some in the bedroom earlier."
Once her friend disappeared into the room behind her, Cat yelled, "Did you want to talk about Beck now?" In response, she heard a long, agonizing groan. "Is that a 'no?'" she questioned.
Marching back into the room and slamming the tissues down on the couch next to Cat, Jade complained, "Such an ass! He was condescending right?"
"So condescending," Cat agreed with a smile on her face.
A/N: There you have it, the third chapter! Please please please review and let me know what you think, this took me FOREVER because of how indecisive I am. Initially, I wrote this chapter from Jade's perspective, but I ended up rewriting it from Cat's perspective because it added a lot more context to her unpredictable actions. Regardless, I'd love to hear your feedback! Likes, dislikes, suggestions, anything at all!
(reviews totally make me update faster btw)