Chapter 5: Clearing Up Misunderstandings

Andre found Tori with her head resting against her locker.

"Uh, Tori, you good?" He asked carefully.

"Hmphmpm." Tori mumbled.

"Sorry, what was that?" Andre leaned against the locker beside her.

Tori removed her face from the locker and instead slowly collapsed to the floor in defeat. "I'm an idiot."

Andre moved to sit beside her. "Why do you say that?"

"Of course she doesn't return my feelings. Why would Jade suddenly start liking me anyways? I'm just- stupid." Tori sighed.

"Hey, stop hating on yourself Tori. I don't like to hear it." Andre soothed. "Now, what happened in there?"

"Well I started the conversation by apologizing for kissing her, she said she wasn't mad, she asked me why I kissed her, I said because I was confused after our date and playing Nancy and Walter, and then- ugh." Tori buried her face in her hands.

Andre threw an arm around her shoulders. "Then?"

"Then she said it's fine and that mistakes happen." Tori sighed.

"Oh." Andre blinked.

"Yeah. She definitely does not return my feelings, and now I am stuck having an unrequited crush and my life sucks." Tori leaned her head back, banging it against the locker.

"Well, maybe not. I mean, this is Jade we are talking about, maybe she just didn't know how to admit that she-"

"Andre, don't get my hopes up, please." Tori groaned, landing her head on her friend's shoulder. Andre nodded, feeling sorry for his best friend, and so they sat in silence until the bell rang, calling them to class.

When Jade got home that night, she threw her bag in the corner and collapsed onto her bed face first. She sighed loudly, and then, not finding that to be enough, grabbed her pillow and screamed into it.

A loud chirp interrupted her screaming and alerted her that someone texted her.

She turned and grabbed her phone from her pocket, glancing at the screen.

You and Tori seemed pretty upset after the closet, what happened? -Beck

"Oh nothing, I'm just an idiot who can't handle real feelings, that's all." Jade spoke to an empty room.

She left Beck's text unanswered as she screamed into her pillow again.

She sat up and thought back to her and Tori in the closet. "It's fine, mistakes happen!" She rolled her eyes at her earlier remarks. "Really Jade?" She berated herself out loud as she stood up and began to pace the room.

She had completely driven Tori off, and she could tell by the look on Tori's face as she left the closet that she had deeply hurt her.

Jade wasn't trying to hurt her, for once. She was just trying to give Tori a way out of this embarrassing situation in case she wanted one, Jade was trying to be nice.

"Serves me right." Jade muttered to herself. "The one time I try to make nice with her and I take it a step too far. Classic."

Jade continued to ponder the situation as she grabbed her darts from the dartboard in her room, and began to throw them at the red target.

Jade almost convinced herself that it was really just better off this way. A happy, positive, kind person like Tori would not be happy with- well, a Jade. And how long would they even last if they did start dating? Jade surely could not handle dating a Tori type girl. Too perky. Too sweet.

But Tori was also fierce. She could be ruthless. In a really hot sort of way. And then there was that annoying thing called physical attraction, which Jade had to admit, Tori was undoubtedly attractive. And then there was the fact that Tori drove Jade absolutely crazy, in the best way possible. She was challenging, exciting-

"Maybe I really am a masochist." She sighed. "Dammit Vega!" Jade threw the last dart with ferocity. "How am I falling for you?"

To take her mind off of Tori, Jade started to make herself a simple dinner of spaghetti tacos. Her dad and step mom were out of town, so there was no one around to witness Jade's internal crisis, thank god.

While she ate she watched a few of her favorite scenes from the scissoring to soothe her, but even that didn't help. After there was no food to distract her, all she could think about was how Tori would jump at every scene. How she would probably end up in Jade's lap and they would-

"Okay. I need sleep. I'm obviously going insane." Jade sighed, flicking off the TV and preparing for bed.

But of course she couldn't sleep.

It didn't help that when Jade closed her eyes all she could see was Tori walking around all day looking like a kicked puppy dog. And then she felt inexplicably guilty because it was her fault that Tori looked that way.

Jade turned to her bedside table and checked the clock. "Only 7:45? Are you kidding me?" She groaned.

After some tossing and turning, Jade was contemplating just knocking herself out with a sharp blow to the head when she heard a knock on her front door.

She sat up quickly, startled and confused as to who would be at her door now.

She grabbed a pair of her sharpest scissors - just in case- and went to answer the door.

The person knocked again and in the middle of the third knock, Jade threw the door open, to find none other than the cause of her insomnia staring back at her.

She looked as if she had just sprinted a mile, her hair windblown and her cheeks flushed with excess heat. She was wearing her tennis shoes, black running shorts, and a pink hoodie.

"Hey." Tori said, clearly out of breath. "Can we talk?"

"How-"

"I ran here." Tori admitted. "Beck gave me your address."

"Tori, your house is like- six miles from here." Jade scoffed.

"Trina refused to drive me and everyone else was busy." Tori explained.

"Well-" Jade paused. "I could have driven to you."

Tori blinked, obviously the thought never occurred to her. "Well, I needed the exercise anyways." She finally caught her breath. "Can I come in?"

Jade simply stared at the girl for a second, still in disbelief that she had run six miles to come talk to her. "Yeah, of course."

"Thanks." Tori stepped into Jade's house. "I um- like your pajamas." Tori pointed to Jade's ensemble.

Jade looked down and realized she was wearing nothing but a black silk camisole and short pajama shorts. "Well, I wasn't expecting you." She grabbed for her long black jacket hanging on the coat rack and wrapped it around herself.

"Yeah, sorry." Tori apologized. "Wait, Is that a golden piano?" Tori pointed to the corner of the living room.

"Well, painted gold." Jade scoffed. "It was my dad's choice, not mine. He doesn't look like it but he loves weird shiny decorations like that."

"He didn't strike me as the type." Tori remembered when she had met the man after she helped Jade put on her play. He seemed very serious, reserved, not the type of man to like and own a golden piano.

"Yeah, well everyone's different behind closed doors, or so they say." Jade shrugged.

"It's so bright in here! Not what I was expecting."

"Were you expecting me to live in some sort of cave with bats hanging from the ceiling?"

Tori laughed. "No, but I wasn't expecting your house to be filled with so many shades of yellow and pink." Tori picked up a flowery pillow from the couch.

"You can blame Karen for that one."

"Karen?"

"My step mom." Jade answered.

"Oh." Tori placed the pillow back. "So then, is your step mom-"

"Why are you here, Tori?" It came out more abruptly than Jade had wanted, but still, she wanted to know.

Tori swallowed and put her hands in her hoodie pockets. "Right, well I just wanted to talk about, you know, what we were talking about earlier, in the closet."

"The kiss?" Jade raised an eyebrow at her.

Tori blushed. "Yeah."

"Okay. What about the kiss?" Jade was interested now.

Tori took a deep breath. "Well, see. Earlier, when you said it was a mistake, I agree that it was, but you know, mistakes happen and can sometimes turn into incredible things, right? Like Bob Ross says, they're like happy little accidents that end up making the painting better!"

Jade looked at Tori, confused.

"Or like when that dude discovered penicillin! We were learning about it in biology remember? How he looked at the mold growing in his Petri dish and then because of that mistake he would up discovering a medical miracle!" Tori explained. "Or like-"

"What are you getting at, Vega?" Jade almost laughed at the girl's ability to blather on when she was nervous.

Tori looked down at her feet, then back up at Jade. "I'm saying, that while kissing you at first may have been a mistake, it was a happy mistake, at least on my end. And um- I would really- I would really like to kiss you again." Tori finally admitted, snapping her eyes shut, fearing Jade's reaction.

Seconds passed, which to Tori felt like hours.

Jade took a few steps closer to Tori, her heart speaking for her as her mind was completely faltering at the moment. "Okay." She finally replied, softly.

"Okay?" Tori opened her eyes and noticed the distance closed between them. "You won't strangle me with toilet paper if I kiss you?"

Jade laughed lightly, which put Tori more at ease. "I'm not going to murder you Tori. You can kiss me."

Tori took a step closer to Jade, taking one of her hands in her own, and she began to lean in, but then paused. "Umm, You can stop me if you want."

"I'm not stopping you." Jade smirked.

"Okay, well just letting you know so-"

"Vega." Jade rolled her eyes. "Just kiss me."

"Okay." Tori whispered as she finally captures Jade's lips with her own. Just like their first kiss on stage, their lips meld together perfectly, Jade's lips surprisingly soft and warm against Tori's own.

She felt Jade wrap an arm around her waist and to reciprocate Tori draped her own arms around Jade's neck, tugging her closer gently.

They broke apart after a mere few seconds, and yet Tori still felt breathless. Kissing Jade felt better, more natural than any kiss Tori had before.

As the silence persisted between them, Tori felt pressure to fill it. "I- um- wow." That was all Tori could manage to say.

"Yeah." Jade simply replied. Tori swore she saw the girl's cheeks redden. They still hadn't let go of one another.

"So, um. I'm super gay." Tori finally admitted.

"You're just realizing this? I thought you had kissed a girl before." Jade laughed at Tori's remark and Tori noted how beautiful she was the she laughed freely.

"I have, but- I just- wow." Tori breathed.

"You're not such a bad kisser yourself." Jade brushed a stray piece of hair behind Tori's ear. "So are we going to continue this kissing thing- or?"

"Yes!" Tori replied a bit too quickly. When she saw Jade's smirk Tori cleared her throat. "I mean, I would like that, if you would like that too, then yes maybe we could continue to-"

Jade pressed her forehead against Tori's own as the latter continued to blather on.

"Tori?" Jade murmured, a sultry tone to her voice.

"Yeah?" Tori finally took a breath.

"Shut up." Jade whispered as she closed the distance between them by again, pressing her lips to Tori's.