It's underhanded. Jade knows that.
She has never been one to shy away from being underhanded.
She's given it long enough to work itself out anyway, in her opinion, if not also in everyone else's. They're coming up on the final days of senior year and maybe that does make this a bit of a bad idea; a last ditch effort to make something happen before they all go off in their separate directions, a childish attempt to stop a change that very well may not be able to be stopped.
Oh well.
She hatched this brilliant plan of hers all of five minutes ago, and since she did the seconds and the turns of the game have ticked by at a snail's pace. Patience is far from being at the top of her list of talents - she isn't unaware of that - but this is important. So she bides her time, she feels out the pattern of the game, and after they have fallen into a lull of boring dare after boring dare she finally gets picked and she makes sure to choose dare, and counts herself lucky all she has to do for that is to drink a cup's worth of juice from the pickle jar in Tori's fridge.
"Ok." Cat giggles as she wipes her mouth, "Your turn."
Even as she says it Cat leans forward, a grin on her face. "Who ya gonna pick?"
Any other day Jade would pick her. She hasn't had a turn in seven or so rounds and they're all getting bored enough with the game that it wouldn't really matter.
But, tonight, it does matter.
"Andre." She says, looking across to the other couch where her target is seated and leaning back, only half listening. "Truth or dare?"
He perks up a bit at the sound of his name, but only shrugs before giving the question any thought.
"Uh… I don't know, truth."
She grins, and then pretends to think.
"Have you… ever… lied to Tori?"
Next to her she feels Beck's eyes go wide, and Robbie's too for that matter. In front of her she sees panic flash through Andre's face as his body turns stiff, and that panic is briefly followed up by anger, because he knows she knows not only that he's lied, but when and how. Then Tori, the absolute icing on the cake, sitting on the floor right at Andre's feet, whirls her head around so that she can see his frozen reaction and it. Is. Perfect.
"Uh…"
That's all he manages to get out, and she grins wickedly.
"Uh… Can I change to dare?"
"What?" Tori asks, a fear in her voice, and Jade swears she almost feels giddy as she stands up.
"Nope." She declares, "But this is getting awkward, we should go."
She thinks she hears Beck trying to call her back, or preform some other sort of damage control, but she is out the door before either attempt can take, and she is soon joined.
Tori… Tori has no idea what's just happened.
One minute they were heading into what was likely to be one of the last rounds of truth or dare, and then with one question everyone was all but racing out the door and leaving her alone in her living room with the victim of the question.
Andre.
She looks at him, and he has his jacket held awkwardly in his hands.
"Um… I should go too." He says, and he tries to get past her and follow the others out the door, but she grabs onto his arm when he tries to get by her and pulls him back.
"No, stay." She says, and when she has him in front of her again he doesn't try to leave, so she folds her arms and looks him up and down, as if the answer she's searching for will be scrawled somewhere along his body.
But, of course, it isn't.
"What have you lied to about?" She asks, because really, Andre Harris is nothing if not a terrible liar. She's seen him lie, or try to; he can't do it. So what was so big he willed himself to figure it out?
"Nothing." He swears, but she can see it in the way his fingers tighten on the fabric of his jacket, it is very much not nothing. "It was um… Pens."
She only stares at him at first, like she's trying to give him time to come up with something better than that.
But, all he does is lick his lips nervously.
"Pens?"
He nods, shakily, and she's pretty sure he is well aware that she isn't buying whatever this is.
"Yeah…" He says the word like he is trying to convince himself more than he's trying to convince her. "Yeah. Remember last week when you lost your new pack of pens?"
"Yeah?"
"And I told you I hadn't seen them?"
"Yeah?"
"I lied." He says, "I stole them, and then I sold them to Girl Scouts."
She… Now based on that, HOW has he ever lied to her and pulled it off?
"You stole my pens?" She questions, slowly, but he nods.
"Yep."
"And sold them to Girl Scouts?"
There is a beat of silence, like he might actually be considering fessing up.
"Yep." He says, and when all she can do is stare at him after that, he quickly bids her goodbye and rushes out the door.
She tries to let the issue drop; whatever Andre has lied to her about has to be little, right? That's what she keeps telling herself, but no matter how many times she repeats that she can't convince herself. So, if he isn't going to talk, she's going to have to put this to bed with the help of the next best person.
"Jade!"
Jade whirls around, her locker still open next to her. She has a puzzled expression on her face as Tori marches closer, like she knows what this is about yet at the same time she doesn't.
"What-?"
She doesn't let her finish. She marches by and grabs Jade by the arm and drags her off, only giving her enough lag to allow her to close her locker. She doesn't stop until the two of them are alone in the confines of the janitor's closet.
She releases Jade and closes the door, and Jade merely folds her arms with a scowl.
"Don't you ever grab me-"
"What did Andre lie to me about?" She demands, and she knows Jade well enough by now to know when she's disappointed.
She shifts her weights into one foot and purses her lips.
"He didn't tell you?"
"No!" She exclaims, and she feels like she is unraveling more and more by the second. "No! He made up something about taking my pens and selling them to some Girl Scouts!"
Jade furrows her brow and leans a shoulder against the wall.
"Look." She near pleads, "I respect that Andre has his privacy, but usually you do too and I know you wouldn't have brought it up if you didn't think I should know. He isn't going to tell me so could you please? Just tell me enough so I'm not driving myself crazy worrying about him?"
She feels like she is losing her mind here, but Jade, casual as ever, brings her backpack around to her front and pulls a nail file out from one of the smaller compartments.
She swears she is about to start begging all over again, or maybe Beck knows something? He'd tell her. At the very least he would tell her if she should be worried.
"Do you remember when Andre told you he had a crush on me?"
She opens her mouth to say yes, of course she does, it was the weirdest few days of her life. But instead her eyes go wide as a very key thing about those few days comes to her mind.
"How do you know about that?" She asks, warily, and Jade smirks.
"Jade?" She asks again, "Jade did he tell you-"
"Relax." Jade snaps, before resuming her nails. "I knew from the start."
Ok… Now she's lost, and how does this correlate with what's going on now?
"You did?" She asks, deciding that the best course of action here is going to be allowing Jade the reigns.
"Ah-ha." Jade says, "It was my idea."
She blinks. She… What…
"Uh… What?" She asks, and with a bored huff Jade lets her hands fall back to her sides and pushes from the wall, taking a step into her space.
"Everything Andre told you that week was true." She promises, but it doesn't make her feel much better about… Whatever is going on here.
"I just helped him with the details."
Jade can't help but to laugh at the expression on Andre's face. He's been playing the same melody for hours now, and bit-by-bit the two of them have been piecing lyrics together. Finally something hit her, and based on the way he is simultaneously frozen and melted in his seat she'd say it hits him the same way.
"You liked that?" She asks through a laugh.
"Mm-hmm." He hums, and she can't help but laugh again as she lets the headphones relax around her neck.
"Good, we're getting somewhere." She says, "I know I'm no Tori Vega but, glad I can still help."
That, at least, jolts him.
"What… What do you mean?"
"Come on." She scoffs, "Tori sings all your songs, she's even supposed to sing this one, and she helps you when you're stuck on lyrics."
Andre keeps staring at her, for a long few seconds.
"What are you getting at?" He eventually asks, and she laughs.
"Nothing." She promises, and after staring at her for another few seconds he eventually, hesitantly, starts scribbling down some of her lyrics.
"Just that you clearly have a thing for her."
He breaks the tip of his pencil.
He looks up to meet her gaze, and she holds it. She can see him thinking through all of his options here. Denial, agreement, flat out ignoring her.
"So what?"
Ah, indifference.
"So what?" She asks, "In the three years I've known you you've dated six different girls. As soon as you fall you say something. Why is Tori different?"
He shrugs, but the thoughtful smile on his face lets her know that he knows exactly why Tori is different.
"Those other girls, I didn't need to be friends with them. But Tori…" He smiles even brighter, like just the thought of her can make him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. "She's special. I can't lose her."
Jade smirks to herself, "How do you know you will?"
"I don't." He answers, "But it's not a risk I want to take."
She… She wants to be able to respect that. Anyone else she might be able to, but Andre is something else. He's a sweetheart, he always has been. He deserves to be happy.
"Besides." He says, "I wouldn't know what to say. Like you said Tori helps me with my lyrics. When my head gets all jumbled up the way it does when I think about her, she's the one who gets it to make sense."
Jade nods, and considers that. She would offer to help but she knows she doesn't have the patience for something like that. Andre is more of a words kind of person, and Tori responds to words. Her, on the other hand, she is more of a person of action.
Still… When has a lack of experience ever stopped her before?
"What if you tell her it's about another girl?"
He crinkles his brow.
"What?"
"Just in case." She says with a shrug, "If you ever do decide to tell her how you feel, you can get her help with what to say by telling her you're in love with another girl."
She is expecting him to reject her flat out, but instead he gets this considering look on his face.
"Who's the girl?"
"I don't know." She shrugs, "Someone liking would cause a problem for you. Tell her it's me for all I care."
To be fair, she hadn't expected to get a text at 2:45 that morning informing her that he couldn't stop thinking about telling Tori since she'd brought it up, and so he was going through with her "insane plan".
"Wait…" Tori draws out, pointing at her with a semi-unsteady hand. "You told Andre to show up at my house in a panic about being in love with you, when really he thought he was in love with me?"
"He is in love with you, and I didn't tell him to panic. He did that on his own."
Tori gapes at her, and as she does Jade decides she may as well get comfortable and leans back against the wall and returns to filing her nails.
"Wait." Tori eventually comes out with, again. "Andre told me that if he can't get his feelings out he gets all wonky in the head, he said he's always been like that."
"Might explain why he was panicking."
Tori rolls her eyes, "I wasn't with Andre that night." She says, "You were. And if he had feelings for me then why was he all wonky about you the next day?"
"Easy, he was projecting." She says without looking up from her nails. "He still needed to deal with it, you thought it was me he was in love with, so he panicked about you, to you, without you knowing."
She glances up then, and Tori's jaw may as well be on the floor. It takes most of her self-control not to laugh even a little bit at the expression.
"Wait."
"Ugh!" She growls, tipping her head back. "What now?"
"I dressed up as you and he tried to kiss me-"
"He was trying to kiss you!" She exclaims, starting to lose her patience. "Tori, Andre has been in love with you for three years. Every song he has written in the past three years has been about you! Including the one he wrote that night!"
Again Tori stands there in a stunned silence, and this time Jade decides she isn't going to wait for her to catch up.
"Think about it. Song2You, Beggin' on Your Knees. Even Make it Shine. Even when we went to that fancy restaurant and you guys did a cover, he picked Tell Me That You Love Me."
Tori still isn't saying anything, at all, and finally with what she is choosing to classify as pity rather than any form of genuine care, Jade rolls her eyes and pushes off the wall and starts on her way out.
"Just… If you're not going to figure it out yourself, I thought you should know."
And with that she leaves, and hopefully Tori will handle the rest appropriately.
If not, she's not sure how much harder she can push.
While Andre is not very good at avoiding thinking about his problems, he has over the years developed a talent for avoiding the causes of his problems.
So he's been holed up in the instrument room for the past three hours, avoiding both Tori and Jade, and trying to finish his senior project even though he knows it's useless. He isn't going to be able to focus until this thing with Tori gets resolved one way or the other.
Which, he supposes, might be why he hid himself somewhere she could find him so easily.
She pokes her head through the door before letting herself fully into the room.
"Hey." She says, and his heart grows heavy as he watches her enter so slowly.
Things are supposed to be easy with her. She skips to his side whenever they're suddenly in the same room; she isn't supposed to approach him like she's afraid he might run from her. He is never supposed to run from her.
Except, that is exactly what he's done.
"Hey."
She closes the door behind her, and waits long after the soft click of the handle to start her approach.
"Jade told me… A lot."
His breath catches in his chest. He knew Jade would tell her, after last night there was really no other conclusion he could have drawn. He knew she wouldn't let it go, and he didn't take care of it.
"I'm sorry." He says, and then he stands from his chair, suddenly unable to sit under Tori's questioning eyes.
Something settles in her face with his words. Maybe belief. Like Jade told her everything, but she came here to confirm it, rather than just talk about.
"I…" How is he supposed to explain this? He had better figure it out, because she is looking at him with those big doe eyes just waiting to understand. "What we have… We're so good. I… I couldn't risk losing that."
She parts her lips to say something, but he turns away and starts pacing, keeps talking, because now the gates are open and he can't shut them until everything he can think to say is out.
"But then Jade started asking about it and she got me all wonked up! I had to get it out but I couldn't so I… I lied. I told you I was in love with her and I… I don't know what I thought was going to happen. I knew I wasn't going to get over it and I didn't. We put it in another song and I got it back under control."
Now he's done, and he's still. He's looking at her look at him, trying to comprehend everything he has just said and he wants so bad to take back the past 24 hours. But he can't. All he can do is damage control.
"I'm sorry."
She looks down, rolls her lips together, then back up at him.
"I'm sorry too."
His heart sinks like a rock in his chest.
"Yeah?"
She nods, and takes a step closer to him.
"Yeah." She shrugs, "I… I'm sorry I didn't see any of the signs and-"
"Whoa, hey." He interrupts, and they are so close now it is killing him. That, and her blaming herself for not knowing when he was the one hiding things. "No. I, I should've told you. A long time ago. I just didn't want to lose you."
"You wouldn't have lost me." She swears, one of her hands coming down light on his shoulder, and then with a flicker of uncertain certainty in her eyes that hand moves up to gently cradle his jaw. "The opposite, actually."
He feels his eyebrows shoot up, his brain turn off and back on again, and a hopeful smile daring to poke through at the corner of his mouth.
"Yeah?" He asks, and she nods, and the next thing he knows he can feel her warm breath on his lips a fraction of a second before they're pressed against hers, and his hands are on her hips while her other one ventures up to the back of his neck.
Maybe they should play truth or dare more often.