Hello again! Muchas gracias for reading and/or reviewing the first chapter. I'm glad somebody besides me liked it. :)
It's Friday and I wake up with Beck in my bed. It's not that this is really much of a rarity – he stays over all the time. I'd be here alone all the time if he didn't. My problem with this situation, however, is that I don't completely remember ending up here. What did I do after we came inside? It's all a blur. My whole life is dissolving faster than I can comprehend it.
Beck has his bare chest pressed to my back and his face is nestled into the crook of my neck. Every time he breathes out, a tiny strand of my hair flies up into my periphery and then disappears again. For a moment I think that he might still be asleep, but then he wraps his arms around me and touches his lips behind my ear. His skin is so hot, and a tiny part of me wants him to stay just to keep me warm. The second he opens his mouth though, I know he has to leave.
"Good morning." He whispers in a happy pre-"remembering that the world sucks" tone.
"I didn't mean for you to stay the night." I climb out of bed, immediately freezing, and go straight to my dresser without looking at him.
"Oh…uhh…sorry?"
"It's not your fault." I mutter a halfhearted apology as I pull on a camisole, but he doesn't seem to buy it.
"Well, I should go…" I struggle putting on a pair of sweatpants and then turn around just as he's zipping his jeans. His eyes stay locked on mine for a moment and I suddenly remember how he ended up at my house in the first place.
"Your truck's still at the burger place, isn't it?"
"No, I was with Andre yesterday, so he drove." He starts buttoning his shirt, and I could tell him he's off by two buttons but I don't say a word until after he notices it. He sighs and starts to unbutton it so he can start over.
"I should drive you home then."
"You don't have to." I just give him a look. As if he really expects me to make him walk. He's already guilted me into it.
I grab the first jacket I can find, find my car keys in a pile of yesterday's clothes on the floor, and lead the way outside. Unfortunately – and surprisingly – my mother happens to still be home when we reach the kitchen, and I don't make it any further.
"Jade," She says my name in a tone that suggests that she's mad. She hasn't seen me in three days – she always manages to leave before I wake up and come back after I go to bed – so who knows what it could be. "Can I talk to you for a second?" She ends her question with a forced smile aimed in Beck's direction.
"What? I kind of have stuff to do." I grumble, earning myself a frown from her.
"It'll only take a minute." She promises, again looking at Beck. I turn to give him the keys, wondering what I could have possibly done that she couldn't chastise me for in front of him. She's never been the type of mother to wait until a guest was gone to reprimand me for anything.
Once the door closes behind Beck, she sets her hand on the empty bar stool beside her, inviting me to take a seat. I humor her and sit down without arguing.
"Jade," She repeats my name once again, rather than just getting to the point. One minute, my ass. "I know that…well, I don't really know how you're feeling right now, but I do know you're hurting, and that I haven't been around enough to comfort you…and that I've never really been around enough throughout your life for you to even consider coming to me…but you know I'm here if you ever do need me, right?" I nod, though I'd never consider taking her up on such an offer. "You're my first priority. I can skip work." Pretty words, but we both know work is her first priority, and she can skip me.
"Is that it?"
"No, not yet. I, umm…Jade." Again with the name. It's like she thinks it's some magic word that can heal the relationship we don't really have. I love my mom, but that will never happen. We're never going to be the type of mother and daughter who go shopping together, or go to movies together, or, someday in the future, call each other every day. "I know you're looking to Beck for comfort right now, and I just want to make sure you're being careful."
"Oh my God, Mom. Don't you think we've had this discussion enough times?"
"Well obviously we should have had it sooner." She spits out this sentence in the bitterest tone I've ever heard her use, and stares at me for a moment before I decide I need to get out of here.
"Beck needs to get home." I excuse myself from the room and make my way to the driveway, where my car is running with Beck asleep in the passenger seat. I knock on the driver's side window to wake him up before I even bother to open the door, and even when I've started the engine and am backing out of the driveway, he still hasn't bothered to look at me.
"Your mom hates me." I laugh and it feels weird on my lips.
"No she doesn't."
"Yes she does. She doesn't even respect me enough to ask for privacy. She just kept giving me the stink eye."
"She was not giving you the stink eye." I mutter, reaching over to turn on the heat because I didn't bother to put on shoes and my toes are frozen. "She was giving you her 'please leave so I can complain to my daughter about you' look."
"Oh, so she was talking about me." He pauses. "How does that support your argument at all?"
"Alright, maybe she does hate you…but she didn't always. She really liked you at first. For a long time, actually. Now she kind of hates me too though, so I wouldn't feel too special."
"I wonder what made her change her mind." He mumbles. We both know exactly how to answer that question.
Beck sits silently in the passenger seat of my car for the rest of the way to his house, and while I've gotten used to him acting this way whenever I drive – my driving him places is a threat to his masculinity or something moronic like that, and it makes him feel uncomfortable – I kind of wish he would say something so I could stop thinking about the past.
I stop my car beside his trailer and turn to look at him. He just stares back at me, blinking once before he opens his mouth to say something. No words come out, so I lean over the console and kiss him. This will most likely be the last time this happens for a while, and when I pull away from him, the look on his face shows that he knows that.
"I love you" He says, placing his hand over mine. "but I'll give you your space. You know where to find me." He gives me a weak smile and I can literally feel a pain in my chest. I almost want to take back what I said earlier, but I know that once I leave and I stop thinking about him, I'll start thinking about Tori, and this little heartache I'm feeling now will be nothing compared to the feeling I'll get when I go to school and I sit down at that lunch table with them and she's not there because she's never going to be here, there, or anywhere ever again and she will never ever know that she was really the closest thing to a best friend I have. Had.
I'm crying so hard now that my body is shaking and I can't even speak. Beck hesitantly leans over the console between us and wraps his arms around me. He stays like that for a while, even after I've stopped sobbing into the collar of his shirt. He just holds me. He smells like my room…or maybe my room has always smelled like him. I guess I'll find out soon enough.
"Thanks for at least trying to understand."
"You gonna be okay?" He grimaces and then apologizes. "I'm sorry. That was a stupid question. We're gonna be alright though, right? Eventually? We'll get through this. You're gonna be fine, I'm gonna be fine...we're all gonna be okay."
"Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I'll be okay. This kind of stuff happens to people all the time and they get through it, right?"
"Yeah, they do."
"So we will too. I'll be okay." I don't really believe that I will ever feel better, but I keep repeating this mantra, hoping to convince myself.
"Well you probably want to get home. You're not even wearing shoes." He taps my nose with his index finger, his way of reprimanding me for my bad habit of driving barefoot. He's always telling me how "risky and irresponsible" it is, but this time he just touches my nose and starts to get out of the car without chastising me. "Oh!" He's halfway out but he stops to look at me one last time. "Are you going tonight?"
"Yeah, I think so." I answer him softly. He just nods and removes himself the rest of the way.
Beck doesn't go inside until I've left his driveway, and he waves as I pull away, but I don't bother waving back and just start to drive home. Rather than actually go there, however, I end up passing my turn and driving and driving and driving until I end up in the parking lot of Bed, Bath, and Yonder. I wander inside, ignoring the poor acne-covered meathead at the door whose only job is to unnecessarily stand by the door and greet people, passing the kitchen section and the bathroom section, and weaving through the bedroom section until I reach the farthest corner of the store, which is for the most part pretty empty. I climb onto one of the bed displays and lie flat on my back, sticking with my ritual of coming here every time something goes wrong.
…
It was a Sunday when I showed up at Tori's house completely out of my mind. I stood on the patio for ten minutes without having even come close to working up the courage to ring the doorbell. She was my only option. I couldn't tell anyone else. I definitely couldn't tell Beck – not yet. Andre and Robbie would never in a million years want to hear about my current predicament, and I certainly couldn't count on Cat to keep it a secret. So it was Tori. Again. As much as I hated having to come to her, she was reliable. She wouldn't turn me away. Tori was too nice for that.
Before I had a chance to decide between running or knocking, the door opened and Tori herself walked out. She had her phone in one hand, with her headphones in her ears and the volume turned up loud enough for me to hear it – she was listening to Katy Perry. Typical Tori.
She walked over to the sidewalk, humming loudly, bent down to get the newspaper, reached into the mailbox for the mail, and came skipping back to the house, reaching the patio without having noticed me sitting there. She opened the door, stepped inside, and then when she turned around to shut the door she finally saw me sitting on the bench across from her. She pulled her headphones out of her ears and started winding them around her phone as she stepped back outside.
"Jade, what are you-" She stuffed her phone into her pocket and looked up again, finally noticing the state I was in. "What's wrong?"
"You're good at fixing things." I said to her, reaching into my bag and pulling out a little white stick. I held it in front of her face and she stepped closer, her eyes widening when she noticed the little plus sign. "Fix this."