Hi, we're back. Anyone still interested? I appreciate your reviews, let me know if you want me to stick with it – I'm hoping this is going to be a little more light-hearted than my other story (although it could hardly be any less) but there will be a more serious side…
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Tori leaned on the counter at work, daydreaming. She could still smell tomato ketchup and bacon on her, but she was in a diner and she supposed no one would notice. The food fight that morning had unsettled her slightly, the frisson she'd felt as she'd knelt astride Jade, pinning her down and and threatening her with the ketchup bottle, had been mirrored by something else for a moment, a look in Jade's eyes that she couldn't quite place.
She had a troubling feeling of... not deja vu, exactly, because clearly they had been here before. But it was too easy. Too easy to forget that this wasn't real, that laughing and fighting over the breakfast table wasn't going to lead to where it used to, and that made the little shards of pain she felt when she remembered all the sharper. But still it felt real, like the beginning of something, rather than the end, and that was enough, for the time being, to stave off the loneliness. Maybe that was why she'd let Jade walk back into her life without a fight, practically begging her forgiveness. Just tell me it wasn't my fault. She knew how pathetic that sounded, she knew she should have demanded more, but the fact was that, as much as Jade didn't want to talk about it, Tori didn't want to hear about it. She didn't want to know, didn't want to face the evidence of Jade's life apart from her, the cold logic of her decision to leave. At some point the woman she thought had loved her must have weighed her up and made a choice, must have sat facing her across the breakfast table, listening to her chatter away, knowing that she wouldn't be there tomorrow. And now she was back. And all those things would be unbearable without the answer to the one question that she couldn't bring herself to ask.
Did Jade want her back?
She felt something sting her ear painfully and whirled around to see only an empty doorway, the sound of laughter fading, retreating into the kitchen. She looked down in search of whatever they'd thrown. She shifted her foot and there it was, a small paper airplane.
She unfolded it slowly, half knowing what she'd find. It was a picture. It was crudely drawn, but it was pretty clear what the two girls were doing, or at least what one girl was doing to the other, and she felt a weird sense of injustice rising along with the tears. We never even used to do that, she thought, as though that would rob their accusation of its sting. She should have it out with them. She should go in there and... Well, she should at least tell Helen, maybe she'd do something.
She screwed the paper up and stuffed it in her pocket, and wondered if they'd seen Jade come into the diner. They couldn't have known it was her, but she found herself wishing they had, and that Jade had seen the picture. Then we'd see who's laughing, she told herself, and indulged a brief fantasy of an outraged Jade vaulting over the counter to rain down scissory death on them all.
And now she knew why she couldn't bring herself to ask the question. Because as long as she didn't ask, as long as she didn't actually cut into the birthday cake, she could pretend it was real. Just for a while.
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"Could you open this jar for me?"
"What, with my great big muscular arms? Wait, let me just wipe my sweaty palms on my moustache first."
"Jade! Look, I don't think you're masculine, okay? That wasn't what I meant."
"Yeah, right."
"Oh, come on! You know I think you're pretty. I've told you that."
"Yeah, once. And I had to drag that out of you."
"You didn't! And anyway, that was kind of an awkward situation. I've told you since though, haven't I?"
"I don't recall. Tell me again, maybe it'll jog my memory."
Tori sighed. "You are pretty."
"Yeah, that rings a bell."
"You see?"
"I remember the dismal lack of enthusiasm. Really brings it all back."
"Hey! You said I was only pretty in the dark."
"No, I said 'from certain angles'."
"That's not better!"
"At least it was voluntary."
"Right. Fine. You're the most beautiful creature that ever walked the earth. Now, are you going to open this jar for me or not?"
"No."
"So, what, you're not going to open a jar for me now because I didn't say you were pretty enough?"
"No, I'm not going to open a jar for you because you need to learn something. Sit down."
"What? Why?"
"Sit."
Tori sat, grumpily, as Jade placed the jar on the coffee table in front of her. "This," she said, "is a jar."
"I know that! I'm not-"
"Hush! Now inside this jar," Jade went on, "are some pickles. Which means you have a problem."
Tori muttered something to the effect that the pickles weren't her only problem, but Jade ignored her.
"You don't want these pickles to be inside this jar," she said. "You want them to be inside you. So," she shook the jar. "What are you gonna do?"
"Well I was going," Tori said, exasperated, "to ask you to open it."
"No!" The sharpness made the other girl jump. "Come on, Tori, show some initiative. You're a smart girl. There are a million ways you could open this jar," Jade said. "You could throw it against a wall, you could hit it with a hammer. You could drill a hole in the top. You could use some boiling water and the principles of thermodynamics. You could hire the Pied Piper of Picklin to entice them out with his magic flute. You could even," she said, "take a slightly damp cloth and twist it around the lid to give you a bit of leverage. I mean, you know. If you wanted to."
There was a long pause.
"You know, you're kind of a smartass for someone who's sleeping on a sofa."
"No, I'm just a smartass. Whether I'm sleeping on a sofa is irrelevant."
"Really?" said Tori. "Is that so? Well, let's just see how irrelevant it is, shall we?"
"Wait, what are you... No, come on, Tori, you can't be serious… I didn't mean it! Don't do that! Please!"
There was enough genuine panic in Jade's voice to make Tori pause in her pretense of throwing the rucksack out of the door. "Okay, I wasn't really going to," she confessed, "but give me some credit, Jade. I've had to look after myself for the last six months, without any help from you or anyone." She picked up the pickles. "And if you think in all this time that I haven't been able to open a single jar of pickles because I didn't think of that, then you're wrong. It's just that this one," she brandished the offending jar, irritably, "is particularly..." She made one last, futile attempt to shift the lid. "Ugh... tight." She stormed off into the kitchen.
She came back two minutes later.
Jade carefully said nothing, as Tori sat heavily on the sofa next to her, tight-lipped. There was a sullen silence for a moment, until finally the open jar was moved an inch closer to her.
"Pickle?"
Jade peered into the jar. "No, thanks," she said. "They give me wind."
"Gross."
"They give you wind, too."
"Shut up."
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Thankfully for Jade, it wasn't that night that it happened. But it was bound to happen sooner or later. Tori knew the sofa was uncomfortable, she'd woken up on it enough times, surrounded by the detritus of a night partying alone. So it should have come as no surprise to find herself woken at two in the morning by a figure at her bedroom door.
Jade, hair ruffled, t-shirt hanging loose off one shoulder, clutching a pillow protectively in front of her like a teddy bear. "I can't sleep," she said, quietly.
Tori gazed at her in the half-light, head bowed, eyes hidden in the shadows. She shuffled further over towards what she still thought of as 'her' side of the bed, and dragged back the covers. Jade slipped wordlessly in beside her, with a look of silent gratitude, and Tori turned away, trying to ignore the heady sense of familiarity at the warm body so close to her.