Hi, just a short one today, feel free to review and let me know if it's awful.
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"I'm sorry?"
Everything about the woman on the other side of the doorway set Jade's teeth on edge. She was just the kind of haughty bitch that she despised. She checked her anger, and reminded herself that for all she knew this was Tori's boss, or her landlady, and it wouldn't do to unleash the demon. "Can I help you?"
"I said," the woman enunciated carefully, as though talking to a particularly slow child. "Who the hell are you?"
Jade tried not to simmer. "I'm a friend of Tori's," she said. "I'm staying for a couple of days."
The woman looked unimpressed. "I didn't know Tori had any friends," she said, uncharitably.
"Well she does," Jade said. "And I'm one of them."
"Really?" She seemed skeptical. "Well I need to see her. Where is she?"
"Not here."
"I'd guessed that already," the woman said, irritably. "Otherwise I wouldn't be stood here having to talk to you. Where is she?"
"At work."
"I see." She looked at her watch. "Well I haven't got time for this. Tell her I was here." She turned to go.
"No."
The woman turned back. "No?"
"No," said Jade. "I can't do that."
"Why not?"
"Because you haven't told me," she said patiently, "who the hell you are."
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Tori spent the afternoon fretting. At least there were customers today, but that didn't really help.
It's all going to be fine, she thought, as she absent-mindedly poured coffee all over a small woman in a nasty dress.
"Watch what you're doing!"
"What? Oh, God, I'm so sorry! I'll get you a cloth." She pulled out a handful of napkins. "No, wait, here, let me just..."
"I can do it." The woman snatched the napkins away from her and dried herself off while Tori retreated to the safety of the counter. Concentrate, Tori. You can't afford to lose this job. Especially not with the club still closed. She wouldn't look after you this time.
It was going to be a long day.
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Jade sat alone in the apartment. Now. You have to decide now. Before it all gets too complicated. She stared at the phone in her hand, scrolling the missed calls up into oblivion. How much time?
Not enough.
She stared at her rucksack, and made her decision.
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By the time the end of her shift rolled around, Tori was ready to throw herself into the garbage-disposal unit just to escape from the diner. She practically ran home, stopping off only to buy a bottle of wine, and realized guiltily that she couldn't remember the last time she'd paid for anything. She bounded up the steps to her apartment, clutching her bag and bottle, and let herself in...
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... to an empty room. "Jade?" she called out hopefully. "Are you there?"
There was no response. She looked around and noticed to her horror that Jade's rucksack was missing from its place beside the sofa.
She's gone. Again.
Her hands fell dejectedly to her sides, and she stood, helpless, the bottle of wine barely held by her fingers, listening to the sound of an empty apartment.
There was a time when she'd have welcomed this, counted it a pleasure to come back from work to find no one home, a chance to spend some time alone before the arguments started. Now it was anathema, the silence only reinforcing how much, how instantly, she missed Jade's presence there.
Where was she?
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Where was she? He put the phone down, and drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk. He reached out to dial again and thought better of it. He'd send Karl round to the house later to check.
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"Hey," said a voice in her ear. She jumped, the bottle slipping from her finger, landing mercifully intact on the rug. She spun round to see Jade holding a carton of milk, looking at her with an odd expression. "Are you okay?"
"I... I thought you'd..."
"I just went out for some milk." Jade pushed past her into the room and disappeared into the kitchen. "I moved my stuff into your room," she called. "I hope you don't mind."
"Er..."
"I mean, say if it's a problem," she said, returning. "It's just that it was in the way, and I thought I'd try and keep the place tidy. It's okay, isn't it?"
"It's fine," Tori said. "Honestly."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
"Great." Jade's eyes dropped to the bottle on the floor. "You dropped something."
"Oh." Tori bent and picked it up, holding it close to her chest, more defensively than she meant to. "I just thought..."
"Tori Vega," Jade said, reproachfully, with a slight pout. "Are you trying to get me drunk?"
"No!"
"And yet you come bearing alcohol, of a kind I like?"
Tori hesitated. It had been part of the deal, but the deal had been broken. She handed it over like a naughty child surrendering contraband candy. "It's just a bottle of wine, Jade," she said, sulkily. "I thought it'd be nice, that's all. You know, with dinner."
Jade looked at her for a moment, and grabbed the bottle. "Okay, sounds great," she said. "What are you making?"
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Jade watched Tori's dinner preparations with the patience of a saint, struggling heroically not to interfere, while occasionally wincing as the other girl hacked haphazardly at vegetables with more enthusiasm than accuracy.
"Do you want any help?"
"No." Tori grunted, chasing an errant carrot across the worktop. "I'm good."
"Right."
Jade leaned back against the table and folder her arms. "You had a visitor today," she said.
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah. Some woman."
"What woman?"
"I dunno. Just some woman." She paused. "She said her name was Heather."
Tori's chopping slowed, then resumed more furiously than ever. "Did she say what she wanted?"
"Nope."
"Oh."
"I think she was lost."
"Right."
"Must have got the wrong apartment, or something."
"Probably."
"Because she said she was looking for her girlfriend."
Tori stopped chopping. Jade waited for a moment.
"You don't have to tell me, you know," she said, quietly.
"Jade..."
"I mean it's none of my business, but..."
"It's over." Tori's voice was hollow, and Jade heard the thump as the knife went down. "I told her it was over. Weeks ago."
"Okay."
"I did!"
"I believe you."
Tori finally turned to face her. "Are you mad with me?"
Jade was surprised. "Mad with you?"
"For not saying anything."
"No, I'm not mad with you, Tori," she said. "If you've got a girlfriend..."
"Had a girlfriend."
"... had a girlfriend, then that's fine," she said. "I'm glad you moved on with your life, you know? I'm glad you haven't been on your own, that you… that you had someone else to open your pickle jars for you."
Tori looked at her. "Really?"
"No, of course not," Jade said, exasperated. "I hate the idea of you with someone else, just like you must have hated it when I went off with Marcus. But the point is I've no right to expect anything else. You don't owe me an explanation. You don't owe me anything. I left you in the lurch and now I've just walked back in here without even asking. I'm just an unwanted guest, and I know I'm only here because you can't bring yourself to turn me away."
"That's not true! I want you here."
"Do you?"
"Yes! I'd have thought after last night you'd know that."
Jade blushed slightly. "Well, maybe."
"Look, Jade, I get that right now you're feeling a bit insecure, okay? Wondering whether I'm just using you as a rebound to get over Heather, or just killing time until we get back together, or-"
"No. None of those things had occurred to me. Now I feel terrible."
"Shut up. What I'm saying is, it's not like that. Me and Heather, we were... nothing, really. I don't even know why I liked her. She just came along at the right time. And now it's over, she moved out and-"
"She lived here?"
"Well, yes." Tori said, uncomfortably. "For a while. She left her husband."
Jade pulled a horrified face. "Homewrecker!"
"Don't! I feel bad enough as it is."
"And so you should, enticing that delightful woman away from her family, leaving her tiny children alone and defenceless."
"She doesn't have children!"
"Really? She seemed like such a motherly type."
"You know nothing about her!"
"No," said Jade. "I don't." She looked around the kitchen. "I don't feel like eating. I'm going to skip dinner."
Panic hit Tori. "Oh, no, Jade, come on. Don't be like-"
"And so are you. Grab a couple of glasses."
"I... what? Oh. Right."
"And a couple of bottles."
"A couple? I only bought one."
"There's another three in the cupboard."
"Three?"
"I figured if we were going to talk, we were going to need them."
"But three?"
"Well, then I figured if we were going to talk about the kind of things you want to talk about, one of them was probably going to get broken. In fact," she decided, "now I know about Heather, maybe two."
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Not at the house, either. That wasn't right. He reached for his laptop and pulled up his bank account, scrolling through the recent withdrawals.
There? What was she doing back there?
This wouldn't do.
This wouldn't do at all.