29. A Step Out Of Sync.

Beck called her back but she didn't answer. Seconds later he sent a text: That wasn't a conversation. Jade shut off her phone and tossed it in her schoolbag. Staring, dead-eyed, at the black bag, she wasn't jolted into awareness until Alyssa came back into the room without knocking.

"How'd your phone call go?" Alyssa asked, doing a poor job of pretending she didn't know what it was about.

"Fantastic," Jade responded. "My life's all butterflies now. Except the butterflies are giant and their wings are made of razors and they thirst for my blood."

"Hm. Well, I snuck up a plate of food for you. I took all the bruschetta that was left."

Jade narrowed her eyes, but took one of the appetizers from the white plate because they actually smelled delicious. She crunched, trying to pretend it didn't taste as good as it did.

"I'm sorry things haven't gone the way you wanted to," Alyssa said. She was once again settled at Jade's desk, picking up a bruschetta for herself. Jade just shrugged. She brushed the crumbs off her hands and grabbed her notebook — the one she'd filled with confessions such a short time ago. She shuffled the pages half-heartedly, looking for something worthwhile.

"I need to write a song," she muttered.

"Oh yeah?" Alyssa spoke around a mouthful. She swallowed and her voice cleared. "A school project?"

"I guess," Jade tilted her head at a particular phrase in her notebook. "It was kind of…voluntary, though."

"What are you writing about?" Alyssa started on another bruschetta, her hand catching the crumbs.

"No one."

"Gotcha," Alyssa smiled sympathetically, but Jade didn't look to see. Instead she kept Jade eyes on a set of sentences in the notebook. She rolled them around in her head, internally messing with melodies and syncopation.

"Are you gonna perform it?" Alyssa interrupted.

"If I ever get around to actually writing it," Jade grit her teeth.

"When?"

"Friday."

"Ooh, you've got a deadline then."

"Yeah."

"I'll be quiet then."

"What an idea."

Jade turned to a fresh page and copied down those sentences, leaning against the leg of her bed. She hummed quietly to herself, trying to ignore Alyssa's presence. To her credit, Alyssa did stay quiet, only crunching quietly as she finished off her half of the bruschetta plate. Jade was starting to get into the zone, actually writing an entire stanza, when a tinny ringtone broke the silence.

"Oh, I'm sorry Jade," Alyssa wiped her mouth with her thumb and took her phone from her purse. "Hm. I think maybe I should answer this."

"Whatever."

"Hello?" Alyssa answered her phone, still lounging in Jade's desk chair. Jade glared at nothing, wishing her 'guest' had left the room. "Oh, hey Beck."

Jade looked up. Alyssa made pointed eye contact with her.

"Aw, why aren't you coming to yoga?" Alyssa whined into the phone. "Yoga might actually help you feel better, you know."

Jade glanced back to her notebook.

"So things didn't go how you thought they would with Jade?"

Jade set her notebook aside, turning her body to face the girl at her desk. Alyssa put her finger to her lips and put Beck on speakerphone.

"…and then she just hung up on me," Beck was saying. "I just don't know what to do anymore. I don't want to give up on her though… 'Cause, like, when I think about my future, she's still there, you know?"

"Yeah. So what are you going to do?" Alyssa asked him while widening her eyes at Jade.

"Well it's too late to back out on Meredith…."

"Is it?"

"I already told her we'd go to the thing on Friday together, and she keeps sending me song options that she might sing. She wants me to choose one."

"And?"

"And they're literally all horrible."

Jade and Alyssa both smirked. Beck just sighed on the line.

"I don't know," Beck continued. "Maybe it'll be good to go out with Meredith. Maybe it'll help me see that I don't need Jade."

"Maybe," Alyssa said quietly as Jade's smirk fell.

"Thanks Alyssa." Beck hung up. Alyssa looked to Jade, who was once again slumped against her bed, bending the cover of her notebook.

"Somehow I became a therapist for all my friends," Alyssa explained with an awkward chuckle. Jade didn't acknowledge her. "You know, Jade, going out with Meredith might help him see the exact opposite. He might realize just how much he does need you."

"Maybe he doesn't," Jade shrugged, as if it she didn't care.

"He does."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does matter, dammit!" Alyssa suddenly shouted. "Stop minimizing everything!"

Jade raised her eyebrows as her eyes widened, looking up at Alyssa Vaughn like a scolded child.

"I swear, I've known you for a matter of weeks and I want to smack you! I can't even imagine how people who've known you for a long time feel."

"Oh," Jade said quietly, looking at her hands. "Alright, well—"

"Like, you think you're this horrible person that everyone hates and you don't deserve happiness or something. But you know, deep down, that that is absolute bullshit. You're awesome, and we all know it."

Jade blinked.

"Seriously. I mean, Beck calls like four times a day to wax poetic about you, even after the breakup."

"I…really?"

Alyssa nodded.

Jade nodded too, thoughtfully, as she uncapped her pen and reopened her notebook.

Somehow Alyssa became a comforting presence as Jade wrote her song that night. The lyrics were done by the time the party had broken up and Alyssa had swapped the empty bruschetta plate for deviled eggs purloined from the kitchen. Then Jade once again pulled out her keyboard and started plunking the keys until she hit on a chord progression she liked. Alyssa was nodding in agreement, picking up her next snack, as Jade played it over and over.

"Sounds good," Alyssa said, though it sounded more like "thounth goo" with all the deviled egg in her mouth.

Jade smiled genuinely, singing the first verse out loud.

"Damn," Alyssa sat forward, wiping her hands on a paper napkin. "I did not realize how good of a singer you were. I always thought Beck was sort of exaggerating, but damn."

Jade laughed, making a note next to her lyrics.

"So you're singing this on Friday?"

"Mhm."

"While Beck is on his date."

"I see where you're going with this," Jade warned.

"I'm jus' sayin'," Alyssa shrugged.

"Well, don't."

"Okay. Hey can I ask you something that might be kind of offensive?"

"Sure," Jade narrowed her eyes.

"So…" Alyssa spun the desk chair in a circle, "why didn't you start writing this song earlier? I mean, this seems to be cutting it kind of close."

"Contrary to popular belief, I'm not good with deadlines."

"Really? You're writing a song three days before you're performing it because you procrastinated?" she was spinning faster in the chair.

"I mean, I had another song but I had to scrap it today."

"Oh, how come?"

"Well, it had nothing to do with someone paying a guy to ask me out so my ex-boyfriend could go on a date, if that's what you're thinking."

"Understood."

With my eyes on the prize,

Not a thing to my name.

True friendship is putting someone's ex on speakerphone for them. I'm sooo sorry for my absence, I've been busy with doing nothing and being uninspired and dancing myself to death. This song is "Somebody New" by Joywave, and their new(ish) album is super duper fantastic and I listened to it literally more than ten times while writing this chapter. Anyway, thank you so much for still supporting my story even though I'm waaay off track! You're all awesome.