Based on the episode "Car, Rain, and Fire". This also references the one-shot story I wrote that tied in to the last chapter. It is called "Shaken", and I would recommend reading it first as it references what has been going on between Jade and Beck over the last couple days before the events of this chapter.
...
Cat was still getting used to the fact that Beck and Jade were broken up. As much as Jade cried at night over the breakup, Cat did too. She also forgot her "special vitamins" several days that week, so her emotions were on even more of a spiral that normal. When she saw what she thought was an obituary for her favourite actress, Mona Patterson, she was already primed for emotional disaster. She was plunged into deep mourning, and even Tori's attempts at joviality that morning at school could do nothing to alleviate her cloud of sadness.
She was not beyond using her teary eyes and pitiful sniffles to get her way. Soon Tori was committed not only to their joint science project, but also getting her to arrange a memorial pilgrimage to Mona Patterson's house to leave a tribute display.
That ride just so happened to be Jade. Although Tori said that it was because Jade wanted to breath in the lingering soul of the actress, Cat was hopeful that it was actually because Jade loved her so much that she was willing to help out her devastated friend.
And when Jade learned that she was driving Cat's brother's derelict old car to San Diego rather than to a nearby neighbourhood and yet still kept driving through the rain, Cat was convinced that, despite other things that were changing, Jade still loved her and was committed to taking care of her.
For her part, Jade was wondering why she could not have just said "no". But when she got home and felt her stomach sink a little as she checked her phone and realized - again - that no texts from Beck was her new normal, she was relieved for the distraction that Cat's ill-fated memorial field trip had provided.
She opened her text chain from Beck. The last text was from the night of the earthquake. They had argued bitterly then. It had been a point of cartharsis, almost, their emotional explosion in lieu of true closure on the night they silently broke up on other sides of a door. But in his text he had said he was glad she was okay, and she had hold him the truth - she was glad he was too.
Then he had sent her that little black heart emoji. It had been their stand-in for "good night - I love you" so many times.
She had almost sent it back, but she had not.
Looking at it now, she wondered if she should have.
Maybe.
Too late now.
She switched to her text chain with Cat and sent her a pink heart. Tonight Cat sent a yellow one back. She never knew what colour to expect from Cat, but she was grateful that Cat had gone with one of her top five colours rather than black to humour Jade. She did not think she could have handled it.