Good news! I've finished this story so it definitely has an ending! There are another 18 chapters to go after this one which you'll all hopefully enjoy!

It was quarter past twelve by the time Jade's phone rung. She had been asleep and it took more than a few moments for to gather herself and realise that she wasn't dreaming.

Eyes unconciously wandering to check on Toby, she reached over to her bedside table and picked up the phone.

"What?"

"Is everything alright?" Beck's voice hummed out of the speaker. He didn't sound weary, as she did, but worried.

"Uh, I guess." Jade replied. She was too tired to explain the whole charade now. Beck hadn't been there at the time and the window had been missed.

"Jade, you called me like fifteen times. What the hell happened? Is Toby okay?"

"Toby's fine. It was just something from the play."

Beck took an audible sharp intake of breath. "Jade you can't call me fifteen times and then leave no explanation. What am I supposed to think? You can't worry me like that if it's not about Toby."

Jade felt a significant stab of annoyance. "Well what if it's about me?"

Beck paused for a moment. "You know that's not what I meant."

Jade scoffed. "No I don't. You just said not to bother you if it's not about Toby. What the fuck is that about, Beck?"

"Are you joking? That's not what I said!"

"Well, you all but did."

"This is ridiculous. You're putting words into my mouth!"

"No, I'm just interpreting what you're saying!"

Jade heard a rustle beyond the wall, and became conscious of her raised voice.

"Look, Amber will kill me if I start shouting," she added, before Beck could retort. "So let's talk about this tomorrow."

Beck sighed. "Fine."

"Are you at school tomorrow?"

"No."

Jade rolled her eyes. "Of course you're not."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Jade could not be bothered with a fight five seconds after having to call off a different one.

"I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"Bye."

"Bye."

As the phone clicked off, Jade collapsed back onto her pillow. It took her three hours to fall back asleep.

If Beck didn't apologise straight away, she would be mad. If he didn't apologise within seconds, profusely, and with concrete plans of both how to make things up to her, and how to avoid such an incident in the future, she would be mad.

She hadn't expected that what she'd be mad at was him failing to apologise at all.

"What do you mean, 'so'?" Jade spat, angrily.

"What are we doing here, Jade? Let's talk."

"We can talk after you apologise."

"Me?" Beck looked genuinely stunned. "What do I have to apologise for?"

Jade was taken aback. "For never being here. For missing my play and not even asking how it went. For not picking up and getting annoyed that I'd even called in the first place. For insinuating that things only matter if they involve Toby." She listed, counting on her fingers. "Need I go on?"

Beck shook his head. "I was at work all day yesterday. It's ridiculous for you to be mad that I'm not constantly accessible."

"I'm not! It's just you could try to make up for it once in a while by not being a prick when you're around."

Beck scoffed. "That's rich. You think you're a ray of sunshine when we're together?"

Now, a lot of people disliked Jade. From her classmates to her own family, people found her difficult and uncompromising. Few people liked being around her, and those that did generally realised that there were reasons for her demeanour.

Always.

Jade shook her head. "You're not supposed to see me like that."

Beck sighed in exasperation. "So I'm not supposed to feel annoyed when you're not transparent with me? I'm not supposed to notice when you're miserable?"

"You're supposed to get why I'm miserable!"

"You're always miserable!"

"And why do you think that is?" Jade yelled, and the pair descended into silence.

She was glad that they had chosen the park to have this conversation. They were sat across from each other on a bench, with more than enough distance to the next human to allow them to shout. Toby lay minding his own business in his stroller, and Jade tried not to worry about how he seemed entirely unfazed by his parents' adjacent argument. He couldn't already be used to their fighting; she wouldn't allow him to have that kind of childhood.

"What do you want me to do here?" Beck asked. As Jade looked at him, she realised that, like her but perhaps in a different way, he was utterly defeated.

"I just wanted you to apologise."

"And that's all I wanted from you."

Jade shook her head with a caustic smile. "But neither of us know what we're apologising for, right? So what's the point? We're not on the same page - an apology's never going to be genuine."

Beck shrugged. "I don't want you to be upset."

"But I am. And you don't get why."

"I'm not a mind-reader, Jade."

"But you're supposed to get me. You used to get me."

"What are you saying?"

"I think I've changed too much, Beck. And so have you. We don't understand each other. And if we don't have that, what do we have?"

"Jade-"

"Be honest - if we didn't have Toby, would we be trying so hard to save this?"

Beck looked over at Toby. He couldn't manage an answer.

"We wouldn't, Beck. We'd see it purely for how it is. It's done, Beck. Let's just let it go."

"Jade, I said that Toby deserves better than impulsive breakups whenever we argue."

"This isn't impulsive." Jade replied, defiantly, and he realised that she was telling the truth. "I'm not happy, you're not happy, and this isn't a happy relationship. This is no environment for a child to grow up in, but it's also no environment for love. This isn't working and hasn't been for a long time. You know that."

Beck's eyes welled up, and Jade had to look away so as not to let him see that hers were doing the same.

"We don't just need to do this for Toby. We need to do this for ourselves." Jade whispered.

"We can make it work. If we try." Beck pleaded.

Jade shook her head. "I can't. This-" she gestured around, referring to more than just the relationship. "-it's killing me. I can't stand what we're doing to each other. I don't want to hate you."

"I don't hate you, Jade. I could never hate you."

"And that's how I want things to stay."

"Please don't do this."

"It's already done." Jade replied, a tear slipping down her cheek. "I'm sorry."

Beck looked down, failing to acknowledge her.

"I'm gonna take Toby home." Jade said, looking at the slightly greying sky. "You're welcome to come, now or... whenever. You know - to see him."

Beck didn't answer.

With a sigh, she stood up from the bench and took hold of Toby's stroller.

It was the hardest walk of her life, pushing the pram away from Beck, trying to ignore the screams in her head to take it all back, to turn around and apologise. But on she moved, remaining loyal to her head, whilst her heart begged her to look back.

Beck looked up, just as he knew that she would be turning to spy him. Because they'd always been in tune with each other. That was love.

But all he saw was her back.

Beck and Jade weren't unfamiliar with breakups.

The Hollywood Arts student body liked to joke that they often broke up and got back together before they could even update their Slap statuses, but there was honestly some truth behind this. Jade was a little ashamed to admit that she couldn't provide a definite number for the amount of breakups they'd gone through in their two-and-a-half years together, but she was pretty sure it spanned more than one hand.

She was hotheaded and impulsive, and was always the one who both initiated, and got hurt, by the breakups. They always resulted in her getting insecure and desperate, whilst Beck gained the upper hand, as the knight in shining armour to allay her vulnerabilities. At the crux of it, however, the breakups didn't tend to last long because they loved each other and wanted to be together. Previously, their longest separation hadn't lasted a week.

They'd now been apart for three weeks.

With each day that passed, their peers, who had once assumed that they would see the pair embracing in reconciliation in no time, began to believe that this was for real. Beck & Jade had become Beck and Jade. There was to be no more kisses in the corridor, arms around each other in class, rides to and from school together. No longer would they be joined at the hip, sharing secret moments and words to which no one else was privy.

Naturally, the female body at Hollywood Arts descended into a frenzy.

Jade hardly noticed, however. If she'd made even a half-hearted effort to listen to the chattering of conversations around her, she would've done well not to hear her ex-boyfriend's name within the first thirty seconds. He was on the lips of every girl, none of whom seemed particularly bothered that he had a young child in tow. Ultimately, these were hyper-sexual theatre school kids, and Beck, the attractive and presently-successful pretty boy, was the absolute diamond.

But for Jade, the world around her had started to pass in a blur. It was a matter of getting through the days, or, more importantly, getting Toby through them. Mealtimes rarely occurred to her, and god was she tired. If she didn't have Toby to consider, how she would've loved to simply curl up in a ball and sleep forever.

Robbie didn't even register her threadlike existence as he weaved past her table on his way to sit with the boys. He, like the rest of the gang, hadn't purposefully taken sides, still perfectly open to speaking to Jade if she spoke to him. However, he'd just naturally gravitated to Beck, unintentionally of course. The boy just was much better company, and it was much easier to be friends with someone who actually seemed to occupy a space in life. Jade was barely even still existing.

Beck also had a certain social status which brought opportunities. Sure, Jade wasn't exactly a dweeb, something which could largely be accredited to the student body's consensus fear of her, but she wasn't typically the recipient of the same invites which were handed to Beck.

Certainly, she wouldn't have been inviting him to a party teeming with college girls.

"So how do you know this guy?" Asked Andre.

"He's my stunt double in Little Lake."

"You need a stunt double? For what? If you have to blowdry your hair a little too feistily?"

Beck chuckled. "It's cause of child safety laws and stuff. Anything where we could lightly hit our heads or get a bruise or something and they throw the stunt doubles straight in."

"And he wants us to come?" Robbie asked, nervously.

"Yeah." Beck shrugged. "He said he wanted it to be super big. He's invited loads of people from college and he told me to bring whoever."

"Wow." Robbie beamed. A college party was beyond the realm of accessibility for most uber-popular high school students, let alone people like him. Maybe he might finally lose his virginity...

"Come to mine at eight on Saturday and I can drive you there. We might have to taxi back, though." Beck laughed suggestively.

Andre grinned and shook his head, as Robbie pretended to know why on earth Beck wouldn't also be able to drive them home.