Jade tended to like movies in which someone died. Or, you know, got tortured a little. Just something to liven things up. The Scissoring was a personal favourite, although she'd long run out of watching partners, with Cat hurrying away at even the mention of the name, and Beck arguing that she couldn't surely still enjoy a movie she'd watched more times than she could count on her hands.
Nevertheless, despite having her preferences, Jade didn't mind curling up in Beck's bed and watching a rom-com or a comedy or a drama. So long as the important things were in place - Beck, and her head tucked into his neck. At present, they were watching a film about a spy who'd lost his passport, and Jade really couldn't work out whether it was supposed to be humorous or upsetting. Beck had his arms around her, however, and was tracing circles on her stomach, occasionally planting kisses on her hair, so it wasn't all bad, really.
His phone buzzing numerous times was, however, rather annoying, and after ignored the third notification, Jade rolled her eyes and reached over for the device.
She tried not to predict that it'd be Alyssa Vaughan, although that was fairly likely. She'd helped Beck get his big break, and now he felt like he owed her a friendly relationship, frequently texting her back whilst he was with his actual girlfriend.
For once, though, it wasn't her, or anything to do with the show, or even Tori Vega, who was just as irritatingly relentless as Alyssa.
In fact, it was Andre, inviting him to Karaoke Dokie. Jade tried to ignore her internal relief that it wasn't a girl, and put the phone back on Beck's side table.
"What was it?" Asked Beck, his fingertips coming to a halt over Jade's navel.
"Just Andre. Asking about Karaoke Dokie."
Beck frowned and picked up the phone. "You don't want to go?"
Jade made a nondescript noise and nestled further into Beck's side. But he was already typing away, attention far from 'Eye Spy'.
"You really don't want to go?" Beck asked a minute later. "It could be fun."
Jade groaned. "Can't we just stay here? I'm comfortable, and anyway, we can't be wasting babysitter time on that."
"We could take him." Beck suggested, looking over to the crib in the corner of the RV, in which Toby was babbling to himself.
Jade scoffed. "No we can't. You think he'll last more than a minute in a place where the primary purpose is to sing, loudly and often badly?"
Beck couldn't argue with that logic.
His phone buzzed once again and, after a moment, he turned back to Jade with a grin. "Apparently Robbie's duetting with Rex. Come on, babe, you know you want to see that."
Jade rolled her eyes. She'd had more than enough contact with that double act recently.
"Oh and Cat's singing too. You know she'll really want you there, and it'll be fun to watch. Please, Jade?"
Jade groaned. "Fine, if you insist."
Since she'd broken up with Danny, Cat had been exceptionally quiet. After a long conversation, lots of tears, and a few new stuffed giraffes, she and Tori had made up, but she was still noticeably in her shell. Obviously, Jade was still furious with Tori, but moreso concerened with her friend's behaviour. If Tori's actions had a lasting impact on Cat, she would make certain to crush every single dream that Vega had, no matter how miniscule. Cat didn't need enemies with a friend like Tori, and Tori wouldn't have friends for much longer if she made an enemy of Jade.
If Cat was singing then Cat was happy. Or she should be, anyhow, and Jade wanted to see that. She was aware that she hadn't been the most present over the past few months, and their relationship had had an awkward tinge to it ever since Cat had run off in the aftermath of the Tori-Danny incident; Jade hadn't been able to find the words to describe why she'd been interrogating Cat on puppet details, or why she'd sprinted off after Danny instead of staying with her upset friend.
Which is how Jade ended up doing all but the opposite of what she would really like to be doing on a Friday evening. Instead of curled up in Beck's bed with zero plans, she was sitting under blue loghts in Karaoke Dokie, trying to ignore the throb in head head aggravated by every pulsation of bass from the speakers.
It was worth it though. Cat had, as foretold, taken to the stage, and seemed to Jade an almost entirely different person. Her singing, as predicted, was out of this world, but her confidence was what stunned Jade. Gone was the visible insecurity of the past few weeks, and the noticeable lack of confidence. All the negative consequences of her relationship with Danny seemed to have dissolved with just one peppy pop song.
The redhead beamed as she returned to her friends, all of whom congratulated her rapturously. Jade gave her a hug, which was enthusastically reciprocated, and proceeded to offer to buy Cat a soda. It was a metaphorical olive branch, but it seemed to work. Cat smiled genuinely, requested a lemonade, and sat back down, her eyes lingering on Jade with a palapble sense of gratitude.
Jade smiled herself. See, she was capable of being a good mother and a good friend. All was not lost.
Beck couldn't help but notice the pair's simultaenous positivity. Being away on set so often, he wasn't sure what had occurred recently to disrupt a once inpenetrable friendship, but clearly things were back on track.
Thinking about this, Beck almost missed the new arrivals to the table.
The first was a slender brunette girl dressed in a flowing pink top and blue jeans. Tall with purposeful eyes, she stalked straight over to Beck and sat down in Jade's empty seat.
Behind her, a second girl lingered more awkwardly. Blonde and less defiant-looking, she hovered at the side of the table before Andre generously morioned for her to sit in an empty seat, largely due to second-hand embarrassment than any personal preference.
"Hey, you're a new face." The first girl said to Beck, something sultry in her tone.
Beck looked around, as if trying to work out who the girl was talking to, when it was plainly him.
"Me? I've come here before." He laughed, awkwardly.
"Have you now? I'm sure I would've noticed you."
"Nah, I blend in." Beck chuckled.
"Oh, trust me, you don't."
Beck ran a hand through his hair, smiling bashfully. Andre and Cat looked on in concern, whilst Tori's focus was purely on the girl who thought she could saunter up to Beck and secure him as hers.
Get in line.
"I'm Hayley." She said with a smile, holding out a hand for Beck to take. Hesitantly, he took it, resulting in an awkward handshake rather than the hand kiss Hayley was presumably after. Nevertheless, her smile didn't falter.
"Beck." Beck replied, with a slight nod.
"Oh, I know who you are."
"You do?" Beck asked, eyebrows raised.
"Of course. Little Lake High? I'm already obsessed."
Beck frowned. "But it's not even out yet. We've barely started promoting it."
"Connections, honey." Hayley winked. "My dad knows people, so I got to see the pilot. It seems you look as good in real life as you do on the show."
Beck flushed red. "Oh, thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed the show, too."
"He's got the second one ready for me, if you wanted to watch it? I've got a flatscreen TV at my place." Hayley said, batting her eyelashes.
Beck opened his mouth, his mind whirring to conjure up a polite rejection, but he was saved by the bell, in this instance being the irritance of his girlfriend.
"Yeah, he says no." She told Hayley. Somehow, Beck thought sharing his excitement at being recognised for the first time probably wouldn't go down well.
Hayley swiveled round on her chair, giving Jade a once over with an unimpressed look.
"I think you say no, not Beck. And who are you to decide what he does with his life?" Hayley spat.
"Well, I'm his girlfriend, so I have more influence than you, for a start." Jade replied, impatiently.
"You're his girlfriend?" Hayley asked, incredulously, and looked Jade up and down as if models weren't glad that she'd chosen acting. She stood up and Jade veered closer to her.
"Yeah. Got a problem with that?" Jade asked, gritting her teeth.
"No." Hayley replied. "Just surpised that's all."
"What? You expected some blonde cheerleader with worms for brains?"
"I just expected more than this." Hayley smirked.
"Who do you think you are? I don't even know you and you-"
"Hey, hey," Beck cooed, standing up to separate the pair as Jade got markedly more wound up. "it doesn't matter. Let's just ignore them and enjoy our evening out." He carried on, shooting Hayley a look which did appear to dampen her spirit.
"I hope you enjoy the rest of the show." He said, reparatively, before turning back to Jade and herding her into the seat Hayley had just vacated. This seemed to do the trick. With no upcoming star to focus her attention on, Hayley practically clicked her fingers at her blonde sidekick, who promptly sprang up from the seat Andre had given her. The pair then stalked off to a different table, seemingly trying to catwalk but succeeding only in looking as though they were both wearing particularly uncomfortable shoes.
"Fucking bitch." Jade said under her breath, and Beck rolled his eyes. Why she was even giving Hayley the time of day, he wasn't sure. It certainly wasn't her usual form. More often than not, Jade's stony expressions were enough to scare people into doing as she wished. She'd always said that sooner or later people will embarrass themselves if you gave them the space, so why waste your energy?
She was right, of course, even in an instance where she wasn't following her own advice. It only took half an hour for Hayley and "Tara", as announced by the overly-excited-looking MC, to take to the stage. Still looking as though their shoes were giving them blisters, they turned back to back, hands on sparkling hips, with their mics poised for a volcanic performance.
What actually occurred, however, was more adjacent with a cat's meow along the seismic scale.
They were awful. Truly, utterly terrible.
From the first note to the last, Jade's face stretched into a joker-esque grin. There was nothing more satisfying than unlikeabke people digging their own graves. Jade didn't even need to perform herself - seeing the girls' attempt at singing, it would be a cruel final strike to something already dead.
She leaned towards Beck, also looking fairly gleeful for someone having to listen to such a crime against music. "Thank you for taking me. I'm starting to enjoy myself now."
Beck turned to her and smirked, unable to resist kissing her. Jade wasn't sure if it was a sign of her negative influence upon Beck that he was attracted to her visible displays of delighting in others' downfalls, but when it meant she got to kiss him, she didn't care to think about it too deeply.
It was nice, being out together, without the stress of Toby, or other girls. If Jade worked hard enough, she didn't think about everything she had to worry about either, or the dull pain in her head that seemed to be her natural state these days.
Beck snaked an arm around her and she tucked herself into his side, barely preventing an eyeroll upon seeing Tori staring at them in a poor attempt to be inconspicious.
"I love karaoke." Cat beamed, seemingly just happy to be out with her friends.
The group nodded earnestly.
"Gotta thank Japan for that one." Andre said, with a mock salute.
"I love Japan. I went there with my family last summer and it was so amazing. It's so futuristic." Tori exclaimed.
This time, Jade didn't restrict her eyeroll. The furthest she'd been with her family was Tampa Bay to visit an aunt. There, her mother had forced her to take a picture with a dolphin so she could send it to Jade's father as evidence that his child support was being spent on "enriching" experiences for their daughter. This had, unfortunately, ended with an emergency room trip where Jade had to wait hours before her bite from a supposedly "friendly" dolphin could be bandaged up, after which she was prodded with a great number of vaccinations for aquatic diseases. The episode had provided her mother with a most unwelcome hospital bill, and so after, holidays which Jade was invited on were incredibly rare. Safe to say, she did not need to hear about how much fun the Vegas had frolicking around Tokyo.
"I'd love to go to Japan, but my brother's banned from there." Said Cat.
"How do you get banned from a country?" Beck asked, quizzically.
"Oh, he stabbed my cousin Jesse." Cat replied nonchalantly. At the stunned silence, she clarified, "It was an accident... it was at Disneyland."
No one quite knew what to say to that, as usual. Usually Jade would ease the awkwardness by asking how Jesse (who cropped up in a number of Cat's stories) responded, but she felt a kind of exhaustion at the idea of continuing the story that surprised her.
In the end, it was Beck who broke the silence, offering to buy a round of drinks. Jade couldn't help but laugh at the terminology, her boyfriend acting as though he would be coming back with an armful of vodka cokes rather than the overpriced sodas he would end up depositing on the table.
With Beck otherwise occupied, Cat chose her moment to speak to Jade. You almost needed an appointment to get to her these days - she was always so busy with something or someone, or worse, consumed by her own suffocating thoughts.
"Jesse punched him." Cat smiled, nudging Jade. "It was only a plastic knife but it got stuck up Jesse's nose and then they both got kicked out."
"Of Disneyland or the country?" Jade asked, and Cat beamed at the response.
"Um, I'm not sure. My brother's been kicked out of a lot of things. He might get kicked out of the house."
"Really?" Jade asked, with an eyebrow raise. It seemed that whatever Marco did, his parents were determined to act as though he was normal, which included allowing him to live at their house rent-free, although he must've been nearing 22.
"Well... no, not really. But he's been really bad lately."
"Hmm?" Jade murmured, but her attention had been caught by a scene on the other side of the room. Beck, a holder of drinks in his hands, had been stopped by a busty brunette and the pair appeared deep in pleasant conversation. As Cat carried on talking, Jade gripped the edge of the table, seeing Beck lean in for a selfie, two pairs of pearly white teeth showing.
"...so what do you think?" Cat asked Jade, hopefully?"
"Hm?" Jade looked away from Beck, who was now beginning to make his way back to the table, fortunately without the girl. "Oh, yeah, I'm really sorry about that Cat, that sucks."
Cat paused for a moment. "Yeah."
She had asked Jade if she'd like to join her for dinner at her Nonna's. The older woman had mentioned that she hadn't seen Cat's friend in a while and it would be nice to catch up. Cat mentally drafted her notification of rejection.
Beck sat down again, distributing the drinks to the table, and Jade's attention was immediately upon him.
"Who was that girl?"
"Another fan of the show." Beck grinned. "Isn't it great? It's not even out yet and I'm already being recognised."
"Yeah, so great." Jade replied, unenthusiastically.
Beck shot her a look, more hurt than anything. Surely, as his girlfriend, she should be pleased that something he'd put so much time and effort into was paying off?
Before he had time to pose this question to her, however, the MC had cut the music and announced that the winner of the evening's karaoke contest was due to be announced. The gang, sans Tori who was secretly hoping her rendition of Hot'N'Cold might come up on top, buzzed excitedly, stretching out arms to pre-emptively congratulate Cat on her inevitable win. Though, if they'd looked a little closer, she didn't seem quite so upbeat for someone who was certainly about to be applauded.
Perhaps she was a psychic. Because instead of the name they (and 90% of the crowd) were expecting to be called out, the MC raised his mic to his lips and yelled something else entirely.
"Hayley and Tara!"