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Tori found herself with an empty beer bottle in her hands. Then she felt herself being lightly shoved to the center of the huge circle of, technically, former classmates. She was at Beck’s house because his parents were in Canada, so he decided to take advantage and throw a belated graduation party. Tori wasn’t sure how people she never even saw at Hollywood Arts showed up, but Beck was a popular guy and she figured he knew them some way or another.
All of them were playing spin the bottle and it caught Tori off guard when Jade sat in the circle as well. Albeit reluctantly, but still.
(Tori still couldn’t believe Jade showed up at all considering she and Beck didn’t break up on the best of terms. But it did feel a little normal when the whole gang was there, so Tori was glad when she saw Jade’s car pull up. And it felt more normal when Jade argued that they were too old to be playing spin the bottle; Beck’s rebuttal was that she didn’t have to play. Jade said she was playing because she wanted to.)
“Just spin it already, Vega,” Jade scowled.
“Oh,” Tori didn’t realize how long she’d been holding it. “Yeah.” She put the bottle on the ground and gave it a decent spin. The bottle quickly spun for an eternity until it finally slowed down, which was when Tori felt her hands get clammy. She just hoped it landed on someone nice and someone who wasn’t going to make her do anything she didn’t want to. And Tori really hoped it landed on––
“Jade!” Cat squeaked, covering her mouth with both of her hands.
All the side conversations stopped and the only thing anyone could hear was a faint pop song in the background. Tori silently wondered if the universe listened to her wish.
It was somewhat of a recent thing — her crush on Jade. Tori didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, so she kept it to herself. While it felt a little different from other crushes she’d had before, Tori tried to convince herself she would get over it (over Jade) soon. Or at least she hoped she would.
Tori wanted to take the risk and ask Jade out during the last few months of school, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. There was too much potential for it to blow up in her face, in her opinion. At first, she felt guilty for having a crush on her friend’s ex-girlfriend, but then Tori remembered Beck had no problem wanting to kiss her a year ago, so the guilt sort of melted away after that. Her biggest fear, really, was making things awkward if Jade didn’t reciprocate the feelings, which was totally fine with Tori, but it would’ve been really weird to be hanging around someone who rejected her.
Tori sputtered, “Um, I can spin again––”
“That’s against the rules!”
Tori couldn’t tell who shouted that out, but it made her whole face flush up to the tips of her ears. Then she looked at Jade nervously and she only got more nervous when she saw how annoyed Jade looked.
“It’s just a stupid game,” Jade muttered. Then she leaned across the circle and pressed her lips against Tori’s, cupping her jaw. The stupid rules –– which Jade was sure Beck made up –– required them to kiss for seven seconds and, like the idiots they were, the party-goers started counting down.
Tori eagerly kissed Jade back. She didn’t know what to do with her hands, so she awkwardly held one to her side and kept the other one on the ground to support herself. God, this was actually happening. Sure, Tori had some…thoughts about kissing Jade before, but she never thought about kissing Jade in front of a good chunk of the senior class. But, fuck, she didn’t care at all. It was great and way better than she imagined and––
“One!”
–– and it was over.
Jade separated as soon as the countdown was finished and sat back down like nothing happened. Maybe Jade was one of those people that didn’t think kissing was a big deal.
Tori tore her gaze away from Jade before it got weird. She didn’t want to look creepy by staring at her for too long, even if that was kind of all Tori wanted to do. After a few more people kissed, Tori still felt a bit flustered with everything, so she got up and went out to the porch for some fresh air. There were too many people there for her liking, so she opted to hang out near Beck’s RV. She was grateful that it was a nice, quiet night, especially when she looked up at the sky. Even the smog couldn’t ruin the view of the moon she had.
“Hey.”
Tori jumped at the sudden voice and then her eyes widened. She didn’t know what to say, and based on the fact that her mouth was open, but no noise was coming out, she couldn’t talk anyway.
“Sorry,” Jade apologized. Which, weird, but appreciated. “I thought you heard me walking over.”
“It’s…it’s okay,” Tori slowly found her voice again. She was so confused –– why was Jade outside with her? It was painfully quiet for…Tori wasn’t even sure how long, but it felt like hours. The silence was about to kill Tori; she had to ask. “Why are you here?” Jade scowled and Tori panicked. “No, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant––”
“I didn’t wanna be stuck inside with a bunch of idiots playing a stupid game.”
That made a ton of sense to Tori and she found herself nodding along. “I’m still surprised you came,” she admitted. She didn’t know if that was the right thing to say, but it was true.
“I didn’t have anything better to do,” Jade replied, shrugging. “You’re lucky I came. I saved your ass from kissing one of those losers.”
“Yeah,” Tori nervously chuckled. She felt herself blushing all over again. The only difference was it was a lot less suffocating than it was inside, mostly due to the lack of other people. Tori found herself physically biting her tongue in order to not gush about how great the kiss was. That would definitely scare Jade off and have her gone in seconds.
“Did I make you uncomfortable or something?” Jade sighed, almost annoyed. Tori was being oddly short with her and it was obviously because of the kiss. There was no other explanation.
Tori whipped her head and finally looked Jade in the eye. “No!” she replied, shaking her head. Jade still didn’t look convinced. “You really didn’t.”
“Then why are you acting so weird?” Jade pushed. This wasn’t adding up.
“I actually liked it?” Tori blurted out. God. Why couldn’t she help herself?
“Oh,” Jade realized. That made sense. A ton of sense, actually. Jade had noticed how differently Tori started acting around her towards the end of the school year. But Tori was always sort of weird, so she never questioned it. Now, though, through that simple admission, it all clicked for Jade. “You like me,” she concluded aloud.
“What?” Tori’s voice came out painfully high. The blood rushed to her face all over again and there was nowhere to run. How was this happening? How could Jade possibly know that? “How did you––”
“You’re not exactly subtle.”
God, why was Jade being so nonchalant about this? If anything, it only stressed Tori out more, mostly because she couldn’t deny it. But there was one thing she could do. “Bye!” Tori bolted out of the driveway and started sprinting home. She was glad it wasn’t too late and that her house was only about a ten minute walk from Beck’s. Since she was running, however, she made it home about three minutes faster than that.
As usual, the house was empty. David was working late and Holly was visiting family up in Fresno. Trina was staying in her apartment in Long Beach until her lease was finished at the end of the month.
As Tori tried to get her breathing under control, she took her phone out and texted Andre she was already home, so he wouldn’t look for her when it was time to leave. She went upstairs to her room and changed into her pajamas and washed her face. She took her contacts out and got in bed, face pressed down into her pillow as she tried to process everything. She ran away from Jade. Figuratively and literally. How embarrassing.
Tori already figured she had maybe about a five percent chance with Jade. She was positive that, after tonight, her odds were down to a solid zero percent. Tori wanted to scream into her pillow and let out every ounce of frustration she had, but all that came out was a small, pathetic whine.
She was able to wallow in self pity until a loud pounding on the front door startled her. Tori decided to ignore it, but then her phone chimed several times and she whined again. She blindly reached for her glasses and then grabbed her phone to see who was texting her.
it’s me
answer the door
hurry up
your creepy neighbor is staring at me
Fuck.
Tori scampered down the stairs anyway. The pounding on the door did not let up and Tori took a deep breath before finally opening the door. “Hi.”
Jade lightly pushed her over and let herself inside. She dropped her purse on the couch and then crossed her arms, wordlessly glaring at Tori.
“Um,” Tori stammered. “What brings you here?” Tori wished she could disappear when Jade remained quiet. But she knew what she had to do and let out a shaky sigh. “Sorry for running away. That was kinda lame.”
“No shit,” Jade snapped. “I didn’t even say anything bad.”
“I know, but you figured it out,” Tori sighed, then sat on her couch. She couldn’t believe she was talking about this with Jade. It was so weird.
Jade rolled her eyes. “Like I said, you’re not that subtle. After you said you liked the kiss, it made sense.”
“Does it even matter?” Tori asked. “You can just forget about it. You didn’t have to come here. It’s fine.”
“Obviously I didn’t have to come here. I came because I wanted to,” Jade rolled her eyes again.
“Why?”
Jade let out a deep, frustrated sigh. She didn’t want to explicitly say it, but maybe she had to. For Jade to say that she didn’t also enjoy the kiss would be the ultimate lie. And maybe the kiss brought up some old , deeply repressed feelings about Tori that Jade had at one (or several) point(s) in time.
It was something that Jade simply thought would never happen. Ever. So, she never said or did anything about it. Jade moved on and that was it. Or at least she thought that was it. That stupid bottle landing on her revitalized whatever feelings Jade thought she no longer had. And the kiss wasn’t bad, though Jade wished it didn’t have to be in front of people she couldn’t care less about.
But still, Jade was kind of embarrassed to admit all of that. So, she kept it short and hoped Tori would understand the meaning behind it. (She was still Jade. It was hard for her to be completely open with her feelings.) “I didn’t hate the kiss either.”
Tori sat up straight on her couch. She definitely caught on. “You mean…”
“Yeah.” Jade shrugged, looking almost everywhere but at Tori again. “I tried following you in my car to tell you, but I didn’t know what direction you went in. I didn’t know you were so fast.”
“I was on the track team at Sherwood.” Tori didn’t know why she decided to focus on the last part of Jade reciprocating her feelings for her, but…she did. And Jade at least looked genuinely interested in that fact.
“You used to run track?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Tori shrugged. After she transferred to Hollywood Arts, it was rare for her to talk about her time at Sherwood, but even rarer for her to talk about the extracurriculars she participated in there. “I never told anyone.”
“You can tell me more on our date,” Jade casually replied.
“We’re going on a date?” Tori’s face lit up. Was this Jade’s way of asking her out?
“If you ever actually ask me out on one, then, yeah we might.”