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The iconic guitar riff of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” blaring loudly startled Beck from his sleep, sending him into a slouched sitting position as he tiredly shuffled his hands around the bed looking for his Pear Phone. When he finally found the offending device, he hurriedly turned the alarm off and then promptly allowed himself to fall back into a lying down position. He bounced slightly on the old springs of his mattress in a way that might have been amusing had he not woken right back up into his sour mood from before he’d gone to sleep.
For the umpteenth time in their long, arduous history, and the tenth or so time since he and Jade had reunited at the Full Moon Jam, the two of them were at odds. The latest squabble had started when, of all unimportant things, he’d brought her the wrong kind of coffee from Jet Brew. She liked it black with two sugars, something he’d known intimately when they were together from all the times he lovingly took care of the coffee fetching in their relationship. He, however, had been exhausted upon waking up after staying up too late to cram for a U.S. Government test, and ordered her a caramel frappuccino. Which just so happened to be one of the many, many things that Jade hated, calling it a “sugar-soaked bastardization of perfectly good coffee” when he’d shown up with it.
Beck had been conflicted when she’d gotten upset. It was such a minute interaction, a small blip on his daily radar of issues and assorted tasks to take care of, that part of him felt vehemently frustrated that Jade was, after three and a half years of on-again-off-again dating, still picking at things that didn’t need to be picked at. On the other hand, though, the drink he’d ordered wasn’t entirely a coincidence; it was the beverage of choice of a pretty blonde senior girl named Juliette he’d taken out for coffee and a movie just a few weeks before the Full Moon Jam where, well, it was all history after the whole school had witnessed it on the big stage, Sinjin’s spotlight on them. He’d woken up the day after to an angry paragraph and a block on The Slap from Juliette. Guilt not unlike the guilt clawing at him for mixing up his own girlfriend’s order with another girl’s had overcome him, and he hadn’t known whether to be happy or not to be back with Jade yet again.
Maybe that was why he had gotten annoyed at Jade’s dramaticism so quickly, and began saying admittedly hurtful things about how Jade was “always doing this” and hadn’t changed a bit since their last separation. It had ended in Jade dropping the frappuccino on the floor decisively and storming away, leaving him with the spilled, sugary mess of a drink to either take care of or leave there, making himself look like an ass to the number of students who had watched the scene go down. He’d had to ask random peers if they had napkins in their bookbags and then embarrass himself getting down on his knees to wipe up the mess with too-few entirely too-small napkins. His hands had gotten covered in the stuff, and he’d only become angrier. Despite his good sense, he’d sent a strongly-worded text to Jade that had made the squabble boil over into a full-blown fight.
Unlike in their small altercations, Jade didn’t cool off and return to his RV the next day, or the day after that, or the week after that. After a few days he tried to cover his ass by sending a long-winded apology over text, but she only cursed him out for doing so instead of “growing a pair” and apologizing in person. She ignored him for about ten days before that day of Beck’s unceremonious Guns N’ Roses awakening, and he knew that today, a fateful Tuesday, was the day he was going to break their silence.
So, with an exhausted spirit and a wavering resolve, he got dressed, sprayed on some Axe to cover his body odor from last night’s sweat, and departed to school. Once his car was parked and he was inside Hollywood Arts, he quickly spotted Jade.
“Hey,” he managed to force out once he’d mustered the strength to approach her where she was sulking at her locker. She was a force to be reckoned with, after all, at least when she looked like she did now.
“Don’t,” she shot back, a warning in her eyes.
“Oh, come on, Jade.” His voice took on a quality that Jade had told him in arguments before that she hated: underlying condescension. “You can’t just shut me out like this for weeks. That’s not how normal relationships work.”
“Oh, so our relationship isn’t normal now?” Her eyes had flared in that challenging, supposedly-dangerous way that he knew didn’t have anything behind it from all the times he’d had to bolster her confidence in quiet, emotional moments in his RV. It ground his gears more than he expected, the fighting, the acting, the differences between who she was with him alone and at school around everyone.
So he lashed out. “Jade, our relationship has never been normal! Do you think it’s normal to break up every three weeks? To keep coming back to each other when we could just be moving on from the fighting, the yelling, the text-fighting! Remember the play Tori took Sikowitz to? Where we disrupted the whole auditorium with our big pointless fight? I don’t want to be like that anymore!”
Jade deflated then, face taking on a somber visage, and Beck realized how badly he just fucked up. He’d expected more anger, not hurt feelings. At that point, he could no longer gauge which time she’d have either one. It was like he didn’t know her the same as he used to, and it made him set his jaw, teeth squeezed together painfully as he awaited Jade’s reply.
Her voice was small in a way he’d almost never heard her use when other people were around to witness it. “So what are you saying?”
He sighed, looking at the floor and shoving his hands in his jean pockets. “I don’t know. I- I just want things to be different. Like they used to be, you know?”
“We’ve been together for three-plus years, Beck. When exactly are you talking about?”
“When we first got together. You and I were inseparable, you didn’t so much as go to a movie without me!”
“Oh, so you want me to have no independence? To spend every waking moment with you? Now who’s not being normal about this?” The attitude was back in Jade’s voice but Beck knew it was a facade.
There was no way Jade hadn’t noticed the way things had felt… different, and he had a rising suspicion she was just trying to avoid it by drawing him back into an argument. After all, in her mind it was safer to express aggression than be open about her feelings. He’d known that for a long time; Jade was a complicated person. The thing was, he used to be invested in unraveling her, but lately he’d been more exasperated with her behavior than curious about what was causing it. That’s no fairer to her than her constant fight-picking is to me, is it?
A melancholy realization settled itself in Beck’s chest. They didn’t work together anymore the same way they used to, and that meant that despite how comfortable and familiar Jade was, their relationship had an implicit expiration date if they didn’t make an effort to mend their tensions. But for the second time in their spotty history, he genuinely wasn’t sure if he wanted to keep trying.
“That’s not what I want, Jade. I think you know that. I just want to feel like we’re each other’s ride-or-dies again! I want to recapture what made us good together. I want… to feel that spark again.”
All at once, Jade’s head tilted to the side, a frown pulled at her lips, and she began to fidget with the strap of her messenger bag over her shoulder. “So… right now you don’t feel the spark?”
Beck sighed, carding a hand through his long hair. “Be honest with me, Jade. Do you? Because this isn’t the first fight we’ve had since getting back together. Or the second. Or the third. Or even the fifth! It’s only been three months. You have to feel that things aren’t the same!”
Jade looked at her boots for a long moment. “Fine, I’ve felt it. But we’re supposed to fix it when things go wrong!” she said, lifting her gaze back upward to meet his eyes. “You- you sound like you’ve already given up.”
Then it was Beck’s turn to break eye contact. He looked at the students around him surreptitiously to see if any of them were listening to them, which only a few seemed to be, before sadly gazing into Jade’s somber blue-greens.
“We’ve been trying to make this work for a long time, Jade,” he murmured. “If we were really good for each other, wouldn’t we have figured it out by now?”
Jade’s eyes suddenly appeared shiny, and if Beck’s eyes weren’t deceiving him, it looked as if tears were about to escape them right there in the hall. “So is that it? It’s over? Just like that?”
Beck had never felt more wrong doing what was supposed to be the right thing. “I think it should be. I love you, and you’ll always be important to me, but… it’s time to call it.”
Jade scoffed, voice thick with the tears that were still building. “Time to call it…” she mocked derisively. “Beckett? You’re an idiot.”
Then she was pushing past him and striding away, leaving Beck unsure if he was relieved or brokenhearted.
He found out through André a few days later that Jade had gone to Tori’s house right after school. Just like the breakup before the breakup at the poker game, she’d poured her heart out to Tori, the girl she supposedly hated. It didn’t make much more sense to him than it had the first time.
Yeah, apparently she even stayed the night at Tori’s. Slept on her parents’ dirty old inflatable mattress too, read André’s most recent Slap message. Beck’s chest ached, not sure what to do with his deep-seated desire to make Jade feel better. Can’t exactly do that with this one, huh? Beck mused to himself bleakly as he tried to formulate a reply.
Before he could think of anything, André sent another DM. Not trying to make you do anything you’re not comfortable with, but maybe you should talk to her. Clear the air a little, yeah?
Beck stared at his Pear Phone for long enough that the screen timed out. He desperately wanted to reach out, because who could better understand what she was going through than him? Just because he’d been the one to end things didn’t mean he was surfing on rainbows. Didn’t anyone know or care that he hurt too?
I’ll think about it, he replied, and turned his phone off.
The next day at school, he came in earlier than usual to beat Jade to school and waited by his locker, watching the doors like a hawk. He waited for so long he began to get irrationally worried that something horrible had happened. Had she left Tori’s house late at night and gotten into a car accident, maybe? He paced back and forth until he got a few weird looks from others in the hall, and decided to lean back against his locker instead.
At five minutes until first period, though, Jade at last came through the front doors, dressed in a lazy sort of outfit consisting mainly of black spandex clothes. She didn’t even have her usual boots on, old Converse sneakers he hadn’t seen on her in years making an appearance. He carefully crossed the hall, stopping a few feet away and clearing his throat.
“Jade,” was all he could say. His mind was awash in a million possible ways the conversation could go, and he was so overwhelmed that none of his planned sentences came out.
“Beckett,” she said, not faltering as she put textbooks and notebooks from her bag into her locker. Suddenly, she turned to him with an icy stare. “Something I can help you with?”
“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” Beck almost mumbled, confidence wavering as he stared into the empty-looking eyes Jade had lazer-locked onto his.
“Oh, you know, just dandy!” Jade retorted, voice taking on the Betty Sue Goldenheart accent she usually used with Tori. “I, for one, love getting broken up with by people!”
“Jade, I know I could have handled things better, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it in public, I should have been… I don’t know, kinder. Gentler. But I’m not exactly jumping for joy over this breakup either, you know?”
“Oh, now you want me to feel sorry for you? This is your own doing! What do you want, a cookie for being sad after dumping me?”
“Jade-”
“No, don’t Jade me! If you want to know how I’m doing? Newsflash: I’m bad! If you want to help me? Leave me alone!” With that, Jade slammed her locker and stormed down the hall until she was out of sight.
Beck stood in front of her locker for a long moment, heart heavy. His thundering thoughts were rising to a crescendo inside his head; pain, guilt, regret, and a depressingly exhausted sadness were warring within him. He had wanted this, wanted to end what had felt like a tiring obligation more than a loving relationship. So why didn’t he feel good? Where was the relief he had been looking for?
In the end, he returned to his car as the first period bell rang and leaned his seat all the way back, finally allowing himself to cry.
The second week after the breakup, when Beck made it in later than usual at ten minutes until first period, he stopped short in his tracks, unsure if he was believing what he was seeing.
Jade stood at Tori’s locker, a small smile on her face. It almost looked as if she was genuinely enjoying Tori’s company. That fact swiftly got proven for Beck when Tori said something under her breath and Jade laughed, head tossed slightly back. Well, he’d thought jadedly, someone’s healing pretty fast.
He instantly berated himself mentally for his thought process. What, you want her to be miserable? You want her to feel like you feel? Only a real asshole would wish that on her. He trudged over to his locker, eyeing the few books and the spare flannel that visibly resided inside. He found forlornly that he didn’t identify as strongly with the clear door as he used to. He’d had no secrets and nothing to hide, but now that fact wasn’t true. He had to hide from all his friends and the school at large that he was still majorly broken up about losing Jade. When he’d started that conversation with her, he hadn’t wanted their relationship to end. He’d wanted to work towards reconciling, but he’d gotten into his head and made what felt like one of the worst mistakes of his life. His heart still ached just thinking about her, and he hurried to class without his proper books just to get away from the sounds of snickering coming from Tori’s locker.
When lunch came, he found that he hadn’t hurt nearly as bad as he could have yet. He arrived at the Asphalt Cafe to see Jade and Tori sitting next to each other at their usual lunch table, André, Cat, and Robbie surrounding them. The five of them were all talking, rather loud too, with intermittent laughter ringing out as jokes were made. Beck’s chest tugged at the sight of them all together; he felt so awful, so sunken into his depression that all he wanted was to join them, to hear Robbie’s lame jokes, Cat’s latest zany story about her brother, or one of André’s jaunty keyboard tunes he would sometimes play in between bites of his lunch. His friends were his greatest source of joy during the daytime, but with him and Jade not speaking, he was stuck on the opposite side of the patio, watching from afar.
He knew he couldn’t just sit down in the open spot on the side of the table they never used like he so desperately wanted to. The moment would instantly get awkward, Jade would either say something rude and make everyone uncomfortable or up and leave, no doubt drawing Tori after her the way she always did. As Beck skirted around the side of the Asphalt Cafe and to the Grub Truck to buy lunch, he stared wistfully at Tori. Once upon a time he’d thought they could have been something to each other should he and Jade break up. Now, he cursed himself for ever having such thoughts. I never deserved Jade in the first place…
At any rate, Tori had always seemed to be more invested in being Jade’s friend than his. He and Tori were close enough, and did things together with the group that Jade rarely came along to, and there was the time they went on their “opposite date” and shortly after nearly kissed during the Platinum Music Awards. But Tori was so passionate about getting past Jade’s walls, always trying to goad her into hugs or admitting that they truly were friends. She’d gotten Ms. Lee to put up money for Jade’s play, she’d helped her with buying a dog for Beck when they were broken up the time before the time before this time, (regardless of whether said dog minorly mauled his father…)
And, well, Beck would have to be stupid to deny that there was a unique sort of parley between Jade and Tori. Jade was nastily cruel when she truly hated someone, but from the incident with the fake stage fighting injury onward, she wasn’t that same level of rude to Tori. Sure, she’d done some majorly fucked-up things to her, like stealing her blood during Steamboat Suzy (which he’d had to needle her for ages to get her to admit to,) but where she ordinarily would just ignore someone she disliked to that degree, she instead poked and prodded at Tori, provoking her responses. Beck had wondered before if there was really an underlying like of Tori beneath all of Jade’s somewhat bitter theatrics that she couldn’t just admit. It was hard for her to make friends, as he knew. Maybe she’d wanted to be friends with her from the start. Regardless, seeing them so close when all he wanted was to be that close to Jade… It didn’t feel very good at all.
“Hey! Pretty hair boy! Are you gonna order or do I have time for a nap up here?” Festus shouted from inside the Grub Truck. Shit. Apparently he’d been standing at the truck for a long moment, a short line forming behind him.
“Uh, sorry. I’ll have a beef burrito,” he muttered sheepishly.
“Uh-uh, no burritos today. Only chorizo taquitos.”
Beck sighed. Looks like nothing in his life was going his way. “Some of those then.” Festus happily took his cash and disappeared into the kitchen of the truck, leaving him to stare at the pavement and wonder when it all went wrong.
A month after the breakup, Beck didn’t see any of his friends until Sikowitz’s class due to how late he’d been to school. He got detention for being twenty minutes late to first period, and it colored his attitude all day. By the time he got to Improv, his headspace was overly negative and he’d plopped himself into a chair all the way in the back corner. He’d expected to see Jade nearby, who had taken to sitting a seat away from him since they’d separated. But instead, she was on the other side of the room, directly next to Tori.
And, much to his shock, the two of them were sipping Jet Brew coffee together. Jade said something with a sly-looking smile on her face, making Tori choke on her coffee and cough some onto her pink t-shirt.
“Jade! What is wrong with you!?” she exclaimed, loud enough for the whole class, including Beck, to hear.
Beck watched intently as Jade mimed a biting motion at Tori, batting her eyelashes ever so slightly. He blinked, mouth opening slightly. He remembered a time in seventh grade when he was just a skinny boy, in his emo phase and still on the shorter side of things, when he and Jade had only just met. She’d liked to tease him a lot at that time, and would accompany her flirty-seeming jokes with biting gestures just like that. He recalled so clearly because of the way those motions had used to fill him with a burning anticipation in his gut, an excitement that Jade had later become the first person to truly stoke in him.
Beck’s head spun as he watched Jade use the sleeve of her black shirt to slowly wipe the spilled coffee from Tori’s shirt. Either he was reading way too much into things or the way her hand lingered on her chest was rather suggestive too.
No… he thought, watching Jade withdraw her hand and lick the spot on her shirt sleeve she’d just wiped Tori’s with.
“Jaaade! That’s so gross!” Tori said, shaking her head.
“It’s just coffee, you big baby, what’s gross about that?” Jade retorted. Except it wasn’t a retort, it was a reply that sounded wholly teasing in a good-natured way that was distinctly different from the brash rudeness of past comments to Tori. A horrid feeling somewhere between jealousy, fear, and envy brewed dangerously in Beck’s chest. There was no way he was picking up on what he was picking up on, right?
“Yeah, coffee from my shirt!” said Tori. “You don’t know when the last time I washed this was.”
“You’re almost getting it, Vega. Your shirt is what made it taste so good,” came Jade’s inexplicable reply, toned low and dramatic in an almost seductive-sounding way.
There was little doubt in Beck’s mind now, and he hated himself for being so nosy when he was supposed to be moving on and letting Jade do the same. But what was he going to do if Jade liked Tori? He didn’t think Tori liked girls, but if she did, the two of them would totally change the dynamics of the friend group by getting together. Tori was the champion of the group, always hosting get-togethers at her house so often left empty by her parents. A new relationship would mean Jade would surely be present at every movie night, every trip to Nozu or Karaoke Dokie, every group concert trip. He’d truly be ostracized from the friend group with Tori turned against him like she almost definitely would be after getting the scoop on what had happened from Jade’s biased position.
Beck stood up, unsure where he was going. But when he was at the door, he couldn’t stop himself from looking over his shoulder at the two girls. Tori’s face was a light shade of pink, a blush subsiding from her cheeks. Beck’s heart sank. Does she like her back? he wondered, begging the universe for it to not be true.
In that moment, he decided he was going home and not coming back for the rest of the day, detention be damned.
Two months after the breakup, it was time for the latest Friday Night Concert. Beck didn’t feel nearly as excited as he’d once felt for the occasion; out of all-consuming sadness and a certainty that he wouldn’t be welcomed anymore, he’d hardly seen or spoken to any of the group since the day at the Grub Truck. He hardly considered them his friend group anymore seeing as the only one who still regularly texted him was André. It wasn’t the others’ fault, though, because they had all (except for Jade) reached out at their own times and he’d only responded with dry, sparsely-worded replies. He was so inside his own head and ready to believe what was surely coming that he’d counted himself out from the group largely on his own. It was a wonder to him André was still keeping in contact when he never had anything fun going on anymore, no trips to the beach or weekend cookouts or participation in school events.
He knew from their Slap conversation that André, Tori, and Jade were all performing songs separately. The thought of seeing his old friends having fun without him made him want to go to sleep and not wake up until he had graduated, but after some intense prodding from André, he agreed to at least come for his and Tori’s songs.
I don’t know what Tori’s performing but Jade says she’s doing some old Incubus. Not that I know who that is… read André’s latest text. Beck gazed at it for a long time, memories flooding him. Incubus used to be one of his and Jade’s favorite bands to listen to together, a good compromise from the heavy emo and metal she liked and the lighter rock and folk that was his flavor. He wondered for a good part of his morning which song she’d play, part of him hoping that it would be “Wish You Were Here.” During their relationship, whenever he and Jade had been apart for whatever pressing family obligation was occurring, they’d send each other that song. It was a wistful sort of rock tune that repeated the title line a lot but had slick enough guitar riffs that it made up for it. Despite the certain odds against him, he wished more than anything that just like the Full Moon Jam, she’d be singing for him again, with the intent to reconcile things once more.
When he arrived back at the school on Friday night, it was positively buzzing there. Music was pulsing over the speakers outside as the first performers did their final sound checks, dancing bodies filled the entire Asphalt Cafe inside and out, laser lights were pulsing, and gobos were strobing. Everything almost immediately was too much for him, and he sat down with a glass of punch (that thankfully had no sausage in it this time.)
The first performers began their song before André had shown up. Beck couldn’t help the anxiety that plagued him, wondering if André had talked to Jade and he’d decided to take her side in the whole breakup-radio-silence debacle. But when the first song subsided, he felt a tap on his shoulder that was revealed to have come from André when he jerked around, startled.
André pulled him into a hug once he was on his feet, clapping a hand on his back. “Man, it’s been so long since we’ve actually hung. How are you doing?”
Beck smiled fakely, feeling split in half. He had been falling beneath the surface lately, unable to get his life back on track since Jade. Guilt over his decision to quit things ate him up at night, and during most of the day too, considering he had to go to school with the girl who he’d broken his own heart with.
“Well, I’ve been fine. Not much going on with Jade monopolizing all of your guys’ time,” Beck laughed out humorlessly. Fuck, he thought as André’s face screwed up in confusion. I shouldn’t have said that.
“What are you talking about? You know you can still hang with us even if Jade is around, right? She doesn’t care about what happened anymore. Which you’d know if you sat with us at lunch like you used to. We all miss you, dude.”
Beck smiled once again without it reaching his eyes. “Yeah, you’re right. I just get… so nervous when I think about it. I don’t want to cause a rift between anyone, you know.”
“You could never cause a rift, you’re part of the family, man! I mean it. You should totally sit with us on Monday,” said André as he set up his folding chair next to Beck’s.
Beck sighed. Maybe he could try to reconcile things between him and the group, at least a little. After all, just a text to each of them might help his case. While André finished getting situated, he opened The Slap to Tori’s profile and sent a short message. It was small, but it felt like a big step out of the rut he’d found himself in for so long.
He and André watched the lineup of performers with rapt attention, feeling almost normal for the first time in a while. The two of them commented on impressive dance moves and vocals, André gushing over some of the guitar players’ intricate riffs. It was friendly, and warmed Beck’s cold heart. He almost forgot that Jade was singing until her name was being called and she was stalking up onto the stage in an all-black outfit and all-black makeup that accentuated every aspect of her natural beauty.
She walked up the microphone with a sway in her step and took it off its stand. “Hey, everyone. Tonight I’m singing an old favorite, “Wish You Were Here”. Mike Einziger, the guitarist of Incubus, once said this song was about “being happy living in the moment and not looking forward to the future as some event”. With that in mind, this is for someone who means a lot to me, and I hope they understand.”
Beck sat up a good deal straighter in his chair. There was no way… Not only was it the song he’d been hoping for, it sounded like it really was directed at him. As the band in the back of the stage began playing the iconic opening of the song, Beck stood up, eyes wide and hopeful.
Jade lifted the microphone to her lips, crooning the first lyrics into it. “I dig my toes into the sand, The ocean looks like a thousand diamonds strewn across a blue blanket…” Beck took a few steps away from his chair, recalling all the times he and Jade had listened to those words while sitting in his car at the beach, gazing at the shining blue surf. “ I lean against the wind, pretend that I am weightless, And in this moment I am happy, happy…”
The chorus with its powerful guitar chords melding with drum beats mixed perfectly with Jade’s throaty vocals, singing “IIII, wish you were here,” slowly and repeatedly.
The next verses began, and Beck continued stepping closer to the stage. “I lay my head onto the sand, The sky resembles a backlit canopy with holes punched in it. I’m counting UFOs, I signal them with my lighter, And in this moment I am happy, happy…”
The song went on, a repetitive but intoxicating chorus striking what felt like every chord of muscle in Beck’s body. Eventually, as the bridge began, Beck was only a few feet from Jade, as close as he could get to the stage.
Jade finally seemed to notice him as she sang, “The world’s a rollercoaster and I am not strapped in,” She smiled softly, meeting his glossy eyes. “Maybe I should hold with care, but my hands are busy in the air saying, IIII, wish you were here…”
Then, however, Jade stopped looking at Beck. He blinked, wondering why she wasn’t staring him down as she sang like she’d done back at the Full Moon Jam. He followed her askew gaze to the front row a ways to his left, and he tilted his head in confusion as he tried to suss out what she was looking at so intently.
Then, he saw her. Jade’s eyes were dead-set on Tori Vega.
He had to step away from the music then, pushing past people with reckless abandon as he hurried off the Asphalt Cafe and into the school’s cool halls. He breathed slowly, trying to calm himself down. It was exactly what he had feared. He wasn’t the friend the song was for at all.
But maybe that was okay. André had seemed certain that Jade was over her anger at him. Maybe, just maybe, Jade being interested in someone else was a good thing. If she’d moved on, then he could have the attention of his friends back. But as he returned outside to see Tori onstage preparing for her own song, a pit settled in his stomach. He wondered if Jade had somehow arranged for them to perform one after another. After all, it wasn’t completely outside the realm of her persuading powers… He couldn’t stop questioning whether she’d caught on to the meaning of Jade’s longing stare as Tori set up with a different set of background musicians. If the nervous way she kept looking to where Jade had sat down was any indication, though, it didn’t matter. She does like her back…
Little did Beck know, all the confirmation of that fact was still coming. The music of Tori’s song began and it was a tune Beck didn’t know, so he leaned against a pillar of the cafe to listen.
“I really wanna stop, but I just got the taste for it, I feel like I could fly with the girl on the moon,” sang Tori. Instantly, the usage of the word girl instead of boy caught Beck’s attention. He leaned in closer, almost obsessed with figuring out the saga of Jade and Tori that seemed to still be unfolding.
“So, honey, hold my hand, you like making me wait for it, I feel like I could die walking up to the room, oh yeah.” Tori smiled nervously, eyes roaming the crowd. “Late night watching television, But how’d we get in this position? It’s way too soon I know this isn’t looove, But I need to tell you something…”
The music in the background dropped, and Tori grabbed the mic to belt out, “I really, really, really, really, really, really like you, and I want you, do you want me? Do you want me too?” Beck’s eyebrows shot skyward as she repeated the line, eyes landing on Jade where he’d known they would end up.
“Oh, did I say too much? I’m so in my head, when we’re out of touch. I really, really, really, really, really, really like you, and I want you, do you want me? Do you want me too?” Tori sang with all her heart as her eyes stayed locked on Jade, who was standing up looking just as surprised as Beck felt. He’d known this was a possibility, but to see their feelings for each other revealed in the same way he and Jade had reunited before… it wasn’t easy for him to witness.
He rushed away from it all for the second time that night, going to the front parking lot and getting in his car. He started it, ready to depart and head straight to his bed back home in his RV, before he remembered he hadn’t seen André’s song yet. The last thing he wanted was to ostracize the one of his friends he was sure of where he stood with, so he accepted a round of ugly tears streaming down his face instead, letting out all of his pent up emotions. Figuring the darkness of the crowd would hide his red eyes, once he had used up all his tears, he hopped right back out of his truck. He had to be there for his friends, whether he believed they were his friends or not. He cursed the stupidity of crying as he made his way back to the Asphalt Cafe; why did it have to help him feel better so much, even when it wasn’t that long?
By the time he made it back to the crowd, almost the same scene as the Full Moon Jam was laid out in front of him. Someone had a spotlight shining on Jade, and she was covering her mouth with her hands as she stepped closer and closer to the still-singing Tori who was repeating the final chorus of the song with even more passion that the first, even improvising a few silly dance moves that had Jade laughing as well. As the song drew to a close, Tori’s face was bright red, and she hurried off the stage with a cursory bow before the crowd was even finished cheering.
Beck watched from afar as Tori joined Jade, the two of them dangerously close. Their faces became similar colors as they shared hushed words in the quiet of the space between acts. He watched Jade’s telltale signs that she was into someone, smiling at the ground and then back at them, laughing genuinely with the snort she usually hid, gently pushing and shoving.
As he watched the pure emotions that crossed her face, a part of him felt… closure? He, at last, had confirmation of what he’d suspected, and knew that things with him and Jade were over for good. And, truly? It was hard to not be happy for Jade with how strongly she was cheesing in her conversation with Tori. When the two of them finally leaned in for the kiss Beck had strongly expected, he respectfully looked away. When he looked back, however, they were still interlocked, and he watched for just a moment, smiling when they pulled away with goofy grins on their lips.
He couldn’t stop himself from carefully crossing the crowd to get to the two of them. They noticed him when he was a few feet away and Tori beckoned him over with a soft smile.
“Hey,” he said simply. “You guys both did great on your songs. And got more than you bargained for?”
To his surprise, both girls laughed genuinely. “Well, I don’t know, mine was kind of overt,” said Tori. “I got exactly what I bargained for!” Jade and Tori glanced at each other and giggled softly, seemingly still giddy from everything that had happened.
“Well,” said Jade, eying Beck carefully, “I’ll agree that I did. Mine wasn’t supposed to be so obvious.”
He smiled. “I got it, though. Couldn’t forget how much you love that song.”
Tori suddenly looked offended and swatted at Jade. “Wait, have you sung this song for him before?”
“Not… per se?” said Jade, face pinking adorably. “I’m sorry! It’s a good song! We just used to send it to each other when we were apart.”
“Aww, that’s kind of sweet!” beamed Tori. “But you still have to sing me another song sometime! One that’s just for me.”
“Okay,” said Jade, easily acquiescing to Tori’s will. Well, that’s certainly different from her and I… Beck mused, smiling in a way that actually reached his eyes.
When the two girls’ attention was back on him, Beck ran a hand through his hair sheepishly. “I’m, uh, really sorry I haven’t been around. I felt… really weird about what happened, and I didn’t want to insert myself where I would have made you uncomfortable.”
Jade sighed but not in a rude way like usual. “Beck, I’m sorry too. If I’d just talked to you instead of going silent on you then you wouldn’t have been so worried. After a few weeks I got over things; you should have just reached out. I should have reached out.”
“I know, and it’s okay,” he said, a wan smile flickering across his lips. “I promise I’ll be more involved in the group again… if you’ll have me?”
André’s voice piped up from behind Beck. “Don’t we get a say in this?”
Beck spun around to see Robbie and Cat alongside André behind him. “Yeah, we’ve missed you sooo much, Beck!” said Cat, who was inexplicably bouncing. “We could never want to have you away!”
“Yepper-doo! We love you, man,” concurred Robbie, who (thankfully) was unaccompanied by Rex.
Beck smiled, trying to force down the next round of tears welling up in his eyes. “Well, if you guys really still like me, can I have a group hug?”
“Bring it in!” shouted Tori cheerfully before the six of them came together in a big mess of hugging, Beck in the center. And in all of his friends’ tight embrace, for the first time in months, Beck finally felt okay.
When the hug dissolved, everyone turned their attention to Jade and Tori. “Soooo,” said André. “You two, huh? It’s about time y’all wised up about how you feel.”
Robbie piped up then. “You knew? I would have never expected this after how those guys started off. I really thought Jade wanted to hurt Tori for a while there!”
Everyone laughed, probably because it was true for them too. “I… might have, for a while…” admitted Jade.
“Hey!” Tori retorted, before getting placated with another kiss that had the group oohing and whistling.
Beck smiled at Jade with eyes part sad, part relieved, and part amused. “I really am happy for you guys. You deserve each other,” he said, heart aching, but only dully.
Jade smiled a genuine smile at Beck, and he decided that seeing that grin, platonic or not, was all he hoped for in the future. “Thanks, Beck. That means a lot.”
The topic changed then, Cat interrupting to ask if their new development meant that Tori and Jade were “lesbobians”, which led to an entire discussion about sexuality that Beck stayed out of, listening intently. Just being around his friends was healing, and he found that he didn’t need to contribute to have a good time. Just their presence was enough for him, and he hoped with all his heart that nothing would ever pull them apart again.