I'm Yours to Keep, I'm Yours to Lose (Long Story Short, I'm All About You)

Chapter 5: willow (tori)

Nine months.

It had been nine months since she had left LA, nine months since she'd come to New York.

Nine months, and Tori had decided it was time to leave.

She had packed up her things, shipped them back to Los Angeles, and in a few days time, she'd be on a plane headed across the country.

Headed home.

Home. She didn't even know what that meant for her anymore. Her friends were gone, her career off the ground. She was going to live in her own apartment in LA, away from her family and free with her independence.

And then there was Jade, and who knew where they stood. Tori didn't even know what she wanted, or she at least tried not to think about what she wanted (what she really, really wanted), because she could not dare to have expectations after their painful parting and then Jade's confusing and unacknowledged drunk text.

(Despite it all, she missed Jade, but had she said too much?)

So she was going home, yes, but she didn't even know what she'd find when she got there.

For now, though, she was in a bar with her friends, celebrating one of her last nights in the city. There was Jack and Juan and a small group of others, and as Tori looked around at them all, she was struck with the sad sense of how fleeting life could be.

They were drinking and dancing and laughing, and Tori was having a great time. But like her life in New York, these people were temporary. She had enjoyed them in the moment, but when it came time to leave, she felt she would miss the idea of this time and place more than the actual thing.

"The city," Jack mused to her. "It didn't give you what you wanted."

"What do you mean?" She asked, thinking of her album, her career, her music. All the things New York had given to her in such a short time. "Of course it did."

"No, he's right," Juan said. "I see it all the time. Especially with young up-and-comers. They come to New York and the city opens itself to them. It becomes part of their identities. Not so with you."

Tori shrugged, smiling. "I'm an LA girl, what can I say?"

"Maybe," Juan agreed. "But you're unfulfilled. You could've gone back, but you didn't. You stayed. And now you go back because you still haven't found what you needed to find."

Tori laughed at that, feeling tipsy on tequila and a little intrigued at such a serendipitous concept. "And what exactly was I supposed to find?"

"Girl, how am I supposed to know?" He grinned at her. "I just know you didn't find it." Juan looped his arm over her shoulder, his eyes suddenly going wide as he turned to Jack. "Baby, you know what she needs?"

Jack raised an eyebrow. "What's that?"

"The Sasha Suarez Special."

"Oh my God," Jack's mouth fell open. "You're so right."

Tori frowned. "The what?"

They both beamed at her, mischievous and excited. Jack started typing into his phone as Juan gave her shoulder a squeeze. "This girl," he gushed. "I swear to God, Tor. She'll change your life."

Tori hesitated, her mind on leaving, on going home to LA, on who might be (but almost certainly probably wasn't) there waiting for her.

(Tori missed Jade.)

"I'm leaving in two days," she said. "I don't think that's really enough time to be set up with a girl..."

"Honey." Jack looked up from his phone. "This isn't a setup. It's just one night. But I'm surprised we didn't think of this before. Why didn't we think of this before?"