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

Chapter 6: long story short (jade)

"Jade had spent months chasing this feeling. Months trying on obnoxious guys and annoying girls, months of misery and guilt and regret suffocating her from all sides. She had spent months knowing it was useless, months missing Tori, and now, at last, she felt she had everything she wanted, literally at her fingertips, all her wishes spoken into existence just like that.

August. Jade had blinked and July had passed her by, the summer almost over. Soon she would be packing up her things, moving into her new apartment, starting her second year of college.

But for now, it was still August, and she still had time.

"Stop! You're gonna burn it."

"No I'm not! I like it crunchy."

"That's not crunchy, it's black."

Tori stuck her tongue out. "Well, you do it if you're such a good cook then!"

"Fine, hand over the spatula and I will!"

This is what August brought, apparently. She and Tori in Tori's apartment, bickering about bacon as Tori cooked them breakfast. Or at least tried to cook them breakfast.

In the past, as recently as the spring even, Jade wouldn't have believed anyone if they'd told her she'd end up waking up most mornings in Tori's apartment, in Tori's bed, with Tori's arms around her.

But that was then, and this was now, and now, Jade was pretty used to waking up snuggled into Tori. Well, maybe not used to it, but she was... familiar with it. They'd been doing this for a little over a week now, and they had fallen into it almost too easily.

The cuddling, the holding hands, the breakfast in the morning.

They were dating. Like dating-dating. Like actual, for real, Slap-official girlfriends.

It was... whatever. No, it was fine. Okay , it was good.

Jade was happy. Like actually happy. Like a sing in the shower, smile for no reason, just because, kind of happy.

This was what they were doing now, Jade-and-Tori, them , no time-limit, no end-date, no reason to be anything else. It was August, and they were together, and Jade could see her future spread out in front of her, an endless string of days just like this:

Bacon on the stove, the morning sun on her face, and Tori Vega kissing her against the kitchen counter, looking like some kind of stupidly gorgeous walking advertisement for the world's hottest bedhead.

August. August was good.

//

Okay, so, yeah, Jade's definition of good hadn't exactly been solid the past year. She knew that.

Whatever, though. When she said she was good now, she meant it. She was good.

She was more than good, actually, although it felt weird to think it because just a few months ago she had been so far from even being fine that the two might as well not even be in the same galaxy.

Now, though? Now she had a movie in post-production, a month to do whatever she wanted with her time, and a girlfriend.

A hot, talented girlfriend, who thought Jade was the best thing since sliced bread.

So when Jade said she was good, this time she knew it was true.

Because Jade was a realist. Even more, she was a cynicist, sometimes beyond the point of realism. So in that dark, hidden well of her heart that was no longer so dark or hidden, she knew she couldn't have ever imagined a world in which she was twenty years old, had already written and directed her first feature film, and was in a functioning romantic relationship with Tori Fucking Vega.