Tightrope

Chapter Six

"Is this party going to be as boring as it sounds?" Jade complained to Tori as the latter pulled her shirt over her head and dropped it on the bench beside her. She started picking through the pile of dresses she'd brought into the dressing room with her, arranging them by the order she wanted to try them on in.

"Probably. It's your fault for making everyone like you so much. You have to go now." Tori responded happily from the stall beside Jade's. "I don't know what you did...but the guys all love you for some reason. Especially Marcus and Hunter, but it's obvious why they're so fond of you." Jade's loud sigh echoed through the entire fitting room, filled with ten separate stalls, most of which were currently empty, excluding the two that Tori and Jade were occupying.

"The rest of them probably talked to the guy at the front desk and are now thinking that if they're nice to me I'll show them my boobs."

"Please don't." Tori laughed as she stepped into the first dress she'd taken to try on – a deep red, strapless one that clung to her body all the way down to her hips, and then flowed to the tops of her knees. She studied herself in the mirror with a look of approval, as an annoyed grunt echoed from the stall beside her.

"If I wear this dress I won't be able to control that."

"The blue one?" Tori questioned as she removed her own dress and started a possibilities pile before moving on to the next one. "Did they have it in a bigger size? That one was really cute."

"It's not really a matter of size..."

"Oh..." The pop-star-in-progress mumbled, paying much more attention to her reflection in the mirror than Jade's complaints about her dress. She frowned at her second choice and had just removed it when Jade burst through the dressing room door, nearly giving her a heart attack for the hundredth time.

"I'm stuck." She stated, indifferent to the shock she'd just given Tori, who was standing with her arms reflexively covering her chest. Her face flushed with red and she looked down at the lacy white undergarments she'd been caught in.

Without a single thought about how inappropriate she was acting, Jade simply turned around to give Tori access to the partly undone zipper on her back. She scooped her hair up to keep it out of the way and stood there impatiently for a few seconds before Tori finally moved toward her. With more trouble than had been expected, the zipper finally came loose. Jade let out a breath once her lungs were less restricted, but didn't make any move toward the door. Instead, she put her back to it and remained in the place, observing the red dress Tori had tried on first, and then the green one lying in a pile at Tori's feet, before her eyes moved up Tori's body in a slow progression toward her face. Tori stared back at her, uncomfortably aware of how long Jade's eyes were lingering.

"Umm..." She started to say, just as Jade looked away, to the view of herself in the mirror instead of Tori. "About the other day... Something Marcus said got me thinking." Jade's eyes fluttered shut for a moment, before she returned her attention to Tori's face. "You don't think anyone's expecting us to kiss, do you?" The actress simply shrugged in response, and it seemed she didn't consider it to be as much of an issue as Tori did.

"I don't know. Your little Kidz Bop band would certainly like to see that."

"But you don't think people will get suspicious if we don't?" Tori's arms finally fell to her sides for the first time since Jade had invaded her dressing room.

"They probably will. Why? Are you uncomfortable with that?" The horrible teasing voice was back again, coupled with one of Jade's most seductive facial expressions. Tori was relatively sure that Jade sat at home at night, practicing ways to seduce and humiliate people.