Love or Die

Anti- Jade and Travis

One Week Later

            Jade was a zombie shell of who she used to be. She went to classes because she was expected to. Did the work, because she was expected to; studied because she was expected to. She ate three times a day because she was expected to and held conversations with those who initiated one with her. She saw Liz everyday but never told her about what happened with Travis. Jade refused to think Travis’ name or speak of him to anyone; refused to acknowledge his existence at all. She was careful not to listen to his music on her iPod and made Liz change the background on her laptop before she would use it.

            Jade spent all her time doing homework, staring at the ceiling from on her bed or watching TV without really retaining anything. For all her efforts not to think of him, she was never able to erase him from her life completely. She left the two pictures of him on her desk, choosing not to work at it rather than remove them. The plushLabradorhe won for her at the arcade was laying on the foot of her bed, seeming to always stare at her as a reminder of him. And though time had passed, she could still smell him on the side of her bed he had slept on. With so many reminders of him in her room, crying had involuntary become a routine for her when she was alone, always remembering the moment he closed the door in her face.

            Travis himself wasn’t doing much better. He still hated himself for what he had done to Jade, but hoped she would be strong enough to bounce back quickly and move on from him. He tried to check on Jade the next day, but Mandee seemed to know and was suddenly there every day. His only escape from her was the time he spent in the studio. It didn’t take long for him to realize that losing Jade was affecting his music. Every song he seemed to work on was about loss and he sang them with all the pain he felt. But when he was asked to sing something happier, he thought of the pained look on Jade’s face and he couldn’t.

            Unlike Jade, Travis wasn’t trying to forget her. A lot of his best moments were with her and he cherished each one. She always made him feel like the old, human Travis while managing to make him better at the same time. Mandee called his feelings for Jade a “fleeting infatuation” in his long existence and demanded that he love her, but she was wrong. His fleeting infatuation had been with Mandee that night three years ago and it had been a mind trick by Mandee herself. What Travis felt for Jade was different; something about her had drew him to her until he got to know her, but from the moment she first smiled at him he had fallen in love with her completely.

            Never again would Travis say that the vampire from Twilight made stupid decisions for someone who was in love.