Jade|
The day has been so shitty and long and hard that I don't even try to hold back when Tori comes through my front door. It's a little later than I expected, but I don't care, throwing my arms around her neck and crushing her in a hug. It seems dramatic – it's only been a day, for Christ's sake, but even so, seeing her in her rumpled jeans and her hair all tossed up, expression delighted, I can't stop myself from squeezing her harder.
"Did you walk here? I just about sent out a search party."
We separate and I can see Tori's face flush. "I had to ask my mom."
I roll my eyes at her, taking her backpack from her hand and walking down the hallways toward the door that leads to my basement. "You're not supposed to ask permission to sneak out. That's why it's called sneaking out."
"I don't sneak out," she replies. "It took some convincing, but I eventually told her that you had called and asked me to come over."
"That's not even a lie, Vega. Can you lie to your parents?"
"I might have exaggerated your … enthusiasm. A little."
I turn over my shoulder. "You told your mom I was a hysterical, sobbing mess, didn't you?"
Tori's lips perk. "See? I can lie."
I make a face at her. Honestly, I don't care what she told her mom. It worked. She's here. I stop at the door that winds down to my room. I look at her again. She's waiting, excited, and I wonder if she's been looking forward to this moment. It seems stupid, I know, but the only people who have been in my room are my parents and Beck. My room is a very private place to me, something very few people get to see. For a reason. Letting them bear witness to my freakish collections, absurd knick-knacks, and other questionable possessions means I'm breaking down another wall.
I take a deep breath. She smiles and it calms me somehow. I twist the door handle and drop down the steps. The light is on, but with no windows down here, the room always seems dark somehow. Like a tomb. I've always liked it that way.
I try not to care, but I'm watching her reaction. She closes the door behind her and puts her back to it. Brown eyes float around the shelves on my walls, the paintings. Slowly, her face passive, she approaches a jar with a mouse fetus floating inside. She taps the glass with a fingernail.
"It's real," I tell her before she asks. She doesn't shrink away – in fact, she bends slightly to get a better look.
Finally, she straightens, spins, and smiles at me. Something in me that I didn't know had tensed up relaxes, a coil of wire being unwound. She doesn't comment at all on my room which makes me feel better. I didn't want verbal confirmation that my room was fine. I just needed her to not run away.
Gliding to the bag I dropped at the door, she starts pulling out pajamas. "So, how did you entertain yourself today?"
I sit on my computer chair and try not to make a show of watching her undress. Her legs are bronze and glowing. Dark hair tumbles down her shoulders when she shakes it out of her hair tie. I watch as she shimmies into a pair of sweats. I find myself wishing she'd change her shirt, too, but she seems to be planning on sleeping in the tank-top she's wearing.
I try to ignore that I want to see more of her.
"Lots of TV." It's true. I did little more than rise from the couch today. Mom was there in the morning, talking into her headset the whole time about some conference she had to go to. She eyed me suspiciously before she left but didn't ask. It occurs to me that I don't even think she knows Beck and I broke up yet.
