Jerrie Oneshot Book

Where the Ocean Meets the Sky

A/N: Holy crap, I just noticed that this book has reached 100k reads! Never ever thought that would happen, so thank you all so much! ❤️ To celebrate that milestone, here's another one for you guys. 🥳

P.S. This one is based on the music video for Only You.

Summary: Jade has never felt like she belonged anywhere. She decides to attend the graduation party everyone has been invited to, but quickly realizes that she is no more visible there than she's ever been... until the most beautiful girl she's ever seen walks into the room and sees her. (slightly mature)

The party was tonight. Everyone would be there.

Everyone but you, Jade thought.

Because even though everyone was invited – their entire graduating class and probably most of the juniors, as well as anyone else who word had leaked to and who managed not to draw attention to themselves – Jade knew she didn't belong there.

She didn't belong anywhere.

It was what happened when you were never in one place for more than a year or two, she guessed, but somehow it felt like more than that. It was like the constant cycle of trying to make connections only to be torn away again before her roots could find fertile soil had set her permanently adrift, a tumbleweed.

Or a ghost.

When she was younger, she'd developed a habit of pinching herself every time someone's eyes skated over her like she didn't exist to prove to herself that she was real.

Jade looked over at her closet, where the Little Black Dress every woman supposedly needed hung, taunting her. She'd gotten it out, thinking maybe someone would say something to her at graduation, would see her and smile and ask, 'Are you coming tonight?'

No one had.

Her teeth dug into her lower lip, letting it drag through slowly.

She sat up, fear and anticipation electrifying her limbs and compelling her into motion. She grabbed the dress from its hanger and slipped it on, tugging at it where it clung to her hips and thighs, and deciding after a single glance in her full-length mirror that there was no way she could wear it. It was too much, and she was trying too hard.

She shimmied out of it and into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt with a jean jacket over top, but that felt too casual, like she wasn't trying hard enough, and she yanked it off and reached for a sleeveless button-down blouse she couldn't even remember acquiring. She eyed herself critically and decided it would have to do, because otherwise she would be here all night, trying things on and taking them off and never finding anything that felt right.

Because the truth was it wasn't the clothes that were the problem. It was her own skin she didn't know how to live in.

----

The party was close enough to walk to, and she could hear it even before she reached the tangle of cars that jammed up the entire neighborhood. It seemed like only a matter of time before someone complained, but she supposed when you had the kind of money it would take to buy a house that backed right onto the beach – or the cliff above the beach – you could afford to pay off your neighbors to look the other way for a night.

There were people everywhere, dancing and drinking and doing things in the dark Jade didn't let herself linger on for too long. She smiled at anyone who glanced her way, but they never returned it, and again she was struck by the feeling that they couldn't really see her. Instead of pinching herself, or digging her nails into her palms until they left crescent-shaped scars, she grabbed a drink and took a gulp, letting it ease her parched throat even as the alcohol went straight to her head.