A Dangerous Friend

The Sun and The Moon

Hi there. Hope you're still liking this, but if not, you'll be glad to know it's nearly over.

Any spare comments you have laying around would be gratefully received <shakes tin hopefully>.

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She saw Beck first, and stumbled. What the hell was he doing here? And then her tunnel vision widened, to take in André, and Cat, and finally Tori, stood around the kitchen table. They looked up, surprised, and it slowly dawned on her. This was what all the secrecy and phone calls had been about. Tori wasn't having an affair at all. Despite everything she'd said, Tori had invited them over. And somehow it made her even more furious to think that she'd gone through all that anguish, all that pain, just for this, just for Tori to ride rough-shod over her objections so that she could make everyone 'friends' again. She felt her anger begin to rise.

Because that was Tori all over, wasn't it? This was the flip-side of Tori's devil-may-care, 'sharing' attitude to life – she carried it over into other people's, too. No privacy, no boundaries, no sense of keeping her nose out, because Tori always knew best. Tori was always convinced that if she just got everyone together to talk about things, everything would be just peachy, and it didn't matter if those people didn't want that, if it hurt them or made them angry, just so long as Tori got to feel smug about doing the right thing. That was just the way she'd been at school, she told herself. Little Miss Smug-Pants, always fixing things.

Somewhere, in the blackened shell of her soul, 'new' Jade was ringing alarm bells like crazy and yelling something about jumping to conclusions, but it didn't matter now, because old Jade was back in the driving seat.

"I see you've got company," she said, coldly.

"Jade..."

"Don't mind me, I only live here."

"Jade..."

"Although I thought you might at least have told me, then I could have made other plans. You know. On my birthday."

"Jade..."

"But never mind, you just go ahead and have your little-"

Tori strode across the room. "Excuse us." She dragged a protesting Jade out into the corridor and pulled the door closed behind them. As soon as they were alone, Jade turned on her.

"So this is what you were laughing about when I came home at lunchtime," she fumed. "I should have known."

"I... Wait, you came home?"

"Yes, I came home. And you know what I heard? You, giggling away behind this door, while you were stabbing me in the back. "

"How could I stab you in the back from behind a door?"

"Metaphorically, Tori. You were metaphorically stabbing me in the back," Jade said. "By laughing it up with some other giggly, backstabby little traitor."

"That was Cat."

"Well I know that now, don't I?"

"So why didn't you come in?"

"Because at the time I thought you were..."

"What?"

"Never mind," she snapped. "The point is, you lied to me."

"Oh, come on, Jade. It's for your own good."

"How?" Jade said, affronted. "How is this for my own good?"