Tori's first meeting at Neutronium Records was feeling less like the first step of her music career and more like the first major exam of a class she didn't study for. Hours practically flew by as she and Nora West were going over the fine points of contract after contract to the point that words were starting to blend into one inky blob on the papers. When she raised her head up to blink and rub her eyes, Nora looked at her from across the desk, looking and sounding totally unfazed by their nonstop page-skimming.
"You feeling alright there, Tori?" Nora asked with a polite smile in her direction.
"Oh...oh, yeah!" Tori set her hands back down on the table, even though her eyes were still sore, "Just getting a little stiff from all the important reading we're getting through!"
"Well, not to worry," Nora briefly stretched her own arms before returning them to her clipboard and pen. "I just have a few more questions for you, if you don't mind..."
"Not at all!" Tori shook her head, naively unaware that she was setting herself up to be blindsided, "Ask away, Ms. West!"
"Alright...so do you have your own means of transportation here in Miami?"
"Yes! The red Honda HR-V that I drove here today in!"
"Excellent, and you've already found a permanent place to live?"
"Yes, a studio apartment just outside the commercial districts! Not a bad commute to get here, in fact!"
"How lovely. Now, have you been sleeping well with my daughter?"
"I—wait, what?!" Tori almost fell back in her seat, staring straight at Nora, whose expression looked completely calm in comparison. "W-What did you say?"
"I just asked if you've been sleeping well," Nora laughed softly, "I know jet lag can last a long time for people not used to traveling often, and you do look a little ragged."
Tori blinked, confused if she had just imagined the last part of that question or not. Shaking her head, she just answered plainly, "It hasn't been too bad. I've been sleeping very comfortably, actually."
"Not too comfortably, I hope..." Nora said under her breath.
"What was that?!" Tori knew she wasn't imagining things now. She dropped the papers she was holding and glared straight at Nora, who was still reading nonchalantly, "Is there something you want to tell me?!"
"Tori...are you feeling alright?" Nora raised an eyebrow toward her, sliding her papers neatly into a folder, and got up to walk toward her client, placing her hands gently on her shoulders, "It looks like you're having first day jitters. Maybe we should take a break?"
"N-No!" Tori shook her head and stepped back instinctively, "I'm not jittery! You're just—"
"Ah...ahh..." Nora raised a finger over her lips, nodding to her left and right, "People are trying to get important work done here, Tori. Why don't we go outside for lunch? I know a great restaurant down the street you're sure to love." She walked toward the door, holding it open for Tori to follow through.
Unable to even feign a shred of confidence, Tori nodded silently, collected her bag, and followed her girlfriend's mother out of the office and to the parking lot.
Once outside, with Nora's back to her, Tori quickly pulled out her phone to send a warning text to Jade.
TORI: YOUR MOM'S HERE IN MIAMI! TEXT ME BACK ASAP!
As soon as she hit the "send" button, the text bubble floated up her screen, but was immediately followed by a red error message.
-UNABLE TO SEND. RECIPIENT OUT OF RANGE.-
Chiz! Tori swore in her head. That theater must be in a dead zone!
Nora turned back toward Tori, the latter quickly shoving her phone back into her purse. The mother smiled sweetly as she clicked the key fob to the onyx black coupe parked in front of them. "How do you like the company car? Of course, I think your SUV is much more practical. I'd have chosen function over flair, but you know Mason, right?" Tori didn't answer as she ducked her head into the passenger's seat and hugged her purse against her seat belt.
As Nora drove them out of the parking lot and onto the main streets, Tori tried to distract herself from her nerves by looking back and forth between her text to Jade trying to send and the lively streets outside. Eventually, neither was helping, so she turned to Nora, who was looking straight ahead with that smile still painted on her face. It was reminding Tori of an eerily similar situation.
"Um..." Tori gulped before lifting the silence, "I like your car."
"I'm so glad..." Nora replied in an almost sultry tone, eyes not breaking from the road.
"So...do you like driving here in Miami?" Tori attempted a smile. What was on her face would not be considered a smile.
"Well, barring work needs, I actually prefer to drive at night, but I can make an exception sometimes," Nora glanced in Tori's direction with a cool, icy gaze, "Anything for my daughter's friend~"
Now this conversation was getting way too familiar. Tori looked back down at her phone, quietly pounding the send button with her thumb, only to keep getting the same error sound and message.
Nora's ears perked at the error sound, to which she said, "Oh, are you texting someone?"
"Um...trying to! Just seems to be a reception issue!"
"Well, I hope they're not in the block by Glenanne Road. There isn't much signal around there...not much of anything around there."
Tori's eyes shot wide open, the sense of déjà vu being much too strong now. She didn't want to wait for Nora to start creepily singing nursery rhymes. Once they stopped at a red light, Tori quickly undid her seatbelt and yanked her door handle...only the door wouldn't open. She stared at the handle, trying to pull it again and again, but nothing happened. She then turned to see Nora looking at her rather dumbfounded.
"Tori, what are you doing? We're still ten minutes away from the restaurant!" Nora quickly put the car in the parking gear, unbuckled herself, and reached over to grab the passenger-side seatbelt. Tori suddenly leaned back into her seat, face turning red as Nora was barely an inch over her, dragging the seat belt over her and back into the buckle. After settling back into their respective seats, Tori felt like a child again, being silently disciplined by her mother for playing in the car. She was afraid to look at Nora, fearing she was upset by that display, but her face showed quite the contrary as Nora was quietly chuckling, "Good thing for automatic safety locks, right? What is it with you kids these days? It's like you leap before you even look..."
If there was some implicit shade or hidden meaning in what Nora had just said, it flew over Tori's head as she hopelessly sighed and sat back, staring at the road ahead until they had arrived at a plaza highlighted with a big restaurant on the corner.
Stepping inside the restaurant was almost like stepping into a whole other dimension, as the walls were dark grey and blue and the lights shone like spotlights over a stage. Tables and booths lined the walls, with 4 long bar stands forming a square around a staging area similar to a theater-in-the-round. At that center were two wooden stools and mic stands over tiny monitors on the floor.
The whole layout of the restaurant rang similar to the Asian fusion restaurant Nozu back in LA that doubled as a karaoke bar some days. Before Tori could point this out, she noticed Nora turn to her and say, "Now doesn't this feel like a slice of home, Tori?" Before Tori could reply, the mother turned to the host stand and greeted in Japanese: "[Hello. Table for two, please?]"
Tori stared wide-eyed at Nora's Japanese, sounding so perfect she almost thought she was listening to a foreign dub of a drama. She snapped back to reality long enough to follow the host and Nora to one of the bars next to the center stage. Sitting next to each other, they each took a menu and ordered two ice waters. Once the waiter left them, Nora casually took out her phone to reply to messages she received while she was driving. Tori could only keep staring at her and not her menu.
Catching the latter's gaze, Nora chuckled and set her phone down, "Being a legal consultant, I've worked with a number of companies worldwide, so learning a foreign language became a must when translators are few and far between."
"O-Oh, I'm sorry," Tori blinked and looked back down at her menu, "I was just surprised. Your Japanese sounded...perfect! I mean, I wouldn't know! I only know English and Spanish..."
Nora shrugged, keeping her smile as she turned to her own menu, "That's nothing to be ashamed of. You'll definitely be making use of both here in Miami. Now, how do you feel about the Jade—?"
"I knew it! You are probing about me and Jade!" Tori slammed her menu down, causing a few nearby heads to turn toward her suspiciously. Noticing this immediately, she slowly sat back down, bowing her head in apology.
Nora just blinked and pointed to her menu, "As I was about to say...how do you feel about the Jade Dragon Roll set? You strike me as a sushi lover, right? Don't worry; it's all my treat today!"
Tori felt defeated. It seemed Nora wasn't trying to get a rise out of Tori over Jade or anything she feared, so she just nodded and took a long sip of her ice water. She watched Nora wave the waiter over and order for them both in the same perfect Japanese.
As they waited for their food to arrive, Tori used the newfound silence between her and Nora to check her phone again. No change since leaving the office, no signal for Jade to receive her warning text. Stowing the phone back in her purse, she briefly caught Nora's gaze, but instead of the calm, casual eyes she was seeing all day, her eyes were sharp; like Tori's own mother when she caught her kissing Jade at the airport. Tori blinked away and stared down at the table, afraid to risk speaking up and misunderstanding the situation once again, but this time felt almost...undeniable. Soon enough, their food had arrived; a platter of Jade Dragon sushi rolls between the two of them. Taking a long look at the food, Tori could swear she'd seen them before.
"They look familiar, don't they?" Nora asked, as if reading Tori's thoughts, "Perhaps from a time you had them at Nozu in Los Angeles?"
"H-How did you know that?"
"Jade told me," Nora answered calmly, to which Tori blinked to make sure she heard Jade's name this time. "When she told me about that 'date' the two of you were forced into to improve your chemistry for a play you were paired together on. She said you ordered this very set because it was 'ironic'."
The memories were coming back to Tori. She wanted to remember that night fondly, but her anxiety over Nora knowing every detail of that night was preventing that from happening. "So, what else has she told you?"
"Quite a lot, actually," Nora took a sip of her water before continuing, "I'm sure you know she and I have been speaking more since her graduation. I was so happy when she told me she wanted to patch things between us, and the way she just...lit up...with the stories she'd tell me about you and your Hollywood Arts friends. I only wished we could have started talking like that months, or even years ago..."
Tori gulped another sip of water, taking in every word Nora spoke, feeling a sense that her casual manner since this morning was coming to an end. Setting down her glass, she leaned a little closer and said, "I can probably guess why you're here...in Miami, Ms. West."
Nora sighed as she popped one piece of the sushi in her mouth, chewing and swallowing quietly. "After that call yesterday, I'm sure Jade was upset. I was just expecting a quick update from her about this supposed graduation trip she's on, and instead I was told that my only daughter was moving out and leaving me alone...again. It was pure luck that my firm told me that one of our representatives in Miami was retiring, leaving an opening that I was more than happy to take."
Tori could hear a sharp breath from Nora, her hand visibly shaking as she held her glass. "Ms. West, you gotta understand! Jade wasn't trying to abandon you; far from it! She told me that she loved getting to connect with you again. She wouldn't intentionally hurt you like you're thinking!"
"So why?" Nora asked, looking at Tori, eyes misty and mouth frozen in a solemn frown, "Why is she here in Miami? Why does it seem like she's dropped everything she had in LA—her home, her clothes, her mother—to run off and be with you?"
Tori couldn't stand to look at her any longer. She sunk her head in her hand propped up on the table and sighed, "We-we're in love. We confessed to each other the night before I was supposed to fly out here, and we both wanted more time to...to be together, to understand this thing we only just discovered between us. I know it was such a hasty decision, but we didn't think—"
"You're damn right you didn't think!" Nora snapped, her voice low enough that no one around them could hear, but sharp enough that it cut Tori like a sudden dagger. "I know how Jade feels about you. She told me everything; your rivalry in school, growing closer despite all that—to the point that she gave up opening for Mason's award show because you were becoming friends...or something more than that. I guess that night you confessed to each other must have been something special..."
Tori's cheeks flushed at the implication, "N-No! We didn't...we're st—It's not what you think! We just talked, and watched movies, and..." She couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence and confirm Nora's suspicions, instead biting her lip to stop talking.
Nora pushed her plate aside and stood up from her seat, "Tori, don't misunderstand me. If you and Jade truly love each other, I will not stand in the way of that. But I am still Jade's mother, and all I want is for her to be successful and happy. You understand that, right?"
Tori nodded more than necessary, feeling this conversation was so much heavier than the one with her parents. She couldn't deny Nora's feelings, especially when they were a direct result of their own last-minute choice. Getting up from her seat, she looked somewhere between Nora and the ground when she asked to go wash up before heading back. Nora nodded, which was enough of an answer for Tori to turn and make for the restroom without a second glance back.
Watching Tori leave so quickly, Nora knew the words between them cut deep. With a sigh, she asked their waiter for the bill and a to-go box for the food. As she waited, her eyes curiously fell toward the empty center stage.
"Well..." Nora mumbled before going to the host sitting by the mic stands. She subtly handed him a large bill and he let her walk up the small steps to the center stage. She heard a sudden round of cheers and applause from the surrounding patrons, all of which she ignored as she typed a song code into the monitor. Grabbing a microphone, she took a deep breath and looked straight down as an ironically upbeat, staccato piano intro began playing from the speakers. When the brief intro stopped, Nora looked up and started to sing:
Straight hair, straight A's, straight forward
Straight path, I don't cut corners
I make a point to be on time
(Head of the student council)
I don't black out at parties
I jam to Paul McCartney
If you ask me how I'm doing, I'll say...
She sighed in line with the song's pause, taking a quick glance at the crowd, who were enraptured by how deftly this woman was singing a very recent hit, as if she were the original artist herself. She still ignored it all as the song continued.
I was adopted when I was two
My parents spoiled me rotten often
I ask myself, "What did I do...
...to get as far as I've gotten?"
A pretty girl walks by my locker
My heart gives a flutter but I don't dare utter a word
'Cause that would be absurd behavior for Little Miss Perfect!
As Nora vocalized through the song's chorus, she caught Tori's gaze from where they were sitting previously. She was watching with as much surprise as everyone else, but Nora's gaze didn't linger to see the rest of the reaction as she finished the chorus strongly.
Straight hair! Straight A's! Straight forward! Straight girl!
Little Miss Perfect...that's me!
Nora's hand made a swift cutting motion toward the host, who stopped the song promptly as she began to step down from the stage; politely waving toward the large amounts of applause she received. Returning to the bar, she collected the to-go box and her card with the bill, nodding to Tori silently as they left the restaurant together.
As they settled back into the company car, Tori worked up the courage to ask, "What was that back there? You asked them if you could sing something?"
Nora shook her head, making up an answer quickly, "Some colleagues of mine told me they do a 'random karaoke' bit sometimes around lunch hour. Random guest, random song, and I was it. They were just lucky I heard that song a lot on the radio, or there'd just be a lot of awkward mumbling..."
Tori accepted the answer, unaware that it was a lie, but smiled, "Well, you sounded really nice. I guess Jade gets her musical talent from you."
Nora gave a short vocal positive in reply, not wishing to explore that compliment further.
As the car started back up and toward the office, Tori sank quietly in her seat; no longer checking her phone, but taking short glances at Nora instead. Every time she saw the mother's cold, silent expression, she found herself wishing for the creepy nursery rhyme humming instead.
Hope you enjoyed the little throwbacks and hints of what's to come! As always, let me know what you think and stay tuned for more!~