[fic] let's sing a song of all the mistakes we should have made (1/4?)
fic: let's sing a song of all the mistakes we should have made (1/4?)
fandom: victorious + sam and cat
pairing: tori/cat(/andre); jade/beck(/andre); robbie/trina(/andre); ot7 polyamory (past cat/sam)
word count: 2,800
recipient: killing_kurare
prompt: lovesong (I swear it will get there, I super promise)
setting: eight years after their high school graduation, jade calls an old friend back to los angeles and everyone is forced to face the secrets they've been hiding from each other
warnings: extensive discussion of mental illness, alcoholism, self-harm, co-dependent behavior, poly relationships, self-destructive behavior, motherhood, alternating-female-POV
a/n: part two is already written it just needs to be typed up (don't even ask) and part three is ~planned in my head already so I'm hoping to be able to wrap this up in four parts. *cross fingers*
[The first time Cat saw Tori after eight years, it was less dramatic than she would have imagined (if she had imagined it) (which she hasn’t, not once).]
It was in their third year of college when Sam and Cat finally made a pact to go see therapists together. Cat really owed Sam for the whole ‘we’re going to college’ thing and Sam owed Cat… well, everything the way she saw it. It was almost funny, afterward, how much what started as a dare changed their lives. For one thing, Cat stopped dating to deflect her feelings for Sam and Sam stopped comparing Cat to Carly. Or anyone to Carly. For another, the medication actually made Cat a whole new person, gave her a grasp on reality that Sam had been unwilling to admit her girlfriend was missing. Cat was still there - but it was like for the first time she knew where ‘here’ was. Which changed everything and nothing all at once.
Mostly, it just drove home how perfect they were for each other - two perfectly fucked up little girls pretending to laugh along when the world beat them down.
Which is why it obviously only lasted until they were both well-adjusted enough to realize they probably never should have fallen into bed with each other in the first place.
It took a while - another two years of fighting and crying and make-up sex and long, long weeks of pretending that everything was alright because being fixed means you’re no longer broken which means you are committed … it was almost like they had to stay together in order to prove that they were normal and okay.
Normal people work things out.
Broken people break things.
That’s just logic.
Until Cat came home early from a tour playing back-up singer to a has-been and found Sam giving her station manager a blow job in the living room.
She didn’t even cry.
She spent about a month on Beck and Jade’s couch. Sam got her show syndicated and started dating a guy from an indie-rock band and got her picture in a few tabloids.
Cat still listened to her morning show and didn’t beat herself up too much for laughing along. Sam still came to all her opening nights in the half-dozen theatres that would hire her. And they stayed friends. “Coffee once a month that never talk about anything more personal than the weather” kind of friends.
“I guess we really did fix each other.”
“What makes you say that?” Sam didn’t hide her bitterness behind humor and curls anymore. Cat thinks she could fall in love with a woman like that.
“Because we broke, but we didn’t really break. You know?”
Sam doesn’t say anything and Cat is old enough now to know not to fill in the blanks for her.
Sometimes silence is just silence.
Just before Cat’s twenty-sixth birthday, Jade finally got what she’d been working for: her own independent theatre. It’s technically funded by her university and also technically part of her grande doctorate project or dissertation or whatever… and she convinced them to all get back together for her first show.
Cat saw no irony in the face that after eight years, Jade was the one who is able to bring them back together again.
Oh… the others?
They’d been keeping busy. Jade triple-majored in theatre, music, and creative writing and then jumped right into a doctorate program (or two?) (Cat just knows she’s always buried behind stacks of books or at the student theatre). Beck got a soap his sophomore of college - only finished because Jade said she wouldn’t marry him without that “BA” next to his name. Now he’s insisting she put the “Dr.” in front of hers before he’ll even consider accepting her hand. It’s been a long six years, but he’s still hoping for something a bit more challenging, did a stint on Broadway, but hated New York. Robbie is stage manager at a small but upscale theatre - his lighting designs are pretty wildly admired. Andre got an internship at a record company and now is working his way up the producer ladder. Cat’s caught his name hidden in a couple of hot singles the past couple of years. Trina opened a beauty pageant school and has had a few reality shows poke their heads around, but her determination to keep the girls from being exploited makes it difficult for any contractual agreements on either side.
Cat worked mornings at a preschool and was popular in the local musical theatre circuit. She always got the Chenoweth roles even though she knew she’s an Idina at heart. But, that’s the game.
And Tori.
Well, Tori left on tour with a little alternative band when their singer caught pneumonia right after graduation and ended up with a record deal. Cat knew not to pay too much attention to the tabloids, but a divorce and a child and an affair with a manager and a brief stint hiding out in India learning yoga or something equally pretentious were all confirmed by Sam’s radio contacts over the years.
They were all sitting in Trina’s living room (she had the biggest house) (she had the only house) drinking beer and Robbie was cooking that smelled perfect; and he and Trina were still pretending not to be together even though he moved all his stuff in two years ago; and Cat was leaning against Jade’s legs from her spot on the floor; and Andre and Beck were clustered around the piano; and Cat felt good. Because they all see each other and make time for each other but they’re twenty-somethings in Los Angeles and life is a bitch and so it’s been a while since they were all in the same place at the same time… alone. Bars and opening nights and record parties and beauty pageants don’t count.
Andre was the one who said it first, “So she’s really coming?” His mouth full of fancy cheese and he was looking down at the script Jade had handed them skeptically.
“She’s coming,” Jade had a way of making the impossible sound factual.
Trina looked at Robbie worriedly and Cat glanced away when he started to rub her shoulders comfortingly, “Mom was in the hospital last-”
“She’s coming.” Beck calms down when he drinks beer. Like way down. Like a Black Hole of anti-energy.
Jade started playing with Cat’s hair restlessly; like this was the part of the ‘meeting’ she had been dreading the most.
Cat cleared her throat, “It’s a genius idea. But if she isn’t here, it won’t work. We need…” she should've said everyone but her was sticking to the roof of her mouth like peanut butter. No one met her eye.
And someone changed the subject.
The first time Cat saw Tori after eight years, it was less dramatic than she would have imagined (if she had imagined it) (which she hadn’t, not once). They were in Jade’s rehearsal space on campus, the theatre itself still undergoing some last-minute renovations under Robbie’s supervision, a herd of Jade’s undergrads alternatively attempting to be helpful or staring wide-eyed at them, and Tori walked in in an over-sized knitted sweater, leggings with boots, a cup of coffee in her hand, and large sunglasses covering half of her small face.
No one took note of the leggy girl standing in the corner playing with her phone except for Cat. Who stared and tried not to stare and concentrated on breathing. Part of her wanted to be sixteen again - run over to her friend and jump into her arms - but a stronger part wanted to keep her cool, to concentrate on the scene she was rehearsing with Andre and stay in character. Prove just how adult she was.
How completely unaffected she was by the ghost appearing in the corner.
She didn’t notice Andre lean slightly more towards her, waiting for her to fall.
Maybe it was years of having them all always nearby, arms at the ready - hands just waiting for hers - that it wasn’t unusual enough to make note of. He told himself that it was a good thing that she felt comfortable enough to rely on them like that. He told himself to stay steady and so he did. He was good at staying steady.
Trina was actually the first person to notice Tori’s entrance - but they had fought over the last toaster strudel that morning and she wasn’t in any rush to be the beaming sister, so pleased and tickled to have her (famous!) long-lost relative back in the city.
Jade acknowledged her with a raised eyebrow and a wave of the script in her direction.
Beck was on location in the desert to the West of LA and wasn’t due back into the city until probably the wee hours of the next morning. The independent film was actually a great opportunity for him as an actor so no one - even Jade - begrudged him not being there.
So the first time Cat spoke to Tori after eight years of radio silence, it was in-character, reading lines from a script.
“So you finally made it.”
They hugged.
“I told you I wouldn’t be too late.”
“You’re always late.”
“I always wait.” Tori smiled brightly at Cat, who rolled her eyes back.
“Traffic was bad.”
“Traffic is always bad.”
“I’m always bad.”
“You are who you are.”
“I’m bad at this shit. I’m leaving. Nice seeing you.”
“You just got here.”
Cat felt her face shift under a new weight, the mask of a nonchalant character tired of their lines falling over her face. “I forgot my lines. Let’s try again some other time?”
“But that’s not… you can’t just go off script like that!” Tori’s high-pitched wail was forced and fake, Cat knew it from years of rehearsing with Tori late into the night when they both were too tired to try anymore.
Trina tapped Tori on the shoulder and the scene continued, Cat kissed Andre and Jade goodbye and waved to the interns or students or whatever and walked out the door. She was late for an appointment.
She txted Jade later on her pear, REHRSL GO OK SRY G2G EARLY
Jade txted back in seconds, u r gr8! c u @ sushi @10 ok?
Andrea was wearing a soothing blue color that day. She tended to wear light, calming shades of blue when she was worried that a client was going to react badly to their session. Cat tried not to be curious who the unlucky client was that day.
“So I was cleaning out some old files and I was reminded that we’ve been seeing each other for five years almost exactly.”
“You say that like this is a mutually beneficial relationship.”
Andrea smiled.
Cat smiled back.
“Do you remember when you first came to see me?”
“Sure. My girlfriend and I - we decided together to find therapists. The Psychologist recommended you.”
“You had just recently been in the hospital, hadn’t you?”
Cat’s smile widened, “Laryngitis. It was really gross.”
“How long were you in the hospital for?”
“They told me three weeks, but I was so out of it - it felt like just a couple of days.”
“Hmm… three weeks is a long time to be in the hospital for laryngitis.”
Cat’s smile curled into a smirk, “Well, it was a very dangerous virus.”
“Of course.”
They smiled at each other.
“Had you ever been hospitalized before that?”
“Nope. Fit as a fiddle.”
“And you don’t remember anything from your time in the hospital?”
“Why are you asking now… I mean. That was a long time ago.”
“I just saw on the news last night that Tori Vega was in town. I know you two used to be friends and that just before the… laryngitis? You were very concerned for her -”
“She’s in town to help a friend. I mean, we’re all helping.”
“What’s it like seeing her?”
“Fine. Good. Nice. I guess. I haven’t really had the chance to like… catch-up or anything.”
“Mmhmm.”
Cat did her best not to scratch her elbow. She needed to. But she needed the distraction.
“In one of your sessions with Sam that year - she mentioned your brother. Did he come visit you in the hospital when you were sick?”
Cat’s heart began thudding in her chest, hard and fast. She smiled. She smiled until it hurt and that hurt was so familiar it hurt all the more for the scars it had left behind. “Probably not.”
“What about your mother?”
“Mom is in Arizona working. She can’t really afford to come out to LA every time I get a cold.”
“You were in the hospital for three weeks, Cat. I’m just trying to remember if you’ve ever mentioned your family.”
“Jade and Beck and the rest. They’re my family.”
Andrea smiled, “I know Cat. I was just hoping that after … well it’s been five years and I know a lot about Jade and Sam and nothing about your mother or brother.”
Cat felt like she was going to throw up. She smiled. She shrugged. She breathed in and out evenly. “There’s just not much to tell I guess!”
“You can tell me anything, Cat.”
Cat rolled her eyes and laughed, “Duh, Andrea. You’re like my therapist.”
“Oh right. I forgot.”
Cat gave Andrea a high-five on the way out the door, “Stay chill, A.”
The mask she had slipped on looking into Tori’s reflective sunglasses didn’t work here, but she wasn’t completely naked. You aren’t just a character on stage.
All the world’s a stage.
She just had let herself forget.
Everything was different and everything was the same. It was weird except in all the ways it wasn’t. Almost like everything had come to their natural conclusions. Robbie and Trina’s legs intertwined under the table and sharing an appletini, Cat tucked between Jade and Beck their fingers in her hair and arms reaching over her plate, Andre and Beck whispering together over the menu.
Andre sitting rather stiffly next to her when he would have once invaded her space the way that they all did with each other. Like a pile of puppies sitting there in a booth in a respectable, not too-highly priced sushi bar, and not a group of twenty-something professionals.
She kept her sunglasses on at the table and ignored Trina kicking her under the table. She ordered whiskey and ignored Robbie’s exasperated expression. She paid more attention to her phone than the conversation at the table and ignored their hurt eyes.
She could ignore a lot.
She was Tori fucking Vega.
And she was doing them a fucking favor.
(She didn’t look at Jade once. She’d lose her resolve to stay distant and taciturn if she looked at Jade. She’d lose everything she was pretending she had worked for if she looked at Jade.)
She let them drag her to the karaoke bar in the back after dinner. She ordered another drink and refused to sing. She made snarky comments and accused them all of being hacks. She told a wicked story about Taylor singing in the streets of Paris as if she had been there instead of only having read it in a magazine just like all they probably had. She didn’t look at Jade once.
Except.
Except Cat was still Cat fucking Valentine. And she still sang like Mariah Carey had a love affair with Bruno Mars and Janelle Monae's love child. And that alone brought the sunglasses down.
“Jesus, Cat. Where are you working now?”
Cat blushed, “Oh I help run this cute little preschool-”
Tori waved her hand, “No I mean. Singing. Performing. Not that other shit. You should go to New York, I know some people. You are wasting yourself here.”
Cat giggled and it was so fucking cute Tori could have thrown up little pink hearts.
“Yeah but I mean. I like Los Angeles. Why would I leave?”
Tori shook her head, “That’s just because you’ve never left. You should be on Broadway, girl.”
“Tori…” Trina looked somewhere between freaked and pissed and Tori ignored her.
“Let me make some calls. I can get you in the door at least.”
“Tori…”
“No, Trina,” Cat handed the mic to Tori and waved Trina’s worried face away. “Tough talk from a washed-up pop wannabe. How many Broadway shows have you headlined in the past eight years? I’m happy here. With … Why did you come anyway?”
“I can leave! I can fucking leave and then what would you have?”
Cat’s eyes shined and Tori felt like she had drowned a cat in front of a room full of nuns, “Not you.”
Robbie and Tori took that moment to practically carry Tori out the door, shouting about getting up early and jetlag. She didn’t get a chance to look behind her and not for the first time she was glad.
Eyes forward, Vega.
Trina waited until they were home and Robbie was hiding upstairs before she said what she had to say.
She poured a glass of water for herself in the kitchen and chuckled to herself, “So I guess now I know how it feels to have an insensitive ass for a sister.”
Tori rolled her eyes, “Cat is fucking talented. She’s too good for regional theatre. And you know it.”
“God are you really that stupid? And… oblivious?”
“Whatever Trina. I’m going to bed.”
“Cat is sick you moron.”
[next chapter: jade]
fandom: victorious + sam and cat
pairing: tori/cat(/andre); jade/beck(/andre); robbie/trina(/andre); ot7 polyamory (past cat/sam)
word count: 2,800
recipient: killing_kurare
prompt: lovesong (I swear it will get there, I super promise)
setting: eight years after their high school graduation, jade calls an old friend back to los angeles and everyone is forced to face the secrets they've been hiding from each other
warnings: extensive discussion of mental illness, alcoholism, self-harm, co-dependent behavior, poly relationships, self-destructive behavior, motherhood, alternating-female-POV
a/n: part two is already written it just needs to be typed up (don't even ask) and part three is ~planned in my head already so I'm hoping to be able to wrap this up in four parts. *cross fingers*
[The first time Cat saw Tori after eight years, it was less dramatic than she would have imagined (if she had imagined it) (which she hasn’t, not once).]
It was in their third year of college when Sam and Cat finally made a pact to go see therapists together. Cat really owed Sam for the whole ‘we’re going to college’ thing and Sam owed Cat… well, everything the way she saw it. It was almost funny, afterward, how much what started as a dare changed their lives. For one thing, Cat stopped dating to deflect her feelings for Sam and Sam stopped comparing Cat to Carly. Or anyone to Carly. For another, the medication actually made Cat a whole new person, gave her a grasp on reality that Sam had been unwilling to admit her girlfriend was missing. Cat was still there - but it was like for the first time she knew where ‘here’ was. Which changed everything and nothing all at once.
Mostly, it just drove home how perfect they were for each other - two perfectly fucked up little girls pretending to laugh along when the world beat them down.
Which is why it obviously only lasted until they were both well-adjusted enough to realize they probably never should have fallen into bed with each other in the first place.
It took a while - another two years of fighting and crying and make-up sex and long, long weeks of pretending that everything was alright because being fixed means you’re no longer broken which means you are committed … it was almost like they had to stay together in order to prove that they were normal and okay.
Normal people work things out.
Broken people break things.
That’s just logic.
Until Cat came home early from a tour playing back-up singer to a has-been and found Sam giving her station manager a blow job in the living room.
She didn’t even cry.
She spent about a month on Beck and Jade’s couch. Sam got her show syndicated and started dating a guy from an indie-rock band and got her picture in a few tabloids.
Cat still listened to her morning show and didn’t beat herself up too much for laughing along. Sam still came to all her opening nights in the half-dozen theatres that would hire her. And they stayed friends. “Coffee once a month that never talk about anything more personal than the weather” kind of friends.
“I guess we really did fix each other.”
“What makes you say that?” Sam didn’t hide her bitterness behind humor and curls anymore. Cat thinks she could fall in love with a woman like that.
“Because we broke, but we didn’t really break. You know?”
Sam doesn’t say anything and Cat is old enough now to know not to fill in the blanks for her.
Sometimes silence is just silence.
Just before Cat’s twenty-sixth birthday, Jade finally got what she’d been working for: her own independent theatre. It’s technically funded by her university and also technically part of her grande doctorate project or dissertation or whatever… and she convinced them to all get back together for her first show.
Cat saw no irony in the face that after eight years, Jade was the one who is able to bring them back together again.
Oh… the others?
They’d been keeping busy. Jade triple-majored in theatre, music, and creative writing and then jumped right into a doctorate program (or two?) (Cat just knows she’s always buried behind stacks of books or at the student theatre). Beck got a soap his sophomore of college - only finished because Jade said she wouldn’t marry him without that “BA” next to his name. Now he’s insisting she put the “Dr.” in front of hers before he’ll even consider accepting her hand. It’s been a long six years, but he’s still hoping for something a bit more challenging, did a stint on Broadway, but hated New York. Robbie is stage manager at a small but upscale theatre - his lighting designs are pretty wildly admired. Andre got an internship at a record company and now is working his way up the producer ladder. Cat’s caught his name hidden in a couple of hot singles the past couple of years. Trina opened a beauty pageant school and has had a few reality shows poke their heads around, but her determination to keep the girls from being exploited makes it difficult for any contractual agreements on either side.
Cat worked mornings at a preschool and was popular in the local musical theatre circuit. She always got the Chenoweth roles even though she knew she’s an Idina at heart. But, that’s the game.
And Tori.
Well, Tori left on tour with a little alternative band when their singer caught pneumonia right after graduation and ended up with a record deal. Cat knew not to pay too much attention to the tabloids, but a divorce and a child and an affair with a manager and a brief stint hiding out in India learning yoga or something equally pretentious were all confirmed by Sam’s radio contacts over the years.
They were all sitting in Trina’s living room (she had the biggest house) (she had the only house) drinking beer and Robbie was cooking that smelled perfect; and he and Trina were still pretending not to be together even though he moved all his stuff in two years ago; and Cat was leaning against Jade’s legs from her spot on the floor; and Andre and Beck were clustered around the piano; and Cat felt good. Because they all see each other and make time for each other but they’re twenty-somethings in Los Angeles and life is a bitch and so it’s been a while since they were all in the same place at the same time… alone. Bars and opening nights and record parties and beauty pageants don’t count.
Andre was the one who said it first, “So she’s really coming?” His mouth full of fancy cheese and he was looking down at the script Jade had handed them skeptically.
“She’s coming,” Jade had a way of making the impossible sound factual.
Trina looked at Robbie worriedly and Cat glanced away when he started to rub her shoulders comfortingly, “Mom was in the hospital last-”
“She’s coming.” Beck calms down when he drinks beer. Like way down. Like a Black Hole of anti-energy.
Jade started playing with Cat’s hair restlessly; like this was the part of the ‘meeting’ she had been dreading the most.
Cat cleared her throat, “It’s a genius idea. But if she isn’t here, it won’t work. We need…” she should've said everyone but her was sticking to the roof of her mouth like peanut butter. No one met her eye.
And someone changed the subject.
The first time Cat saw Tori after eight years, it was less dramatic than she would have imagined (if she had imagined it) (which she hadn’t, not once). They were in Jade’s rehearsal space on campus, the theatre itself still undergoing some last-minute renovations under Robbie’s supervision, a herd of Jade’s undergrads alternatively attempting to be helpful or staring wide-eyed at them, and Tori walked in in an over-sized knitted sweater, leggings with boots, a cup of coffee in her hand, and large sunglasses covering half of her small face.
No one took note of the leggy girl standing in the corner playing with her phone except for Cat. Who stared and tried not to stare and concentrated on breathing. Part of her wanted to be sixteen again - run over to her friend and jump into her arms - but a stronger part wanted to keep her cool, to concentrate on the scene she was rehearsing with Andre and stay in character. Prove just how adult she was.
How completely unaffected she was by the ghost appearing in the corner.
She didn’t notice Andre lean slightly more towards her, waiting for her to fall.
Maybe it was years of having them all always nearby, arms at the ready - hands just waiting for hers - that it wasn’t unusual enough to make note of. He told himself that it was a good thing that she felt comfortable enough to rely on them like that. He told himself to stay steady and so he did. He was good at staying steady.
Trina was actually the first person to notice Tori’s entrance - but they had fought over the last toaster strudel that morning and she wasn’t in any rush to be the beaming sister, so pleased and tickled to have her (famous!) long-lost relative back in the city.
Jade acknowledged her with a raised eyebrow and a wave of the script in her direction.
Beck was on location in the desert to the West of LA and wasn’t due back into the city until probably the wee hours of the next morning. The independent film was actually a great opportunity for him as an actor so no one - even Jade - begrudged him not being there.
So the first time Cat spoke to Tori after eight years of radio silence, it was in-character, reading lines from a script.
“So you finally made it.”
They hugged.
“I told you I wouldn’t be too late.”
“You’re always late.”
“I always wait.” Tori smiled brightly at Cat, who rolled her eyes back.
“Traffic was bad.”
“Traffic is always bad.”
“I’m always bad.”
“You are who you are.”
“I’m bad at this shit. I’m leaving. Nice seeing you.”
“You just got here.”
Cat felt her face shift under a new weight, the mask of a nonchalant character tired of their lines falling over her face. “I forgot my lines. Let’s try again some other time?”
“But that’s not… you can’t just go off script like that!” Tori’s high-pitched wail was forced and fake, Cat knew it from years of rehearsing with Tori late into the night when they both were too tired to try anymore.
Trina tapped Tori on the shoulder and the scene continued, Cat kissed Andre and Jade goodbye and waved to the interns or students or whatever and walked out the door. She was late for an appointment.
She txted Jade later on her pear, REHRSL GO OK SRY G2G EARLY
Jade txted back in seconds, u r gr8! c u @ sushi @10 ok?
Andrea was wearing a soothing blue color that day. She tended to wear light, calming shades of blue when she was worried that a client was going to react badly to their session. Cat tried not to be curious who the unlucky client was that day.
“So I was cleaning out some old files and I was reminded that we’ve been seeing each other for five years almost exactly.”
“You say that like this is a mutually beneficial relationship.”
Andrea smiled.
Cat smiled back.
“Do you remember when you first came to see me?”
“Sure. My girlfriend and I - we decided together to find therapists. The Psychologist recommended you.”
“You had just recently been in the hospital, hadn’t you?”
Cat’s smile widened, “Laryngitis. It was really gross.”
“How long were you in the hospital for?”
“They told me three weeks, but I was so out of it - it felt like just a couple of days.”
“Hmm… three weeks is a long time to be in the hospital for laryngitis.”
Cat’s smile curled into a smirk, “Well, it was a very dangerous virus.”
“Of course.”
They smiled at each other.
“Had you ever been hospitalized before that?”
“Nope. Fit as a fiddle.”
“And you don’t remember anything from your time in the hospital?”
“Why are you asking now… I mean. That was a long time ago.”
“I just saw on the news last night that Tori Vega was in town. I know you two used to be friends and that just before the… laryngitis? You were very concerned for her -”
“She’s in town to help a friend. I mean, we’re all helping.”
“What’s it like seeing her?”
“Fine. Good. Nice. I guess. I haven’t really had the chance to like… catch-up or anything.”
“Mmhmm.”
Cat did her best not to scratch her elbow. She needed to. But she needed the distraction.
“In one of your sessions with Sam that year - she mentioned your brother. Did he come visit you in the hospital when you were sick?”
Cat’s heart began thudding in her chest, hard and fast. She smiled. She smiled until it hurt and that hurt was so familiar it hurt all the more for the scars it had left behind. “Probably not.”
“What about your mother?”
“Mom is in Arizona working. She can’t really afford to come out to LA every time I get a cold.”
“You were in the hospital for three weeks, Cat. I’m just trying to remember if you’ve ever mentioned your family.”
“Jade and Beck and the rest. They’re my family.”
Andrea smiled, “I know Cat. I was just hoping that after … well it’s been five years and I know a lot about Jade and Sam and nothing about your mother or brother.”
Cat felt like she was going to throw up. She smiled. She shrugged. She breathed in and out evenly. “There’s just not much to tell I guess!”
“You can tell me anything, Cat.”
Cat rolled her eyes and laughed, “Duh, Andrea. You’re like my therapist.”
“Oh right. I forgot.”
Cat gave Andrea a high-five on the way out the door, “Stay chill, A.”
The mask she had slipped on looking into Tori’s reflective sunglasses didn’t work here, but she wasn’t completely naked. You aren’t just a character on stage.
All the world’s a stage.
She just had let herself forget.
Everything was different and everything was the same. It was weird except in all the ways it wasn’t. Almost like everything had come to their natural conclusions. Robbie and Trina’s legs intertwined under the table and sharing an appletini, Cat tucked between Jade and Beck their fingers in her hair and arms reaching over her plate, Andre and Beck whispering together over the menu.
Andre sitting rather stiffly next to her when he would have once invaded her space the way that they all did with each other. Like a pile of puppies sitting there in a booth in a respectable, not too-highly priced sushi bar, and not a group of twenty-something professionals.
She kept her sunglasses on at the table and ignored Trina kicking her under the table. She ordered whiskey and ignored Robbie’s exasperated expression. She paid more attention to her phone than the conversation at the table and ignored their hurt eyes.
She could ignore a lot.
She was Tori fucking Vega.
And she was doing them a fucking favor.
(She didn’t look at Jade once. She’d lose her resolve to stay distant and taciturn if she looked at Jade. She’d lose everything she was pretending she had worked for if she looked at Jade.)
She let them drag her to the karaoke bar in the back after dinner. She ordered another drink and refused to sing. She made snarky comments and accused them all of being hacks. She told a wicked story about Taylor singing in the streets of Paris as if she had been there instead of only having read it in a magazine just like all they probably had. She didn’t look at Jade once.
Except.
Except Cat was still Cat fucking Valentine. And she still sang like Mariah Carey had a love affair with Bruno Mars and Janelle Monae's love child. And that alone brought the sunglasses down.
“Jesus, Cat. Where are you working now?”
Cat blushed, “Oh I help run this cute little preschool-”
Tori waved her hand, “No I mean. Singing. Performing. Not that other shit. You should go to New York, I know some people. You are wasting yourself here.”
Cat giggled and it was so fucking cute Tori could have thrown up little pink hearts.
“Yeah but I mean. I like Los Angeles. Why would I leave?”
Tori shook her head, “That’s just because you’ve never left. You should be on Broadway, girl.”
“Tori…” Trina looked somewhere between freaked and pissed and Tori ignored her.
“Let me make some calls. I can get you in the door at least.”
“Tori…”
“No, Trina,” Cat handed the mic to Tori and waved Trina’s worried face away. “Tough talk from a washed-up pop wannabe. How many Broadway shows have you headlined in the past eight years? I’m happy here. With … Why did you come anyway?”
“I can leave! I can fucking leave and then what would you have?”
Cat’s eyes shined and Tori felt like she had drowned a cat in front of a room full of nuns, “Not you.”
Robbie and Tori took that moment to practically carry Tori out the door, shouting about getting up early and jetlag. She didn’t get a chance to look behind her and not for the first time she was glad.
Eyes forward, Vega.
Trina waited until they were home and Robbie was hiding upstairs before she said what she had to say.
She poured a glass of water for herself in the kitchen and chuckled to herself, “So I guess now I know how it feels to have an insensitive ass for a sister.”
Tori rolled her eyes, “Cat is fucking talented. She’s too good for regional theatre. And you know it.”
“God are you really that stupid? And… oblivious?”
“Whatever Trina. I’m going to bed.”
“Cat is sick you moron.”
[next chapter: jade]