The sky gives a begrudging mutter, rolling and shaking its displeasure through my car. Clouds cluster together, a conspiracy of grey, losing their soft and fluffy appearance and gorging themselves with ink, every rumble a threat to split themselves open.

I don't know how long I've been driving. Long enough to see the sun shrink and fall, to see the clouds creep in, silent in their approach. I don't even know if the stars are out yet. They're hidden behind a swollen ceiling, swallowed by the storm. It's windy outside. I see the trees flex sideways, leaves and cast off sheets of paper twirling a chaotic dance. Rain falls fitfully, a few premature clouds blushing themselves onto the pavement, road slick and shining under my warm headlights. I don't know where I am. It's not the first time. This car is- this car was- my sanctuary. A means of escape, of running and running in a city you can't get out of. No matter what streets I turn onto, I never reach the outskirts of Hollywood. I never make it away from the neat, manicured houses that I've seen all my life, that I've lived in all my life. I never see the mess that some peoples lives can be. I never see the less-than-pristine houses, I never see the tired father come home, sweat staining his shirt, I never see the mother pushing a lawn mower, wiping a hand across her brow. I never see anything less than perfect. I keep myself away from the mess, from the struggle. I keep myself clean and held apart. I stay indoors, I stay alone. I tell myself that people like that can't be happy. Not really. They might love each other, but that's all they have. You can't be happy with one person. You just can't. If you could, Dad would've stayed with Mom. Stayed in Pasadena at that little law firm, instead of taking a ludicrous offer in Hollywood, and dragging me and Mom with him. Love wasn't enough to keep them together, and they had everything else in the world to keep them happy. How can people who live such messy, complicated, difficult lives still smile at the end of the day?

They do, though. I kid myself that it's not possible, because it's not possible for me. I'm cut from my parents' cloth, and we have an awfully discerning tailor.

If I even could be happy with one person, why can't I be happy with Beck? Why does Tori keep creeping in? He's perfect. He's safe. He doesn't mind that I'm closed up, that I'm pushy and loud and mean. He doesn't like it, but he lets me be who I am. Maybe Tori'd let me be that too, except I'm not myself around her. Without even doing anything, she turns me upside down. She disrupts the neatly stored feelings, the carefully arranged thoughts. She makes me a mess, and at the end of every day, she's there, swirled up in me. But there are days I've woken up smiling.

Thunder rumbles, vibrating the air with its great yawn, rain starting to pour down in a great sheet, rattling and pattering over my car, hissing a fine mist on the road.

I have feelings for Tori. That much is obvious. That much has been clear from the beginning. As much as I tried to fool myself that every time with her was the last time, that they were just stumbles on a path I'd made a wrong turn on, part of me has known that it was never about hating her. Maybe at the beginning, the very beginning, it was. A way to purge whatever love existed in me, and leave it as pure hate. Maybe at the start it was about trying to hate her more. It's not about trying to hate now. It's about trying not to love her. To get back the feeling I was content with. To put back all these emotions and lock them up, where they can't hurt me anymore. As hard as it is to strive to hate her, it's harder still to accept that I don't. That I really don't, at all, and the harder I try, the more evident it becomes.

I glance in my rearview mirror, tail-lights staining the street behind me red. The backseat is dark, the changing light building shadows of us there, pressed against the leather. That was when I realised, when I let Tori... when I forgot to hate her, just for that little bit.

I tear my eyes away from the mirror, throwing them back on the dimly lit road, windscreen wipers barely making a difference to the steady torrent of rain that needles the glass. I think back on all the times I was with her, my fingers inside her, my lips caressing her. The funny thing is, I can remember everything. Every little detail, every pant, every hitched breath and trembling muscle, but the one thing I can't remember is how I felt during it all. All I remember is her, in images starker than those painted by the lightning, darkness stripped away for a moment. A blink of an eye. That's how I was with her. That darkness, stripped away. Sometimes for a moment, for a sentence, for a heartbeat, but always for too long.

I take a deep breath, heart hot and heavy in my chest, crushing my lungs. My hands twist at the wheel roughly, car swaying unsteadily as I take the corner hard.

The first time I kissed her, really kissed her, wasn't in the bathroom at school. It wasn't in the backseat of my car. It was in her house, in the dark. Pressed up against her in her room. When I could forget who she was and who I was, and what we're supposed to be. The first time I really kissed her, I wasn't kissing her. I was kissing this girl who makes my heart tremble and ache. This girl whose fingers danced over my skin like our breathing was a melody. This girl I didn't know, because I didn't want to. If you don't know someone, you can't fall in love with them. There's no such thing as love at first sight, and, true to form, I lost my heart in the dark. When she gasped my name in that twilight, the words were pins pricking me, digging under my skin with a reminder. That I was Jade, and she was Tori, and never the two shall meet. I can still remember what she tastes like.

The heat crawls along my ribs, climbing upwards, scratching at my throat with needle sharp claws. It's a sickly creature that she introduced in me, that she infected me with when we met in the park that night. A disease of possibilities, caught when she stripped off her skin and stood in her bare bones, pleading with me. When she spoke everything I'd already thought. If only things were different. If only I could live in mess with a smile on my face, and Tori's arm around me. If only I could take that chance. If only I could take the road less travelled; the road of the heart, not the head. If only I could get her out of both. If only she'd never come to Hollywood Arts. If only, if only, if only.

The cat comes out of nowhere, a dark and desperate streak dashing across the street. My foot slams down on the brake, frozen hands twisting the wheel. The tyres screech and skid, sluicing and sliding on the slick tarmac. There's a sharp metallic snap, a tortured scream of steel, and I'm thrown sideways, seatbelt jerking me back in the seat like a rough hand; a whip snapped across my chest. The car rocks to a stop, engine stuttering before returning to a strained idle. My heart's jolting in my chest, flooding adrenaline through my veins like neon, lighting me up. My fingers shake as I turn the key, killing the engine, my headlights illuminating a closed store, interior desolate. The passenger side door is warped, bowing in the middle slightly, a sharp crack fracturing through the window. I manage to hook my stiff fingers around the door handle, almost spilling out into the street as it swings open. I'm wet in an instant, the rain a heavy blanket settling over me. I circle around the hood, a hand placed on the slick metal, my steps uneven, almost tripping over the curb. There's a street sign bent almost double, folded like a paperclip against my passenger door. Navy paint scraped away to expose bright and gleaming steel. Who knew my car could hide its true colours so well?

A chill starts to sink into my bones, nibbling and gnawing at my flesh, covering it in goosebumps. I get back into the car, falling heavily into the seat, wet clothes slipping on the leather. My fingers worm into my hair, head bowing, and the next thing I know, the water running down my face is warm, and the taste on my lips is of salt. I squeeze my eyes shut, lips parted, soundless sobs forced out by the heavy, hectic pounding of my heart. I'm scared, I'm so scared of everything. I just want everything to go back to the way it was. I don't want to be out here, cowering in a banged up car. I don't want to keep feeling these things that hurt me, these biting bugs I thought I'd locked away. I want the walls of my maze to stay straight, foliage neatly trimmed. I want to keep everyone out, because if I let them in, they'll just trample everything. They'll mess everything up. I've worked so hard to be who I am, to be together. To stay safe, in the heart of my gilded cage. Beck might've cut through to me, might've reached me in my hiding place, but he lowered the sheet again, let me stay where I was so sure I wanted to be; in this maze I don't even know my way out of anymore.

Tori, though? She's torn the sheet away, held a hand out to me. She wants to show me the way out of this prison that I've locked myself into. Or maybe she just wants to stay in there with me.

My chest aches with every breath, ribs feeling crushed and broken. The seatbelt might've kept me from flying around my car like a pinball, but it didn't do it gently. I take as deep a breath as I can manage, blinking away whatever tears still stubbornly well, lips shaking. I'm a wreck. Just as much as my car is. The only difference is, I don't know who can fix me. Home is not a place of healing, Beck's only a place to rest. Everything tells me not to go to her. Every instinct I have tells me to retreat, to cut her out like cancerous flesh, lest she burrow down and reach my bloodstream. But that's what I've doing all this time; running away. I've been doing nothing but setting up barriers against her, even though she was never attacking. She's only my enemy because I can't fight her.

Maybe it's time I tried something different. I'm scared, and I'm hurt, and I'm soaked to the bone. I couldn't feel any worse than I've already made myself feel. I'm torn into pieces too tiny to see. What more harm can seeing Tori do? It's time to finally stop running, to wallow in the mess that's always surrounded me. It's time to deal with this thing I keep trying to fuck away. I need to know. I need to know if she could've been good for me, if I was right to be terrified of this feeling. I need to know if maybe she could've loved me too. I need to know what it could've felt like to be with her, to really be with her. Not as Jade, not as Tori. Just as two people. One who never feels a thing, and one who feels too much. Strip us to our skeletons, and maybe we're not so different. I've had some bone showing through for a while now.

Maybe she can show me why people still smile at the end of the day. Maybe she can show me how to be happy, even in the midst of mess. Maybe she could be that someone that makes everything okay.

Or maybe she could just be another mistake I keep making.