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 Posted: Wed May 09, 2018 11:45 am
It started slowly, the way most things do when there’s not a lot of pressure applied.
He was busy, work filled his plate so full that there was often little room for anything but and Jade understood, because work was very much a staple fixture in her life. Work was also what had brought them together too, a simple meeting as her channel grew in popularity and companies became more and more interested in sponsoring her.
Levi had been the reason she’d signed the contract.
For a long while things were great, they could make time together and she could even frame it as work if it helped coax him out of the office or away from his laptop long enough to give her some much needed attention and, as far as she was concerned, Jade was relatively low maintenance.
She didn’t mind if either of them found company in someone else’s bed as long as there was the understanding that they made time for each other. And, really, Levi’s mistress wasn’t another person it was a concept; work.
But that was the issue; it was growing more and more difficult to get Levi to put aside work for even five minutes.
When her birthday had been passed over in favor of work, Jade had spent the day largely alone with the exception of a meal with her family. Porsha was on tour and Jade had been too tied up in things in the city to even consider attempting to visit the woman. Even then it had been manageable, lonely, but manageable.
But, Jade was finally reaching her enough is enough point.
It was difficult, because she knew that the combined efforts of Chase and Levi were finally paying off and Mr. Renegade was caught in compromising positions more than once since the music festival and it their patience was finally paying off, but Jade was tired of letting her boyfriend ignore her or rain check her or blow her off.
There had been a point in time when showing up to his office unannounced and dragging him out had worked and garnered her afternoons full of her favorite person but then he’d gone and replaced his secretary, it was needed and she knew that, but the new girl...she was more aggressive about how Mr. Drummond is busy and can’t be disturbed right now.
It was agitating but even that had been manageable, until it wasn’t.
More often than not she’d get rejected, turned away, and couldn’t even catch a glimpse of the man who was supposed to be her boyfriend, the one who’d promised her that you and I until the end unless it was for a board meeting that she was only invited to attend because her face was the face of the company’s media outreach.
Then she started noticing how much time Levi spent with his new hire, a Cassadega Bright.
The woman was a looker, Jade couldn’t deny that, and normally Levi being around or with other women didn’t bother her but there was something about this one that left her uneasy. She knew it likely had to do with the simple fact that Ms. Bright kept her from distracting Levi, while in turn being a distraction herself, and she wasn’t normally a jealous woman, but she was jealous of that one.
At first, it was easy enough to brush it off, to allow herself to think that their time spent together was work related and it probably was but it was still...hurtful that he’d chosen to spend more time with Cass instead of her.
Jade was great at putting up a good front but things started to slip the longer things went on and she felt more and more neglected.
Texts went unanswered if they weren’t business related and most calls were rejected, sent straight to voicemail. In fact, she had basically stopped carrying her personal phone at all. There were some exceptions, days where she felt more optimistic than others only to regret the attempt at normalcy.
Cerissé had her work number, and her personal, and knew when or what she should contact her about. In fact, if it hadn’t been for her protegé, Jade would have opted to ‘work from home’ more often than not because her primary job was videos.
She knew it was a serious problem when she found herself completely skirting the side of the building’s floor where Levi’s office sat. Avoidance felt easier than trying to pretend like things were fine, like she could simply stroll over and enter his office like she used to.
Jade knew she needed to be upfront with him, but her heart was tender and she was struggling because Levi meant something to her, it wasn’t like the other people she half-dated or slept with. It wasn’t like with Porsha, whom she was increasingly fond of but had never been her person, not like Levi was...had been?
Her heart hurt.
Still, a few weeks...or maybe it was months at this point...since her last attempt to get her boyfriend to spend time with her had passed and she decided to try again.
When she stopped by his office, surprisingly without one Ms. Bright to bar her from the door, he had smiled tiredly at her and she could feel the way it made her heart sing.
Oh, she thought, clutching the doorframe to keep her upright and balanced, I’ve missed that smile.
But, in the end, he told her he couldn’t step away from work and she left, aching all the more from the rejection. She hadn’t even tried to fight him, like that time when she’d pushed her way in and plopped in his lap. Instead, she had swallowed her wants, nodded her head, and excused herself.
Even then, the dull aching was nothing compared to when she’d gone out, trying to be bubbly and bright and attend an old friend’s gig at a club and spotted him among the crowd with none other than one Ms. Cassadega Bright.
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Posted: Tue May 29, 2018 12:32 pm
She doesn’t confront him right away.
Instead, she waits and she watches. Jade does this partially because she’s so caught off guard and partially because she is convinced that she’s missing something. The Levi she sees isn’t the Levi she knows, the Levi she loves.
Blue eyes watch and despite the dimness of the club or the distance between them, Jade can still make out his form well enough. Her boyfriend, if that’s even what he is at this point, has always been a skinny whip of a thing with less meat on his bone than his sweet tooth would dictate but something about the way he looks is wrong. He’s gaunter than he used to be, he even looks a little more…hollow if she looks at him too long between slightly squinted eyes. She can even see the bags beneath his eyes at this distance and they’re the worst she’s ever seen.
Despite the aching his neglect has left within her, Jade can feel her heart constrict with worry and something catches in her throat that she can’t swallow when tension seizes her shoulders and keeps them rigid.
Acid green is staring right into ocean blue and for one terrifying moment Jade thinks that Levi’s going to approach her but then his head turns and she realizes that his eyes were too unfocused to notice her.
From there, it didn’t take her long to realize that Levi was high.
All thoughts of confronting him left in that moment. Now couldn’t possibly be the right time, not with one Miss Cassadega Bright lurking in the background like a shark.
So Jade leaves.
.
Nearly a week passes before she can gather up her strength to confront him in his office. Everywhere else is too public and for all their openness, some things are kept better private.
It’s a rare occasion when his secretary is out of the office and at first, Jade thinks it’s a lucky sign. Maybe things are finally going right for her. And when she enters, he gives her that smile that makes her want to melt. Suddenly, the idea of confronting him is almost too much and she nearly retreats but Jade Argent has never been one to shy away from things before, even when it’s her heart on the line.
“Jade what are you--”
“We need to talk,” she interrupts, shutting the door behind her and clicking the lock into place.
.
It goes worse than she expects.
Their fight is quieter than she expects too, no angry yelling from her end even if her blood burns hot in her veins when she looks at him and the desk that keeps them separated. Her tone remains even and her voice doesn’t shake like she feared it would. Instead, it’s all very clinical in how it goes down.
Jade can’t decide if that makes things better, or worse.
Levi doesn’t put up a fight or if he does, it’s so miniscule she’s forgotten it in the ten...fifteen minutes it takes for them to have the conversation. He’s incredibly resigned, the exposed jar of starseeds and orbs sitting as pretty as she used to on his desk. There are other things, of course there are, but this is the worst offender.
She knew what his general had to say about starseeds and, for the first time since she’d joined the ranks of the Negaverse, she could see what sort of future was ahead of him if he didn’t stop.
Faustite came to mind, their conversation clear in her head as if they’d spoken just the other day.
“You have to stop.”
“I can’t.”
“Levi, please. For me?”
“I can’t.”
His tone is as defeated as she feels, even though she still manages to stand as tall as ever while his hand plays with the jar on his desk.
“Then I can’t either. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t pretend that things are okay, that we’re okay and you won’t even try--” her voice chokes and tears spring into her eyes unexpectedly.
Without another word, she turns on her heel and leaves.
The door slams shut behind her and she doesn’t look back.
He’s not coming after her and she knows it enough to not even pretend that he might.
.
It doesn’t stop everything from hurting.
.
Afterwards, when she manages to make it to the privacy of her car Jade nearly breaks down with her grip on her steering wheel so tight it turns her knuckles white. Her jaw is clenched so tightly she can feel the headache beginning to form as a result but she’s determined not to cry, not yet. Not until she gets to one of her apartments.
.
It takes thirty minutes before she’s in a state where she thinks she can safely drive and another twenty to get to the apartment she abandoned outside of video production. It’s there where she crawls into a bed that hasn’t been used in months and it’s there that she wraps herself around a pillow, pressing it against her face to muffle the sobs she’s sure she’s heaving.
Over the two hours she remains curled up half under the covers, Jade has cried more tears than she had in the last four years.
The breakup has shaken her far worse than that time she was cornered and attacked, when she’d been kidnapped and--
It’s then that she sits up, palms rubbing away the remains of makeup that hasn’t streaked across her face, and shakes her head to shove the thoughts away. That had been years ago, she was fine even if they hadn’t found or made any headway when it came to Sailor Sparks, the ringleader of the ragtag group who’d single handedly destroyed what should have been a profitable event.
In fact….
Hadn’t that been where it’d all begun to spiral downwards? How had she missed Levi’s descent and addiction when it was so blatantly in her face?
How could he fight for her then but not even try to fight for her now?
It hurt.
Jade sank back down and curled around the pillow again.
She wasn’t enough for Levi to try and break his cycle of addiction and she didn’t have enough in her to try and fight it, not when everything else she had been neglecting came crashing back down on her.
Two dozen deleted texts later, to various parties, and Jade had fallen asleep on a tear-stained pillow.
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Posted: Tue May 29, 2018 1:55 pm
( music ) Word Count: 1,509
Going to work in the same building as her now ex-boyfriend is difficult but Jade pushes through anyway. It’s part of being a performer, she reasons, when she puts her makeup on in the morning. A little more effort goes into her outfits and the way she does her eyeliner or the red lipstick she’s taken to wearing like a shield. Most people, to their credit, don’t say anything although it become painful obvious that they’re no longer an item.
So much so she has to unfollow the tag otp: siren and her sailor on her social media sites.
Mr. Renegade is almost insufferable about it when she asks for a meeting to talk about her work arrangements and Jade is reminded that while she’s apt at dealing with assholes, Renegade is perhaps one of the biggest ones she’s had to deal with professionally.
Were it not for Chase Black’s intervention, Jade might have lost what careful control she had over her emotions when he was being entirely too stubborn about her request to work with someone other than one Levi Drummond. Thankfully the more recent CEO stepped in just in time and had assured them both that he would have personal hand in how her work proceeded.
It wasn’t much, but Jade was at a point where she needed some sort of assurance that things could be different moving forward.
He had invited her to his office afterwards and while Jade had wanted to stay no, she said yes because any distraction was a welcome one at this point.
.
Mr. Black’s office is on the top floor of the building and the elevator ride takes five minutes to reach the floor. It’s uncomfortable to say the least because while the man is nice enough there’s something unsettling about him.
Maybe it’s the way he carries himself or maybe it has to do with the other side of him that she’s only truly heard rumors about here and there.
It’s not her first time alone with him, but that was before he had spent an extended amount of time away and when Jade looks at him, there’s very little that’s recognizable of the person she knew way back when.
(I wonder if this was what it was like for Levi, the next time he saw him, she can’t help but think and then her heart aches at the memory of who her boy used to be.)
“What can I help you with, sir?” Jade asks once the man has taken a seat on the other side of the ornate desk that takes up a quarter of the room.
“You remember the festival, what was it called again?”
For a brief moment her throat seizes and she digs her nails into the bare skin of her arms. Flashes of the event, including the sparks that’d knocked her out, hit hard and she was grateful that he was busy cleaning up papers to actually look at her.
A deep breath and a harsh swallow later, she answers. “Anthemusa.” Jade’s voice is softer than she means but she’s starting to realize that there’s a lot more she needs to unpack when it comes to the festival than she thought.
She’d been so good at compartmentalizing, she hadn’t realized how much it still affected her, especially now that everything feels like a raw, open, and gaping wound.
“Right,” he mumbles and his sharp whiskey-eyed gaze meets her bright blue one and Jade feels frozen in place, like he’s capable of reading her as easily as she can read others. It’s unsettling, in a way that’s uniquely different from the other ways he unsettles her. “Do you remember how there was footage, before the attack on your stage, of Renegade speaking with the assailant?”
Her nod is as slow as the way she swallows, indents being left behind in her skin from how tightly she presses nails against them.
“We have more evidence that he’s harboring her.”
For a moment Jade can’t breathe and can feel the way her throat is closing up because her heart is racing and everything is going white.
It passes, thankfully, and she blinks at him. “Excuse me?”
To her surprise, Mr. Black is patient, even kind when he repeats himself. “The girl who attacked you, we’ve found her. Or,” there’s a dry almost bitter laugh from him, “rather we’ve spotted her coming and going from Mr. Renegade’s abode.”
“How long?” The question, or is it more of a demand with how it rushes from her mouth, spills from her and she’s stumbling forward, having to grip the desk to support herself.
“It’s been a few months, as you know Levi’s been distracted. I saw no point in informing you until we were certain.” He’s calm and straight to the point and she’s grateful for it.
“When--” Jade feels dizzy from the news and the feeling that’s bubbling in her belly that she thinks might be revenge. “When can we do something about it? I-- I want to be part of it, after she--” She starts to laugh, nearly hysterical from the rush of things happening around her.
Her break up, the revelation, the chance to face her attacker and do something in return.
Jade nearly feels unhinged by it all.
Mr. Black’s smile almost looks feral and she feels something twist in her gut the longer she looks at him. “Soon,” he promises, straightening out some more of his desk. “There are few loose ends that I have to clean up before we can move forward.”
The news irritates her, because Jade didn’t realize she’s itching for some sort of fight until the opportunity for one is presented to her, but she bites her tongue and swallows her desires. It’s all a rolling effect, a side-effect of the break up and her desire to return to being in control of something again.
“Will--” She starts but his gravelly voice cuts her off.
“No, were he in a different state of mind, perhaps, but Levi is unfit to handle these affairs. You will take his place instead.”
The news is relieving and Jade can barely contain herself the longer she sits there. “What of Mr. Renegade?” She cannot help but ask.
“We’ll take care of him too.”
.
In the aftermath of the meeting, something about Jade feels a little lighter.
For the first time in days her thoughts aren’t consumed with the aching of her heart or the fact that more often than not she ends up having to sneak away to deal with pesky tears and emotions that used to not overwhelm her.
Now that the dam is open, Jade is struggling to close it.
But it helps knowing that some sort of retribution is around the corner, that all she has suffered wasn’t for naught. That maybe even though she can’t really get true closure when it comes to Levi, she can at least get justice for Anthemusa.
Maybe it’s not a real victory, but she’s taking what she can get right now.
.
When she starts working on her next video, it’s with Anthemus in mind and how for so long she had avoided talking about it because the wounds were fresh and gaping and she didn’t want to pour salt into them but now...now they’re a scab, a scar on her skin of all the things she’s had to endure at the hands senshi.
Now, she thinks, it’s time to speak up.
Staying quiet for too long could have very well been why things with Levi reached a point where she couldn’t repair it no matter how much she begged him to simply try for himself, for her.
In fact, as she sat in the chair, fingers hovering above the mouse for her webcam app, Jade froze, staring back at her reflection in the computer screen.
How much of the break up was simply her fault?
Could she have pushed harder for his attention? Should she have demanded it from him the way she used to when she would plop into his lap, before his secretary had been replaced?
Should she have spoken up sooner than holding on to her quiet concern while she presented this strong, unbreakable woman to the public. The public that included her boyfriend who probably didn’t understand the type of things she was carrying on her shoulders because she didn’t speak up?
This would be different.
This thing with Sailor Sparks was going to be resolved in a matter of days, she hoped, or at most a few weeks. Chase Black had promised her justice against her assaulter and the man who’d allowed it to happen and Jade could not wait to grab ahold of the reigns and take back her narrative.
And she was going to start with this video, expressing the vulnerabilities she had once been so determined to hide from her fans. Maybe it wasn’t the best way to handle things, but she had to start somewhere.
This happened to seem like the best place.
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Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 2:46 pm
Jade finds that she grows too restless in the days that follow her meeting with Chase.
It’s difficult to discern what the cause might be, there’s too many variables to narrow it down to any one thing; the break up, the anticipation of finding Sparks, the possible remove of Mr. Renegade from the company, and even the chance to control some aspect besides the content of the videos in her life again. She knows it’s likely a mix of thing that’s set her blood buzzing and her heart pumping far more erratically than necessary.
She’s even discovered that Porsha’s returned home and part of her aches to see the woman she isn’t sure that she’s ready to unpack the things that have been building over the last year.
There’s hesitation, certainly, because she misses her strong partner but Jade also wants to be strong for Porsha and until she can keep up appearances, or she can talk of her ex-boyfriend without her voice shaking or her eyes tearing up she won’t. Or at least, she won’t be the one reaching out.
Yet.
Soon.
When she’s ready.
In fact, only Cerissé has been informed of what happened and even then, it’s barely notification at all. The woman had received a single text with a simple message.
[Text to C♪: Levi and I broke up ]
Her friend had taken some time to respond and Jade assumed it was because the woman didn’t know how to respond. Relationships weren’t something the pair often discussed and sometimes Cerissé was rather clinical, as if she didn’t have time for things so messy and complicated as emotions.
She’d gotten back a, I’m sorry for your loss. Do you need anything?
It makes her feel better, to have it out and in the open in some way, without getting pressured to talk.
[Text to C♪: Not right now, but I’ll let you know. ]
For how different they were, Jade greatly appreciated the friendship her protege provided her with and how calm and drama-free it tended to be.
From there it’s a matter of finding someway to distract herself.
It starts with her going over the messages on her latest posts and checking her other social media accounts, such as twitter who apparently has a DM for her to read. Then it transitions to her flicking through various dating apps listless on her bed (who’s sheets she had changed recently) and swiping until she found someone cute enough to message. Or respond to, whatever came first.
In the end, she picks somebody to meet up with at one of the many clubs in downtown Destiny City.
.
Dancing and the rush of being at a club pressed against someone who’s only paying attention to her is thrilling. It makes her feel like she used to, confident and self assured, and she doesn’t mind the way his fingers dig into her hips or the way his stubble scratches her neck.
The guy’s not bad looking and definitely the exact opposite of what Levi looked like, with blue eyes, blond hair and a height barely above her own in heels, and this whole thing settles the buzzing that’s alight in her veins.
It’s not quite enough to settle the aching of her heart, even when he kisses her and lets his lips trail down her skin when they’re stumbling out of the club, but it helps and that’s all she needs right now.
.
At first, it’s everything that Jade needs.
It’s light, easy, and no-strings attached but afterwards when she’s laying in the dark of the room with the guy passed out beside her she has entirely too much time to think.
Jade can’t remember the last time she had someone else sleeping in her bed. She hooks up with people frequently enough to get laid on a semi-regular basis but it’s hardly ever at her place and certainly not the secondary apartment instead of the one at the complex Porsha owns.
The euphoria that’s come with no-strings attached banging is starting to fade and is replaced with a twisting feeling in her gut.
In the darkness of the room his body looks eerily similar to that of Levi’s and Jade knows that her mind is playing tricks on her but it doesn’t stop the knife from pricking her heart and making it bleed. A shudder travels down her spine and she lays back against the bed, reaching to shift the pillows until they sit comfortably beneath her neck instead of awkwardly behind her back.
Closing her eyes doesn’t put her any closer to getting some sleep and she ends up lifting her arm and pinching her fingers together on the bridge of her nose while her companion slumbers too peacefully behind her.
Why hadn’t he worn her out completely before he passed out?
Another fifteen minutes pass before she gives up, sitting up and tossing the covers off before she moves towards the dresser and pulls out an oversized t-shirt to tug over her head. It barely skirts the middle of her thighs but she’s never been shy about her body and isn’t about to start now.
.
The night air is chilly on her barely legs but that doesn’t stop Jade from taking a seat on her patio, heels pressed against the edge of the seat and knees against her chest. Squeezed between her torso and thighs are her arms and clutched between both hands is her phone.
Blue eyes take in the twinkling of the city lights that she can see from her seventh floor apartment, when the view isn’t obscured by other building, and she shakes her head in a poor attempt to clear it.
She had hoped that the fresh air would help the longing in her chest.
Instead, her thumb presses against the home button of her cellphone and light illuminates the screen. Her fingers move automatically, even though a voice in the back of her mind is telling her everything she’s about to do is a bad idea.
Expectedly, it goes to voicemail, which she muses is for the best, but that doesn’t stop her from talking anyway.
“Hey, it’s Jade.” There’s a pause, a shaking intake of breath as she tries to steady her voice before she continues. “Chase is helping me settle things, y’know from the festival, and-- god this is stupid, you don’t even care but-- I wish you were in a better state so you could be there too.”
There’s another pause, a longer one where she rubs her palm over her face like it’ll keep her eyes dry and tear-free.
“Do you remember when I first showed up at the office? You were working so hard to convince me to sign and I agreed because you promised that it was going to be you and I until the end.” Jade’s voice cracks and she barely manages to move the speaker from her mouth when she lets out a sob.
Crying is inevitable, it seems. Jade should have expected it, in hindsight, considering who she was calling and all of the things she was saying to him.
“And I wanted proof, so you took me to a club and I drank you under the table only to get sick after. You were enamoured with me anyway and now that I’m thinking about it, I was pretty enamoured with you too.” There’s a bitter laugh that breaks up her message and she shakes her head, rubbing the tears out of her eyes before they can fall.
“You know, I really thought that maybe--- once I realized what was going on….I thought that you cared about me, enough that you would just--” There’s more bitter laughter and she feels stupid for going on this tangent but she can’t seem to stop talking. “I thought you’d try at least, for me. That I mattered enough to you, that we mattered enough for you to put up a fight for us but you didn’t.”
Teeth drag across her lip and her palm is pressing against her forehead to keep strands of white from falling in her face and to ground her a little too.
Jade didn’t realize how off balance she could feel when she wasn’t standing.
“So much for you and I until the end, huh?” Her voice grows quieter and she sounds less angry and more sad. “Except, except this is the end of the line on the voyage that was us, isn’t it? It ******** sucks, you know, it sucks because the journey was a good one until it wasn’t. I hope you’re happy.”
Her thumb hits the end call button almost immediately after and Jade wishes she hadn’t picked up her phone, that she hadn’t woken up and tried calling at all.
It was a stupid, classic post-breakup move that she wants to feel ashamed about and can’t because she needed and outlet, more closure than that bullshit ‘fight’ they had in his office.
But it turns out closure doesn’t stop everything from hurting anyway and she should have known better. Just like she should have known that rebound dates wouldn’t help either because even with someone else on his side of the bed, everything still hurts and she still feels a little hollow and empty.
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