Strangers No More || Jerrie

Chapter 17

After wishing Danielle and Demi good luck as they left for the airport, Perrie headed up to their child’s room. As she looked around at the mural-covered walls, Perrie felt the excitement that always came with finishing a project. She knew that today would be her last day painting, and she couldn’t wait to get started with it.

She pulled out all her paints and the smaller brushes that would be necessary for the remaining detail work.

Jade arrived just as Perrie was just about to put brush to wall.

“Sorry I’m late,” the brunette sighed breathlessly as she entered the room. “Carson and I were getting breakfast before she heads back to Westchester for the week.”

“How is Carson?” Perrie asked. They had spoken about Jade’s family in the context of Jade’s letters, but not much about how they were currently doing.

“She’s good,” Jade nodded. “She asked a lot about you. I told her that we’ve been talking again.”

“We’ve been doing more than just talking,” Perrie laughed. When a blush spread across Jade’s cheeks, Perrie decided to clarify her meaning. “We’ve literally been spending everyday together.”

“Oh, right,” Jade mumbled.

Sensing Jade’s slight discomfort, Perrie grabbed her hands and pulled her further into the room. She took the brunette’s purse off her shoulder and placed it on the ground. She then grabbed one of her paintbrushes and pressed it into her hand.

“Perrie, what are you doing?” Jade asked, confused.

“I think the question you should be asking is, what are YOU doing,” Perrie chuckled and tapped her brush on Jade’s nose, leaving an orange mark.

“Did you just get paint on me?” Jade asked.

“Nope!” Perrie responded innocently. “Clean brush, see?” She quickly changed brushes behind her back and showed the brunette a clean one.

“Good,” Jade responded. “But I’m not painting. I’d just f**k up all your hard work.” She gestured around her to the decorated walls.

“No you won’t,” Perrie reassured her. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Jade sighed and Perrie grinned when she walked closer to the paints and said, “Okay Michelangelo, what do I do?”

“This way,” Perrie placed a hand on Jade’s hip and led her to the far wall by the window. “I’ve outlined the stripes on the tiger; all you need to do is fill them in. You literally couldn’t mess it up if you tried.”

“I don’t think you understand my total lack of artistic ability Perrie,” Jade laughed. “I literally can’t even draw a straight line.”

“Well I don’t think anyone would ever assume you could do anything straight,” Perrie teased, unaware of how close she was now standing to the brunette. Surprised by Perrie’s response, Jade laughed louder than was necessary. “Okay, time to get to work so we can be done by sundown,” Perrie continued as she patted Jade’s shoulder and walked back to her side of the room to get started on the details of the forest.

After Jade finished with the stripes and Perrie went over the edges of them quickly, she gave Jade the new task of reading letters while she checked out the rest of the walls, making sure everything was perfect.

When she was finally finished, Perrie took a seat opposite Jade and pulled out her own letters. She knew exactly which ones she would be reading that day. “I don’t really want to read these out loud,” Perrie announced as she took sheets of paper out of a handful of letters.

Jade furrowed her brow in confusion.

“Obviously, I want you to read them, but I just don’t really feel great about reading them out loud. Can you just read them to yourself?” Perrie held the letters in her hand and looked up at the brunette nervously.

“Okay,” Jade nodded seriously and Perrie mentally thanked Jade for not dwelling too long on the matter.

Perrie handed Jade the letters and watched the brunette’s impassive face as she read them. None of the letters were more than one sentence in length, but Perrie knew that they marked a shift. They signified the first sign of her getting over Jade. To an extent anyway.

In the past five years, Perrie had slept with ten people. The first three had been within the span of just over a month, but the others had been more spread out. None of them more than two nights in a row. She didn’t regret any of them. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. One guy had stolen six euros from her, but other than that she hadn’t regretted it at all. She still didn’t. She was in control of the situation each time it happened. That didn’t mean she enjoyed telling Jade about them though.

“I see,” Jade finally spoke after what felt like hours to Perrie of her staring at the three pieces of paper. “The one who’s name you didn’t know, did you…did he…”

Realizing Jade’s train of thought, Perrie quickly cut her off, “It was one hundred percent consensual. They all were.” After a brief thought she added, “There were seven others. Ten total.”

“Oh,” Jade fell back on to her haunches and Perrie attempted to read her reaction, but her gaze was on the papers. Jade’s eyes were always so expressive and told everything she held inside, but when she shielded them, it was sometimes impossible to read the stoic woman.

“Jade?” Perrie questioned cautiously. When Jade didn’t respond immediately, Perrie shuffled closer to her. She placed a finger on her chin and lifted it up. “Talk to me Jade.”

“I just…I mean,” Jade sighed. “It’s stupid because I was with Selena, but I guess I never really thought about you being with other people. Or maybe I just didn’t want to think about it. And obviously we had no obligation to each other, but I just…” She sighed again, struggling to think of the right words to say.

Perrie knew that the discussion they were having was a serious one, but she suddenly noticed the orange paint stain on Jade’s nose that she had left there earlier and couldn’t help but giggle. Jade pulled back from Perrie and moved to stand up, but Perrie reached out a hand and stopped her. “Sorry, that was totally inappropriate,” she spoke, all the while still trying to maintain her laughter.

“Whatever Perrie,” Jade rolled her eyes.

“No!” Perrie yelled out just a little too loudly. “It’s just that you have paint on your nose.”

Jade scrunched her nose, spreading the paint a bit and Perrie had to place a hand over her mouth as she laughed again. Jade brought a finger up to her nose and felt the slightly sticky, nearly dry paint. Her mouth widened. “You said that was a clean brush!” she exclaimed.

“I may have lied,” Perrie smirked.

“In that case…” Jade trailed off as she leaned over to the still wet brushes and dipped one in green paint. Just as Perrie processed exactly what Jade was doing, Jade flicked the wet paint in a long streak across Perrie’s chin.

“Oh, it is ON, Thirlwall,” Perrie gasped. She quickly stood up and grabbed herself an open can of blue paint. She dipped a finger into it and taunted Jade with it. In return, Jade grabbed the green can and dipped a finger in herself.

They chased each other around, but they were both careful to stay in the middle of the room on the canvas so that they wouldn’t get paint on the murals. As a result, they ended up running around in circles, sloshing paint around and occasionally pressing a painted finger or handprint on each other.

After running around in circles, Perrie was starting to feel dizzy and when Jade tried to catch her leg, she fell to the ground. Jade fell on top of her. They both struggled to contain their laughter as they continued to finger paint on one another.

At the feeling of the cold paint being drawn across her collarbone, Perrie instinctively arched her back, pushing closer to Jade. She immediately blushed when she realized what she’d just done, but the glint in Jade’s eyes told her that Jade had purposely tried to elicit the response.

Sensing that Jade was momentarily distracted, Perrie hooked her leg around the other girl and flipped them so that she was now on top of Jade. And if her leg happened to push between Jade’s legs, she didn’t stop it. Especially not when Jade let out a soft moan.

Hearing herself moan, Jade slapped her hand over her mouth, forgetting it was covered with green paint. Perrie laughed and took the brunette’s green hand in her blue one. She held them up between them as if she were measuring the difference in their sizes.

Perrie stared at their hands and Jade followed suit. They bent their fingers at the same time, intertwining them, mixing together the colors. A drop of the new color they had created fell down Perrie’s arm and Jade used her free hand to stop its movement.

“Who would have thought that green and blue could make such a cool color together,” the brunette remarked.

“Anyone who’s ever learned anything about art,” Perrie chuckled. “It’s called cyan.”

“Cyan,” Jade repeated, as if tasting the word for the first time. She smiled up at Perrie and Perrie’s stomach flipped. “And here I thought blue was my favorite color.” It flipped again and Perrie didn’t even have to think about what that meant.

Fuck, she thought to herself.

It would have been so easy for her to close the distance between them. To lean down and kiss Jade’s paint-covered lips. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t afford to ruin the friendship they finally had. She knew there was another reason as well, but she couldn’t quite figure it out.

So instead of kissing her, Perrie rolled off of Jade. She thought she saw of flicker of disappointment in those brown eyes, but figured she’d just imagined it.

“I should probably clean all this up,” Perrie gestured to the room around her. “The mural is done, so I should get everything out of here tonight.”

“I’ll help,” Jade nodded. And together they cleared everything out of the room. And if they brushed by each other just a little too closely, neither of them said anything about it.