fic: the hard way (3/5) - demi/selena
Title: The Hard Way (3/5)
Pairing: Selena Gomez/Demi Lovato
Rating: PG-13 (R/NC-17 for later parts)
Summary: With touring and shows and studio sessions, Selena and Demi have gone months without seeing each other. To make things complicated, Selena realizes she's in love.
Note: Not only is this my first Demi/Selena fic, but I decided early on in writing this that - to avoid losing my effing mind - I was just going to set this in some psuedo-alternate universe that is pretty much the same as this one, except this way I have an excuse for not checking dates. So yeah.
disclaimer: This story is lies, lies, lies. Complete fiction.
The force of their bodies colliding is certain to leave bruises, and yet it’s the way Demi’s lips graze her ear when she whispers i am never letting you go that leaves behind an ache. She smells of lavender and maybe Selena’s hands tremble when she pulls away.
It scares her how much she expects this.
-
There is a warm hand, soft skin that leaves behind a memory, delicately across her cheek. The streetlights are blurred by the dew on the windows and unnatural against a shadowed face, dark eyes and the slightest smile. Demi’s hand is tender along her cheek and Selena leans into it, fits perfectly into the curve she finds there. Then, it falls against the seat.
There is a voice, displaced: we're here. Everything comes into focus and Selena realizes the entire thing was a dream.
Still, she likes to think the warmth remains.
-
Demi collapses onto Selena’s bed, sheets bouncing up into the air from impact. When she speaks, it’s muffled into the comforter. “I haven’t slept in years.”
Selena laughs through a yawn, but Demi turns, bleary eyes meeting hers. “No, really. I’ve been on tour for five years. I haven’t seen my kids in two and I think I’m behind on my alimony payments.”
Selena climbs into bed next to her. “Wow, you are so out of it.”
Demi smiles dreamily. “Your name’s Selenita, right? You’re the pool girl?”
The playfulness in her tone mixes with something else. “Okay, now you’re just making this up.”
“I told my mom I wanted a pool boy, but apparently she was afraid I’d get ideas, so she got me a pool girl instead. But little does she know, right, Selenita?”
“What?” So much for playing cool, even Selena can’t deny the jump in octaves her voice takes. Luckily, when she focuses her eyes to see Demi in the darkness of the room, she sees that she’s already drifted off to sleep. Feeling daring, she nudges her slightly, the last words she spoke reeling her in.
All this elicits is a small snore from Demi.
-
They brush their teeth together in the morning, each moving to a place around the sink like a practiced pattern. It’s in this moment, Demi’s reflection smiling at her, that the thought arises: There is usually comfort to be found in numbers and facts and the unbendable rules of such, but today, she only finds uncertainty. She is seventeen and in love, but she knows that this year will come to a close, that she will be eighteen, a different number, a different girl, with different rules and a different life than she has today. Seventeen in love is as tangible as fate and luck and horoscopes in the back of magazines.
Even still, she holds onto the possibility of it all, a painted portrait of her and Demi, of a time when she can turn to her and ask:
Did you love me when you were seventeen?
-
It’s stupid, maybe, but the things she finds she missed the most are tiny, drifting between lines of habit. The way Demi holds her hairbrush when she sings to Don’t Stop Me Now, fingers curled around ridged sides. The way her hair falls over her face when she gets really into the song.
The way she laughs when she realizes Selena’s watching her.
This is how things should always be.
-
All illusions of romanticism and the tragedy of unrequited love and the other myriad thoughts that have been weighing on her mind lately are buried beneath the sheer velocity in which she’s bombarded with good old fashioned hormones.
Because man alive, has Demi always been this sexy?
The truly unfair part of this is that it’s Demi in sweats with her hair tied up in a sloppy ponytail that sends a shiver through Selena. The way syrup drips down onto her chin, the way she licks the powdered sugar off her finger - the act of eating pancakes has never possessed so much eroticism.
Selena is in big, big trouble.
-
It’s not often she finds herself so infuriatingly mad at her mom, but the occasion arises following breakfast. She sighs and leans against the doorway, takes in the sight of her daughter and Demi sitting down on the couch, in the same room for the first time in months, and opines: “Can’t begin to say how glad I am to have you back, Demi. I never thought my baby girl would ever smile again.”
There’s a weight to what her mom says that can’t be ignored, and it cuts through any comfort the room may have possessed.
“Mom!” Selena protests, but it’s too late. The words hang heavy, nothing to accompany them beyond raindrops on the roof and white noise from the TV.
Neither of them have ever kidded themselves about one thing: Demi’s a bull in a china shop when it comes to this - sharp twists of her wrist and full force emotions, things being better off over done than half-assed, and in the end, post-fervor, she looks around and wonders why everything is broken. Realization dawns on her just as abrupt, and Selena would suffer through the past few months all over again to not have it come upon her so suddenly.
Yet, it’s that look, this moment, that she knows she loves this girl beyond reason, beyond bearable measures.
“I didn’t know. If I’d - I can’t believe I was so...” Demi reaches out and hugs Selena tighter than she ever has before. “I missed you so much - I spent the entire time worrying you were gonna forget about me.”
“Really?”
“Really. And it was stupid - I ended up doing it to you, or making you think it, and - and...you should’ve yelled at me, Sel!”
“I thought maybe I was crazy. Like, I was just imaging it or, or jealous or - ”
“You weren’t, I wouldn’t have thought you were...” After a second, Demi relents. “Okay, I probably would've teased you, but at least it would’ve been out in the open! I feel horrible now.”
“Please, don’t.” Selena casts a look over her shoulder, only to find that her mom has already vacated the room. “I’m just glad to have you back, I didn’t want to ruin it.”
“Selena,” Demi takes her hands in her own, squeezes them tight. “Promise me that you won’t worry about ruining things: I want you to tell me everything, okay?”
An anxiety falls heavy in the pit of her stomach, gnawing. This isn’t what she expected. She bites the words out, lying to her friend for the first time. “Okay, I promise.”
-
It doesn’t take long for Selena to realize she didn’t think this all the way through. Even in her room, there is little time where they’re left alone before interruption, and Selena can’t say that she musters enough courage to even think of saying something to Demi.
Four days into it, they go to the beach. The whole group of combined families makes their way closer to the tide, while Demi and Selena stay behind. They fall into what should be a comfortable silence, but Selena finds herself incredibly concerned with where to put her hands, and how to stand, and how to not look like she keeps picturing Demi naked.
By fate, a distraction: Demi points to the sky, bouncing with excitement. “Look, look!”
A star streaks across, leaving a bleached trail across black and Selena turns to see her with a smile so bright that even a shooting star can’t compare.
“It’s beautiful,” Demi says, hushed above a whisper, just as urgent.
Selena nods. “Beautiful.”
“Close your eyes.” The urgency remains, but it hits Selena like lightning.
“Huh?”
Demi’s smile melts into something else, even in the dark Selena can see that. “Gotta make a wish on a shooting star, dork. Can’t let it go to waste.”
“Right.” The word’s carried out on a hitched breath, and for once she’s relieved to not fall into a teasing match with Demi. Her eyes shut, lashes tickling her cheek. There’s always been something therapeutic about shutting off one of her senses, allowing her body to tune into the ones that require more effort, more of a connection to the environment. The air is warm along her arms, and a small breeze from along the water caresses her skin as tenderly as a lover’s fingers.
Her body tightens just as the thought starts to wonder, and she clears her throat, cracks her knuckles to release the tension. Demi slaps her hand. Bad habits.
“Make a wish.”
“I am...”
She isn’t, she can’t.
Not even in her own head can she fathom what she would wish for that wouldn’t be on some level inappropriate. There has to be a rule forbidding someone from having thoughts about a girl she met at a Barney audition. A girl whom she has been best friends with since, who she’s shared clothes with, a bed with.
She’s seen her naked. Sure, it was within the context of being, like, 11 and not really feeling weird about that stuff. Innocence and all that junk. It was a time before hormones and feelings and when “sex” still elicted eye-rolls and “ew’s”. It was before “sex” turned into sex, the kind of sex you imagine having with your best friend every time you catch the curve of her hip when her pants ride low and her shirt catches, when she brushes her hair back and her neck, shoulder, are exposed and the thoughts that run through your mind are the kind that should be reserved for people with neck kinks like Dracula or something. And --
“Wow, you must be wishing for something super epic,” Dem’s voice rang out, that giggle bubbling up just behind her words, completely incongruous with Selena’s line of thinking. “Don’t get too carried away, the wish might break under all the pressure.”
Selena doesn’t open her eyes. There’s a sense of escape and she likes the warmth of it; she’s not afraid like she is when her eyes are open. “Did you make a wish?”
“I don’t have anything left to wish for.” At this, Selena opens her eyes, if only because it doesn’t sound like Demi. She still speaks in a whisper but it’s lower, there’s a weight to it that wasn’t there before. This would normally be where they’d have a staring contest until one of them broke down into giggles. Instead, all that’s left is staring. Selena’s eyes open and her gaze is pulled to Demi like a magnet, and once she locks with Demi’s stare, it seems permanent.
For the first time in months, she feels like she can rest.
And then something happens. Selena knows instantly that she will examine and reexamine this moment later to find the meaning in it. Demi takes a step closer. It’s not out of clumsy shifting of weight, but maybe it’s just her wanting to link her arm in her friend’s, so they can return to looking at the starry sky, or wanting to get some body warmth as cold has crept up on them. Or maybe, her eyes locked with Selena’s, there’s a different intention.
“Demi! Demi!” Madison squeals with delight, running up the sandy mounds with a jar in hand, a lightening bug buzzing around within the glass confines. “Look!”
The moment snaps in two and falls to the ground, trampled under Madison’s determined march. Demi breaks the gaze first, and walks over to her sister with a smile. “Wow! How’d you do that?”
“Patience, duh,” Madison explains proudly.
“You’re not gonna keep it, are you?” Demi asks, putting on her best faux-serious voice, the kind she reserves for teasing her sister. “‘Cause the little guy’s probably got a family waiting for him back - ”
Madison rolls her eyes at her sister’s facade. “I know, I know. I just wanted to show everybody...”
“You show mom yet?” When Madison shakes her head, Demi wraps her arm around her sister’s shoulders. “C’mon, let’s go show her.”
For just a second, Demi glances back to Selena, who stands frozen under the moonlight. Smile fading, she looks away and walks off with her sister.
-
There are only a few details that Selena cares to elicit: there’s a movie playing, everyone crammed cozy watching what may or may not be a comedy, and Demi sits so close that her elbow fits into the crook of her arm, and her hand is resting on Selena’s thigh, fingers curled along the inside of her knee. This last detail is certain to be the one that lingers. It doesn’t help that even through the fabric of her pajamas, she can feel the warmth of Demi’s skin - separated only by a thin layer of cotton - against her own. And every time the girl laughs at a joke from the movie, her grip tightens a little.
Yet, when Demi brushes her hair behind her shoulder, accidentally pushing it into Selena’s face, she turns and looks her friend directly in the eye, their noses practically touching. “Sorry, babe.” And again, she whispers, like it’s a secret. Her hand never leaves Selena’s leg, and there’s an ache in thinking of how if she shifted her leg even a little bit, Demi’s hand might accidentally fall lower and...
Selena clears her throat as discreetly as possible. No one notices, as another apparently hilarious joke is rounded off and everyone shares a laugh while Selena is desperately trying to stop thinking of what she wants her friends hand to be doing to her.
-
Eventually, the credits roll. Everyone filters out of the room, and Demi doesn’t move, still close to Selena on the couch, despite added room.
“I missed this,” she sighs into the cushion.
“What?” Selena asks, dumbly, distracted.
Demi laughs, “Home.”
“You must be getting tired, Dem,” Selena manages a poke. “You’re not at your house.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Home isn’t just a house, all that cheesy nonsense. I missed being around family, not having to travel. I missed you, Sel.”
“You did?”
“Stop acting so surprised.” Demi sits up a little, looks her straight in the eyes, till the point that Selena’s uncomfortable, very aware of how close their faces are. “It scares me how surprised you are.”
Selena breaks eye contact first, and it feels cowardly. “These past few months have been crazy. I feel crazy.”
Demi reaches out and cups Selena’s face - there’s a familiarity to it, but Selena can’t for the life of her remember her actually ever doing it - to counteract the familiarity is a touch of freshness, intimacy. It feels electric. “You’re not crazy.”
“I’m not?” She sounds so helpless to her own ears.
Clattering from the kitchen makes Selena jump in place, and Demi snorts in laughter. When Selena looks back at her friend, she sees her mid-yawn. “I’ma go to bed...”
-
The catalyst has to be when she walks into the kitchen and her mom looks at her for all of one second before asking, “What’s wrong?”
Anxiety from the past few days, from the past four months, boils up until she feels like she’s steaming at the ears. She can’t shake the thought that there’s something deliberate about how Demi is acting. The pool girl comment, the beach. It can’t have all been a coincidence, Selena can’t be making this all up in her head.
And it’s not even just that: they’re best friends. Beyond superficial “how’re you doing?” questions, Demi should’ve realized by now that something was up, something strange was going on. It’s not as if she’s supposed to suddenly realize her best friend of ten years is madly in love with her, but she has to have realized something.
She goes upstairs with a level of determination she’s never quite matched before. If she was truly crazy and imagining this, so wrapped up in her own feelings and confusion as to fall into delusion, then she thinks she can handle it. But if she isn’t?
Demi’s grabbing clothes from her half-open suitcase when Selena walks in, closes the door behind her. No lights are on, so when Selena’s eyes finally adjust to the darkness, the sight of her friend - looking annoyingly naive about what’s going on - hits her like a brick wall.
Her confidence falters.
“What’s up, dork?” Demi gives her a mock serious look before laughing.
“Dem...we-we need to talk.”
“About what?”
“About what’s going on right now.”
Demi’s brow furrowed. “Huh?”
“Demi!” Selena practically stomps her foot, her friend’s name coming out sounding like a swear. “Stop acting like nothing is wrong.”
There’s more aggression in her voice than she intended, and Demi literally takes a step back, then steadies herself, shoulders squared and jaw firm. She meets the aggression with hostility. “What the - ? What’d I do wrong? Why are you being such a - ?”
“Something’s different.”
Maybe it’s the suddenness of how she cuts Demi off. Maybe it’s the way her eyes start to burn. Maybe it’s the way her voice breaks at the end.
Whatever it is, it scares the shit out of Demi. “What...what do you mean?”
“Lately, it’s just been...I mean, you and me? You. Things are - everything’s different, Dem.”
“Selena, you’re scaring me.”
Selena swallows, tries to stop shaking. She can’t. “I’m in love with you.”
Demi doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even look like she can.
Selena pushes through it. “And I feel like...earlier, there was something. There was something there, right? I’m not crazy, am I? You have to have realized it by now, right? I may know how to act but I’m still 17 and I’m still...I still keep...”
Tears sting painful at the corner of her eyes and she has to clear her throat to keep it from trembling. Even still, emotion catches in her voice. “I can’t stop thinking about you. When you’re around, I can’t focus, but at least it’s better than when you’re not around because...I don’t even know what to do with myself when you’re gone, Dem. Four months went by without us seeing each other and each day I got more and more scared that you’d just fade away from me and I’d never see you again...”
The silence that follows is heavy and long, endless. She half-expects to hear grasshoppers chirping, for lack of anything else. She isn’t breathing, and she isn’t even sure Demi is.
Finally: “If I knew, I...I would’ve...”
“You would’ve what?” The words jump out, impatient; with each second that passes in the wake of her confession, the more friction it creates. “Please say something. Anything.”
Demi’s lip quivers as she steps forward, hesitant in a way that cuts deep into Selena. Slowly, she reaches out, at first to take Selena’s hand, but then, she rethinks it, her hand lifting to her friend’s face.
“Demi, you in there?” There’s an abrupt knock at the door, and they both jump. Demi looks as if she's spooked out of a dream - all the while Selena remains in the haze, reaching out for her as she falls away, back into reality. Her hand falls to her side just as the door opens to reveal Demi’s mom.
“What is it, mom?”
The older woman holds up Demi’s phone as she looks from one to the other. It isn’t lost on her that she’s interrupted something, as she explains regretfully: “You have a call. It’s important.”
(TBC...)
Pairing: Selena Gomez/Demi Lovato
Rating: PG-13 (R/NC-17 for later parts)
Summary: With touring and shows and studio sessions, Selena and Demi have gone months without seeing each other. To make things complicated, Selena realizes she's in love.
Note: Not only is this my first Demi/Selena fic, but I decided early on in writing this that - to avoid losing my effing mind - I was just going to set this in some psuedo-alternate universe that is pretty much the same as this one, except this way I have an excuse for not checking dates. So yeah.
disclaimer: This story is lies, lies, lies. Complete fiction.
The force of their bodies colliding is certain to leave bruises, and yet it’s the way Demi’s lips graze her ear when she whispers i am never letting you go that leaves behind an ache. She smells of lavender and maybe Selena’s hands tremble when she pulls away.
It scares her how much she expects this.
-
There is a warm hand, soft skin that leaves behind a memory, delicately across her cheek. The streetlights are blurred by the dew on the windows and unnatural against a shadowed face, dark eyes and the slightest smile. Demi’s hand is tender along her cheek and Selena leans into it, fits perfectly into the curve she finds there. Then, it falls against the seat.
There is a voice, displaced: we're here. Everything comes into focus and Selena realizes the entire thing was a dream.
Still, she likes to think the warmth remains.
-
Demi collapses onto Selena’s bed, sheets bouncing up into the air from impact. When she speaks, it’s muffled into the comforter. “I haven’t slept in years.”
Selena laughs through a yawn, but Demi turns, bleary eyes meeting hers. “No, really. I’ve been on tour for five years. I haven’t seen my kids in two and I think I’m behind on my alimony payments.”
Selena climbs into bed next to her. “Wow, you are so out of it.”
Demi smiles dreamily. “Your name’s Selenita, right? You’re the pool girl?”
The playfulness in her tone mixes with something else. “Okay, now you’re just making this up.”
“I told my mom I wanted a pool boy, but apparently she was afraid I’d get ideas, so she got me a pool girl instead. But little does she know, right, Selenita?”
“What?” So much for playing cool, even Selena can’t deny the jump in octaves her voice takes. Luckily, when she focuses her eyes to see Demi in the darkness of the room, she sees that she’s already drifted off to sleep. Feeling daring, she nudges her slightly, the last words she spoke reeling her in.
All this elicits is a small snore from Demi.
-
They brush their teeth together in the morning, each moving to a place around the sink like a practiced pattern. It’s in this moment, Demi’s reflection smiling at her, that the thought arises: There is usually comfort to be found in numbers and facts and the unbendable rules of such, but today, she only finds uncertainty. She is seventeen and in love, but she knows that this year will come to a close, that she will be eighteen, a different number, a different girl, with different rules and a different life than she has today. Seventeen in love is as tangible as fate and luck and horoscopes in the back of magazines.
Even still, she holds onto the possibility of it all, a painted portrait of her and Demi, of a time when she can turn to her and ask:
Did you love me when you were seventeen?
-
It’s stupid, maybe, but the things she finds she missed the most are tiny, drifting between lines of habit. The way Demi holds her hairbrush when she sings to Don’t Stop Me Now, fingers curled around ridged sides. The way her hair falls over her face when she gets really into the song.
The way she laughs when she realizes Selena’s watching her.
This is how things should always be.
-
All illusions of romanticism and the tragedy of unrequited love and the other myriad thoughts that have been weighing on her mind lately are buried beneath the sheer velocity in which she’s bombarded with good old fashioned hormones.
Because man alive, has Demi always been this sexy?
The truly unfair part of this is that it’s Demi in sweats with her hair tied up in a sloppy ponytail that sends a shiver through Selena. The way syrup drips down onto her chin, the way she licks the powdered sugar off her finger - the act of eating pancakes has never possessed so much eroticism.
Selena is in big, big trouble.
-
It’s not often she finds herself so infuriatingly mad at her mom, but the occasion arises following breakfast. She sighs and leans against the doorway, takes in the sight of her daughter and Demi sitting down on the couch, in the same room for the first time in months, and opines: “Can’t begin to say how glad I am to have you back, Demi. I never thought my baby girl would ever smile again.”
There’s a weight to what her mom says that can’t be ignored, and it cuts through any comfort the room may have possessed.
“Mom!” Selena protests, but it’s too late. The words hang heavy, nothing to accompany them beyond raindrops on the roof and white noise from the TV.
Neither of them have ever kidded themselves about one thing: Demi’s a bull in a china shop when it comes to this - sharp twists of her wrist and full force emotions, things being better off over done than half-assed, and in the end, post-fervor, she looks around and wonders why everything is broken. Realization dawns on her just as abrupt, and Selena would suffer through the past few months all over again to not have it come upon her so suddenly.
Yet, it’s that look, this moment, that she knows she loves this girl beyond reason, beyond bearable measures.
“I didn’t know. If I’d - I can’t believe I was so...” Demi reaches out and hugs Selena tighter than she ever has before. “I missed you so much - I spent the entire time worrying you were gonna forget about me.”
“Really?”
“Really. And it was stupid - I ended up doing it to you, or making you think it, and - and...you should’ve yelled at me, Sel!”
“I thought maybe I was crazy. Like, I was just imaging it or, or jealous or - ”
“You weren’t, I wouldn’t have thought you were...” After a second, Demi relents. “Okay, I probably would've teased you, but at least it would’ve been out in the open! I feel horrible now.”
“Please, don’t.” Selena casts a look over her shoulder, only to find that her mom has already vacated the room. “I’m just glad to have you back, I didn’t want to ruin it.”
“Selena,” Demi takes her hands in her own, squeezes them tight. “Promise me that you won’t worry about ruining things: I want you to tell me everything, okay?”
An anxiety falls heavy in the pit of her stomach, gnawing. This isn’t what she expected. She bites the words out, lying to her friend for the first time. “Okay, I promise.”
-
It doesn’t take long for Selena to realize she didn’t think this all the way through. Even in her room, there is little time where they’re left alone before interruption, and Selena can’t say that she musters enough courage to even think of saying something to Demi.
Four days into it, they go to the beach. The whole group of combined families makes their way closer to the tide, while Demi and Selena stay behind. They fall into what should be a comfortable silence, but Selena finds herself incredibly concerned with where to put her hands, and how to stand, and how to not look like she keeps picturing Demi naked.
By fate, a distraction: Demi points to the sky, bouncing with excitement. “Look, look!”
A star streaks across, leaving a bleached trail across black and Selena turns to see her with a smile so bright that even a shooting star can’t compare.
“It’s beautiful,” Demi says, hushed above a whisper, just as urgent.
Selena nods. “Beautiful.”
“Close your eyes.” The urgency remains, but it hits Selena like lightning.
“Huh?”
Demi’s smile melts into something else, even in the dark Selena can see that. “Gotta make a wish on a shooting star, dork. Can’t let it go to waste.”
“Right.” The word’s carried out on a hitched breath, and for once she’s relieved to not fall into a teasing match with Demi. Her eyes shut, lashes tickling her cheek. There’s always been something therapeutic about shutting off one of her senses, allowing her body to tune into the ones that require more effort, more of a connection to the environment. The air is warm along her arms, and a small breeze from along the water caresses her skin as tenderly as a lover’s fingers.
Her body tightens just as the thought starts to wonder, and she clears her throat, cracks her knuckles to release the tension. Demi slaps her hand. Bad habits.
“Make a wish.”
“I am...”
She isn’t, she can’t.
Not even in her own head can she fathom what she would wish for that wouldn’t be on some level inappropriate. There has to be a rule forbidding someone from having thoughts about a girl she met at a Barney audition. A girl whom she has been best friends with since, who she’s shared clothes with, a bed with.
She’s seen her naked. Sure, it was within the context of being, like, 11 and not really feeling weird about that stuff. Innocence and all that junk. It was a time before hormones and feelings and when “sex” still elicted eye-rolls and “ew’s”. It was before “sex” turned into sex, the kind of sex you imagine having with your best friend every time you catch the curve of her hip when her pants ride low and her shirt catches, when she brushes her hair back and her neck, shoulder, are exposed and the thoughts that run through your mind are the kind that should be reserved for people with neck kinks like Dracula or something. And --
“Wow, you must be wishing for something super epic,” Dem’s voice rang out, that giggle bubbling up just behind her words, completely incongruous with Selena’s line of thinking. “Don’t get too carried away, the wish might break under all the pressure.”
Selena doesn’t open her eyes. There’s a sense of escape and she likes the warmth of it; she’s not afraid like she is when her eyes are open. “Did you make a wish?”
“I don’t have anything left to wish for.” At this, Selena opens her eyes, if only because it doesn’t sound like Demi. She still speaks in a whisper but it’s lower, there’s a weight to it that wasn’t there before. This would normally be where they’d have a staring contest until one of them broke down into giggles. Instead, all that’s left is staring. Selena’s eyes open and her gaze is pulled to Demi like a magnet, and once she locks with Demi’s stare, it seems permanent.
For the first time in months, she feels like she can rest.
And then something happens. Selena knows instantly that she will examine and reexamine this moment later to find the meaning in it. Demi takes a step closer. It’s not out of clumsy shifting of weight, but maybe it’s just her wanting to link her arm in her friend’s, so they can return to looking at the starry sky, or wanting to get some body warmth as cold has crept up on them. Or maybe, her eyes locked with Selena’s, there’s a different intention.
“Demi! Demi!” Madison squeals with delight, running up the sandy mounds with a jar in hand, a lightening bug buzzing around within the glass confines. “Look!”
The moment snaps in two and falls to the ground, trampled under Madison’s determined march. Demi breaks the gaze first, and walks over to her sister with a smile. “Wow! How’d you do that?”
“Patience, duh,” Madison explains proudly.
“You’re not gonna keep it, are you?” Demi asks, putting on her best faux-serious voice, the kind she reserves for teasing her sister. “‘Cause the little guy’s probably got a family waiting for him back - ”
Madison rolls her eyes at her sister’s facade. “I know, I know. I just wanted to show everybody...”
“You show mom yet?” When Madison shakes her head, Demi wraps her arm around her sister’s shoulders. “C’mon, let’s go show her.”
For just a second, Demi glances back to Selena, who stands frozen under the moonlight. Smile fading, she looks away and walks off with her sister.
-
There are only a few details that Selena cares to elicit: there’s a movie playing, everyone crammed cozy watching what may or may not be a comedy, and Demi sits so close that her elbow fits into the crook of her arm, and her hand is resting on Selena’s thigh, fingers curled along the inside of her knee. This last detail is certain to be the one that lingers. It doesn’t help that even through the fabric of her pajamas, she can feel the warmth of Demi’s skin - separated only by a thin layer of cotton - against her own. And every time the girl laughs at a joke from the movie, her grip tightens a little.
Yet, when Demi brushes her hair behind her shoulder, accidentally pushing it into Selena’s face, she turns and looks her friend directly in the eye, their noses practically touching. “Sorry, babe.” And again, she whispers, like it’s a secret. Her hand never leaves Selena’s leg, and there’s an ache in thinking of how if she shifted her leg even a little bit, Demi’s hand might accidentally fall lower and...
Selena clears her throat as discreetly as possible. No one notices, as another apparently hilarious joke is rounded off and everyone shares a laugh while Selena is desperately trying to stop thinking of what she wants her friends hand to be doing to her.
-
Eventually, the credits roll. Everyone filters out of the room, and Demi doesn’t move, still close to Selena on the couch, despite added room.
“I missed this,” she sighs into the cushion.
“What?” Selena asks, dumbly, distracted.
Demi laughs, “Home.”
“You must be getting tired, Dem,” Selena manages a poke. “You’re not at your house.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Home isn’t just a house, all that cheesy nonsense. I missed being around family, not having to travel. I missed you, Sel.”
“You did?”
“Stop acting so surprised.” Demi sits up a little, looks her straight in the eyes, till the point that Selena’s uncomfortable, very aware of how close their faces are. “It scares me how surprised you are.”
Selena breaks eye contact first, and it feels cowardly. “These past few months have been crazy. I feel crazy.”
Demi reaches out and cups Selena’s face - there’s a familiarity to it, but Selena can’t for the life of her remember her actually ever doing it - to counteract the familiarity is a touch of freshness, intimacy. It feels electric. “You’re not crazy.”
“I’m not?” She sounds so helpless to her own ears.
Clattering from the kitchen makes Selena jump in place, and Demi snorts in laughter. When Selena looks back at her friend, she sees her mid-yawn. “I’ma go to bed...”
-
The catalyst has to be when she walks into the kitchen and her mom looks at her for all of one second before asking, “What’s wrong?”
Anxiety from the past few days, from the past four months, boils up until she feels like she’s steaming at the ears. She can’t shake the thought that there’s something deliberate about how Demi is acting. The pool girl comment, the beach. It can’t have all been a coincidence, Selena can’t be making this all up in her head.
And it’s not even just that: they’re best friends. Beyond superficial “how’re you doing?” questions, Demi should’ve realized by now that something was up, something strange was going on. It’s not as if she’s supposed to suddenly realize her best friend of ten years is madly in love with her, but she has to have realized something.
She goes upstairs with a level of determination she’s never quite matched before. If she was truly crazy and imagining this, so wrapped up in her own feelings and confusion as to fall into delusion, then she thinks she can handle it. But if she isn’t?
Demi’s grabbing clothes from her half-open suitcase when Selena walks in, closes the door behind her. No lights are on, so when Selena’s eyes finally adjust to the darkness, the sight of her friend - looking annoyingly naive about what’s going on - hits her like a brick wall.
Her confidence falters.
“What’s up, dork?” Demi gives her a mock serious look before laughing.
“Dem...we-we need to talk.”
“About what?”
“About what’s going on right now.”
Demi’s brow furrowed. “Huh?”
“Demi!” Selena practically stomps her foot, her friend’s name coming out sounding like a swear. “Stop acting like nothing is wrong.”
There’s more aggression in her voice than she intended, and Demi literally takes a step back, then steadies herself, shoulders squared and jaw firm. She meets the aggression with hostility. “What the - ? What’d I do wrong? Why are you being such a - ?”
“Something’s different.”
Maybe it’s the suddenness of how she cuts Demi off. Maybe it’s the way her eyes start to burn. Maybe it’s the way her voice breaks at the end.
Whatever it is, it scares the shit out of Demi. “What...what do you mean?”
“Lately, it’s just been...I mean, you and me? You. Things are - everything’s different, Dem.”
“Selena, you’re scaring me.”
Selena swallows, tries to stop shaking. She can’t. “I’m in love with you.”
Demi doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even look like she can.
Selena pushes through it. “And I feel like...earlier, there was something. There was something there, right? I’m not crazy, am I? You have to have realized it by now, right? I may know how to act but I’m still 17 and I’m still...I still keep...”
Tears sting painful at the corner of her eyes and she has to clear her throat to keep it from trembling. Even still, emotion catches in her voice. “I can’t stop thinking about you. When you’re around, I can’t focus, but at least it’s better than when you’re not around because...I don’t even know what to do with myself when you’re gone, Dem. Four months went by without us seeing each other and each day I got more and more scared that you’d just fade away from me and I’d never see you again...”
The silence that follows is heavy and long, endless. She half-expects to hear grasshoppers chirping, for lack of anything else. She isn’t breathing, and she isn’t even sure Demi is.
Finally: “If I knew, I...I would’ve...”
“You would’ve what?” The words jump out, impatient; with each second that passes in the wake of her confession, the more friction it creates. “Please say something. Anything.”
Demi’s lip quivers as she steps forward, hesitant in a way that cuts deep into Selena. Slowly, she reaches out, at first to take Selena’s hand, but then, she rethinks it, her hand lifting to her friend’s face.
“Demi, you in there?” There’s an abrupt knock at the door, and they both jump. Demi looks as if she's spooked out of a dream - all the while Selena remains in the haze, reaching out for her as she falls away, back into reality. Her hand falls to her side just as the door opens to reveal Demi’s mom.
“What is it, mom?”
The older woman holds up Demi’s phone as she looks from one to the other. It isn’t lost on her that she’s interrupted something, as she explains regretfully: “You have a call. It’s important.”
(TBC...)