Page 119 of A World Apart
I opened my mouth to cut her off−
“And don’t say it’s because it’s boring,” she waves a stiletto nail at me, threateningly. “You played backup guitar on an album currently charting on Billboard, and you’ve mentioned it once! Last week THE Sherry Taylor asked you to go to lunch with her! She has three Grammys! It’s not. That. Fucking. Boring!”
“What do you want me to say?” I cried, trying to push my point across through the volume of my words. “You want me to be impressed by the constant stream of celebrities? You’re upset that I’m not more interested in a job that’s 90% grunt work?”
“No!” Becka is shouting by this point, splotches of red across her cheeks as if she’s been slapped.
“I want you to remember why you came here in the first place! I want you to wake up, and realise that what you have here, the comical intern role is what you wanted. Your funny year-long side step for experience and a good time. I want you to remember that you WANTED this.”
I spluttered, baffled and angry but hardly knowing why.
“I’m allowed to get bored!”
“But it’s not just that, Kaiya. You’re not you anymore, you’re an intern in your own fucking life!”
She might as well have punched me in the face, and I recoiled as though she had, rocking back on the stool and having to stand up in case I fell.
“What’s the play here, Becka? Hmm?” I was starting to feel lightheaded, a tingle that started in my fingers was now steadily working its way up my arms. “Just say whatever you’re beating around the bush about and tell me what you expect to get out of this. Because, from where I’m standing, my best friend is yelling at me because I’m not excited all the time.”
To my surprise, instead of yelling, Becka burst into tears. She turned away from me, her shoulders heaving as she tried to take big, gulping breaths of air to calm herself down. Eventually, once she’d settled, she turned back to me, her face streaked with tears, but her eyes still blazed. Fire trapped behind glass. Despite the gulf between us, I couldn’t help but want to close the space that kept us apart.
“You don’t see what I see.” Her voice wavered, but she persisted. “You don’t see how small you’re making yourself.”
I frowned.
“But I do. I see how you fold in on yourself to accommodate him and his life. Your whole life has become about him, Kaiya. Everything you do, everything you plan, or don’t plan. Everything you want for yourself is based on him. You’ve stopped making plans for yourself.”
There was a buzz in my head, a persistent, but dull vibration behind my eyes. I had an overwhelming urge to defend myself against the accusation, but when I wentto open my mouth, the words died on my tongue, the stunning realisation that I couldn’t disagree.
Wordlessly, I sat back down at the counter, looking up at Becka, seeing the way she’d wrapped her arms around herself, as if expecting me to lash out, but all the energy had been sapped out of me.
After several moments, Becka sighed and moved back over to the counter, leaning her elbows on it.
“Look, I’m not telling you to break up with him.” It sounded very much like she was suggesting it though.
“I just need you to understand that you’re just as important as him. Your life matters. Whatyouneed matters.” She reached across the counter and clasped my hand, squeezing it tightly.
“I do hear you, and I won’t sit here and pretend like I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I chewed on my lip, trying to think about what I was trying to say. “Perhaps I’ve been going about this the wrong way. I’ve been so preoccupied with trying to fit myself around his life, that maybe I have made that my priority.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I laughed, but there was no humour to it.
“I don’t know when it stopped being about us, and started being about him and the group, but sometimes I don’t feel any different than those hardcore fans that spend their entire lives following their every movement.”
Becka nodded along, her face more open and expressive now. I could see I was starting to make sense to her again. The funny thing was, the more I said, the more it was making sense to me as well.
“When we’re together, and it’s not about the band or their schedules, it’s good. It makes sense.”
Becka hummed, looking away as she tapped her fingers on the counter-top, agitation clear in the sharp staccato of her fingernails on the stone top.
“The thing is, babes,” she eventually said, “you’re hardly together. No, listen,” she grabs at my hand as I’d been about to pull away.
“Listen to me, I’m not criticising you. You need to hear this, because it’s the truth. You are hardly together. You barely know each other, even you must agree that’s true.”
I didn’t disagree, if anything.
“What’s the end goal here? You’re here, he’s there. He can’t openly be with you, or if he does − let’s say that happens − are you prepared to deal with what that looks like?”
The truth was, I didn’t have an answer. I’d seen the fallout from when two idols were found out to be dating, and it often wasn’t pretty, to say nothing of someone… ordinary.
