Crescendo | WILBUR SOOT

iii. ask me anything

✧ INSTAGRAM, 12:27 PM ✧

florencepugh, wilbursoot, ninadobrev, and 998.4K others liked

giacama: i look too good not to go live. q and a in ten minutes :)

321K COMMENTS...

user12: my homosexuality is confirmed.

ninadobrev: If looking good was the criteria, your life would be a live stream 💕

giacama: i am fully in love with you, babes 🥺ninadobrev

user89: I love it when women 😫

user43: Yes, officer, this woman right here. She stole my heart 💔

zendaya: You look so good, baby.

giacama: oh yeah? why don't you marry me then? zendaya

zendaya: Just name a time and place, babes. Time and place. giacama

user39: gia and zendaya's friendship = god-tier

user46: GIA, IT'S BEEN A YEAR. GIVE US MORE MUSIC!

user31: hey, user46, don't pressure artists into releasing music unless they are ready. gia's said multiple times that she's working on a new album and it's just going to take time. don't be a meanie :(

wilbursoot: My Twitch chat and I will be there!

✧ ♪ ✧

GIANNA CAMAZZOLA WAS AN INTROVERT TO THE MAX. Everything she had achieved -- all of her fame, followers, and notoriety -- it was all a fluke. Becoming "GIA" the world-famous pop star was never in the cards for Gianna. Without the influence of tequila and an overly aggressive girlfriend, the university student would never have uploaded her first video to YouTube.

The singer had her life planned out. She wanted to finish school, get her Master's degree in social work, and bully her passion for music into a hobby. But overnight, a video posted in an alcohol-induced haze changed the young woman's life. Her music was played on the radio, performed on talk shows, and covered by behemoths in the music industry. Before she knew it, a record label sprawled her name on the front of magazines across the world.

Now, more than three years later, Gianna sat alone in her Ontario apartment with her phone positioned in front of her. Though her social media was full of people fighting to be her friend, the harsh reality was that Gianna was nearly always alone. Her social interaction was all but limited to the internet and the occasional pestering text from her manager. For the most part, Gianna was isolated from the world.

With a low sigh, she let her anxieties exit her body through her nose. Before she could second-guess herself, the singer set Gianna aside and let Gia perform for her Instagram Live.

She greeted the names she recognized in the chat before addressing the Live as a whole.

"Hello, lovelies," Gia said. Her voice was light and warm, much like her music. "If you want to start filling the chat with questions, I'm going to answer the top two soon-to-be asked before you can even type them.

1. New music is coming, but it will take time. Patience is the name of the game, my friends. 

2. I am not in a relationship, nor am I looking to be. I appreciate your many offers, but I am enjoying my own company too much to burden myself with a relationship at the minute.

Did that adequately cover those questions?"

The chat flooded with a variety of amused emojis and LOLs as the singer spoke dryly. It was antithetical to her nature to be rude, but she wasn't above teasing her audience about their predictability.

With the answers covered, Gia felt comfortable jumping into the chat's growing list of questions.

"Favourite colour?" she read. "Yellow and black, Hufflepuff pride!"

At the request of the comments, the singer displayed her growing collection of small tattoos, shared her Canadian pride, and talked briefly about her family history in Calabria, Italy. She continued to chat aimlessly before she landed on a question that was worth answering.

"Ah, I was wondering when this one would come up," the singer said with a smile. "Would I ever write a love song?"

She paused for a moment, considering how to answer the question without offending anyone.

"The short answer is no," she started. "I can't speak with any amount of certainty, but I wouldn't plan on it.

The long answer is more challenging. As a writer and performer, it is my job to sacrifice parts of myself for mass consumption. When I fall in love, I am very all-or-nothing. My heart, soul, and emotions solely belong to that person, whether they want me or not. If I were to write a love song, I would be fictionalizing my experiences because my heart is no longer solely mine. The long and short of it is, I am not a good enough musician to fictionalize my experiences."

She let out a short laugh.

"Basically, I'm saying that writing a love song takes more skill than I possess."

The chat overflowed with disagreement, insisting that the singer was perfect and capable of doing anything. In their eyes, she was perfect. Gia was perfect.

But Gianna, the woman behind the character, was a deeply flawed individual. Gianna was an anxious mess, often falling prey to the self-loathing spiral of thoughts inside her head. Gianna was unmotivated, procrastinating important tasks, even if she knew she would enjoy them. Gianna was deeply insecure and felt like an imposter to her success.

While Gianna's thoughts were preoccupied, the number at the top of her screen started to rise with increasing ferocity.

As the chat began to move even faster, the singer read the repeated phrase exploding through the comments aloud.

"Cross-platform raid?" she read, a question in her throat. "What does that mean? I feel like my Nonna! Chat, help! What does that mean?!"

A small smile appeared on the young singer's lips as she pulled a single word, repeated like a spell being cast, from the comments. Wilbur.

✧ ♪ ✧

a/n: hello lovelies! i hope you're having a great day. please be sure to eat something if you haven't and drink loads of water.

fun fact! grammarly decided that the tone of this chapter is tied between "sad" and "nervous". neither was my intent, but i suppose it works! do you agree?

please vote and/or comment if you enjoyed this chapter! it really does help me on every level and i truly appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.

xoxo,
may