Cherries - a Larina Fanfic

Cherries - Chapter 5

Lana's POV

I woke up in my bed. I felt so nice and pleasant, like my dream carried over into real life... Why was I so content? So... fulfilled?

And yet there was something else tarnishing this warm, full-body sensation. I couldn't help feeling like I'd forgotten something. What was it?

Oh, who cares, I thought, my eyes still closed as I stretched myself out on the bed, reaching beside me for the woman I knew wasn't there, whom I'd been dreaming of... Marina, Marina, where are you?

And then my eyes snapped open. Oh, my god. Did you really send that text message???

Surely not. It had been part of the dream, that was all. I had dreamed I was writing a song with Marina, and then she was holding me, and somehow we were simultaneously writing the song and embracing, and the embrace was the song, and the song was the embrace.

I hadn't really written it down, taken a picture of it, and sent it to her, had I?

I opened my phone, and there it was. I had really sent Marina a picture of my lame, stupid lyrics. I felt my face grow hot. I was all alone in my bedroom, there was no one to see me blushing, no one to be embarrassed in front of. And yet I was embarrassed. I was so fucking embarrassed I wanted to crawl under my bed and hide from the world.

The worst of it was that my messaged was marked "read." And Marina had not responded.

I felt the heat of my own shame in my veins and bones. I curled up into a ball on my bed, praying that it was all a dream. But it wasn't.

I uncurled myself, and sighed. I opened my phone, went to Apple Music, and looked through my library till I found my Marina albums. I opened "Love + Fear," the album she had promised we'd cowrite for, years and years ago. A promise she had not kept. These songs were hers; none of them were ours.

I started playing "End of the Earth," because my embarrassment was mixing with depression now, and it really felt like my world was ending.

And the strangest thing happened as I listened: I heard my own lyrics in her lyrics.

Was it my imagination? "But I'd still follow you down" mirrored "I'd follow you down, down down." "Love you till the end of the earth" mirrored "I will love you till the end of time." "'Cause wherever we are it feels like home" mirrored "Can you make it feel like home if I tell you you're mine."

It was like a secret code I was finally unlocking. Like a message in invisible ink, revealed.

Suddenly, this song felt like our song. Not just her song. Our song.

I listened to the song on repeat, experiencing this strange juxtaposition of joy and shame, waiting on a response I did not know for sure would come.