Lost my reputation | B.E.

Chapter 10: happier than ever

Narrator: someone

Billie's staring at a blonde, petite girl. She's got a cute bob, a simple, black button up shirt and a short skirt to match, and she's instantly hit with how confident this woman looks. She doesn't exactly appear to be one of those overly confident women she regularly sees on Tiktok, but at least she doesn't look crushed by the weight of thousands of layers of clothes.

Her eyes wander to her face, taking in the sparkle in her eye, the flushness of her skin, her rosy cheeks, and the overall fresh and healthy look she's got. She's glowing.

Billie studies her own reflection some more, and she must admit, she loves the way the blue of her eyes seems to pop. She doesn't know if it's the subtle eyeliner or the newly short hair, but she decides that she loves it.

A thought crosses her mind and her eyes suddenly dart down to her midsection, hand self-consciously running over her belly, an act she tells herself is only meant to smooth out the fabric of her shirt. But the way she subtly tilts her body to the side and eyes how flat her stomach looks under her clothes doesn't fool anybody; not her, and certainly not the hundreds of invisible pairs of eyes watching her from across her childhood bedroom.

She tugs on her shirt, rearranges her skirt and fluffs her hair to give it that messy look she adores. She's not sure there's much more she can do to improve her appearance and make herself look better, but at least she thinks she's pretty. From the chest up.

A while ago, her boyfriend had suggested she cuts her hair; it'd look cute with the bangs and the blond, he'd said. Turns out Billie had lowkey wanted to try out short hair again for a while now, and she thought she could do with a nice change. She needed change. Change was good.

But it was only a few days since she'd gotten rid of some of her hair, yet, she could already feel it wearing off – the rush from feeling like someone new. The change and newness are slowly giving way to the feeling of feeling worn out in a worn out body all over again – a too well-known sentiment slowly creeping back in.

In the past, she'd changed her hair color so much in hopes that it would make whatever crisis in her life, a tiny bit better. In hopes that maybe, it'd give her a new perspective.

So that's how over the years, she'd gone from blue to green to silver, didn't matter if it meant losing a bunch of hair in the process, as long as it meant she'd become a new her, then she was fine with it.

But as she stares at herself in the mirror, awfully aware that it's time to leave for the Happier than ever movie premiere, she's afraid she might have run out of herself.

She's longing for the feeling of looking at herself with new hair, with a fresh pair of eyes. Except that this time around, it's different. She loves the hair, yes, but she still catches herself gazing at her reflection with the same old eyes – tired, distasteful, angry, even.

She unvoluntarily curses her boyfriend for pushing her to do it.

She doesn't regret cutting her hair. She just... it's complicated.

Her blue eyes land on her neck – it's now become a safe spot to be bare of any fabric – and she's satisfied to see that there are no longer bruises, no red shapes that nobody except for her could've traced back to Y/N's lips.

Just pale, soft, skin and she finally, somewhat, feels like herself again now that Y/N's gone.

A couple of days ago, she'd taken the painful decision to not address her cheating – to anyone.

Not Claudia again, not Y/N, and certainly not her boyfriend, either. She really, really hoped she could bury this. Hopefully Claudia would keep her mouth shut, Y/N would get over herself, and her boyfriend would stay blissfully ignorant, too busy posting pictures of his bloody face on instagram.