Lost my reputation | B.E.

Chapter 12: Feel good inc.

Narrator: someone

Feet propped up on her dining table, a pen in her mouth, Billie tries really hard to concentrate. Her teeth anxiously nip at the pink eraser on the end of the mechanical pencil she's holding. She squeezes it, feeling the squishy, bouncy material shift softly between her teeth as she bites away with more and more strength. 

The tip of her white sneaker keeps bumping against the vase sitting at the center of the glass table, and one too harsh jerk of her leg has it wobbling slightly, though it stays upright nonetheless.

Billie's been tapping her foot with nerves for as long as she can remember, reading the same words over and over again just as the uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach grows and grows. They're just a bunch of words - a witty, playful line inked onto the script of her upcoming SNL appearance.

Her gaze shifts, eyes focusing right across the table, over the stack of papers clutched in her clammy hands. Zoe's sitting with an elbow propped on the cool surface, a worn-out book opened in front of her. Her fingers are pressed against her forehead in concentration, brows furrowed with curiosity as her blue eyes roam over the pages, going right and left, right and left. Every now and then, her other hand lifts from the table to turn a page, leaving a foggy handprint on the glass.

Billie has always admired the way her friends could stay concentrated for such long periods of time when she couldn't even be bothered to read a book in its entirety - not even a damn script. 

She wants to open her mouth and ask the question that's been gnarling at her, an unbearable itch tickling the tip of her tongue, but as soon as she considers actually saying the words out loud, she closes her mouth shut.

Instead, Billie rips the pen from her mouth and shuffles in her seat, attempting to shift her focus back to the white pages in her hand. She tries for a few long seconds, but all she gets are angry letters staring back at her, until she cannot see words anymore but a jumbled mess of bleeding ink.

Silence is punctuated by Shark's soft snores and the ticking of a clock, and every now and then, the sound of Zoe turning a page has Billie's eyes darting from her script to her best friend.

When Billie finally makes it to the end of the line she is trying to finish, she cannot help that her eyes shift once again to her restless foot still propped on the table, clad in expensive limited-edition converses. She cannot help, either, the twitch in her brow and the jerk of her head as she watches it move back and forth, back and forth, faster than her eyes can catch up.

Her pen twirls between her fingers, tapping against the stack of paper annoyingly, and finally, the words blurt out of her mouth before she can control them.

"When did you know you liked girls?"

Shark's jerked awake and all clocks have stopped and Zoe's frozen in her seat. And then the world starts moving again as if it hadn't stuttered seconds before, and Shark lays back down peacefully with his chin resting on his paws, and the clock has ticked from 2:41pm to 2:42pm and Zoe's chest falls and rises with a new intake of breath.

Billie watches her best friend's eyes shift from her book to an invisible spot on the glass table in discomfort.

Of course that time would come, Zoe thinks.

"Huh?" she plays it dumb to afford some more time to think, and blue meets blue, and Zoe tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. In all honesty, she didn't think now would be that time.

Billie fidgets in her seat, nails picking at what's left of the eraser on her damaged pencil. She starts tapping her foot again, and she takes notice of Zoe's gaze shifting away from her face to her shoe. If she's annoyed by the rattling, she doesn't say it.