Admit It

15; backstage

A slight morning wind brushed against Shawn's skin like a touch he stupidly longed for, while he watched the burnt-out joint from last night roll back and forth across the floor of the glass balcony. He kicked it through the rails and walked away from the balcony he'd spent the entirety of yesterday evening dreaming on, toying with the soaked-through bandages on each of his knuckles. His father had had a pride like Shawn's. To him, there was no wager too risky if he'd already been promised to it. At the very least, he'd done them worse than they'd done to him.

Until lunchtime later that day, it was hard to know how much Shawn had truly fucked them over, since the memory in his mind was simply a mixture of flashing red and shadows of black and words that he wished he could forget. He walked with Brian and watched through his periphery as the students subconsciously or not turned to their lockers while he stepped through them. They found a spot on a small bench and sat down.

"That's them," Brian whispered, not so inconspicuously pointing at the three pricks with their black eyes and bandages and whatnot.

Shawn nearly snorted. "Yeah, no shit Sherlocks," he joked through a tinge of regret. Of course they deserved what he gave them, he wished he could think, but no one deserved all that he'd given them.

"And that's the other person you screwed over," Brian said after a while. "How funny, they're all sitting in a line."

"What?"

"Her. Camila. She's right there."

Although he would never wish to admit it, Shawn couldn't help but nearly stand out of his seat at the mention of her name. Camila, the name was like sunsets and rainy lunches in diners, late night video calls and old songs, evening library conversations and scribbled cursive. He cursed himself under his breath. That name meant too much to him for a name he hadn't even known for three weeks, and for one he knew could never mean anything close to what he wished it could mean to him.

She was 'right there'. Dressed in her light-washed, loosely fitting jeans and sweater vest, her hair tumbling down her shoulder with only one small flower clip in it, she sat a few feet from the boys. A mere few days ago, it would've only taken a moment's time for Shawn to grab her hand and pull her away from the boys he wouldn't trust with a thing in the world and hold her in his arms only stare over his best friend's shoulder at the girl he wanted to get to know inside and out, now, but at least she couldn't see his intense stare from this angle.

"How do you know I 'screwed her over'?" he asked.

"Are you denying it?"

He shook his head. "No. Definitely not."

Brian smirked, before his face morphed just as quickly into something of confusion. "Wait, but weren't you, like, so whipped for her a week ago? You two were all, 'mwah, mwah!' and holding hands and shit."

Shawn ran his fingers through his loose brown curls, imagining instead that it was her fingers toying with his hair, running down his cheekbones, sending butterflies to his heart with their touch of absolute magic. "I wish I could've called her my girlfriend for just one day," he said, staring desperately at the small girl against the wall. "I wish I could've just fucking kissed her once, or told her how much I liked the book she gave me, or sent her another playlist I made for her, or even just talk to her like we used to."

"You're an idiot," Brian said.

"Takes one to know one."

"But I didn't love any of the girls I screwed over!"

"I didn't love Camila," he snapped. "And she didn't love me either. If she did, we would've been in a lot fucking bigger of a mess than this."

Brian rolled his eyes and opened the lunch he'd bought from McDonald's earlier that day. "And you would've fallen in love with her. You're probably still going to. Even if you don't want to."

"But I can't, you idiot. If I fall in love with her, and she falls in love with me, and we start trying something out... I-I'm going to break her! I'm going to ruin her, and that's going to ruin me. You have no idea how beautiful she is, Brian. I'm terrified of what I might turn her into if I touch her."

Brian kept his mouth shut but held out a chicken nugget to Shawn. He sighed and took it. "You're gonna fall in love with her."

"I fucking hate you."

"Love you too, brother," Brian smirked, and, in spite of the thunderstorms running in circles around his mind, Shawn smiled, to the family that he'd found.

 ✧✦✧ 

The blood-red color of the curtain drew like a shadow around his body as he sat and watched her walk behind the curtain. He nearly folded in on himself, a shiver going over his skin, a breath catching in his throat, a beat of a heart multiplying in his chest. Shawn turned his eyes away from her and glanced at his trembling hands, wondering if she saw them too.

"Camila? Camila Cabello?" the drama club director called from somewhere on the stage.

He turned to her as she began to close her book and stand so the director could see her, before he called out himself, "She's here. Behind the curtain."

Camila gave him a small, pained smile.

"It's nothing," he whispered.

A moment passed between them, silent to the world, but deafening to them. Her eyes were a warm, deep brown color, he tried to memorize, and they glowed golden like the flickering table lamps at the library table they'd sat at for hours together. He noticed the slight, wispy bangs that fell around the edges of her cheeks, imagining her cutting them herself that morning like she said she'd always done, and the rosy tint of blush to her caramel skin, a color something of pink carnations and post-romantic poetry. Although he tried not to, he thought about her just possibly analyzing his features the same way he was doing to her, and involuntarily brushed his curls through with his fingers, remembering the way she said she thought it was odd, but cute, how no matter what the rest of his hair looked like, there was always a single 's' shaped curl hanging in front of his face. He cursed himself and dropped his eyes once more.

A buzz came from the pocket of his jeans. He could see the phone screen light through the corner of his eye and pulled out his phone.

'I know about your reputation,' was all the text said. He barely reacted. The reality to him was already too hopeless, too dark and dirtied around the edges, for even Camila's words to drain him any further. He felt it though. Inside of him, he felt it.

'I overheard those three boys today at lunch,' she typed.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to find out from them," he whispered, meeting her eyes. The actors began reading off their scripts on stage. A moment passed. "None of it was an act, by the way. All of it was real."

Her expression, for some reason, sank. Suddenly, even though they used to cuddle up together in the dark corner behind the curtain, arms intertwined, eyes drowning in each other's stares, the arm's length in between them felt like far too close. The air was riddled with tension, unspoken truths, and irreversible attraction.

'Tell Ms. Wilson I have to meet a teacher,' Camila said, and stood. Shawn nodded, watching her once more as she walked outside of the curtain's shadow and out the door. He wondered whether it'd be better or worse if she'd stayed and confronted him about his behavior on that Saturday, or why he did such horrible things to those three boys that were up on stage pretending to be heroes they weren't, or even why he kept the book covered in her sweetest words to him in his backpack. After many moments left alone, he decided he hated the empty silence, and wished she could come back and fill it again. 

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i hope everyone had a lovely 2022! mini-bitesize chapter to end off the year ❤️

december 31, 2022

1:35 p.m.