Admit It

20; vinyl records

Camila ran her fingers over the slightly dusty, slightly worn and strongly loved cases of vinyls on the windowsill of his bedroom. A lost, but in a wandering sort of way, look in his eyes, Shawn watched her from where he sat, toying with his record player, and let the words flow out of his lips every time she picked up a specific record and looked curiously at him. She pulled a glittery pink sleeve from the case and smiled at him, holding back a giggle.

"Oh god," Shawn groaned, throwing his head back as Camila walked to sit beside him on the bed and slipped the vinyl out of the sleeve. "I thought I shoved that one inside my closet so you couldn't find it."

The record player started spinning, and a faint buzzing sound began. 'There's nothing wrong with the Hannah Montana: The Movie soundtrack!' she typed.

"That was the first record I ever bought for myself," he admitted while 'You'll Always Find Your Way Back Home' started playing and Camila pretended to sing along. "I definitely didn't pretend to be a secret pop star back in 2009, you know. I totally didn't play this in my room and do the choreography and scream my lungs out into my cheap orange microphone back then."

She laughed and stood from the bed, just as the voice from the record playing started singing. Camila stuck up her pointer finger the exact same way Hannah Montana had in the movie, then put her hand on her hip as she mouthed, 'Looks like one of those rough days.'

Shawn stood and gave his attempt at the body rolls and pirouettes of the backup dancers, although he had always been the worst dancer, as proved by the fact that he had never beaten his little sister at Just Dance in the 6 years they had been playing it. He sang, "Time's up, you're late again, so get out of the door!" and flipped his hair and bent over like someone who had been smoking or drinking or partying, or possibly all three, a bit too much, before falling back on the bed with laughter. He covered his face with the pillow to hide how much he was laughing, before he felt Camila fall beside him, laughing just as hard.

They laughed until their stomachs were sore and until their throats were dry and until their ears were all too familiar with the sound of each other's laughs. Fuck, Shawn thought. I haven't laughed like that in a while.

Camila was barely able to type her thoughts into her words. 'My brother loved all things Hannah Montana more than anything. There was never a moment of silence at our house, with my dad and my brother and my Mama always singing and dancing and all of that.'

He sat up. He'd heard nothing of her family so far, only the assumptions he'd made when he first saw her apartment and the small instance of the word 'had' when she mentioned her brother once.

"Tell me more," he urged. She smiled and scooted closer to him, letting her left hand fall into his lap so he could hold it in his own exactly the way he loved to.

'It was always the best time at my house,' she began, and Shawn kissed the back of her hand, Camila leaning her head on his shoulder. 'My dad loved music. He never took lessons but he had the sweetest voice and he would sing to anything, commercial jingles, operas, classical music, he knew it. He was a pretty bad dancer though, like someone I might know.' He gave her a look and she pecked his cheek. 'Then my brother, his name was Lucas, he got his musical talent from my dad. He mostly sang and played piano, but then he picked up the guitar and he could play instantly. He taught me everything I know about guitar, though I barely picked up on anything he said, I was more the singer type so I didn't comprehend most of what he was rambling about. He was a really big talker.'

Glancing at him with a wondering, contemplative look on her face, she wrote, 'Could I tell you how he passed? I've never told anyone.'

His breath caught a little in his throat. "O-only if you want to. If you're ready to tell, I'm ready to listen."