Buried secrets, two girls with the same face, and a boy who loved too much.
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When Travis and Nicole meet on a bus for the first time, he thinks she's his ex, Rachel, who broke his heart two years ago. But he doesn't understand why she's pretendin...
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"HE'S TOTALLY SPOILING you." Nessa gaped at the two enormous shopping bags on my bed that were delivered to me just five minutes ago. "Wow."
My own eyes were wide with disbelief. Blinking slowly, I sat on my bed and began pulling out the contents.
Blue dancing shoes. A blue Polaroid. Jewelry. Clothes. Heels. Perfumes. Scrunchies. Two blue diaries. A charm bracelet with a tiny dancing woman and a hydrangea. A bouquet of hydrangeas. A vanilla-scented hand moisturizer.
"A tripod and a camera?" Nessa's brows lifted with both excitement and confusion as she brought them out.
"Oh." I hesitated, taking the gift in. This boy was so... sneaky? Attentive? I didn't even know the word to use.
I sighed and explained. "Cornelia mentioned about two weeks ago that I should be filming myself and posting on my Instagram and YouTube, but I said I didn't have a camera, and he must've... heard."
"So he bought you one." Nessa sighed deeply.
"He pays attention to me," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "I feel like he really sees me."
I was clutching the charm bracelet. I stared dreamily at the delicate designs of the hydrangeas and the dancing woman while my mind wandered, imagining him scrolling through websites, choosing what to get me.
Or maybe, maybe he'd actually gone from one shop to the next, carefully selecting these.
My heart melted to a puddle.
Nessa voiced my thoughts, her voice a wistful sigh. "How did you get so lucky?"
I could only shrug weakly. I didn't know either.
Later, as I carefully put the gifts away, I thought of how lucky I felt lately. Things were just perfect. I was bonding beautifully with my family. My friends, especially Jahdiel, were doing fine.
School was great, though people paid me more attention after I sort of rose to fame. But it wasn't negative. They looked at me with awe.
Just this afternoon, Cornelia and I had finally shot the music video we'd been rehearsing for weeks. This was my very first professional gig as a dancer, and it was such a success.
Cornelia was so happy for me that we grabbed ice cream afterwards. While we sat in the booth, she snapped loads of photos of us, which she uploaded on Instagram.
Cornelia said her mom would buy us a cake and champagne to celebrate. She was right. Travis texted me not long after, congratulating me and saying his mom was strictly inviting me over for dinner.
My friends called afterwards after seeing Cornelia's posts, squealing congrats and asking me how I was doing and how the feeling was like. A lengthy FaceTime later, they'd hung up, promising to catch up with me properly when the weekend was over.
