I searched for Derek, looking through the massive crowd of people until I spotted him. I smiled and walked maybe a little too quickly towards him, bumping into a few people. He noticed, and we laughed as we walked to his car. I put my bags in and hugged him, feeling a rush of some kind of mix of wistfulness, happiness, and safety. He pulled away and kissed me, long and gentle. I looked up at him and laughed. "There's that."
Derek smiled. "I'm glad you're home."
Who really knows where the fuck home is, I thought. I just nodded. "Me too."
"So, what'd you do? Was it fun?"
"Yeah, it was really fun. I didn't do much. Annoyed my friends."
He laughed. "Cool. What do you wanna do today?"
"Right now? Sleep."
"With me?" he joked.
I smacked his arm. "I'll go back, I swear. I already told you."
"Nah. Wait, so are we going to my place?"
"Yeah, if you want to," I said.
We drove for a while kind of quietly, but it was a comfortable silence. The kind of silence I hadn't felt in a while. Neither of us had to say anything. I reached for his hand in the car and he took mine. Something flashed through me that I knew I'd never felt with Javier, and it was so satisfying.
I pulled my hair out of a bun a few minutes later. "Ow, what the hell!" I yelled.
"Everything okay?" Derek stood in the doorway of his bathroom.
"Yep. Think I just pulled all my hair out, but other than that, yeah, I'm as happy as Rose Nylund."
"You sure being Rose is a good thing?"
I laughed. "No." I closed the door.
"Don't kick me out!" Derek yelled.
I giggled. "I'm doing stuff."
I washed my makeup off and looked into the mirror a moment later at my reflection. I didn't go without makeup often, and Derek had never seen me without it; I couldn't decide if it felt scary or refreshing to see myself just like that- myself, totally bare and naked and vulnerable. I was constantly trying to put a filter over myself, even though I didn't particularly like hiding behind makeup- but I didn't know another way to feel pretty. It gave me a weird feeling, like I was a totally different person in a lot of ways.
Being a human was weird.
I took a deep breath and pushed the thoughts out of my head, focusing on that exact moment only. I was back in New York. I was with Derek. I felt so much better than I had in L.A., anyway.
Happy thoughts.
I couldn't let this hit me. Today was going fine. I was fine. I told myself to carry the fuck on and smiled as I walked back into the room. When I opened the door, Derek hit me with a pillow, and I shrieked as he attacked me fiercely. I broke away from him just long enough to grab another pillow and started hitting him back. We chased each other around his apartment until he pinned me down on his bed, wrapping me up tightly in his arms, forcing me to stay still.
"You know what?" he asked.
I looked up at him expectantly.
"I have never seen a girl be so clueless she's being beaten at a game."
I laughed. "All I tried to do was win."
"Hashtag feminism," Derek said in a high-pitched girly voice.
"God, you're weird," I said, pulling myself out of his embrace. "Let me sleep. Give me peace."
I snuggled up next to him and pulled the blanket all the way up to my chin. "I'm fucking freezing," I said. "I missed how hot it was in California."
"I missed how hot you were here."
"Smooth."
He reached for my hand. "Damn, you are cold. You're, like, in a cocoon," Derek said.
"I'm a little butterfly!"
"Make that a kid's song."
"I'm good. I'm enough like a child already. But damn, it'd be easier than actual writing," I said.
"Are you blocked?"
"No, I don't know, I just can't get what I wanna say across the right way... I'm stuck. So yeah, I guess I'm blocked."
"What do you wanna say?"
The question was simple enough, but made me incredibly anxious. I pulled an answer off the top of my head. "Like... I don't know." In reality, I kind of knew, but I was reluctant to tell him. "I want it to be honest and real and open, and I want it to connect with me as much as it does other people... and I want it to be different. Because I'm different." I laughed. "It sounds stupid, but I don't know how to explain."
"It doesn't sound stupid."
"Yeah, it's like I know what I want from it, but I don't. Shocker," I laughed.
"Sara," Derek said.
"What?"
"I love you so much."
I felt my stomach do the same thing it did when I wrote I Choose You. "I love you, too."
"You're beautiful."
When he said it, I believed it. "So are you."
"You have the right ideas. You'll figure it out."
"I know."
"There's my girl."
And he was right. I crept into his living room a few hours later with an insane melody stuck in my head. I'd been up all night thinking about the past few weeks, and it felt like everything was dying to come out after all. I pulled out my phone and typed lyrics into the Notes section. "Let me paint a picture for you, then I'll have to teach you to see it." One thought came to my mind: L.A. Everyone always wondered why I left after I said I never would. No one saw that L.A. had turned into hell. Everyone just asked mindless, empty questions- why was I leaving, what's wrong with a city. No one ever asked about the things that happened there that scarred me.
"Idolize my innocence, stole it from me in the end." I stopped for a moment. It was too true. Since the beginning, I had always been the "innocent" little pop star- I didn't fight, I didn't do drugs, I kept my clothes on. It hit me that not only the media had been naive, but that I had, too. I wasn't always the good girl. I wasn't always perfect. No one saw that side of me, the side that had been slowly revealing itself lately. At the same time, I had tricked everyone, including myself, into believing there was never anything wrong. Funny how fast that'd been taken from me in the past year.
L.A. had always been a safe haven. Home. I swore I'd never leave, until I did. And I just kept coming up with reasons why.
Life in Eden changed.
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Shadows (A Sara Bareilles fanfic)
FanfictionLife was pretty much perfect. Sara was a successful and talented musician, and had her life perfectly in order. Nothing could be better. But now, nothing could be worse. Her life was in shambles, with a recent move to New York City, a breakup, and...