Teach Me How to Love

The Gentle Hum of Anxiety

The next few weeks went by in a stressful blur. Yelena barely had time to breathe. Stephanie had begged her to work a photo shoot since the views for their Instagram page were sky high, and now she had that to worry about on top of her job and taking pictures for the Instagram page. She worked hard to make everything immaculate and worked out harder in the gym to relieve the stress. She barely found the time to eat and her sleeping patterns had been shot to hell. She found herself drinking a glass of wine almost every night to calm her nerves. Thankfully, she had made up with Phil and had even hung out with Randy. They got together and watched a movie in his room or just spent the evening talking about any and everything and she could tell that a bond was forming between them, but she often found herself second guessing being around him so much.

Chris was out on a thirty-day suspension, but she still felt that she was defying him, so she took a few steps back. The last encounter she had with Chris had been intense. If he didn't have feelings for her after that night, she didn't know what more she could do to prove herself worthy of him.

Yelena sat cross-legged on her bed. Her brown hair was pulled into a sloppy bun atop of her head and her glasses slipped down the bridge of her nose and she pushed it back up for the umpteenth time. She spooned a mouthful of the the Raspberry Truffle Ben & Jerry's ice cream she was devouring, holding the spoon in her mouth as she uploaded pictured from the photo shoot she did earlier that day. was redoing the website to make it look sleeker and more modern, so every Superstar and Diva were required to take new photos for their profile. She helped with a quick run through of at least fifteen people, the bright lights giving her a pounding headache, but she pressed through and the results were amazing. She was just about to start on Dolph's pictures when her phone chimed on the nightstand. She stretched and grabbed it, seeing it was a text from Mike

Hey shitface, what room are you in?

xMike

She rolled her eyes. Mike had become one of her best friends. They fought like cats and dogs, but she adored him. He was like the annoying brother she never had, kind of like Phil.

533 asswipe. Why?

xYelena

Her response was a knock on her door five minutes later. She opened it, smiling when she saw Mike with two boxes of pizza, AJ, carrying sodas, and Aksana with a stack of movies.

"We're taking over your room and there's nothing you can do about it shrimp" Mike said, shoving her lightly out of the way. She retaliated by kicking him in the butt on his way in

She greeted the two others and everyone filed into her bedroom

"No fair, how did you manage to get the walk-in shower?" AJ asked

They all spread out on the two beds, Mike and Aksana on one, Yelena, AJ on the other.

"Please no Chick Flicks" Mike groaned

"Shut up Mike. Even if we watch a chick flick, you're going to watch it with us because no one asked you to tag along. This was suppose to be a girl thing" Aksana said, popped a movie into the player

"What's a movie night without me?"

"Awesome?" AJ smirked

"Shut it pipsqueak." he shot at her

The movie turned out to be "Ted" and it was hilarious. They laughed and ate pizza. When the was over, AJ voted that they watched "The Hunger Games". Mike started snoring loudly halfway through

"He's asleep. Does anyone have a Sharpie?"

Yelena found one in her purse and handed it to the small Diva and they giggled like schoolgirls as she drew a Mario-like mustache on his upper lip.