heartbreak girl | s.m.

9 | flickers

chapter playlist⏯
• dancing on my own - calum scott
• flicker - niall horan
• blue - troye sivan & alex hope

———
a few days later
gemma clark <<<

"I'm in the corner, watching you kiss her, oh oh oh. And I'm right over here, why can't you see me? Oh oh oh. And I'm giving it my all, but I'm not the guy you're taking home, oh oh oh. I keep dancing on my own."

I took one of my headphones out to hopefully make me pay more attention to the professor. I felt my eyelids flutter, my body begging me to close them. You've got to stay awake, Gemma. Do you want to fail?

No. I didn't want to fail. I've never failed, not like that. I've had a GPA north of a 4.0 since freshman year, and I'm not about to throw away such credentials just because I'd rather take a nap. Twenty more minutes is nothing.

Before my mom died, I was a shoe-in for
valedictorian back home in Nebraska. My new school in LA was harder, plus I was new, which sucked, and the kids weren't the nicest to me. But my academics were the one thing that I didn't have to worry about. Even at my new school, I excelled. Teachers loved me, students still disliked me for no reason at all.

Then I somehow wound up working at a modeling agency after my new best friend Edith insisted I tried it, because she did it, and she was my only friend, so I did whatever she did. I got dragged along, ended up being hired by some insane luck, and that was that. I thought I would be at least a little cooler after that, maybe finally fit in, but it was the same. Edith was cool, because she was dating Brad Harrison, who had basically been a movie star since birth, but I was still a background character. I was known as "Edith Jones' best friend," or even "Brad Harrison's girlfriend's best friend." I don't even know how I got to be her best friend. She and I just somehow clicked in chemistry class, and the rest is history. She didn't care about her reputation, she just cared about having a real friend. That was nice. No one else in LA was like that.

I actually liked my job at first. It gave me some extra money, and being a "model" gave me a little street cred. But what changed everything was when I met him.

Jake Dempsey.

I think it was around Christmas time, a little before. It was a normal day of work for us, just doing a shoot, but I guess whatever movie Jake was working on was doing photo shoots at the same place we were as well, so the cast was around.

I remember it like it was yesterday.

I saw him from across the room, and Edith whispered in my ear, "That's Brad's friend Jake Dempsey. He's totally hot, and he would totally be into you."

I rolled my eyes, because there was no way in hell that a boy that gorgeous would be into a little-miss-nobody like myself. But now I couldn't stop sneaking glances at him, and he never seemed to notice. Probably because I'm literally invisible.

After our whole shoot was over, I grabbed my stuff from the room and was saying goodbye to Edith as I walked out the door. I wasn't looking where I was going, and felt myself run right into someone.

Good going, Gemma.

"Woah, watch where you're going, slick."

I looked up and there was the boy Edith had pointed out to me earlier. Jake...Jake something. His accent sounded Australian; it was extremely charming and I wanted him to talk again so I could hear it. He was even cuter up close. I looked up at him and his eyes immediately softened.