Coping With Clarity

Chapter Eighteen

She wonders what it’ll be like when they’re sharing her bed. Not the cramped, yet strangely comfy, barricaded bed that Selena is so accustomed to crawling into beside Demi. But her bed. In her room.

Weeks ago it would have still been ‘the bed’ and ‘the room’ but slowly the absence from the poorly decorated walls and stacked boxes; Selena is a slow unpacker, judge her not.

She’s begun to miss it so much so that she thinks, that when Demi is well enough to move, she’ll take her there and they can lie together, for however long she wants.

Demi’s hand accidentally brushes her bare hip, exposed by her rumpled t-shirt. The contact plasters secret grins on their faces and thats when Selena decides that she’ll, somehow, take Demi home after graduation. Hearing it in her mind, sounding so natural, she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it sooner.

Fuck the Doctors (but not literally); Selena has already had enough grief over the travel arrangements and the necessary supervision Demi will need at her graduation ceremony. Dr DeLuise had looked extremely nervous throughout the whole discussion, even after Selena had introduced him to the driving force, that was her mother.

The headache usually caused by thinking about the details and worried vanished when she felt Demi’s finger draw against her jaw, like an artist. Precise and delicate. Involuntarily she hummed to the touch.

“You have no idea how good this feels.” She weakly murmured under Demi’s small action. The younger girl gave a breathy laugh, a exhausted option.

“Lying down or finishing your exams?” Demi whispered back.

Selena loved the way Demi was attuned to her current mood, like a radio, managing to guess her emotions and react - a skill probably acquired from having to guess what all the people tip-toeing around her as she was growing up were really feeling.

“Ooo, trick question. I’ll answer later.”

Selena blushed as Demi worked her hand over the curves of her back, thanking God that Demi couldn’t hear her silent moan, muffled in the pillows.

Her stomach swirled deliriously and she unconsciously pulled Demi closer. Magnets. PB&J. Bonnie and Clyde. Nothing felt as right as connecting her hands behind the small of Demi’s back and keeping her close like there was nothing counting down for either of them.

Their noses brushed. Eskimo kiss. Surely nothing would ruin the moment.

“So, you had that meeting today? With the guidance counsl-?”

Selena let out an exaggerated groan that made Demi crack up. Guidance counselor. Future. She pretended to ignore Demi and buried her head in the girl’s neck to a chorus of ‘no, no, no’ that sounded suspiciously like Amy Winehouse.

“What?” Demi asked innocently before wrecking her charade with an uncontrollable laugh at Selena’s frustration. “Do you not want to tell me about it?”

Selena huffed, knowing her fake ‘hissy fit’ would only make Demi giggle. She could still feel the shivers of aftershocks in the girl’s neck. So she decided to divulge. A little.

“Same old really.” Selena would have left her answer there, with anyone else; but Demi froze up in her embrace. Discomfort. Regret. All the clues and it still took Selena ten seconds for her to realize that Demi wouldn’t know what thesame old was. She had never got that far.

Clearing her breath, Selena passed off her realization as a pause.

“He talked about grades, career goals - higher education. Just asked a few questions about what I was thinking about doing after high school.” She hoped Demi didn’t think she was explaining out of pity. It was forgetfulness. Spending so much time together, and with their newfound closeness, had faded the walls of the hospital and blurred the lingering disease present in Demi. Selena swallowed guilt, her ever present medicine.