Nini Salazar-Roberts was an overnight sensation. Her rise to fame started at a ripe twelve years old. She was taken from her simple life in Salt Lake City, Utah and moved to LA. Life changed for her pretty drastically and when she finally comes back...
Ever since her skyrocket to fame, nini had turned into a very cautious person. She always needed to think through every single possible outcome before making a decision. When it came to trusting people, it took a long time for her to break down her exterior shell. This is why nini had been lying in her bed for hours, just staring at the ceiling.
"Kourt?" she answered, picking up her phone. Kourtney was one of hollywood's best makeup artists in nini's opinion. Kourt had been doing her makeup for the past four years now which had given the two girls plenty of time to bond and form their friendship.
"Nini! How are you? How's Utah?" she asked over the phone, you could tell she was excited to be talking to her best friend again. "I saw those pictures of you in the tabloids looking pissed," Nini had forgotten mostly about that night. No -- correction, she'd forgotten about the whole paparazzi thing, not the whole yelling match she and ricky had in his living room.
"It's... getting better," she admitted. Nini went on to tell her all about the events that had gone on over the past week and a half. Kourtney ate up all the drama. One of her favorite things to do was live vicariously through people's lives.
"So are you two friends now?"
"I wouldn't say all that. I mean, all I did was forgive the guy. I'm not sure if i even want to be friends with him," nini told her. This whole situation had her thoroughly perplexed.
Did she want to cut ricky out of her life? Not really.
Did she trust him enough to let him back into her life? Not at all.
Kourt gave her a knowing look through the phone. Nini often took forever to see things that other people could point out in mere seconds, but kourt never told her that. She knew nini needed her time to sort things out for herself.
"So, I want to come to visit soon," kourtney said, switching the subject up. That made nini brighten up a little bit. Although she'd reconnected with some cool people here, kourtney knew her so much more. It would be nice to have a truly friendly face around, even if it was just for a week or two.
"Um, yes?!" she exclaimed, longing to hug her best friend through the phone.
"Would it be okay if I brought Ashlyn with me?" kourtney said shyly. Nini raised an eyebrow beginning to open her mouth but quickly shutting it.
"Did you finally ask her?" she wondered excitedly. Kourtney's face turned red and all she could do in response was nod which made nini scream out loud.
"You okay?" her mom asked, popping her head into nini's room. Nini smiled at her and nodded, showing her the phone to reveal kourt's face. "Hi Kourtney," she smiled, waving at the girl through the screen.
"Hi, mama D," kourtney chorused in return.
"Oh, hey mom? If kourtney and ashlyn came to visit, could they stay here?" nini asked right before her mom could leave the room.
"I don't see why not, but i'll check with mama," she said, smiling down at her daughter. She was happy that she could bring nini back to salt lake. She knew that her daughter had been having a rough go over the past few years and she just wanted her daughter to be happy. Little did nini know, her parents were in the midst of trying to set some things up.
The rest of the phone call was nini and kourtney looking through dates in their calendars to see if there was a good week or two that would work for all three of them. By the end of the conversation, nini was happy to say that she'd be seeing her best friends in two weeks. She was thankful that it would give her something to look forward to.
------ a week later -------
The past week had kind of gone by in a blur for both nini and ricky. For nini they'd been narrowing down contest submissions and figuring out their next phase and for ricky, rehearsals for the fall musical were in full spring. For the past two years, ricky had gotten super into musicals. He ended up getting into them on accident. He dared to do it by the skaters at school but ended up really enjoying it and making a lot of friends.
This year, East High was putting on camp rock and he was playing Shane. He didn't know how he ended up doing it, but Ricky continued to score the lead roles in most of the productions the high school put on.
The space was good for nini. She needed something to focus her mind on. She was still so torn up about what to do with the whole ricky situation. However, for ricky, all he could think about was nini. He really wanted to be her friend, not just have her forgive him. He knew there was a difference. But, he also wanted to give her space to think about everything. He knew that he messed up big time and would be surprised if they'd ever really get to be friends again... best friends again.
"So, nini, I think we're ready to move to the next stage of the contest," jenn said, clasping her hands together. She motioned to the projector. "So, we had to cut the deadline short by two weeks since we had way more entries than anticipated, but what we're going to do is let fans have a say in this as well. Now that we've narrowed down a bunch of the entries. We're going to post them on your site and fans will get to vote for their favorite entries. Once we have a top ten, you'll choose one from those ten to be the winner." She explained. A mock version of what the site would look like showed up on the screen.
"Okay... so, how many people did we end up narrowing it down to?" she asked, scribbling little doodles in the margins of her songbook.
"Fans will have 25 entries to vote between. The voting period will last two weeks and then you'll have a week to decide the winner," jenn stated, clearly thinking of everything.
Nini nodded, taking in all the information in. "Sounds good to me, Jenn. You're the best," she laughed, closing her notebook.
"Can we go through the 25 entries?" nini asked. She'd helped picked the people that she liked but her management had gone through and trimmed the people that they didn't feel "fit her brand". So, nini had yet to see the top twenty-five. She was curious to see if ricky had made it in.
The 25 names pulled up onto the screen: Oliver, Tate, Sean, Kaycee, Olivia, Julian, Lucas, Maya, Riley, Collette, Julia, Greyson, Beck, Andre, Ariana, Tucker, Miley, Jade, Quinn, Zoey, Tom, Peter, Lee, Ethan, and Ricky.
His name sat there at the bottom of the list. She wasn't sure if it was in any particular order, but there he was. His entire audition video on display for the world to see. That was going to be interesting. Fans would either love it or hate it.
After a little more discussion it was settled. The new website page would go live tonight at eight pm, right after nini tweeted about the next round of the competition.
That night, ricky and nini both went to sleep not knowing what was about to happen.
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Another chapter! I've had a lot of free time today so you'll probably even get another chapter after this! The more you guys interact with me and this story the more excited i am to write! So keep commenting and voting and letting me know what you think!
This is kind of a filler chapter to help us move to the next plot! so not too much happened, but don't worry the next chapter is going to be WILD.
