I can tell my voice isn’t shaking this time. However, I feel like I’m about to break a rule when I walk towards her bedroom and touch the door.

“Are you there?”

“Down here.”

Glamorous and candid Billie Grace is sitting on the floor, behind her bed. She’s just there, staring at the window. Even though it’s summer, she’s wearing her pajamas with some sort of light gray cardigan, just as I imagined I would’ve if I lived here. To be fair, the air conditioning is on, but I don’t get why she wouldn’t turn it off first. I wonder if she knows how to do it. Is that conceited?

“What are you doing down there?” I ask, trying to sound casual, almost too affectionate.

Her hair is short, so I don’t recognize her at first glance. Not completely. Her long blonde hair has been a signature hairstyle of hers for a few years now. There are no pictures of her new haircut yet. 

I’m one of the first people to see, am I not?

Suddenly, she looks up. It’s like she can read my mind.  Even when I can’t control my reaction, she doesn’t seem to falter at my surprise.

Billie plays with a lock of hair, amused.

“This is my room.” She shrugs, as if her eyes weren’t red or she had no bags under her eyes whatsoever. “What about you?”

I know she can tell that she’s making me feel some sort of shame. I clear my throat and nervously look away. However, she sneaks in a little laugh before she makes room for me and pats on the floor.

“Come, sit down with me.”

And that’s what I do. I sit down next to Billie Grace, rising star of the decade. We’re both sitting on her floor, in her bedroom. 

That’s a thing that happens.

“Lilah still wants me to do this, right?” she asks before I can gather myself to say anything. “The whole Matthew Berry fake relationship thing. We’re still going for that”.

“Huh, well. She’s… She knows Berry is a rising indie singer and that you’re switching to pop with this new album.” I’m trying to sound professional, but I have absolutely no control over how crazy the situation looks. I’ve just memorized my lines like an actress. “I think it’s a smart move, even if he works with Molly’s firm. We may even get you pretty good deals out of this...”

Billie smiles. She looks a little bit older than twenty seven, but I have no idea how. I turned twenty six last week and I still feel like I’m sixteen. 

Does she feel that way too, sometimes?

“It is a smart move”, she admits. But she doesn’t seem to like it. 

If I didn’t think staring was wrong, I would definitely be staring at her pouting lip. She looks out at the window. From here, we can only see the clouds and some birds that pass us by.

“Amber?”

Does she remember my name? Wow.

“Yeah?”

“I think I don’t want to do it.”

I bite my lower lip and I try not to look at her. I know that her blue eyes are otherworldly, and I’m terrified of being manipulated by her soft voice. However, I gather up strength and I end up turning my gaze towards hers, being friendlier than I should.

“Okay,” I shrug, leaning on the bed. “What do you want to do, then?”

She’s the one that seems troubled now. I’m the one smiling and she’s the one blushing. I learnt from my parents and their never ending list of guests that I can, and I will act like I am in control. Even if I’m never going to be so. I offer her as much: control, a small corner to fight. Does she want it?

This is me letting her know that I’m on her team, even when we both know neither of us can’t fight against her contract. Isn’t that my job?

The girl sitting next to me doesn’t seem to understand why I would do something like that. And, with all honesty, neither do I. To an extent, I’m just trying not to get fired, even if I don’t really care about the job. Because I like the money and what it brings. 

I guess it just sort of happens, both of us being of a similar age. The distance seems to shorten, all of a sudden. 

“I want to go back to bed”, she caves in.

The room holds us both together in time.

“You’re the one that climbed down here in the first place,” I laugh. “No one pushed you out.”

“And I want fries.”

“Hm… God, me too.”

“Coffee, too.”

“With fries?” 

My face must be hilarious, because she lets out a big laugh before she stares at me in some sort of loving way.

“I’ll dip them in the coffee, yes.”

“Gross much?”

She laughs again. It’s weird, because I don’t feel that uncomfortable anymore. However, as something crosses her mind, she curls up. With her legs against her chest, Billie looks out the window again and bites her lower lip.

“Do you know why I don’t want to do this anymore?”

“Be a superstar?”

“No.” She smiles again. “That part is alright. I love that.”

“I bet there’s some disadvantages to seeing your face on the billboards everyday, girl.”

“But I don’t really see them. You guys do.”

“Oh.” 

I never thought about it. This house, her flats, the restaurants my aunt Lilah told me about. Even when those worlds collide sometimes, Billie Grace lives in a different world most of the time. 

“But you know they’re there. It must be tiring.”

“It is. But I want to think they make my fans happy.”

“I’m pretty sure they do.” Before I can tell why I’m doing it, I’m playing with my own clothes, like a child. “So… Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why don’t you want to do this anymore?”

She seems to recoil, unsure if she should be talking about this with me. I understand. I don’t really think I qualify for this. I’m just a normal girl whose great grandfather committed fraud and ended up with lots of money anyway. I didn’t want to go to university or study public relations, but I thought aunt Lilah could get me a job if I did. I really wanted my dad to get off my back those days, so I said I would do that. I lied a little bit, and I’ve believed that lie for a while. 

Lie after lie, I’ve ended up lying on this floor. But this is not who I am, laying-on-Billie-Grace’s-floor-Amber. This is some sort of mutilated version of me, which I find incredibly ironic given the circumstances.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I add, in the end.

Looking at her, I think I know why she’s wrinkling and looking older than she does. She looks hurt. Damaged by something I know nothing of. She seems to be hurting where no one can see. 

Unreachable but somehow willing to be found, the girl looks at me with teary eyes.

“I was going to do all of this so I could marry Anna this summer,” she says, all of a sudden. “This was meant to be some sort of bearding for a month or so, and then I was going to take a break. I wasn’t going to release the album until after that, if the record label still wanted it. We planned this so carefully...”

I’m completely speechless. 

“Anna?” My brain is rotting swiftly, but the name pops up in my head. “Wait. Anna Archivald?”

“Anna, yes.”  I can hear a whimper, as she closes her eyes.

“Wait a minute, Billie. You’re a lesbian?”

And before I know it, I’m holding Billie Grace in my arms, trying to get her to stop crying. Wailing. Her pain is bigger than any of this: the house, the bottle of wine, the calls. There’s just so much I don’t know under the surface of her papercut wounds and her short haircut. So much beneath the very delicate crafted lies she’s been selling herself.

“But she left me,” she cries. “She left, and she’s just marrying him instead! How cruel is that?”