Page 55 of A World Apart (Between Worlds #1)

T ime seemed to be flashing past now, a blur of days and weeks made relevant by whatever event it was that GVibes was doing at that time. I’d started to feel like a ghost, drifting through my own life, holding on to some unfinished business just out of reach, promising some kind of fulfilment.

Becka had banned me from spending any time in the fan groups online.

She said it was bad for my mental health and honestly, I couldn’t argue that point.

It was like falling down Alice’s rabbit hole, every other post was some kind of perceived drama.

I never commented on a single one, but for every post I read, I couldn’t help but construct a reply in my head.

It sometimes got to be like a constant mental narrative, an argument with imagined opponents. Honestly, I was exhausted.

“Enough!” Becka cried one Saturday morning in early October as we were sat in the kitchenette. My spoon clanged against my bowl of Wheebles as I looked up at her in surprise.

“The eff is your problem?” I mumbled through a mouthful of artificial sweeteners masquerading as a nutritious breakfast cereal .

“I asked you three times if you wanted to come with me to the exhibition, and it’s like you’re not even here. You’ve not been here for weeks, Kaiya.”

I looked at her, shocked to see the way her chin trembled, her eyes that shade of red just before tears spilled out.

“Becka, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore you,” I stammered, “we can go, if you want.”

“It’s not about the fucking exhibition!” She pushed away from the counter and dumped her bowl into the sink so roughly I wouldn’t have been surprised if the ceramic was cracked.

“It’s about you.” She spun on her heel and pointed at me. “It’s about who you are these days. Do you even know?”

“What are you talking about?” I dropped my spoon into the bowl, appetite gone.

“I mean,” she began, and I could see she was working with a whole head of steam; I braced myself. “When was the last time your entire day was just about you?”

“Eh?” I wasn't sure what I'd been expecting, but it hadn't been that.

“When was the last time you went through a whole day doing what you wanted, when and why you wanted?”

“Literally every day.” It felt like my whole face had scrunched in confusion. “I go to work because I choose to, in clothes I like, I eat what I want, I watch what I want, I listen to what I want, I talk to who I want.”

“But you don’t!” Becka is really impassioned now, her arms flung out wide, as if to bring the whole world into our conversation.

“You wake up and speak to Jihoon, you go to work, but do you even want to anymore? I sure as shit can’t remember the last time you actually enjoyed it?”

I opened my mouth to cut her off?

“And don’t say it’s because it’s boring,” she waves a stiletto nail at me, threateningly.

“You played backup guitar on an album currently charting on Billboard, and you’ve mentioned it once!

Last week THE Sherry Taylor asked you to go to lunch with her!

She has three Grammys! It’s not. That. Fucking. Boring!”

“What do you want me to say?” I cried, trying to push my point across through the volume of my words. “You want me to be impressed by the constant stream of celebrities? You’re upset that I’m not more interested in a job that’s 90% grunt work? ”

“No!” Becka is shouting by this point, splotches of red across her cheeks as if she’s been slapped.

“I want you to remember why you came here in the first place! I want you to wake up, and realise that what you have here, the comical intern role is what you wanted. Your funny year-long side step for experience and a good time. I want you to remember that you WANTED this.”

I spluttered, baffled and angry but hardly knowing why.

“I’m allowed to get bored!”

“But it’s not just that, Kaiya. You’re not you anymore, you’re an intern in your own fucking life!”

She might as well have punched me in the face, and I recoiled as though she had, rocking back on the stool and having to stand up in case I fell.

“What’s the play here, Becka? Hmm?” I was starting to feel lightheaded, a tingle that started in my fingers was now steadily working its way up my arms. “Just say whatever you’re beating around the bush about and tell me what you expect to get out of this.

Because, from where I’m standing, my best friend is yelling at me because I’m not excited all the time. ”

To my surprise, instead of yelling, Becka burst into tears.

She turned away from me, her shoulders heaving as she tried to take big, gulping breaths of air to calm herself down.

Eventually, once she’d settled, she turned back to me, her face streaked with tears, but her eyes still blazed.

Fire trapped behind glass. Despite the gulf between us, I couldn’t help but want to close the space that kept us apart.

“You don’t see what I see.” Her voice wavered, but she persisted. “You don’t see how small you’re making yourself.”

I frowned.

“But I do. I see how you fold in on yourself to accommodate him and his life. Your whole life has become about him, Kaiya. Everything you do, everything you plan, or don’t plan. Everything you want for yourself is based on him. You’ve stopped making plans for yourself.”

There was a buzz in my head, a persistent, but dull vibration behind my eyes. I had an overwhelming urge to defend myself against the accusation, but when I went to open my mouth, the words died on my tongue, the stunning realisation that I couldn’t disagree.

Wordlessly, I sat back down at the counter, looking up at Becka, seeing the way she’d wrapped her arms around herself, as if expecting me to lash out, but all the energy had been sapped out of me.

After several moments, Becka sighed and moved back over to the counter, leaning her elbows on it.

“Look, I’m not telling you to break up with him.” It sounded very much like she was suggesting it though.

“I just need you to understand that you’re just as important as him. Your life matters. What you need matters.” She reached across the counter and clasped my hand, squeezing it tightly.

“I do hear you, and I won’t sit here and pretend like I don’t know what you’re talking about.

” I chewed on my lip, trying to think about what I was trying to say.

“Perhaps I’ve been going about this the wrong way.

I’ve been so preoccupied with trying to fit myself around his life, that maybe I have made that my priority.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I laughed, but there was no humour to it.

“I don’t know when it stopped being about us, and started being about him and the group, but sometimes I don’t feel any different than those hardcore fans that spend their entire lives following their every movement.”

Becka nodded along, her face more open and expressive now. I could see I was starting to make sense to her again. The funny thing was, the more I said, the more it was making sense to me as well.

“When we’re together, and it’s not about the band or their schedules, it’s good. It makes sense.”

Becka hummed, looking away as she tapped her fingers on the counter-top, agitation clear in the sharp staccato of her fingernails on the stone top.

“The thing is, babes,” she eventually said, “you’re hardly together. No, listen,” she grabs at my hand as I’d been about to pull away.

“Listen to me, I’m not criticising you. You need to hear this, because it’s the truth. You are hardly together. You barely know each other, even you must agree that’s true.”

I didn’t disagree, if anything .

“What’s the end goal here? You’re here, he’s there. He can’t openly be with you, or if he does ? let’s say that happens ? are you prepared to deal with what that looks like?”

The truth was, I didn’t have an answer. I’d seen the fallout from when two idols were found out to be dating, and it often wasn’t pretty, to say nothing of someone… ordinary.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I don’t have answers, or a plan. All I know is how much I feel for him, and even that scares me, because it feels too much. I know this isn’t normal, I know that. I know I don’t fit into his world, but I also know I don’t want to not try to make this work.”

Becka hung her head, her shoulders slumped forward as she took several deep breaths.

“I get it, babes, I do. And I’m not going to try and persuade you otherwise. But this isn’t healthy. If you’re gonna be in this, you need to remember yourself and put her first. Let Jihoon worry about Jihoon. Be his girlfriend, not his groupie.”

I nodded, silence falling between us for so long I began to hear street noises drifting up from below.

“Couldn’t this have waited until after breakfast?” I quirked a smile, a peace-offering.

“No.” Becka straightened and took my bowl over to the sink, the contents now a mushy mess. “The exhibition is at noon and you weren’t paying attention to me.”

I snorted. “I’ll go have a shower then.”

Over the next week, I was more intentional with the way I interacted with GVibes.

I completely stopped looking at the fan groups, turned off notifications and muted them.

I made sure to be more present at work, even when it was just grunt work.

Becka had been right about this, at least. I had chosen this life, this side-step to a future I hadn’t mapped out yet. I couldn’t waste it.

I still spoke to Jihoon when I could, evenings or mornings, but I now made sure to talk to him about things outside of his group activities.

I tried to share more about myself, my hobbies, my opinions, even if it was only on stupid crap like what TV shows should never have been cancelled (Firefly), or what vegetable was objectively the worst (the radish).