Break Downs and Build Ups 2
After brushing the hair from her face, the situation shifts back to the general uncomfortableness that Kristen had grown to be almost comfortable with, if that made any sense. It does to her and she guesses that’s all that matters anyway. Selena seems less enamored with the change. She has a nervous weird look on her face and Kristen again thinks that she is trying to work up the nerve to politely decline the invite.
Kristen doesn’t think it would be for the best. The girl, Demi, was still at the party and most likely hadn’t stopped whatever she had done to prompt the angry bathroom conversation. People were annoying like that. Of course she could be wrong and this Demi person could be sobbing her eyes out in her car or something, being all contrite and sorry for causing it all.
She knows she is being judgmental, that she has chosen a side without knowing all the facts, but she can’t bring herself to care. People who lied or cheated on someone that obviously seemed to love them were awful people. She knew. She was one of them. Michael was a sweet, caring, understanding guy that loved her. He didn’t deserve what she did.
It took Selena making a slight clearing of the throat noise to draw her attention from the self-loathing that seemed to have become her most trusted loyal companion.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” the girl asks, rubbing her hands nervously on the silk draped around her slender frame.
Selena Gomez looks like she belongs in silky beautiful dresses and fancy high heels. Her posture is perfect, her makeup somehow still immaculate after the tears had dried, and not a hair out of place. Kristen imagines she should feel some form of jealousy. That this girl at a younger age was so perfect at this, while she has spent most of the night awkwardly shuffling around. She doesn’t. Maybe it is because she knows beneath it all is a sad hurt little girl or maybe it is because for some reason she felt the need to brush a few strands of hair from that sad hurt little girl’s face. Either way, she isn’t jealous and doesn’t have any desire to want to be.
“Yea. No, I mean I don’t mind. I needed to get out of here anyway,” Kristen shrugs, feeling the soft fabric of her own designer dress shift beneath the movement.
Together they depart from the dimly lit bathroom into the mess of bodies and noise and flashing lights and everything that makes Kristen’s skin crawl. She definitely needed to get out of there.
Someone, probably the next big teen star, bumps into her and Selena. Kristen shoots the kid a withering glare. If it were less damn loud she might have even made a snide comment. Selena doesn’t appear to be fazed even though the boy almost knocked her over, she even smiles slightly when he gives a strange sort of apologetic hand gesture. Kristen fights the urge to roll her eyes at the girl and bizarrely enough the smile trying to overtake her scowl. It didn’t, her annoyed glares were a perfected art, but the fact that it could have happened is creeping her out a little bit.
They make it to the back door and somehow escape without running into anyone else. Kristen didn’t see Demi and she imagines neither did Selena, since the only time she raised her head was when the kid knocked into them. Even now, as they step out into the cool LA night, the girl keeps her eyes locked to the ground, trailing after Kristen.
Then the paparazzi come out like rats and the normal look of being terrified, annoyed, angry, befuddled and a whole host of other emotions emerges on Kristen’s face. Suddenly the noise and the crowd of the party are a cakewalk. Like always, her feet pause and her pulse jumps and all she wants to do is just run.
A small soft hand wraps around her wrist and Kristen’s body jerks with fear. The odd thing is it is kind of cold, but makes her feel all warm. It doesn’t make her want to vomit or scream or violently rip her arm away. Selena is carefully navigating them through the crowd, head held high, leading her by the wrist. She thinks she should still be unhappy, the lights are still flashing and she is being asked all kinds of mortifying awful questions, but she can see her car in the distance and Selena’s steady grip has yet to falter and unhappy is definitely not what she is feeling.