8 nights in hell [Billie Eilish]

NIGHT VI.3: i'm calling the police

• pov: Billie •

The bad feeling did not leave me. I rolled around in bed for a while as I watched the minutes tick by and the sun reach its highest point. Soon it was time to get up. I reluctantly dressed myself before collecting our clothes scattered all over the room and throwing them back into our bags.

We had a show tonight but I really did not feel like walking onto a stage. I was still tired, so much so that I hoped the coffee Mara was bringing was a strong one. I also started to feel hungry. What was taking her so damn long?
I tried to distract myself and texted her multiple times before even trying to call her. After half an hour I had to leave. My family wanted to get lunch together.

The bad feeling was not to blame on my empty stomach. It lingered after I had eaten. I checked my phone under the table. Something was wrong. I could feel it.
I tried to make sense of it in my head. If Mara had gone out the door right before I had woken up, if she had gone an extra mile to get some special breakfast, if she had met five cats she needed to pet and if her phone had died on the way only then I could explain the situation. Those were a lot of factors that needed to go wrong, though.

I put my fork down, suddenly having lost all my appetite. Finneas gave me a questioning look but did not comment on it.

After the lunch we went to the venue early. During the last sound check in Munich there had been some complications so we had planned in some extra time. That bad feeling continued to get worse and worse with every passing minute. Something was very, very off.

When I came across my mom backstage she gestured me over to sit by her. She smiled warmly. "Is everything ok?"

I nodded and smiled back even though it felt fake. "I just slept like shit but yeah, I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" She dug deeper with concern on her face.

"Yeah, just..." I avoided her eyes and ran a hand through my hair, flipping it. Sometimes I hated that she could read me so easily. "I had a fucked up dream, it was... I don't know."

"Do you want to talk about it?" She turned towards me, making me shift uneasily in my seat.

"Nah," I pulled one leg up and played with a loose thread at the hem of my sweatpants. "I don't remember anyways."

My mom did not reply anything. She just waited and looked at me patiently.

It burst out of me a second later. "It was bad. Just bad. There was all this water and it was the middle of the night and, like, at first I was drowning but then I was at this beach and Mara was there but she wasn't really there she was–"

I gulped, looking down at my hands. "She was dead."

"Oh," was all my mom said.

"No, you don't get it." Once I got going it was impossible to hold back the words. "I like her."

"I know." She looked sad and nodded understandingly.

She was thinking in the wrong direction entirely. A few days ago I would have let her but now that it had become clear to me how I felt these half-truths were not enough.

"No, I like her," I emphasized. "Like... like like."

"I know, sweetie."

"Oh."

She reached out to give my arm a squeeze. There was an unfathomable amount of empathy in her eyes. "I know you. I can see that you're in love."

It was true. Those three words had slipped out by accident yesterday but sometimes I only realized something was true until after I had said it out loud.
It was true. I had known so since that day in Manchester, when after the show I had opened the hotel room door in the middle of the night to find her standing there. Messy hair, duffle bag over her shoulder and the biggest smile on her face. She had been out of breath as if she had run there, as if walking the last steps would not have been fast enough because waiting another second to see me again was simply impossible. I had known it in that moment.