Come What May

17. washed out

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WASHED OUT

—

• saturday, april 10th •

"Photo release time! Are you excited? I'm fucking pumped!"

I grin at Radhika, who's bouncing on the balls of her feet, her eyes shining as she shakes her hands out and giggles, using a ribbon to pull her hair up into a ponytail, something I've never been able to understand because how does she do it? How does anyone tie their hair up with a ribbon?

"Honestly? Not really," I admit, the grin on my face only growing when she nearly rams into one of the models who's walking beside us. "I mean, it's just the spring magazine one, right? The first shoot that we did?"

"And the perfume shoot!" she reminds me, and in the blink of an eye, my mood plummets. And apparently, she notices. "Oy. What's wrong?"

What isn't?

Any shoot but the shoot for the perfume brand, and it would have been okay. That was one of the worst shoots I've ever done, some of the worst modelling I've ever done, and now, it's going to be broadcasted for everyone to see.

Normally, I would just lie to Radhika and say that nothing's wrong. That it's just the nerves, it's always the nerves.

But after the other day, when she just left my place out of nowhere, claiming that her mom was calling her, it doesn't feel right to lie to her.

I still don't know why she left so abruptly, why she gave me such short, brief replies to all of my texts when I asked her, why she doesn't want to tell me what's wrong. Why Storm isn't telling me what's wrong even though it's clear that they know something.

It's becoming more and more clear to me that I don't know much of anything at all.

Shaking my head, I quickly clear the thoughts from it and give her a small shrug. "It wasn't a good day. Like, generally, just wasn't a very good day. Couldn't focus, couldn't sit still. All that."

Radhika pauses in her tracks and glances up at me, furrowing her eyebrows together as she says, "Oh. Was something wrong that day? You came late, right? Was everything okay?"

Radhika is so genuinely pure sometimes, it's painful. Even when I consistently refuse to tell her anything bad that happens in my life in the fears of somehow hurting her, she acts as though it doesn't affect her.

Of course she knows that there was something wrong that day, and of course she wants to know what was wrong. I would want the same if our roles were reversed.

And I don't know why I still haven't told her about my mom's heart attack, but I haven't.

So, with a tight smile, one that I'm certain looks fake, I say, "Mhm. Everything was fine. Just had an off day, that translated into my modelling."

"Oh," Radhika states. "Well... If anything's wrong, I'm here. For you. If you want, that is. I'm just— yeah," she finishes, and her words sound so unbelievably forced, but it draws out a laugh from me.

"I'm good now," I affirm with a smile, a real one. I am. I think. I don't know what being good means. "And uh— what about you? Everything okay?"

The burn to ask her what's wrong has never been worse, it almost stings, because I know that it's something that I did. There's always the possibility of something being wrong at home, but I sincerely doubt that, since she's always complained to me about the things that go on at home and I don't see any reason for her to stop now.