invisible string • Gracie Abrams

041 exposers

"woah... you okay?" olivia asked as gracie came back to herself.

gracie cringed at what she did, mentally slapping herself for letting that slip onto olivia. she knew why that happened of course, but still, she had no desire to tell her or any appetite at the moment at all. especially with charlotte's dad on her mind.

she gave olivia a warm smile, "yeah, just tired still," she said, yawning and easing away from her.

olivia nodded, "m'kay. come on, time to read your girlfriends burn book."

gracie laughed and followed her into the kitchen. the counter was now surrounded by everyone reading what was written off screens and throwing in their opinions. gracie caught a glimpse of jude's laptop which was lit up with an email from vanity fair he was responding, picking one of the biggest platforms to showcase the article. charlotte was tapping her fingers against the countertop, eyes stiffly burned into the screen of her laptop as she kept re-reading each and every page written of her poured out heart and angst.

the singer snuck up behind her and wrapped her arms delicately over top of charlotte and rested her head on her shoulder, causing charlotte to break away from the screen after hours at last.

"hmph," charlotte squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head into gracie's chest.

"are you okay?" gracie asked for the hundredth time.

"my eyes hurt."

"yeah, well you're eyes have been glued to your laptop all day," gracie scolded. "and where are your glasses?"

charlotte raised her head to stick her tongue out at gracie who giggled and swatted her away, taking a seat next to her.

"we got a good team from vanity fair to pick this up," jude announced. "their writers are gonna make some tweaks — not change anything, just make it more professional — and they're really excited about this piece."

"you mean they're excited about the shit ton of reads it'll get," marcus chuckled.

"i mean that's what we want," jude shrugged. "viral means our parents will see it."

"exactly," charlotte agreed. "here," she said, moving the laptop to in front of gracie. "let me know if you want me to change anything with the parts about you okay?"

gracie nodded, although she knew she wasn't going to change a thing.

charlotte anxiously watched gracie read the article. her fingers pounded into the counter as her leg bounced up and down at the speed of light. she mentioned a lot of things in that article, basically everything her parents have said from the night she met gracie till last night, which of course included repeating all the nasty things her dad said about her girlfriend. it even mentioned something charlotte hasn't told gracie about. that when she got drugged at that club that one night, she went there to forget her feelings about gracie in fear of what would happen with her parents and the public eye and what'd it all mean. how she tried so hard to not fall in love with her for weeks but couldn't push past it. so for the most part, she was scared it'd hurt gracie, even though that definitely isn't the intent.

gracie read with a slight frown she couldn't help but form. in her peripheral vision, she could see charlotte slightly building up her anxiety so she let her hand travel to her bouncing leg and placed it on her thigh, slowly rubbing her thumb across to let her know it's okay.

she felt tears threaten to pool her eyes at some parts she read, feeling an ache in her heart but doing her best to not let it show. when she got to the part matthew put in about last night, she noticed how he worded it with such passion, capturing every ounce of pain that he could see in the couple from that moment and displaying it perfectly. there was a lot of aggression in it too, but it was perfectly valid. he used words like 'sickening,' 'cruel,' 'abusive,' 'homophobic,' to make sure the point was excecuted perfectly, so that to whoever reads it would feel the pain charlotte and gracie would everytime mr. and mrs. parker would speak about them.