away; b.e.

Chapter 43

School has been a thing in the back of mind ever since senior year started. I'm done with all my classes, UCLA want to offer me a scholarship for photography. Football has been amazing, but no challenges.

Billie and I have never been better. Lauren and I are getting settling up tour dates. We are also teasing the album. It's finished. The album cover is done. Acoustics have been made. Lauren has also been busy planning her wedding with Bryana.

It's December 24th. Today Billie and I have an interview together for a couples thingy for Teen Vogue. Yes, today is also Christmas Eve.

I'm staying at Billie's for Christmas and tonight our friends are coming over as Maggie and Patrick will be at a friends.

"Babe, you ready?" Billie shouts from the bathroom.

"Yeah. You?" I shout back.

"I need like 2 minutes!" she yells.

"ok!"

I'm wearing a silk white button down shirt with black butterflies on it. I am pairing it with light grey pants and white converse. It is a bit of a summer/spring fit, but who cares?

"Bub, we have to go!" I call her from her room.

"Ok! Let's go!" She says. We walk out the house and get into Billie's car.

"I will never get over how sexy she is," I say.

"Same here," she smiles. She starts the car.

~

"Alright, welcome. I am Carson. If you have any questions please ask me whenever," the worker says. "Oh, and for both our sakes, my pronouns are they/them. I am non-binary!" They say. "It's still kind of crazy to say out loud."

"Did you recently come out?" I ask.

"Uh yeah, 2 months ago," they say.

"Did they take it well?" Billie asks.

"My mom was a bit caught off guard but she's working on accepting it. My dad won't talk to me or about me," they say lowly.

"Well, don't worry about him. That's 1 person. If you ever need someone to talk to, dm me. I read all my dms. Just know that you aren't alone and that you have an incredible community behind you back," I say to them. They nod.

They look around and freeze. "Uh oh. The big boss is here. We need to start now," they start scarring around.

Billie and I were already all set up. We sat on 2 different chairs.

"And action!" Is yelled.

"Hi, I'm Emilie Stone."

"and I'm Billie Eilish."

The camera cuts. The. it re-rolls.

"This is a pretty simple question: How did you two meet?" Carson asks from behind the camera.

I look at Billie. "You wanna answer this one?"

"Uh, ok. Our first ever encounter was last year, a little bit after Dont Smile At Me. I saw Emilie in Manhattan. I don't want to get into those details. But our second official encounter, Emilie was walking to school when she saw me knocked down by a group of 'fans'. She ran over, not caring about her safety. She fought that guy that was in the video. After, she helped me escape a second horde and then told me a bit about herself; and now here we are," Billie laughs.

"When and how was your first kiss?"

"I'll answer this one," I say and I look over at Billie and she is trying to suppress a laugh. "Let it out," I laugh. She starts laugh-not even laughing. Cackling. Fucking cackling.