CHAPTER EIGHTEEN |
wonder
***
KAYLA WAS HAVING a hard time adjusting after the shooting. She was grateful that there wasn't an actual shooter and that it was just Sue's gun. A part of her funnily missed her coach, but that was probably because now Coach Roz Washington was running the team and she was crazier than all hell. Yesterday she said something about making each girl remove a rib for higher raising breasts. If that was the case, she was going to have to remove more than one because she was flatter than a board.
Kayla was hugging her letterman around herself as she worked her way into the auditorium and on the stage. It wasn't empty. Kevin and Shawn, who played the guitar and drums in the band respectively, had asked to meet her to try out a new song. She accepted almost automatically. They were good guys and she loved to play with them and besides, she'd take any distraction she could get to move out of the thoughts of how desperate she was for Sam in the parking lot. She felt stupid. Maybe singing a little bit would distract her.
"Hey, guys." she smiled softly as she approached them. Shawn, the drummer, sent her a grin as he handed her some sheet music.
"So here's the song we wanted to try. Do you know it?" he asked.
She grinned, setting the paper on top of the piano and nodding fervently. "Oh, I know it."
The boys laughed softly before they got into position to play to their hearts' content. Kayla took a deep breath as she slipped her jacket off her arms and began the first line.
< wonder, shawn mendes >
"I wonder if I'm being real. Do I speak my truth or do I filter how I feel? I wonder, wouldn't it be nice to live inside a world that isn't black and white? I wonder what it's like to be my friends. Hope that they don't think I'll forget about them. I wonder, I wonder."
Just before the instrumental picked up into the chorus, Kayla let her mind wander. She had been keeping things in for so long that she wasn't quite sure who she was anymore. She felt like a fake. She was always telling her friends to say what they feel and never be afraid to be themselves, but she couldn't seem to take her own advice. She didn't feel like herself anymore. The girl she was when she came to McKinley is gone and she didn't really know when she went away, she just knew she wasn't here anymore.
"Right before I close my eyes, the only things that's on my mind—been dreaming that you feel it too. I wonder what it's like to be loved by you. Yeah, I wonder what it's like. I wonder what it's like to be loved by you."
She was completely in her head as she sang and she started thinking about how she felt in that parking lot. All she could do in that moment was regret that she didn't tell Sam that she loved him and when she finally got the chance again, she chickened out. And given the chance to do it all over, she'd do it because for whatever reason every time her heart told her to tell Sam, her brain told her it was better to wait and she'd always been the kind of person to lead with her head rather than her heart.
The instrumental was heavy and she could feel tears welling in her eyes as she thought of everything she'd been through with Sam. She was taken back to laughing with him his first day of school and persuading him to join glee while he was in a hospital bed. She thought about the first time he slept over at her house and every hour her dad would come in to make sure he was still on the floor and throughout the years, Sam planned cuddling time around her father's hourly check-ups. She remembered the weekend he stayed over right after Quinn cheated on him. And even the morning after Rachel's party when she had the strongest hangover in the world, she remembered Sam staying in bed almost all day with her and feeding her a concoction of water and ibuprofen. He had always been her person and she spent so much time worried about Rachel or Ollie that she had never really understood it. Sam was there for her in the worst times of her life and she was finally realizing just how long she had been in love with him. She'd probably been falling for him since his family was holed up in that motel room. She just didn't know it then.
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new directions | glee
Fanfiction"As much as you try to deny it, you know I'm just as talented as you and that scares you." - Kayla Garrett has always been known as the pop singer and Rachel Berry's top competition. Kayla loved music, but she never loved fighting for the spotlight...
