STAR, justin bieber

xxxiv. real life, instagram, twitter

real life!

        The sun is awake and breathing. Adira's crusty eyes—drowned by the leftovers of her sleep—take in the waves crashing on the beach, the footsteps still left in the sand from nighttime rendezvous, and the bristle of the trees as their leaves flirt with the wind. A chill rips through her body, and she pulls her robe tighter.

        "Baby, you okay?"

        She turns, smiling when her eyes land on him. His honey hair is tousled. He groans, fisted hands rubbing his eyes. His pyjamas hang low on his waist, proudly flaunting his defined V to the world. Licking her lips, she says, "I'm good. So good."

        His lips curve, eyes squinting to look at the sun encasing her in a golden bubble. Her blonde hair flurries in the wind, and her blue eyes seem to glow against her pale skin. Coming to stand in front of her, he reaches out, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her face close. "You look so beautiful like this," he mutters, rubbing his nose against hers.

        She flushes. "I look like shit. I just woke up."

        Adira had a hard time accepting compliments, Justin'd learned. She was one of the most beautiful women on the planet and could barely stand the word beautiful. "You're gorgeous."

        She hadn't quite heard that since her mother passed. "Look at my gorgeous baby girl," she'd always say, her trembling hands reaching out to clutch Adira's. Adira would bite her lip as she took in her frail mother in her hospital bed. Her mother—the strong woman who had chased butterflies with her and spun her around in their yard—lay with a smile adorning her sickly features, her breathing erratic, and her eyes sunken and dark.

        She buries her nose in his neck. "Fuck off."

        He laughs, and she admires his eyes crinkling, barely able to wrap her mind around how safe and secure Justin makes her feel, like her problems vanish into the clouds when his cold fingers are tracing her back like this and his breath fans her neck.

It almost wasn't real. Justin Bieber was long held as the heartthrob of the century. From the age of 15, he was thrown from a small town in Canada into the world of fame and power. She remembers the first time meeting him with his then-on-brand hair swoop at a charity concert. He was singing Baby for the crowd, and she rolled her eyes at the cocky grin playing on his lips as hundreds of girls screamed and cried at the mere sight of him. He reached out into the crowd, touching the chin of a girl proudly holding her Marry Me Justin sign to the sky. The crowd interrupted in more tears and screams, and Adira was almost surprised she wasn't left deaf.

She didn't see much of him after that, but his face was a mainstay in articles calling him "uncontrollable" and "wild," like the infamous pissing in the bucket. It was a stain they both had in the common, so she talked herself into reaching out to him. The new woman he seemingly held off his arm every other day taught him the world of sweet talk, and she fell for him. Hard. Her world had become enraptured by the late-night whispers in each other's ears, jetting her across the world, sending her those morning messages to remind her how special she was, and loving and adore every inch of her, like he would never be able to get enough. Each word he spoke to her felt like a sacred secret between the two of them.

Then the bomb—he stopped taking her calls, and Seen seemed permanently etched to her blue bubbles. Much wasted tears and ice cream later, he achieved what she thought impossible and shattered her heart into unfixable pieces when she saw the headlines: Mr. Bieber had shocked the world with his surprise marriage to Hailey Baldwin. She felt almost betrayed, but she knew better. She knew Justin always kept her at arms length, as if he never truly wanted the intimacy she craved, as if he was preparing her for the hurt, because nothing good lasts forever. She might have fared better with a warning, but she and Hailey hardly spoke outside of when they hung out with Amala, and Justin had made himself clear.