Aeipathy ➳ Normani ✓

ten

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Six hundred and four thousand eight hundred seconds.

That was the amount of seconds in a week. It was also the amount of time that Normani and Keith did not speak.

For the first three days, Keith had sent Normani a plethora of texts where he expressed his deepest apologies. Normani had read each one but hadn't replied, even though there was a void in her heart where Keith was missing, her pride wouldn't allow her to cave. 

That was another thing about Normani, her pride led her with an iron fist and she had a distasteful stubbornness to match it, too. When the texts ceased, the void, which had felt like a crack on the surface of her heart, deepened into a chasm.

Sorting out her emotions with Keith was the last of her worries, because she now had to find a way to explain how the stranger that had deposited a shit ton of money into her student account was actually not a stranger and her boyfriend.

It wouldn't go well, she knew that and she'd tried to doge all communication from them also – leaving their texts on delivered and ignoring their calls while she was at work.

Normani liked distractions, they gave her a good excuse to ignore her life problems. So when Peaches had asked Normani to come to the studio to do a hip-hop duo with her for her YouTube channel, Normani had gladly accepted.

She had a three hour shift at 15:00 and class at 18:00 and she and Peaches would work on the dance from 12:00, her schedule for that day had filled quickly and Normani couldn't have been happier.

She left the apartment dressed in her favourite pair of sweatpants and sweatshirt with an old pair of trainers – with the outfit she'd wear for her shift and her dance practice clothes in her backpack and took an uber to the studio.

“Mani, hi!” Peaches squealed as soon as she entered the dance room and before Normani could greet her back, the tiny girl jumped at her. Her skinny arms wrapped around Normani's neck tightly and she rested her entire weight on her.

“H-hey Peaches,” Normani managed to huff between breaths.

“Thank you for meeting me out here, I know it was a bit late notice but I've been meaning to have you dance in one of my videos. You know, people on the internet are still obsessed with the Love Galore performance and you've done nothing to maximise that! You're so private and quiet on social media. You're going to make my views sky rocket this week.” Peaches said without taking a pause in between her monologue to breathe.

“It's okay, you know I like helping you out with your dances. What are we doing today?”

“We have to figure out a two-and-a-half minute duo, to the song You Don't Know Me by Jax Jones.”

“Okay, that's fine.”

“Great, let's warm up!” she said. Peaches's outfit was an overload of colours: bright neon blue ribbons adorned her hair, a gold custom tee shirt with her YouTube name sewn in with black sequins, and black sweatpants with sparkly blue stripes down the sides and bright pink neon shoes.

Normani had long since gotten used to her friend's odd and headache-inducing sense of fashion and it no longer shocked her when Peaches walked around in public like a rainbow had thrown up on her.

They warmed up for five minutes and Normani continued to stretch while Peaches set up her camera on the tripod.

  Once the camera was recording, Peaches tugged on Normani's arm, “we need to do the intro,” she said and moved to stand right in front of the camera. Normani followed close behind.