Nevermind [90s fic]

Chapter 2: This Is How It Starts

7:21pm - Cabello Household

The rotary phone sitting on Karla's bed with her still hasn't rang after waiting for three whole hours. By this time, she had already completed her homework, bathed, rewinded then rewatched Basketball Diaries on VHS twice. Karla was expecting two phone calls: one from Carlie and one from Eli. She was more interested in getting on the phone with Eli. Why? Because she's never been on the phone with a boy from school before, and him being popular and promising to call her up after school felt like a big deal. Obviously he had a crush on her. Karla saw that as an opportunity to be popular, too. Maybe high school wouldn't be so bad for once if she had that chance.

Plus, she thought Eli could be her real life Leonardo DiCaprio. Eli's hair wasn't golden but it was still the lightest shade of brown and long like Leo's was...except Leo wore curtains and Eli preferred to keep his combed back. They both had cerulean blue eyes and the same smile with minor crinkles on the outside corners of their eyes, and almost the same arch in their brows. Eli was more jacked than Leo was, but that was okay. If he and Karla were going to be a thing, she was going to imagine her celebrity crush and live out that fantasy. She'd go for any guy who reminded her of her celebrity crush or a fictional character.

It was strange. Karla didn't have to date any boy—or anybody really—but she felt like she needed to...like it was required of her to or like she had something to prove. There were many reasons she had for needing to date boys, and none of them was because she genuinely liked them. Karla was always craving love. Because the only kind of passionate love she's seen on and off the big screens was between a boy and girl, she had no idea that it could ever exist outside of a hetero couple. Never having experienced the romance of a lifetime before or love for one of the many boys that professed their feelings for her, Karla was determined to achieve that this year.

The small brunette jumped at the unexpected harsh knocking on her door but remained in bed instead of running to open it. She lied on her back with her hair falling like vines over the foot of her pink bed, bent her knees, and stared at the one too many Leonardo Dicaprio posters above her bed frame.

"Yes??" she called out to whomever it was.

"Tienes hambre? I made rice and sweet platanos, we're all already at the dinner table ready to eat," said her mother Sinu on the other side of the door. (Are you hungry?)

"I'll be down in a minute!" she said.

"Don't take too long!" Sinu left one final knock before the sound of her footsteps marching down the hall grew distant - indicating that she had gone away to the other side of the grand single story home.

Forget it. Neither of them were going to call. Or maybe they were, just not now. Karla let out a deep disappointed sigh. She was bored and wanted to do something entertaining. Her parents wouldn't let her out on a school night unless she gave them a very good reason to, Carlie wasn't allowed to have guests over Monday-Thursday unless they needed to study, and Normani told both of them that she wouldn't be home until ten at night today - otherwise Karla would have definitely made up an excuse and went over there.

While thinking up something to do, somewhere along the lines Karla found herself thinking about that Lauren girl. She smiled when replaying the sound of her voice singing to her in her head, then smiled even wider when she remembered what the lyrics were. 'I wanna be your girlfriend'; odd yet very pleasing to hear. And the way her piercing green eyes locked onto hers while she danced in a sensual manner...Jesus Christ. Karla thought about it a lot since the moment it happened. So much so, she got butterflies in her stomach and swooned before her brain could react and tell her heart that being this taken and swayed by some beautiful girl was weird as heck.