Chapter Text
“We’ll talk everyday.”
“No we won’t,” Gina says, because she’s used to this kind of thing. Used to leaving and used to the promises that don’t feel like lies even if they are. “We’ll talk every other day, on weekends. We’ll text more often.”
“I’m really proud of you, you know that right?” He says and this shouldn’t feel like a lie too but it does.
She trusts Ricky because he’s proven that she can– proven that he likes her and that he wants to be with her.
She can’t escape the feeling that this is the end.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
Gina paces back and forth in her apartment, feeling so much less like the twenty-one year old woman that she’s supposed to be and more like she felt five years ago– at the premiere for the documentary and seeing live and in technicolor how the editors were going to tear her world apart.
That day had been the start of the end for Gina’s life in Salt Lake, the beginning too for what had been a back and forth relationship with Ricky only for that to come to its inevitable end to when she moved to California.
She’d left for her dream and she’d left to be free of the stares and the whispers, hating that not just the school but the entire country saw her as this conniving, backstabbing ambitious go getter – that being at least the nicest of the things that were said about her online.
Gina’s learned to ignore the rest. It didn’t mean that it still didn’t hurt.
It’s not the same because Gina isn’t the same girl that she was, literally and metaphorically– having more of a presence with the general public beyond a documentary giving her more to hold on to rather than a focus on her dating life.
If they think I moved back to the city for him, that’ll ruin everything. If this keeps getting traction, it’ll become a story and if it’s a story, it could become part of the cycle. I’ll never get the chance to –
Gina can feel herself spiraling, but she’s older now– older and not any less stressed but a lot more capable of handling herself and of figuring out a way to come down from it all.
She knows now that anything that she thought was a big deal might not be that at all, that when it came to viral stories and twitter chatter that all of it was just something that she can ignore– or know at least, how to handle it.
That her publicist hasn’t contacted her yet tells her that it’s not nearly as serious as her mind immediately jumps to, taking a deep breath and remembering what she’s been through.
You thought the documentary was going to be the end of everything. This is nothing. This is just gossip. It’s not even true , she thinks to herself– her mom’s voice bringing her back to the present.
“Gina?”
“I’m here,” she says, taking the phone off speaker and back to her ear– mostly to avoid continuing to scroll while they’re on the phone.
“Well?”
“I saw Ricky,” Gina says, admitting something that felt like it was a secret even if it wasn’t. “We ran into each other a few times.”
Her mother says nothing, waiting patiently for her to ramble on. It’s an old habit from when she was younger, something that Gina has outgrown of and also recognizes it for what it is– a tactic to get her to talk.
Gina knows these things and yet still falls right into it, pushing forward with, “I saw him the first day I got here, at a coffee shop nearby. I thought it was– it wasn’t anything important. We saw each other. We talked and then we just– seeing him today was an accident. Coincidence. He doesn’t even go to Columbia.”
Gina lets out a breath with that, her mother still silent on the other end.
“I’m not back together with him.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“But you don’t approve?” She asks, feeling more like that sixteen year old girl, crying to her mom that she was breaking up with her boyfriend– of moving to yet another city, for herself and not for her job, and still feeling as if she was making a mistake.
It wasn’t a mistake to move to LA and it wasn’t a mistake to break up with Ricky Bowen but this, seeing him twice in as many days and now for people to assume that they’re together again– this felt like a mistake.
“It sounds as if there’s nothing to approve or disprove of,” her mother says evenly, succinctly– making Gina make a face despite her not being able to see it.
“What does that mean?”
“You saw him once, twice, it sounds like. You don’t plan on seeing him again?”
“No,” Gina says quickly, something nudging at her in the back of her mind at that. “But I didn’t plan to see him the second time.”
Her mom hums at that, a tell if there ever was one.
“What?”
She hears her mother sigh on the other end, unable to decipher if it’s disappointment or something else when she surprises her with, “Maybe this would be good for you.”
“What? Seeing Ricky again?” Gina asks incredulously.
“Facing that part of your life,” she says, far more intuitive than she had any right to be– something that Gina shouldn’t be so surprised about.
She got it from somewhere, after all.
“You’ve been running your whole, sweetheart. Part of that, that’s my fault. Pushing you and moving you around,” she says, a hint of melancholy in her voice that Gina doesn’t know what to do with. “But you were happy at East High. Happier than you’ve been in awhile.”
“I’m happy. I was happy in LA,” Gina says, a lie but one that she feels isn’t so easy. “I was happy with the show and with–”
“If you were happy, you wouldn’t have left,” her mother says gently, Gina snapping her mouth shut. “Sweet girl, you have never been shy about what you want in life. Always running after what you want, chasing it like if you run fast enough than nothing else will catch up with you.”
It’s sobering, to feel this way– to be confronted with the utmost realities of herself that Gina didn’t like to think about.
That it was all prompted by Ricky, by seeing him again and of her mom’s observations of that, tugged at something else in her gut.
“Are you going to reach out to him? See what he thinks of this?” Her mom asks, gently changing gears but not quite moving away from the conversation– Gina taking the out for what it is as she takes another breath.
“No. I don’t know. It’s not really trending anywhere,” she says, though she doesn’t know how long that will be true.
“Does it have to be trending for you to talk to him?” A beat. “Do you want to?”
Gina doesn’t know how to respond.
Namely because she doesn’t know that answer for herself.
She hangs up the phone with her mom, making the decision to go online and see what– if any– more commentary has happened.
She sees the tweets that talk about the two of them, more attention to it than she thought– not just from those who watched the documentary but new fans, those who knew her from the show and not from where she’d come from.
She watched, in real time, as people started talking more about the two of them– finding out about the connection, of wondering who Ricky Bowen is and of their tie to East High– that by the time that she’s making herself dinner, she can see that it’s becoming the viral moment that she was hoping desperately to avoid.
Gina isn’t surprised when Carla finally reaches out, asking about her response and what she wants to do– Gina pushing off the decision as much as she can.
“We may want to take advantage of this.”
“No,” Gina says, in no uncertain terms. “There’s nothing to take advantage of.”
Carla makes a sound in the back of her throat like she disagrees but Gina won’t let herself be pushed around, the reminder of what Ricky didn’t want and part of the reason why they broke up in the first place.
“What’s lover boy say in all of this?”
“Don’t call him that.”
“Doesn’t answer my question,” Carla says, sounding as if she’s getting into a car. “Do I need to contact his people?”
Gina snorts, hearing the jingle of the door before it’s closed. “I don’t think he has people.”
“He should,” Carla says, “if this gets any bigger, this–”
“It won’t, it’ll die down,” Gina says, feeling as if she’s lying to herself now– all too aware of what happens when people find a story and eat it up.
All too aware of what this could mean for her and for Ricky specifically, that feeling in the pit of her stomach confronting her with something that she wanted to avoid.
“You know as well as I do that won’t happen,” Carla says, cutting through Gina’s fantasy.
Gina doesn’t respond.
Not to her at least.
Not when she knows what she needs to do.
It’s only after Gina’s cleaned up from dinner, taking her time with it, taking a long shower and completing her bedtime routine when she finally bites the bullet and scrolls through her phone– thumb hovering over the contact that hits her that she doesn’t even know if it’s still up to date.
It’s not as if she can reach out to anyone else at East High and double check, unsure if their numbers are the same.
She knows she needs to talk to him, knows that avoiding isn’t going to make the problem go away– taking a deep breath and trying to figure out how to fix this.
Gina goes to instagram because that’s the best way she can think of that she could try and contact him without having to do some digging– going back to her most recently searched and looking for his profile.
She didn’t take note of his account followers before but she can’t escape the feeling that his follower count has gone up. She takes a beat, summoning up courage she doesn’t really need because sending a message wasn’t that big of a deal– only for her eyebrow to raise when she notices something different.
There’s a message request there, one that makes her heart skip a beat as she hovers her thumb over it– tapping it before she can think better of it.
rickybo : so. Feeling a little deja vu.
Gina smiles, feeling something else in the pit of her stomach.
Something familiar.
Gina sits up and types a message back to him.
ginaporterofficial : still feeling that bagel is worth the risk?
She sends it before she can talk herself out of it, staring at it and then a smile breaking out over her face when she sees the bubbles come up– a sign that he’s online.
A sign, that she doesn’t believe in, that maybe he was waiting to see what she’d say.
rickybo : magic, g. they’re like magic.
Gina laughs, the flutter in her stomach turning away from anxiety into something else.
Something different.
Something new .
There was no use in dwelling on the past. Gina knew that. She moved to New York because of it.
Yet she can’t get away from the feeling that she’s living in that deja vu, talking to Ricky late at night, both of their names and their presumed relationship trending online in a way that neither of them had control of.
Gina was looking to the future, she wanted to live in the future– move away and move forward without living in the past.
rickybo : you okay?
She smiles, leaning back into her bed.
Maybe there was a way to do both at the same time.
She was someone new, in the midst of all of this– just like Ricky is.
Maybe this could be something different for the two of them.
Maybe this time they could try again.
Gina might feel like that sixteen year old girl but she wasn’t, not anymore.
Gina’s made a lot of mistakes in her life.
She smiles, putting her phone up to respond to Ricky.
She doesn’t plan on making the same mistake twice.