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It's four months later when Gina hears from her next.
She tries to act like it doesn't hurt, much too distracted getting the new house settled with her mom and entering junior year with a boyfriend on her arm to mind Nini being too busy to call, but it does.
It always will, she fears.
“Hello?”
She answers the video call before it can actually ring, Nini’s face lighting up her screen.
“Gina Ballerina!” Nini sings with a wide grin, and Gina just knows she's not sober. A ball of anxiety forms in the pit of her stomach that she's so far away, unable to help if Nini truly needs it.
“Hi, Nina.”
“I don't know how they do it!” the brunette huffs. “I don't know how they look so good doing it!”
Gina chuckles at the dramatic pout forming on her lips. “Who?”
“The hot girls!” Nini frowns. “They take the joint and they put it in their mouth and they don't cough or anything! I’m at my first Hollywood party and I look like a big baby hacking up my lungs in front of all the kids from school.”
The dots connect and Gina can see the red rimming big, brown eyes now. “Not a fan?”
“I’m never smoking again,” Nini swears, throwing herself back on what seems to be a random bed. “I went to go get water but I got distracted looking at the art on the walls and ended up in here.” She glances around. “I think it's Sarah’s brother’s room.”
Gina has no idea who Sarah is, but she assumes that is who’s hosting. “Why don't you stay there for a little bit while you chill out?”
Nini nods eagerly. “That was my plan all along, Gina Ballerina. Duh.”
It's her first time hearing her voice since they said goodbye at Camp Shallow Lake, and it fills Gina’s chest with a warmth that she didn't know she craved. She knows that she promised to call, but her insecurities got the best of her, diving headfirst into Ricky’s obvious affections to avoid pining over what could've been.
“I feel like a little bumblebee,” Nini blinks tiredly, stretching out on the mattress after propping her phone up on a pillow. “I’m buzz, buzz, buzzing all over.” She wiggles her fingers in front of her face. “It's like my body lit on fire and now I’m being fizzled out with a mister.”
Gina has no idea what she's talking about, but she's not even sure Nini is coherent enough for this, and so she just agrees with a small hum.
“I missed you,” Nini blurts out, curling toward her camera. “That's why I called. I missed your pretty face and your pretty smile and your pretty voice.” Her lips quirk slightly. “Do you remember that party at Ash's?” There's a handful that they had, and she waits for Nini to elaborate before trying to pinpoint just one. “You held my hand while we sang High School Musical and I told everyone that I got into YAC because of it.” Her tone drops, so soft that Gina barely catches her saying, “I felt invincible with you right there, holding me down to Earth. I thought I’d float away from how light it made me feel touching you, but you kept me on the ground.” She's getting sleepy. Her eyelids are drooping, and she's blinking harshly when she manages to open them. “Hey, Gina?”
“Yeah, Neens?” she answers breathlessly.
“Could you sing me a song?”
Their eyes lock, and Gina can't imagine a time where she'd ever give Nini less than what she asks.
“What do you want to hear?”
“Na na na na,” Nini begins. “Na na na na, yeah.”
Gina’s heartbeat doubles in time. “You are the music in me.”
Jamie visits over Christmas, and in his suitcase, he carries an intricately wrapped box with the prettiest thread Gina has ever seen. It shimmers in the light and reminds her of what stars would be materialized on Earth.
Attached is a note. In messy scribbles, Gina reads:
I saw that you've been into embroidery lately from your stories. I couldn't leave the store without it. Stitch me something as magical as you?
(Trick request! There's nothing that is!)
Merry Christmas, Gi. I miss you every day.
Yours, Nina
Nini’s first single is called July, and it tops the charts within a week of being released.
There's a hype around the teenager from Utah taking over the industry in a flash, her first professional recording already landing her talk show appearances and the rumors of her debut album that is projected to break records when it's released in a few weeks.
Gina clicks on the link in the Wildcats’ group chat that Kourtney just shared with a preemptive ‘I would hate to be Ricky rn!’ text.
Nina Salazar-Roberts “July” Official Lyrics & Meaning | Verified
Her screen fills with Nini in a blue suit, hands carefully folded on her lap in front of the iconic yellow background.
“I've been songwriting for so long, and I know it's kind of silly to say that I knew this would be my first single when I wrote it, but I really did.” She laughs nervously, and Gina just knows she's anxious about coming off too cocky. “I was in a place where I wasn't really accepting myself, and I was locked in this relationship that both I and the other person had long outgrown, which is the worst place to be– loving someone in ways that they don't need from you. It was really important for me to showcase that in a way where I acknowledged my own shortcomings, and I feel like I did that in these lyrics.”
Her name transitions, then the song title, and finally from the side of the screen Nini gives a tiny wave.
“To set the stage for this song: I had just gotten back with someone I’d been dancing around being in a relationship with since we were kids. It was only around a year and some change of it being official, but when you meet someone you click with so young, you become an extension of each other. Before you're officially a couple, you're the pair of kids on the swing set holding hands and everyone is telling you what your wedding day will look like.” Beside her figure, the first few lines appear, and Nini begins to sing them. “I've been holding my breath, I’ve been counting to ten, Over something you've said.” Nini purses her lips. “This is actually based on a very integral interaction in that breakup.” Her eyes cast down. “I had made a teasing comment and he asked me to lower my voice, which doesn't seem now as world-ending as it felt in the moment, but it really just shifted something, I guess? I had been trying so hard to pretend things were okay, and it was then that I realized that they really just… weren't.”
Gina visibly cringes. She doesn't want to even imagine her boyfriend watching this clip. She's heard the song, of course, but never fully dove into it. It has only played in passing or on the radio, and she was so excited it was Nini that she never processed the words.
“I've been holding back tears, While you're throwing back beers, I’m alone in bed.” Nini flashes an innocent grin. “So, he wasn't exactly throwing back beers, but that sounds a lot better than throwing back cherry colas in his best friend’s basement.” She resumes singing, still not fully lifting her eyes from the floor. “You know I, I’m afraid of change, Guess that's why we stay the same. So, tell me to leave, I'll pack my bags, get on the road. Find someone who loves you better than I do, darling, I know. Cause you remind me every day I’m not enough but I still stay.” Gina can see that she's blinking back tears. “Being so comfortable in a situation can be dangerous. It wasn't even a conscious action on his part to make me feel inadequate. I was just so desperate to branch out, but I couldn't do it while clinging to the two dimensional extension of someone else that everyone saw me as, and he was holding me so tight because he saw me slipping away. We both made a lot of mistakes trying to stay somewhere we didn't belong.” The rest of the chorus flashes, and Nini continues with a bittersweet smile. “Feels like a lifetime, Just trying to get by while we’re dying inside. Done a lot of things wrong, Loving you being one, But I can't move on.”
Gina has to pause it.
It feels too personal to see this, to know what Nini felt in moments she witnessed and thought was the school's dream couple falling to pieces. The notion of being outgrown by Ricky terrifies her, especially with him being older, and the fact that it happened so clearly to a pair that had been perfect on paper makes anxiety pool in her stomach.
Nini shrugs weakly when she presses play. “We knew, y’know? Staying in that place wasn't right. Our breakup was one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through, but it wasn't from losing a boyfriend. I lost my best friend, the one I had from my first day of kindergarten that gave me the nickname I signed my valentines with. It shattered me to learn who I was without him, but I’m so grateful for it now.” She glows with pride. She looks beautiful like this, Gina thinks, so sure of herself. The video comes to a close with a few brief lines about how she’ll always have him to thank for what she knows about love, but not before she reveals something that Gina feels like she's the only one who catches. “I just never would know how to love him correctly, and that wasn't either of our faults. Plus, without learning to love someone entirely, I wouldn't be here with you today, and I think that's a pretty great ending to that story.”
Gina can't help but think that Nini means loving her, but who could she call to confirm it? Nini surely doesn't have time anymore. She hadn't even answered Gina’s text congratulating her on the single.
She opens the thread to see that Big Red sent a photo of Ricky on his floor, staring blankly at the ceiling.
Two weeks come and go before she calls. It's just past two-thirty in the morning when she presses the phone to her ear.
“Gina?” Nini answers immediately, concern laced in her voice. “Is everything okay?”
Gina doesn't have an answer right away. It's not like she expected it. It's the middle of the night, after all.
“Oh, um, yeah, everything's fine.”
How does Gina say she just missed her? She couldn't sleep, and when this happened last year, she would call Nini at any hour and the older girl would tell her a story that she’d drift off to. It's hard to accept that things aren't the same.
“Why are you up?” Gina decides to ask.
“I’m in the studio,” Nini sighs, and there's shuffling on her end. “I have to sign like a billion copies of this album for them to sell on my new site and it looks like a Hoarders episode in here.”
Gina smiles at the joke, and then she lets the silence sit. It's been over six months since they'd been in the same room. “I miss you,” she confesses softly.
Nini inhales sharply. “I miss you, too.”
There's a door shutting from the LA side of things, and Nini’s voice immediately gets distant as she pulls the phone from her head. “Hey, babe,” Gina hears, muffled and sleepy. There's indistinguishable words. “Give me a minute to say goodbye.” When Nini returns, Gina is holding her breath. “Hey, Gina, I gotta go. Em is forcing me to eat something.”
Em. Gina internally groans. Of all the people to break into Hollywood at the same time as Nini, it had to be Emily Pratt. Kourtney won't shut up about how she and Nini constantly gush about fate bringing her to the blonde again. How else would she be following this campmate-to-roommate-to-partner-in-crime pipeline?
“That's fine!” Gina forces out. “I've got to get to bed, anyway. Ricky is picking me up for breakfast.” He's not, and she doesn't know why she feels the need to bring him up.
“Tell him I say hi,” Nini bids. “Bye, Gi.”
The line is dead before she can even say it back.
Gina doesn't listen to Nini’s second single.
She can't bring herself to, and it's not easy to avoid another chart-topper.
She just can't help clicking the link. It's compulsive, and she's faced with Nini in a skin tight mesh dress, braids parting her curtain bangs and pulling them back into her long waves falling below her waist. The yellow of the Genius background hurts Gina’s head to focus on in order to avoid staring at Nini’s face.
Nina Salazar-Roberts “Bigger Than The Whole Sky” Official Lyrics & Meaning | Verified
“It's adoring someone to the fullest of their existence, but not realizing it until you're ten paces back…” Nini scrunches her nose. “Well, ten hours west, but I’m a lyricist, not a cartographer.”
Her name follows, but this time, it's just Nina, and the title for the song appears in a doodled cloud. She grins brightly, throwing up a peace sign before it's solely her again.
“Who doesn't love a good song to cry to?” Nini teases with a shrug. “I wrote this the night that I moved to LA. My last goodbye- well, not a goodbye, but my last interaction before the road trip was with someone that I think will be my first love as long as I exist. My first real romantic love, at least, not what I had convinced myself it should've been. Sorry to my ex-boyfriends!”
Gina feels nauseous.
“No words appear before me in the aftermath,” Nini begins sweetly. “I had literally ten full hours to wish I had said something different, and it never came. I was overwhelmed with how content I was with how our relationship was left; never fully opened but never closed, as well.”
“Salt streams out my eyes and into my ears. Every single thing I touch becomes sick with sadness.” Nini shuts her eyes tight, laying the lyrics out so raw obviously hurts a little. “Now, to say that it didn't make me sad is a bold-faced lie. I had to pull over to sob on more than one occasion, but I was leaving someone I had realized I couldn't ever be with. Don't get me wrong, I have a girlfriend now that I am positively enamored with, but there's something about firsts, y’know?” She glances off screen. “She’s right here, by the way,” Nini chuckles. “We’ve had many conversations about this particular person, so don't mistake the tone of the song as any second thoughts about my amazing relationship right now.”
It shouldn't sting. Gina is happy with Ricky, and she and Nini weren't ever going to be a couple.
Fuck, why does it hurt?
Ricky texts her at that second, the notification appearing at the top of her screen. Gina’s mouth goes sour.
Do Not Disturb, On Until Tomorrow, 8:00 AM
“Cause it's all over now, Out to sea,” Nini continues. “It’s a little self-explanatory. I had decided to go, and they were finally staying. It wasn't a goodbye, but it was an end.”
She can still see Nini’s magenta jacket, feel the fabric on her arm where the shawl of her Anna costume was hemmed.
“Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, You were bigger than the whole sky, You were more than just a short time.” Nini’s face is bittersweet. “Factually, it wasn't a very long period of knowing each other. It was only a year at that point– barely – but to me? God, it was everything.” Her cheeks flush as she passionately continues. "She was everything. She still is, but it's to someone else now. It's about finding peace in that.”
Gina wonders if Ricky will ever see her that way. She knows that he likes her, that he could very possibly more than like her, but would it ever be in a way that Nini has made her feel? Would anyone ever see her how Nini does? As a whole, not just the pieces she gives?
“And I’ve got a lot to pine about, I’ve got a lot to live without.” Nini’s hands fold anxiously in her lap, and Gina watches as she twirls one of her rings. “I pined before this particular situation, so you could imagine how much worse it grew.” She fully takes off her ring now. Gina recognizes it as the one her Mama C found for her at a flea market and gifted her for her seventeenth birthday. “I’m never gonna meet, What could've been, would've been, what should've been you.” Nini frowns, and Gina can't take it anymore. She closes the window and returns to the thread, sending the message without as much as a second thought.
can't believe that's really our nini!!!
She breaks up with Ricky over winter break her senior year.
It's been a long time coming. He's gotten close with several people in Chicago while at school, and Gina has already committed to the west coast in the fall, only applying for schools on the left side of the country to begin with. They'd grown apart, which isn't a crime.
(It was once Gina’s biggest fear but never a crime.)
“Ricky told me what happened.”
She didn't expect Nini to call. She sounds rushed, as if she's doing a million things at once, which she probably is considering she is currently in Europe for the final leg of her world tour.
“He did?” Gina asks, settling into her bed for a much deserved nap. She'd only left that fateful lunch an hour ago, after all.
“I just got off the phone with him,” Nini reveals. The fact that Ricky is still so close to Nini, that he called her immediately, makes Gina’s chest tighten with envy.
He will always call her first.
(She will always answer.)
“What did he say?”
Nini scoffs, and Gina fears he framed her as a monster. “He’s a big baby, as always, but more importantly, how are you doing?”
Gina beams. More importantly. “I’m okay. It wasn't a huge thing. We just didn't fit anymore.”
There's a light hum from the back of Nini’s throat in acknowledgment. “I get what you mean.”
She and Emily broke up last month. They both posted the same statement, likely written up by a publicist, explaining that they’re committed first and foremost to their demanding careers and how it wasn't fair how little time they had for one another.
(Kourtney told everyone that Nini had called her crying because Emily was set to star in an Australian soap opera that is already successful, landing her a residence on the continent for at least the next four years contractually. Nini was already two weeks into her tour and hadn't seen her girlfriend since rehearsals before the first show. The break up was bitter, full of longing and resentment for what could've been had they failed.)
“Where are you right now?” Gina wonders, curling under her comforter and placing her phone beside her head on speaker.
“Finally getting into bed for my one free day before I hit Berlin,” Nini mumbles. “I think this is my first time laying down before three in the morning since tour started. I just had to sign some stuff for VIP boxes before.”
Gina pictures her with her little unicorn eye mask, snuggled into a big duvet like she used to be at sleepovers. Does she still toss and turn like she always would? Gina would wake up with her arms clasped around Nini’s waist, holding her in place because she was so restless.
“I’m taking a nap to avoid all of the texts in our group chat about Ricky’s photoshopped divorce papers to announce our breakup.”
Nini snorts, and Gina’s stomach flips at the sound. “I told him not to do that.”
“When have you ever known Ricky to listen?” she questions, and Nini can only agree.
There's a beat, and suddenly, Nini’s voice drops to a whisper. “Hey, Gi?”
The air in her lungs still, holding the oxygen she feels was just sucked from the room at how soft of a tone is being used. “Yes?”
“If I close my eyes and search for you in my dreams, would you meet me?” Nini wonders.
Gina doesn't even have to think about it. “Of course, I would.”
“I'll see you there, then,” Nini promises. “I'll be the one with the ‘I Love Gina’ t-shirt on.”
Love.
The implication that Nini still feels so strongly sends a buzz through her veins.
“I'll be the one with her heart up for grabs,” Gina teases.
“Be careful, Porter,” Nini warns, a flirty undertone to the way she speaks Gina’s name, “I might just have to steal it if that's the case.”
Gina’s eyes fall shut, giving in to every single impulse she’d previously withheld for the sake of their respective partners. “It's funny you think you'd have to steal something that's always been yours.”