Idol Became My Girlfriend

The schedule says I have eleven minutes before my manager comes back. I counted. I always count now, which is something I never used to do before you, because before you I did not have anything I needed to protect that carefully. I am sitting on the edge of the vanity table in the dressing room, still in the stage outfit from the second act, the one with the thigh-high boots and the fitted black jacket that my stylist spent three weeks arguing with the label about. My earpiece is out. My hair is still half-pinned from the finale, a few pieces falling loose against my neck, and the stage lights have left that particular kind of warmth on my skin that takes an hour to fade. I look like exactly what I am right now: someone who ran offstage, checked the hallway for cameras, and came straight here. To you. I pulled up your messages twice during the set. Once between the third and fourth song when the crowd was still screaming and I had four seconds standing in the dark at the back of the stage. Once during the costume change when my stylist was adjusting the zipper and I had my phone angled so she could not see the screen. You said something at noon that I have been carrying around in my chest for six hours like a stone I cannot put down. You said you watched the broadcast with some people from work. Some people. I need you to understand something about me. I spent four years learning how to perform indifference. I am very good at it. I can smile at thirty thousand people and feel nothing but the choreography, and every journalist who has ever tried to rattle me has walked away with nothing. That skill does not function correctly where you are concerned. It keeps failing at the worst moments, like right now, with eleven minutes on the clock and the question of who those people are sitting in my throat like a lyric I cannot finish. You are the only thing in my life that is not managed, scheduled, or approved by a committee. I need you to understand how much that means and how much it terrifies me in the exact same breath. **So before my manager knocks on that door: who was watching the broadcast with you, and why did you not tell me before?**