FRIDAY
Layla couldn't remember the last time she'd made her bed when the sheets weren't still warm from being freshly cleaned. Her bed was only ever made from whenever she put them on until she pulled them out from their tucked position to wrap in them like a big cozy worm.
With all the huge beds Selena had in her house, even with two people in them, and no matter how soft they were... Layla felt like she was trying to sleep on a ping pong table. It was so big, she could barely tell where she was on the bed. She was used to being wrapped in the blankets and sleeping reasonably still on her apartment's tiny twin bed.
Maybe it was better to stay wrapped in the blankets and forget where the edges of the bed were. Maybe she'd reached her limits without noticing and only now found the edge that she would tumble over in her folly. Maybe she'd deluded herself into thinking she had what it takes to make in this line of work. In bed was where she belonged as a streamer... HER bed. On the Internet, where the only thing more discouraging than how easy it was to find haters and trolls... was how easy it was to find entirely sincere and eager fans.
Layla had ran upstairs to a bedroom because that's what she used to do at home when she was upset. She'd never once been in this bedroom before. Even when cleaning with Merri, Selena told her not to waste too much time upstairs since she hadn't been up there, either. When she got in this bed, she slipped into it as carefully as possible, barely disturbing the sheets with her thin form... all because she wanted to leave this bed as close to how she found it as she could so she wouldn't fuck up anything else.
She didn't dream, either because she simply didn't reach a deep enough state of sleep to do so... or because the dream had been the last few days she'd spent in the home of her hero... and now it was over.
Layla was pulled from her sleep suddenly as she felt a hand fall on her shoulder. She spun off her stomach, the sheets falling off her torso, one arm holding her up and one held in a defensive position.
It was Selena.
Of course it was, she thought. This is her house. Nobody else lives here. Once again, she'd forgotten where she was. This time, Layla had hoped she'd just wake up in her crappy apartment, and that none of this had really happened.
Layla pulled her hand to her face, wiping a bit of drool from her lips, inhaling slowly, trying not to sound like she was sniffling, glad that Selena hadn't turned on the light to see her worn red eyes.
"Hey." Layla said weakly.
"Hey." Selena parroted.
Layla looked down. Selena's upper body was nude, but there was something on her legs that Layla hadn't seen before.
"Are those... pants?" Layla asked.
"They're PJ's." Selena answered, hooking a thumb into the waistband. "This is how I normally sleep. I don't actually sleep totally naked. I know it's probably not as cool or sexy as my fans are hoping."
Even in the nearly nonexistent light, Layla found herself staring. "Well... that bulge is pretty sexy."
Selena moved in closer. Layla sniffed. Selena revealed an open box of tissues from behind her back.
"Thank you." Layla took a few and blew her nose gently into them. She crumpled the tissue in her palms and looked over the rim of the bed for a trash can.
"Just throw it anywhere. I'll clean it up tomorrow." Selena said. Layla dropped the wad over the edge of the bed.
"I'm surprised you don't have a bedside trash..." Layla commented. "You know, for late night whacking."
"But I don't do that." Selena said. "I can't."
Layla put her head back to the pillow.
"You mind if I sit here?" Selena asked.
"What am I going to say? No? It's your house."
Selena sat, and then brought herself next to Layla, staying on the duvet. Selena put her chin on Layla's bare shoulder. They both looked across the room to the large bookcase that lined that wall. It held some books, and a roughly equal number of porn accolades that Selena had been presented, most of them shaped like penises mounted to a piece of wood. In the middle of them all were about one hundred fifty Blu-ray DVDs.
"For someone in your line of work, and who seems to watch a lot of TV... I didn't think you'd be so into Disney movies."
"What can I say?" Selena said, putting one hand around Layla. "They're great."
A small silence. Layla didn't move out from under Selena's touch. Selena continued, "I wish... that I had a huge library that I could give you, like in Beauty and the Beast... but instead of books, it's just acres and acres of porn."
Layla laughed. "Well, that's pretty much my hard drive. And it's not even one-millionth of all the porn out there."
Selena chuckled. Then there was silence.
"They're remaking Beauty and the Beast, you know."
"I heard." Selena groaned. "Why? What's the point?"
"That live-action Jungle Book was good."
"But Beauty and the Beast is a masterpiece. There's nowhere to go but down."
More silence.
"You ever get invited to the premiere or something like that?"
Selena sighed. "I don't get invited anywhere. I'm a porn star. Nobody wants me around for their family-friendly event. I just stay at home."
"I know what that feels like."
More silence.
"When I was on the bus to go to the porn studio on Sunday..." Layla started. "I tried pulling my phone out of my sweatshirt pocket by the headphone cord, and it slipped out of the jack. So for one second, on the bus, everyone heard what I was listening to. And I thought... I am so glad I'm not the kind of person who watches porn on the bus."
"Was it Disney music?"
"No." Layla shook her head. "But I wouldn't be embarrassed by that."
"Would you be embarrassed if everyone thought you were watching porn on your phone?" Selena asked. "Because I've always thought that was a holdover from puritanical repression. Like... why shouldn't we all be free about what we like?"
"Well, most of us only watch porn to masturbate." Layla said. "I don't just sit around and watch it in public to kill time, but that's also because... I don't like being aroused in public."
"Being aroused in public is your job." Selena said.
