Nina has a boyfriend, she thinks. (I had a boyfriend, she thinks.) Why the fuck am I thinking about Nina Sommer?, she thinks. She gets up (abruptly) and bids her farewell to the group. The only one of them that seems to pay any attention is Nina, and it makes Vanessa want to throw up because she can't figure why it brings butterflies (beetles, spiders, rats) to her stomach.

There is nothing about this paragraph that isn't perfect. The repetition, and the brackets, and the emphases (that have been murdered by my HTML-fail), and just the WORDS.

I never use brackets in writing, and now I'm beginning to think that this is my mistake, because THEY WORK SO FREAKING WELL. HOW? TELL ME YOUR SECRET, MYSTERY WRITER! NAO! (Well, not now, but later, mmkay, when you're allowed to). Seriously, this is awesome. It's so much more awesome because it almost shouldn't work. Yet it does. It not only works but it adds so much, which just makes me decide that your brain deserves much snoggage, because it's obviously fabulous if it can make this make such perfect sense. (I'm sorry, I think that sounded like an insult. IT ISN'T, I PROMISE. IT'S SO NOT AN INSULT. IT IS SO VERY MUCH NOT.) Lives in brackets. Connections and subtext and things-left-unsaid and things ignored and allusions to what could be, what could have been, what is and isn't, and I'm fairly certain I'm not making sense, but this stry has me in Incoherent Babbling Mode.

They are all at the mansion; Constanze and Juli (already) have their hair sticking to their foreheads as they battle on the karaoke machine. It's funny, Vanessa thinks, because Constanze is singing a Julio Iglesias song simultaneously to Juli's Oasis song. No one can understand a thing they're saying, their words meshing together.

I am forever shipping Constanze/Juli, now. I may be ficcing this fic at some point later when we have official permission to ask permission.

Ahaha, and the following drunken-teenage-almost-snog-but-vomiting. Perfect for these two, and kind of heartbreaking.

Just... so many chances. So many not-chances. So many lost chances, and I think I'm about to cry. Either with wistful sadness or with frustration, I'm not sure, but oh my god. This is beautiful. This continuous, years-long dance.