As Gina is organizing her room she finds the gift that Nini's moms got for her. It had been a few days since it was given to her, with everything that was going on with her and Ashlyn and her mother she must have forgotten about it. She takes out the tissue paper and pulls out a card and what looks like a dotted teddy bear. She opens up the card first and reads it.

Dear Gina,

I'm really sorry about your mother, I'm sure she was very proud of you when she died. From what my wife has told me you seem like a very brave young girl who will go far in this world. Your mother was so lucky to have a daughter that is such a bright student, amazing dancer and hard worker. If you ever need someone to talk to about this or just a grown up to go to for advice text me at 416-593-60065.

Sincerely, Dana Salazar-Roberts

As she is reading it she begins to cry, it was nice to be told that she was brave and a hard worker for once. At school, many kids had told her how amazing she was at dancing or that she was the smartest student in the class. And while it always felt nice to hear that, hearing it from an adult somehow felt different. At school it almost felt like they just feared her or were jealous of her but now it feels like Dana was truly proud of the girl.

She hugged the bear up to her chest and pulled out her phone to send the woman a thank you text.

Dana (Nini's mom)

You: sorry I just opened the gift, I forgot about it, but thank you so much for the card and teddy bear. It really means a lot to me

Dana: Don't worry about it, also he's a giraffe ?

You: but his neck is so short

Dana: Don't insult him like that, he's actually very insecure about his neck

You: I get why, it makes him look like a freak

Dana: You're gonna make him cry ? and it makes him look cute

You: fine, I'll apologize to him

Dana: You better

You: he said it's okay

Dana: Good

Gina giggles at their conversation before going to bed with her new giraffe stuffed animal.


Over lunch the next day Gina's eating with Ashlyn and the rest of the group. Ever since they kissed on the Ferris wheel they had been dating and she was trying to be the best girlfriend that she could be, but had a hard time knowing how to. She had googled stuff like how to be a good girlfriend but most of that was aimed at straight girls, plus the advice they had was awful. She had thought about asking Seb or Carlos for advice but relationships between 2 boys and 2 girls are really different.

She realizes that Nini's moms probably have some dating advice. At first she gets worried that it would be weird to ask her out of the blue, but Dana had said that if she needed any advice she could talk to the woman. She opened up her phone and started texting her.

Dana (Nini's mom)

You: hey, I'm dating this girl and I need advise on how to be a good girlfriend

Dana: OOooOOoooOO, I wasn't out in high school so I don't know that much about teenage romances but I can make a group chat with you and Carol and she probably has some advice

Gina is surprised by how fast Dana had responded, she expected her to be at work and answer it near the end of the day. She waits until being added to the new group chat.

Dana, Carol, and Gina

Dana: Babe, Gina needs advice on how to be a good girlfriend

Carol: That depends on who the girl is

Carol: I would suggest listening to her, and not worrying too much about if you're doing it right. But if you are really worried you should probably ask her

Carol: She's probably also worried about being a bad girlfriend

Carol: Also you're going to have a honeymoon faze, don't expect it to last forever or think that the relationship is over when it's gone

Carol: You don't have to be constantly madly in love to have a good relationship

You: Thank you, I'll go ask Ash what I can do to be a better girlfriend

As Gina and Ashlyn are walking to their next class they talk about stuff like deals at malls and what they're planning to do that weekend. Gina decides to finally ask her girlfriend the question that had been weighing on her mind.

"Hey," She starts to slow down to get the girl to focus on her "You have done so much to help me and I am so grateful for that, but I'm worried that I'm not doing enough to be a good girlfriend to you"

"G, you're a great girlfriend. Yeah I've done a lot for you, but that's because you needed it. And when I need your help with something I'm sure you'll be there to help me out" Ashlyn puts her hand on the girl's shoulder.

"Ok, but still I feel like I can be doing something right now to help you"

"You listen to me talk about stuff that no one wants to listen to me talk about and you always help me with studying"

"Okay, but are you sure there's nothing else you'd like me to do to help you"

"If something comes up I'll tell you," Ash kisses the girl on her cheek and runs off to go to her next class, leaving Gina standing there, blushing.


The drama club gathered in the bomb shelter for another rehearsal. After they go over You Will Be Found a few times Gina and Nini split off from the rest of the group to practice Only Us. Gina had been practicing her parts of the song at home but doing it with Nini was way harder. It felt like a constant competition to be the one singing louder. She knew that she should've just let the girl sing louder than her but she was still Gina, and Gina would never just let another person win a competition.

They had broken off from the rest of the group with Miss Jenn in order to work out the issues that were going on with the song. They knew that most of it would be team building exercises between the 2 of them and not singing but Miss Jenn was in charge, so there was nothing else they could do.

"Okay, I want the 2 of you to give each other 3 compliments, Gina do you want to go first?" Miss Jenn instructs.

"Okay," She thinks for a moment "Nini, you are one of the best songwriters I know of"

"Thank you Gina, Nini would you like to go now"

"Gina you are the best dancer I have ever seen" She says while making a reluctant smile.

"You have the prettiest smile" she responds.

"You have the most beautiful hair"

"Nini, You have improved the most out of any of us over the past year"

"You inspire me to be my best self"

"Okay, see wasn't that nice" Miss Jenn butts in. "Next we will do trust falls, Nini you can go first this time"

"Seriously Miss Jenn, how many of these will we have to do?"

"Only 3, now go"

They get up and Nini cautiously stands with her back towards the other girl and Gina gets ready to catch her.

"Whenever you're ready Nini!" Miss Jenn shouts out.

The girl counts to three in her head then lets herself fall backwards expecting Gina to move out of the way or let the girl fall. But instead she grabs her midfall, not trying to pull any tricks. Nini opened her eyes to see the girl staring down at her.

"Okay, do you want to catch me now?" Gina asks.

"Of course"

Gina stands in front of Nini and swiftly falls back, without showing any fear. Nini catches her though she was expecting to get a few more seconds to prepare and Gina was heavier than she was expecting. The girl was small but had a lot of muscle.

After the first 2 exercises the girls were now more open about a third.

"Alright Miss Jenn, what do you have planned for us?" Nini says with enthusiasm.

"Now you have to stare into each other's eyes for 1 minute without saying anything"

"That seems kind of romantic"

"That's the point Gina, you two are playing a couple, you've learned to like each other, now you have to learn to love each other"

Gina was a little worried about the romantic part, she was dating Ashlyn and didn't want her to be worried about something coming between them. But Nini was already dating Ricky so everything should be fine.

"Ok"

"And the timer starts... now!" Miss Jenn announces.

The two start to stare at each other. As it goes on a slight smile grows across Gina's face. Midway through Nini sticks out her tongue and furrows her eyebrows to make a funny face. Gina giggles and responds by pulling down the bottom of her eyes and pressing her lips flat, then forming a frown. The two girls laugh and before they know it the minute is up.

"Okay, now you two can get to-"

Carlos swings open the door "Miss Jenn it's almost 5:00, can we go home now?"

"Ohh, sorry I guess I lost track of the time, you can all go home"

"But Miss Jenn we haven't even gone over the song yet?" Gina argued.

"You can come over to my house and we can practice there," Nini suggested, "Just let me text my moms"

Miss Jenn and Carlos head over to the bomb shelter. Nini goes to text her mom only to realize she left it in the other room. "Oh, I'll go grab my phone to text them"

"I can text them" Gina types something on her phone "Dana said it's okay"

"Wait, how did you get my mom's phone number"

"She gave it to me with that gift"

They start to head over to the bomb shelter to grab their stuff. Nini was a bit surprised and uncomfortable by how close her friend was with her moms.

"Why are you texting my moms?"

"We're just friends, what, are you jealous?" Gina says amused.

"No, it's just weird"

"Are you worried I'm gonna fuck your mom. Your moms are MILFS" Gina teases the girl

"Don't call my moms MILFs!"

"Why, they're so hot" Gina continues teasing as they enter the main rehearsal room.

"It's weird! Miss Jenn, don't you think it's weird to call your friend's moms hot?"

"Relax! Relax, I'm just teasing you"

"How would you feel if I called your mom hot?"

"I would feel like you were a necrophile"

"oh… right" Nini quietly says after remembering that Gina's mom was dead.

"It's fine, wanna head over to your house"


As they entered Nini's room Gina looked at all the pictures that were strung across the girls room. That along with the hanging chair made it look like it was taken straight out of a Pinterest board.

"Wow your room is so pretty, I wish I had a room that looked like this"

"Oh, yeah. I've kinda gotten used to it. It must've been so nice to constantly be getting a new room to decorate"

"Eh, I decorated the first couple of my rooms but then I just got tired of it. I never got to keep the decorations up for long"

"well, maybe you will be able to now, with you staying at Ashlyn's"

"Nah, I talked to my social worker and I'm gonna be moving into a foster home as soon as there is one with space available in Salt Lake or by next month if there isn't one available by then"

"Oh, so you might not be in Salt Lake for the musical?" Nini says disappointedly.

"Yeah, but I should still be able to be in it. I shouldn't be more than a bus ride away so I can come to the important rehearsals and it would only be like 2 weeks between when I left and the musical"

"Yeah but what about next year? We won't have you in our musical then"

"I'm sure you guys will do fine without me"

"Yeah but won't you miss us"

"It's fine, I'll just forge a path wherever I end up and I could end up moving back here. Foster kids move around a lot, heh, I guess my mom's job really prepared me for this"

"You don't have to be doomed to a life of moving around, couldn't someone adopt you"

"Yeah, I've been talking to my aunt but she already has like twin toddlers so she probably wouldn't have time to take care of me"

"Well, maybe someone else could adopt you"

"Sure, Nini" Gina gave her a sweet smile, the kind you give to kids to feed into their delusions.

The girls then get to practicing their songs and a few scenes. They still have trouble with making it look like they love each other but they at least don't look like they hate each other. After a couple of hours Carol comes into the room.

"Hey you guys, it's almost 7, so dinner will be ready in a few minutes"

"Oh shoot, how did I lose track of time like that?" Gina exclaims "I normally have dinner with Ash at 6:30." She checks her phone to find multiple missed calls and text messages from her girlfriend.

"I just told her that I was going to try to be a better girlfriend and then I missed dinner without warning her" She continues.

"Take a deep breath, then explain what happened," Carol suggested.

"Ok, I will" Gina opens up her and Ashlyn's text messages

Girlfriend

Ash: Hey where are you?

Ash: Are you coming dinner is almost ready

Ash: Are you getting these?

Ash: We're eating without you, okay?

You: Hey, I'm really sorry for missing dinner

You: my phone was off because of Miss Jenn. I was busy practicing the musical with Nini

Ash: Don't worry about it, my parents came home early so I wasn't alone

You: Okay, but I promise I'll make this up to you

Ash: Gina I promise it's fine

She goes back to Carol and Nini.

"How did it go?" Carol asks.

"She said it's fine"

"Have they already had dinner?"

"Yeah"

"Do you wanna eat dinner with us?"

"I'll have to make sure that Ashlyn is okay with it" Gina texts the girl who responds by saying that it's fine and whatever they're having is probably better than reheated leftovers.

They go downstairs to see that Dana had already set the table with an extra spot for Gina to sit at.

"Thank you so much, honey," Carol says.

"I assume Gina will be sitting with us"

"Yeah, I missed dinner with Ashlyn's family" Gina answers.

"Oh, was she upset?" Dana asks.

"She said she wasn't but she isn't really good at telling other people when she's upset"

They all sit down to eat Dana's make-your-own tacos.

"So Gina, how was your day?" Carol asks.

"It was good. We got a lot of practice in with the song Only Us and I got my math test back"

"That's great, how did you do on it?"

"I got 100%!"

"Wow that's amazing, Nini you're in the same math class as Gina right?" Dana asks.

"Yeah, I didn't do that well on the test. I studied really hard though, I just don't know how I'm supposed to do this whole quadratic equation thing"

Gina slouches back in her seat, expecting the girl's moms to start yelling at her. Gina's mother had always expected her to get straight As and would be furious whenever she got less than 90%. But instead the moms weren't mad at all, Dana just replied with "Don't worry sweetie, keep on practicing and I'm sure you'll eventually get it"

"I will, so how was your day?"

"It was pretty stressful, there was a huge recall and I had to sort out a bunch of stuff with vendors. But on the bright side we got a bunch of samples from them, so Gina if you want any olives I am drowning in them"

She scrunches up her face "Mhh, yeah no, I've never really been an olive person"

"Great, I have 5 bags of olives and I'm the only one in this house who likes them. So, Honey, what did you get up to today?"

"I'm so glad you asked, I met with a client to discuss changes in a design I'm doing for them. It was a pretty easy meeting; they only needed some minor things changed. Other than that I just finalized some other designs"

They continued on eating and making small talk. Talking about shows they had recently watched and things they had planned for later on in the week. It felt such a peaceful and content moment, Gina had always wanted to have a dinner like this with her mom. But the girl's mom would often be in a bad mood, meaning that a lot of that anger was taken out on her. Normally the best dinners ended up being when her mother was too busy to be there for them.