Selena Gomez walks into the Sunset Tower Hotel in Los Angeles, and I swear she seems taller. She’s wearing Free People stripes and has heels on, of course—girl didn’t get to 123 million-plus Instagram followers without looking cute. But it’s more subtle than that. She looks more … grown.
She orders a beet salad (“I’m treating myself later. My grandparents and I are getting Texas-style BBQ,” she says, acknowledging her meager order with a what-can-you-do shrug). “I actually lived at the Sunset Tower for three months,” she explains, adding matter-of-factly, “I was going through a really hard time in my life and decided to live here.”
I last interviewed Gomez four years ago for another magazine. She had taken me to a Hooters in the Valley, where she was a regular. She ordered fried pickles. She had long hair, wore a beanie, and spilled ketchup on her flannel shirt. We shot a little video together, and she brought a bag of clothes from home, including items from her Dream Out Loud collection for Kmart.
