To Follow you or To Lose you

Chapter 17: Under the stars

Lying on the grass in the garden of a house whose owner we didn't know, Camila and I admired the stars. The cold of the night embraced us, but her hands drawing meaningless patterns in my arms didn't allow me to freeze.

"How long?" I asked, but I feared the mere existence of her answer.

She sighed.

"I don't know. When my need to travel calls me I will..."

"Does that mean I won't be able to say goodbye to you?"

Camila didn't answer, and I knew she'd avoided saying it because it hurt as much as it hurt me.

"Do you see the stars, Lauren?" I nodded, but I must confess that a need was beginning to appear in my mind. Suddenly I couldn't only appreciate them, because numbers were coming.

One star, two stars, three stars... twenty... thirty...

"When I see them, I just want to visit them all."

Her voice distracted me a bit, but when she stopped, I had to start counting again.

Was I frustrated? Of course.

Camila was speaking and I couldn't properly analyze her words because my mind had other stupid plans.

I wanted to stop, but it was impossible.

It wasn't I who controlled my mind at the time. Actually, it was never completely me.

"Mom and Dad kept me so long isolated from the world that my only dream became to escape them. I wanted to see what was forbidden to me and be the one who they rejected" I swear I was trying to listen to her every word, but every time I diverted a little attention a voice in my head told me the stars would disappear if I didn't count them that very night "... I love to travel, don't get me wrong, but the first time I got on a plane, all I wanted was for them not to find me. I didn't care about the place or how long I would be there. I just needed to get away... Maybe I'm still trying to escape."

And I, at that moment, was looking to escape the numbers I loved so much.

"Camz..."

I could feel tears streaming down my cheeks, and suddenly I wanted to count them too.

I was beginning to despair, because that could be our last night together and my mind was thinking about missing half of it because of my stupid need to count.

"No, Lauren. Don't cry." She begged when she saw me. She wiped my tears with her thumbs six times, and I was frustrated to realize that even those numbers mattered to me, "What is it?"

"I need to count, Camz." I said between sobs.

She smiled and kissed my forehead three times, which made me growl loudly as I realized I had done it again.

"Do it."

"I don't want to."

"Then don't do it."

Her answers to my despair were so simple that five times I wished, for a single minute, to be like her.

"It's not that easy, Camz." I had held one of her hands. I know I was trembling. "Every time I try not to, a voice starts telling me what bad things will happen if my life is not based on numbers. I don't want to, but I have to."

"Do you want me to help you?"

I didn't expect that.

In my childhood, when I had crises like this, my parents said I should go to a specialist. Dinah, Ally, the partners I had and even Normani recommended it to me regularly.