Bound To You (camren au)

if you walk away, part 2

tw: eating disorders, mention of suicidal thoughts, toxic relationships, physical abuse/violence, some self-injury behavior

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To put it bluntly, the next week is hell.

Camila is physically and emotionally drained at every second. She's bruised all over, she's breaking out, she looks a mess. Everybody's noticing it, but without Lauren there, they kind of have no choice but to put up with it.

It's like everybody is afraid to talk to her, now. She knows people have been gossiping about the disaster between her and Lauren. She doesn't even want to think about what people are saying - the things that aren't true, and worse still, all the things that are.

She wonders if people are taking sides. She wonders who the hell would take her side.

She thinks at this point it would be pretty reasonable for all of them to wish that Camila had never been hired. She started all this shit, after all - she drove Lauren away. God, they probably hate her. And she knows she's been moody and fidgety and high-strung lately - she's no fun to be around, anymore. Maybe nobody even likes her anymore. Maybe her performance skills aren't enough to make up for this.

If it wasn't obvious, she's kind of been spiraling. Overthinking. Spending a lot of time caged up in her own brain, running over conversations and her own actions until she's driven herself paranoid. She also hasn't been sleeping very well.

But can you blame her? Who is she supposed to talk to about this? Lauren is clearly out of the question. Normani and Dinah don't want to hear about Camila's constant problems - they probably already think that Camila is blowing all of this out of proportion. She's too scared to go to the other girls. She doesn't want Lucy to be any more pissed at her. And Hailee - she laughs, now, every time Camila mentions Lauren's name, so she tries not to mention Lauren's name. Hailee would make her feel even more horrible about it. Or she'd get mad at Camila for being so hung up on it. Something. It would be bad.

She eats, for the most part. She goes to work, she goes to school. So she isn't completely destroying herself. She isn't at her lowest low ever. Is it weird that that is a little comforting? To know that no matter what, this hasn't- I mean, it hasn't destroyed her. Not completely. Not really.

Or, well, at least that's what she tells herself. Even if just thinking about her and Lauren being in a fucked up not-speaking never-close-again place makes her want to cry. Also, every time she looks at her hands it feels like the skin around her nails hasn't stopped bleeding in days, the same wounds opening again and again and again.

(There's a metaphor in there, somewhere.)

She waits until Thursday, and then she calls her mom.

It's during a really hard rehearsal, and Camila's already having a rough day - she had been expecting Hailee to give her a ride to work, like she does every morning, but when she woke up, Hailee was already gone. Camila had panicked and then called her, and then Hailee had gotten irritated at her for calling and more irritated for being upset. Not in a yelling way, but in a slow-talking, infinitely condescending way. Camila had cried when she hung up, and then felt even worse for crying, because it was the littlest thing and she was probably too dependent on Hailee, anyway.

So. Yeah. Thursday really sucks. She fumbles a lot of moves and she can nearly feel Lucy's exasperation coming off of her in waves.

In the gap between the end of rehearsal and the beginning of opening hours, when all the other girls go to that café across the street, Camila stays in the House of H dressing room and stares at her phone and then her reflection and then she makes the call.