The Girl From Spain (girlxgirl)

Day 29: Mila

Camila almost overlooked the email that offered her the job she had dreamed about for years. It was deeply buried between the insane amount of spam but ultimately, despite seeing it two days late, she found it just in time.

From the short message, she read the request that she should accept of decline by the 20th. So, she had two days to make a decision that she absolutely didn't want to make.

The interview had been so uncomfortable and awkward, Camila hadn't even held onto any hope that she might get an offer and frankly, she had made peace with it. How rude that they were actually interested in her...

She had also recently spent a little too much time staring at the cute and modern website of the independent design agency in Brighton which she had heard so much gushing about from Aki ever since he had signed the contract that officially made him an employee.

Camila had been happy for him but just as jealous. Aki had lived his entire life in Brighton. He had moved exactly twice, from his parent's place to their shared former apartment - where he had lived with two different roommates before her - and from there to his new and current place.

While she was sending applications, sitting in her parent's guest room, and fretting about what to do, he had it all figured out.

And, Aki's boyfriend of three years lived exactly 25 minutes away from their old place and 10 minutes from his new. Why couldn't she and Sally just happen to live so close together?

Camila closed the mail application on her phone and, as a coping mechanism that had been quite effective in the past, opened Instagram to take her mind off things.

Scrolling through random pictures and videos, she soon froze. Even though she remembered to have followed Greenpeace's official page, the picture of a humpback whale on her display accompanied by an article about endangered species took her by surprise.

Some months ago, she wouldn't have been able to immediately identify that whale. To be fair, she could only for sure tell a blue, sperm and humpback whale apart but it was better than nothing. Baby steps.

Camila didn't even pause to think. Lyra would be proud, she figured. Closing the app and opening WhatsApp, she texted Aki. Hey, this is gonna sound like a weird request: Can you tell me something about your working hours, how you get along with your colleagues and how you like your job in general?

Then, she locked the phone, tossed it away to the other side of her bed, and bit her lip. She was very uncomfortably aware of the quick heartbeats pondering against her chest.

Just when she stood up to do... Well, she hadn't quite decided what to do but she needed to release her nervous energy somehow, even if it was just by walking to the refrigerator and opening and closing it. Anyway, her phone started buzzing before she could reach the door. Surprised as she and Sally usually talked in the evenings and not having regular phone calls with anyone else, she picked it up and grinned when she read Aki's name on the display.

As much as she liked her former roommate, Camila had become good at predicting how well she would manage to stay in contact with certain people. The prediction for their friendship hadn't been the best.

Aki was calm and reserved, qualities that made him a very good roommate for someone who needed a lot of alone time, qualities that were infectious and made them share wonderfully relaxed evenings and talks, but unfortunately also qualities that had made Camila doubt they could keep the short friendship permanently alive.

Sometime in her teenage years after the fourth move and third change of schools, Camila had accepted that not all friendships were forever. But she quite enjoyed being wrong.