Dawn in Vancouver

Chapter 1: "My Reality"

Song: I Knew I Loved You – Savage Garden

"I knew I loved you before I met you, I think I dreamed you into my life. I knew I loved you before I met you, I have been waiting all my life."
         - Album "Just Me", Lauren Jauregui

Los Angeles, California

Late August, 2015

The keys of a piano filled each and every one of the corners of that enormous house located in one of the most exclusive areas of Los Angeles. The keys, played with mastery, produced a surround sound that could captivate whoever had the pleasure of listening. The hands of the pianist moved skillfully over her most adored treasure. The last gift of the great pianist Michael "Mike" Jauregui. The only thing she had ever really gotten from her father, a piano.

Lauren Jauregui sighed as she automatically moved her fingers over the keys of her piano, thinking about the concert she would give that same day in front of ten thousand people. Her eyes got lost in the beautiful view of the garden that extended in front of her. It was a gigantic house but sometimes silence managed to depress her.

Her, feeling alone? That was a little ironic and even laughable. She was the great pianist and singer-songwriter Lauren Jauregui. Acclaimed by the critics and adored by the public. To the public she had everything a human being could wish for: fame, fortune and love. She was married to one of the most promising lawyers of Los Angeles, Ryan Green, and Lauren was very happy beside him.

They had been friends their entire life, ever since they both lived in Miami, even though they separated shortly after graduating high school. Ryan had been adopted by a non-wealthy family. Thanks to scholarships due to his basketball talent he'd managed to graduate high school and, the same way, gotten into UCLA, where he'd studied Law. Lauren, on the other hand, had always been a child prodigy.

The first in her class, filled with luxuries and comfort for being the daughter of one of the best pianists of that time: Michael Jauregui. He had been a talented man, who had inherited his daughter with that same talent for music. Sadly, that was the only thing he had done for her. Lauren never received any birthday visits, a hug, or even a kiss on her father's behalf. The visits had been minimum. A birthday gift: a letter written by her manager. That had been Michael Jauregui to her daughter. A stranger that paid for her tuition and gave her a life full of luxury, and who had died due to a drug overdose in a New York hotel.

A man that to Lauren hadn't meant anything more than an artist on TV. An idol and an impossible. Someone who had broken her heart since she was a little girl, and that wound never got to heal even though it had been twenty-six years already. Her mother, on the other hand, had always worked really hard. She was the only one who had supported Lauren on her talent. Even though two years ago she'd lost her to cancer.

But Clara Jauregui did get to witness her daughter's success. Seeing her at concerts, gaining recognition and winning awards. Awards in which every single speech was dedicated to that woman that always stood by her side, until her illness got the best of her. One of the hardest moments for Lauren was realizing that in spite of having all the money in world, there was something she would never get: her mother's recovery.

Nostalgia filled her as her dear instrument reflected her feelings. Her mother's death had broken her world. It had turned her cynical and melancholic. Her mother's death had killed her illusion of triumph and enjoying life. She had gotten lost in a world of destruction.

As an artist you have two big options. The first, occupying your talent to exploit it in the best way possible so it's beneficial to your economic life as well as your personal life. That you occupy your fame to help others and you are a good role model.

This first option had been describing the beginning of Lauren's career. With her father dead. Her manager had taken advantage of her "inherited talent" to launch her career as "the second Jauregui", and much to Lauren's disgrace, who didn't want to owe her father nothing, it had worked. The invitations started pouring in. Radio shows, TV shows, concerts, talk shows. Her career had skyrocketed and been unstoppable ever since.

Lauren knew very well that her fame was simply due to her last name. But there was another part where the true fans were, the fans that truly appreciated her talent. The ones that knew that the moment she played the piano she transformed into a completely joyful person. A person that set her sadness aside as the music transported her. That enjoyed what she did. That sighed just from watching her mother smile from her seat at award shows or concerts as she clapped proudly, as her paleness and thinness became more prominent every passing day due to her illness.

Clara Jauregui had clapped all the way to her last concert. She had sat there as her ventilator kept her alive. Her mother had clapped on the last concert of her fifth album and that same night had said goodbye forever, two years ago.

And at that point, the second option of an artist's world had become present in Lauren. The part filled with excess. The part filled with alcohol, drugs and sex. That part that is so deeply buried in the hearts of people in spite of being successful, of being known in the world.

Her life was simply empty. She had no one. She had one face out to the world, and another to her own reality. She had felt lost. She'd been through all the things she said she would never do. Lauren Jauregui simply had become a portrait of her father.

But, Lauren hadn't thought about her mother protecting her from Heaven. That she'd be in excruciating pain from watching her only daughter following her father's footsteps, ones she had sworn she'd never follow. Her mother always used to say:

"The industry can kill you, little girl, it can surround you. The better you are, the bigger the temptation. But it's in you as a human being to learn how to say no".

Lauren had forgotten that part, so much that she'd ended up in jail for driving under the influence. And much to her surprise, her attorney had been Ryan Green, childhood friend and whom she hadn't seen in more than ten years.

From that moment on she found her way again, but she wasn't walking alone this time. Ryan was with her. He had been her pillar when things got tough, he had been her pillar when she'd walked through jail and everybody had wanted to end her, comparing her steps with those of her deceased father.

"Another artist gone to waste".

"Another talent wasted and consumed by vice".

"Another Jauregui that'll end up overdosing to death in a hotel room".

The tabloids had been cruel, perverse. But she'd had a helping hand by her side that had said to her, "move forward". And a year ago, after retaking success with her sixth album and number one in the popularity lists, "Just Me", they had decided to take one step ahead.

Lauren couldn't remember the exact moment she started going out with Ryan as more than just friends. Good chats, good food and good sex. After that, it had happened in the most natural way possible. Marriage.

She'd been married to Ryan for a year and she'd been extremely happy. Even though in days like that, days when she remembered her past, she felt a vacancy that not even Ryan or music could fill.

In spite of her life, she felt alone. And Lauren Jauregui "the child prodigy" didn't have an answer to that. Surrounded by success, she felt alone. Married to a wonderful man, she felt alone.

And how do you escape that feeling? Lauren wondered as she kept playing. How do you fill up the vacancy of something you don't know you're missing? Who was she really? She was Lauren Jauregui, the famous pianist, the child prodigy, Ryan Green's wife. But then and there, alone in her house, she was simply Lauren, a twenty-six year old woman that in spite of having it all, she kept feeling alone.

Welcome to the music world!

Welcome to the world of pianist Lauren Jauregui.