Do You Trust Me?

Chapter Twenty

NOT PROOFREAD

Camila

I'm starting to think I fell asleep in my hotel room and dreamt this whole day up.

My mind making me believe it was more realistic that I missed that date by falling asleep and now I'm just dreaming that it's going this well. The bookstore. The walk to the park. The almost kiss. The hand holding. The way Lauren speaks to me. It must all be a dream.

Dinner went really well. Lauren took me to a restaurant named Kimura. There's a hotpot in the middle and you basically watch over your food cooking, it was a first for me. It was the first time I'd tried tofu and Lauren couldn't believe it. All the while I was in awe that it didn't taste as bland as I imagined it to. In all honesty I was kind of in a daze thinking about what could've happened in the park. Part of me was a little disappointed those kids butted in, but another part was a little relieved because that would've been moving everything crazy fast.

What the hell had I been thinking trying to go in for a kiss like that? My face felt hot while my head spun at remembering Lauren cupping my cheek as she whispered my name. God I just couldn't.

"Camz?" I opened my eyes and squeezed at the cold hand in my own before looking over to see Lauren looking over me worriedly, "You okay?"

If it was any other person asking me that for the fifth time tonight I would've been annoyed, but when it was her my heart soared. It felt nice to be checked on so much by Lauren.

"Yeah," I said as I looked back down the street to try and bring myself back to reality.

Lauren and I were now aimlessly walking the long way back to my hotel. I knew it was the long way when we didn't take the same route back when we'd gone to the bookstore and the park. My mind reeling that maybe Lauren didn't want this night to end either. After dinner she'd asked if I'd be fine with walking off what we ate as she held out her hand for me. I just couldn't resist since I was still in a daze from earlier.

"It's a lot calmer at night," Lauren said as I looked to see her admiring the lights around us and groups of friends having the best times of their lives on their nights out, "Plus the city scape view gets better."

I hummed as I looked over to the street next to Lauren to think it was unusually calm for busy New York. Most of the cabs I'd seen get called would be for people too drunk to walk back. "You sit out on a roof a lot at night?" I asked her trying to imagine her home here in Greenwich.

"Yeah. My place's got roof access. When I first got it all I wanted was to make a nook up there. Fall asleep under stars. I remember when I signed the lease the first thing I did was get high and look up at the sky." She shrugged with a laugh while I thought about how much had passed since high school.

Lauren's done so much, but I know so little.

"You still smoke?" I asked curiously while I watched her shoulders drop and didn't turn my way.

Lauren hummed before shaking her head, "No. I've been clean for awhile now. Had to get clean." Lauren said lowly as I watched her go somewhere else in her head.

I wondered if she would let me in.

"Did something happen?" I asked as I watched Lauren snap back to her senses before looking over to me as I squeezed her hand.

She looked back and forth between my eyes before looking back down the street, "No. Just stopped." She said as her thumb rubbed at the back of my hand while I tried to not let that distract me from how she was shutting me out.

Easy, Karla. Of course she wasn't going to let you in so quickly. I remembered what Normani had told me back on the boat, about how none of them were who they use to be, so I shouldn't expect it all to be the same. Lauren wasn't the same woman she was all those years ago.