Admit It

11; raindrops

Camila leaned against the wall under the tiny square window and listened as the sounds of the city filled her ears. The birds chirping, the cars powering through the streets, the horns blaring, the music blasting, even the subtle sound of a street performer delicately bowing her violin to the melody of an old, classical piece of music. She'd found that since she'd stopped talking, she became better at listening. After all, the only thing she had left now was to observe.

Her room was still bare, the same way it had been since the move, but what she did have to help her spend the Sunday morning was her backpack, her car, although she didn't quite enjoy the amount of power driving a car gave her, and her fondness for being alone. Though lately she'd questioned how much she really liked to be alone. Maybe until now she'd just been spending time with the wrong people.

Before she left, she left a note on her mother's nightstand, who was working a 24-hour shift at the hospital, that she would be back by evening. Then, she opened her phone and put in her earbuds, walking down the winding, cement grey stairs with her feet silently pattering to the beat of the song.

Something about last night had worked out like clockwork. Something about the way that he kissed her on the forehead, to how they played Scrabble during dessert and her letters spelled out his name, to how she got home past 10pm but her mother was fast asleep, to how it was exactly 11:11 at night when he called her just to whisper sweet nothings and listen tentatively to her silence. 

His eyes gazed through her as easily as if she were made of glass, looking past her covers of silence and stillness to see her smiles, her laughter. She'd always believed in some sort of magic- after all, she'd dressed up as a Gryffindor wizard multiple times for Halloween- but this kind of magic, the kind that seemed to twist fate so as to perfectly intertwine the lives of two people, was new to her.

A slight breeze hit her as she opened the lobby door. Her worn, passed through generations, white car stood alone in the empty lot, a type of loneliness that reminded her of how Shawn's silhouette looked, a shadow in the corner of the library. Even the look of the now not-so-white paint blending in with the unattended to light grey asphalt reminded her of how his black colored sweatshirt had into the darkness.

Camila tossed her backpack into the passenger's seat and started the engine. As the car warmed up to the mid-October air, she plugged her phone into the AUX cord and selected the playlist Shawn thought she would like, 'the breath of cold air that makes you grateful for saturday mornings.' Upon reading the title, she rolled down the window, letting the autumn breeze blow out whatever the air conditioning had done.

Soft piano chords and a retro filter covered each wall of the car as she drove off.

✧✦✧

"Hey," Shawn's voice greeted through the microphone.

He was also in a car, the same low car with the black leather seats that her back had been pressed against just hours ago. Now, she leaned back into her own seat as much as she had since she began driving hours prior, feeling like she had a part of that car with her- the memory of the leather enveloping her body in its chilly, firm touch.

"Tilt the camera a bit," he said, watching the slight roll of her eyes and the playful smile that shortly followed. Every time he insisted that he saw her whole face when they talked. Sometimes it confused her how all it took was her notebook and her features to watch to keep him with her for hours. She thought she would have to try harder for anything of this sort to work even slightly, but sometimes it felt like all he needed was her. No show, no fun attractions, no flashes and masks and lights or even talking, just her.

"What are you doing right now?"

Slowly rolling to a stop at the traffic light, Camila flipped her phone camera and gave it a small spin around the empty streets and narrow sidewalks. Nothing ever happened in Springside Hills, except for Camila and Lucas. In her mind, they were all that ever happened there.