2859

Chapter 18

If there's one thing Camila Cabello knew all about, it was routines. Camila had a thing about routines. She had to stick to them. If she didn't, she be late. She'd get lost. She'd lose everything she owned. She'd figured that out pretty early in life. It was ingrained in her mind at this point. Just like all the dance steps she had ever learned. Stick with the routine and everything falls into place. One move at a time. It had served her well. That was until Lauren Jauregui answered that fated phone call.

Lauren Jauregui was not routine. Nothing about her was routine. She didn't even have a normal routine. Not the same way Camila did. Lauren's life could be chaotic at times. Nothing was set. Everything was day to day. New plans. Roll with the punches.

Just Lauren's inclusion was shaking up Camila's life. Camila would say Lauren was like a milkshake. Like a marshmallow, caramel, extra whipped cream and sprinkles milkshake. Don't get her wrong, the milkshake was freaking delicious. It was the best milkshake she'd ever had, and she was fairly certain that it would be her favorite milkshake flavor forever. But, falling in love with a chaotic milkshake that's only available in New York meant she had to change her routine.

Wake up earlier. Check phone. Take a shower. Check phone. Get dressed. Check phone. Walk to work while checking her phone and dodging people and traffic. Switch to silent, which only made it more complicated. Will herself not to check her phone the entire time Louis is droning on and on about demographics. Check her phone in the reflection of Shawn's glasses. Sneak in a text. Make a quick call. Savor the twenty five minutes she can get around lunchtime. Power through the afternoon grind. Wait all night until Lauren calls. Then do it all over again the next day.

The new routine was getting more and more exhausting. So, needless to say, Camila felt like her life was a little bit topsy turvy. It felt like everything was changing really fast, and yet nothing was happening fast enough. Her normal routine was so off, that she found herself stopping completely throughout the day and having to remind herself what she was doing, where she was going. And when Selena Gomez sent her a memo to meet her upstairs in the executive offices, she was pretty nervous. She couldn't remember messing anything up lately, but anything was possible. She wasn't exactly the smartest cracker in the Triscuit box. She knew that was accurate, too, she had worked with some really smart Triscuit people a few years back.

Selena was kind of infamous for keeping people waiting. It was sort of her thing. The rumor was that she watched them sweat on her closed circuit security camera next door. Camila didn't really believe that, but there were several red, blinking lights all over the place in there. She made a conscious effort not to look directly at any of them. She also went back over everything that she could possibly have done to piss Selena off and nothing came to mind. Thoughts of Lauren were distracting, but she didn't think they'd been that distracting. Or maybe she was so distracted that she didn't even know how distracted she was.

To calm her nerves, she felt the best option was to entertain herself by thumbing through pictures on her phone. There were all kinds of her and Lauren while Camila was in New York. They looked really good together, if she said so herself. There were a bunch that Dinah had sent her that she referred to as The Cutest Thing Lauren Did Today series. Dinah meant for them to be embarrassing, but they really just made Camila fall in love with her more. There were dozens of Lauren that she had sent every morning because Camila was curious about what she was wearing or how she had fixed her hair that day. In most of them, Lauren was making silly faces, but that was okay. That day's picture had Lauren actually giving her a genuine smile. She was genuinely smiling back at her screen when Selena tapped her on the shoulder.

"Oh," Camila said. "I didn't know you had come in."

"You seem distracted," Selena craned her neck to see the display, "Who's that?"