behind the lights | camren

Chapter Twelve

At around eight in the morning, Lauren finally rolled out of bed, and lazily padded into her larger than life bathroom. One glance in the mirror and Lauren could tell that today was going to be terrible, because her appearance was absolutely atrocious: her makeup was smeared across her eyes like a racoon, her raven locks were tangled beyond belief, and Lauren's complexion matched her pearl counter tops.

Lauren put her head in her hands, and silently asked herself what the hell happened last night.

Thankfully, her medicine cabinet was stocked with bottles upon bottles of Advil, so Lauren popped open the cap and swallowed two of the tiny pills completely dry. After that, she followed her usual morning routine of using the restroom, but she skipped the shower, because her level of energy was currently resting at a helpless infant. Lauren oozed toothpaste onto her electrical toothbrush, and scrubbed away the taste of alcohol and cherry lip balm from her mouth.

Lauren stumbled into the kitchen, slightly tripping over her high heels that she had kicked off the night before. Lauren shoved them out of the way with her foot, and continued making her way toward the fridge to retrieve one of her bottled ice coffees.

Before Lauren even had the chance to relax and try to melt away her hangover, a rapid knocking sounded at her front door.

"Who the fuck is it?" Lauren asked rudely, cradling her pounding head in her hands.

"It's Ally, and I'm letting myself in, we need to talk, now," Ally demanded, turning the key in the lock, and pushing open the door with so much force, Lauren jumped in her seat.

Ally rushed into the penthouse, her hands overflowing with papers and magazines. She released the load in front of Lauren, almost causing her coffee to spill onto the ground. Lauren glanced over the stack, which awkwardly hid Ally from sight.

"What's this?" Lauren queried, sweeping a magazine off the top of the stack.

The magazine was littered with the traditional garbage about various celebrity scandals and stories about finding the light, and then Lauren's eyes landed on the most blown up image on the front cover. Under the Star Magazine logo was Lauren, her face fallen, her eyes flickered up in an obviously drunk manor. These types of photographs had been released before, but unlike previous pictures, Lauren's hand was intertwined with Louis Tomlinson's.

"You think that's bad? Turn the page," Ally scowled, and Lauren hadn't seen her assistant this angry in a very long time.

Lauren flipped through the pages, and right on the hot gossip section were more photographs of Lauren, drunk out of her mind, holding hands with Louis Tomlinson, resting her head on Niall Horan, more pictures of Louis and Lauren in the limousine together, and worst of all, the photos of them holding hands outside of her apartment complex, entering together. Lauren sobered up pretty quickly when she feasted her eyes on the photographs.

"Oh my God," Lauren muttered out, eying the cheesy headline that read, Lauren Goes in More Than One Direction.

"This is bad Lauren, really bad! What the hell happened last night?" Ally asked, using her definition of strong language, and that's when Lauren knew that this was really serious.

Lauren racked her brain, trying to string together her memories from the night before, "We're all just friends, I promise. Nothing happened, we were just hanging out. Louis got worried because I got piss drunk, so he escorted me home. He left after putting me in the elevator, and, hold on," Lauren said, getting off the stool to retrieve her phone.

When Lauren returned, she pulled up the text message she sent to Louis the night previous, telling him that she had gotten up to her penthouse safely.