Ink ➳ Camren

Chapter Sixteen

All rights go to original author.

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The worst part of it all was that she didn't know why she had done it. Camila slumped over and let her forehead rest on the cold glass window. The landscape outside was nothing but a blur of shapes and colorless colors and she couldn't remember a time, there hadn't ever been one, when a train ride back to San Jose was the only thing that made any sense.

Nothing made any sense anymore; every thought, every moment was filled with green, covered in green, drowning in green. The entire week Camila couldn't see anything else; all the other colors of the spectrum had been faded out, muted, not even worth noticing any more. And that's why she was on this train. That's why she had packed a bag and bought a ticket to go home the second her last class was finished. She had practically sprinted out of that lecture hall and back to her room, not caring that her lungs were screaming at her to stop.

She couldn't spend one more second in San Francisco. She needed to go back home and see her mom. She needed to see Harry and get fucked up at Keith's bar and forget about the black haired girl she had left confused and halfway undressed on top of her bed on Monday night.

"Fuck." Camila said it in a whisper and squeezed her eyes shut. She silently scolded herself for the hundredth time that day for letting Lauren enter her thoughts again. She had no distractions on the train. In her rush to leave, Camila had forgotten her iPod and the book she was reading and all of her assignments and text books. So that left her with nothing but her thoughts to keep her occupied, thoughts of the last time she saw Lauren, the last time she had kissed Lauren and that hurt look in Lauren's eyes as she pushed her away.
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"We're going out tonight."

Lauren looked up from the book she was reading. Lily was leaning against the front desk, her cool hazel eyes trained on Lauren's tired green ones. "I can't." Lauren looked back down at the open page of the book in her lap. As she tried to find her place, she realized that even though her eyes had been scanning the words, she had no recollection of what she had been reading for the last twenty minutes. Her mind was occupied by thoughts of Camila, even though she was desperate to just push them out and forget about her altogether.

"We're going out." Lily flipped through the appointment book on the counter. "Our last appointment's at nine." Lily didn't need Lauren to confirm or agree. They were going out, they were going to get smashed, and Lauren was going to have fun.

Lauren closed her book and tossed it onto the coffee table. She got up from the couch and without saying a word to Lily or even looking at her; she grabbed her jacket off the coat rack and went outside.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was almost shining and the streets were busy with people coming and going. Lauren sat down on the stoop and pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her jacket, Camila's pack of cigarettes.

There was only one cigarette left in the pack; Lauren had been slowly working her way through them in secret. She had been so good not smoking or not smoking very much for the last four months, but on Tuesday when all her calls went straight to voicemail and all of her texts were left unanswered, she had reached into the pocket of her jacket and found them.

"I fucked it up." Lauren muttered under her breath and pulled the last cigarette from the pack. It wasn't the nicotine this time; it wasn't that nagging urge to light up. She just wanted the taste; she wanted the flavor of the smoke in her mouth.

Lauren took a long drag and instantly her lips were on Camila's again and her tongue was sliding against Camila's again and her hands were in her soft brown hair and she was breathing in Camila's breath. Lauren let her eyes close as a wave of heat rushed over her body. This had to stop.
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