Growing Pains (A Transferred Camren Fic)

Chapter 18

woo! Here it is. Sorry I haven't updated in a long while.

At first she's all kinds of nervous, seeing Lauren for the first time in almost a week is causing her to second guess her decision on actually going to this barbeque. Nevertheless, here she is in the car with her parents listening to them drone on and on about nothing of particular interest to her. That is until her mother turns in her seat and eyes her daughter through her Jackie O esque sunglasses.

"I sincerely hope you don't plan on being buddy, buddy with Lauren today, Dinah. Especially after she broke it off with you." Her mother comments with disdain and it's not lost on anyone in the car what the woman truly means to say. "It'll make our family look like beggars." She adds while facing forward once again to leave her daughter in confusion.

Instead of responding to her mother's poor excuse for 'mother-daughter bonding time', she rolls her eyes and stares out the window taking notice of the street sign indicating Lauren's block. Her heart begins to beat a little faster than it already was and she wipes her sweaty palms onto the fabric covering the back seat of the car.

It seems as though everyone else has arrived and just like always the Hansen's are late. Dinah inwardly rolls her eyes but slaps a smile on her face when her mother tells her that 'Hansen's don't wait for people, they keep people waiting'. She still doesn't think her mother knows that practically everyone at this barbeque can't stand her, but then again she wonders if her mother would even care. She shrugs those thoughts away because it's time, it's now or never, like Camila said, 'start from scratch'.

She follows her parents along the side of the house and glances ever so briefly to her left where Lauren's house is. Dinah knows the girl's not by a window watching her, she's in the very yard she and her family are about to enter, but she can't help but look at the house that she'd practically all but lived at for nearly a whole year.

The first person she see's beyond her parent's figures is Camila and the brunette has a rather strange facial expression on and even more odd, it's kind of aimed towards her. But once her mother steps to the side her eyes land on the back of the exact person she's been waiting to see, Lauren. Pushing Camila's questionable stare to the side she slaps on that sweet grin of her own and makes her way towards Lauren.

"Hey Lauren." she says, stepping up to Lauren and tucking a few stray hairs behind her ear. Lauren smiles back at her but looks seemingly preoccupied, her head looking as though it wants to turn in the other direction.

"Uh, hey, can you... I'll be right back." She holds her hand up to Dinah, the universal sign for 'one moment' and the blonde can do nothing but smile some more and nod.

With Lauren's back to her she quirks one of her perfectly shaped eyebrows while watching Lauren disappear through the sea of neighbors and classmates families. She doesn't want to put too much thought into Lauren's quick getaway, it's entirely possible she had caught her at a bad time, maybe she had been on her way to do the very thing she just left to take care of.

With a sigh, Dinah wanders around the backyard, doing everything in her power to avoid Shawn at all costs. Ever since she had sex with him he thinks there's something going on between them. Truth is the only reason she had sex with Shawn is because she wanted to make Lauren jealous. It's stupid and juvenile but it seems like that's what a broken heart does to a person.

She's kind of hoping to get a moment alone with Lauren, to apologize for the way she acted at Normani's party and for dropping that information on her in the middle of said party. It wasn't really the nicest thing to do but she was hurting, she's still hurting. Maybe Camila is right and that they can start from scratch, begin something new between them and possible rekindle something that they lost along the way.