kik ➵ camren

eighteen

"Wait," I tugged at Dinah's arm as we made our way to the stage. "Please don't call them back. You can't call them back."

Dinah raised an eyebrow and shrugged my hand off as she continued walking without further acknowledgment of my words. I clenched my jaw in nervousness and turned to the most civil of the group, Ally.

"Tell Dinah not to invite those girls back," I muttered quickly in attempt to get it all out before we needed to perform. "Please, Ally."

"Dinah, don't invite those girls back," Ally repeated me, only altering her tone so she'd sound more stern than she looked. 

"Dinah, don't invite those girls back," The tallest muttered under her breath in amusement.

"Dinah, I'm serious, please don't," I begged, grabbing both girls' hands to stop them from further approaching the stage. 

"And why shouldn't I?"

"Because," I tried, only to find Dinah rolling her eyes and walking forwards again. "No wait, I'll tell you. Just stop walking."

"Okay," Dinah stopped in her spot, not bothering to turn to face me. "I'm listening. Make it quick."

"She doesn't know I'm, well, me," The youngest immediately turned to face me with a blank expression.

"You text her," Dinah stated dumbly.

"Yes."

"And you know each other," She continued.

"Yes, kind of. I don't know," I shrugged.

"She knows your name."

"Yes, not my last name, though."

"You've sent her selfies?" Dinah asked with skeptical eyes.

"Yeah."

"And she doesn't know you're Camila Cabello?" The blonde finished with raised eyebrows, I nodded. "How fucking dumb is she?"

"She's not dumb," I argued. "She's just a little slow, I guess."

"A little?"

"Okay, fine, a lot," I sighed. "But just tell them they won some random thing, I don't know. Don't mention me, or kik."

"Okay," Dinah nodded and looked at me in amusement. "I won't say anything, but they sure as hell are coming back."

I nodded and gave in to Ally's futile attempts at moving the two of us towards the stage entrance. We situated our in ears and mics before getting in our positions as the stage hands shuffled around to get lighting and effects right and in no time we were performing our introductory song.

***

"Alright, what's up Miami?" Dinah smiled as she interacted with the crowd while Ally and I grabbed stools for our next song. "So, as most of you know, it's Mila's birthday today. Can y'all make some noise for nineteen?"

I couldn't help the grin from forming on my face as the crowd erupted in chants and screams of everything from 'happy birthday' to the usual comments we'd grown accustomed to over the years. Then I remembered Lauren was here. In my mind searching for Lauren in the crowd seemed like a perfectly logical  idea since I knew the general area in which she was seated, but holy shit, was I wrong. There had to be over twenty thousand people in the audience and even when I only scanned the general area Lauren should be seated in there seemed to be countless faces amid the sea of excited fans.

"Okay, so apparently I was supposed to do the birthday thing at the end, so oops. We can finish that up later then," Dinah took her seat and shrugged while the crowd responded with more screams. "Anyways, the next song we'll be performing something Camila and I wrote with this kid, Kehlani, you might know her. It'll be on the next album, you should get it and all when its out- or illegally download it, just listen to it because I wrote it. So yeah, here we go," Dinah announced with a small, nervous smile before the beginning of the new track came pouring out of the speakers.

The rest of the night was a blur as we sang and performed our set list as we always did, only at the end had it changed. Dinah and Ally came out with a massive stuffed bear and a cake while they gave sappy speeches about the past year and what's to come in the future, asking the crowd to join them in singing me a happy birthday before the show ended all too quickly.

But that was the usual for every birthday I'd shared on stage- what made it different was the fact that I would be meeting the only person who I'd shared my true self with in a matter of minutes now. Someone who I'd come to admire a lot more than I'd like to admit.