Talk Me Down (Camren)

Chapter Two

Her first week at school goes by successfully – she doesn't run into any of her other old bullies and Lauren still doesn't recognise her – and her family have noticed that her mood is significantly brighter as of lately. She's settled into a little routine; her mom drops her off at school on a morning, she meets up with Dinah and everyone before classes, hangs in the art room at break and lunchtime and gets a ride home from Lauren after school.

In fact, she prefers being in Miami to being in California, which is something she never thought was possible.

She gets into her pyjamas straight after school on Friday and plans on a quiet weekend in watching television and scrolling through Tumblr. It goes as any regular Friday does – she eats dinner with her parents, entertains Sofi for a little while and then makes her way up to her bedroom to binge Netflix and scroll through Tumblr.

It's around 6:30PM when she hears a knock on her bedroom door.

She's a little surprised – her mom doesn't tend to knock, her dad never comes up to her room and Sofi bursts in and jumps on her when she wants to play. "Come in."

The door pushes open and Dinah, Normani, Ally and Lauren all walk into her bedroom and see her lying in bed in her pyjamas at 6PM on a Friday night. Great.

Dinah laughs. "Comfy there, Walz?"

Camila is a little taken aback by the nickname, and decides to play it cool. "Yeah, actually. What can I do for you guys?"

She glances up at Lauren and is thankful that she hadn't taken her makeup off or her contacts out – the last thing she wants is a sudden realisation that Lauren knew her before. Especially not when things had been going so well between them.

"Well, pretty much every Friday night we have a ritual hangout at one of our houses. It's like tradition." Normani explains. "And we figured that we should come over and see if you wanted to chill with us. Lauren messaged you on Facebook but you hadn't opened it yet when we set off."

Camila reaches over and grabs her phone, spotting two notifications. One is a Facebook notification that reads 'Lauren Jauregui has accepted your friend request', and the other is a message.

Lauren Jauregui (6:12PM): We're all hanging out tonight, do you want to come?

Camila looks up and sends Lauren an apologetic smile. "Sorry. My phone is practically always on silent."

"Don't worry about it." Lauren flashes her a smile. "I was planning on waiting until you responded, but Dinah and Normani decided that we should show up at your house and ask you."

"In our defence, Mila probably wouldn't have replied to your message until like 10PM or something." Normani fires back.

Ally laughs. "Y'all are crazy. I bet Camila thinks we're weird for just showing up unannounced."

"Technically it wasn't unannounced." Dinah counters, pointing to Lauren, "Lauser messaged her. It's not our fault that Mila didn't look at her phone."

Camila laughs at their little dispute. "Well, what were you guys planning on doing tonight?"

"We were going to go to Lauren's and watch horror movies, but we might as well stay here now." Normani explains. "If that's cool."

"And if you want to hang out with us." Ally adds, turning to Normani, "We can't just knock on Camila's door and expect her to let us stay here."

Normani rolls her eyes in response. "Chill, mom."

Camila smiles. "I'd like to hang out with you guys. It's fine if you want to stay here too, my parents or sister shouldn't bother us."