The sunlight chased shadows across the black carpet of the limousine as the vehicle pushed forward through mid-day traffic, and Lauren watched the moving patterns with mild interest before shifting her gaze to the window. Date. That was the word Camila had used and Lauren had echoed it, thinking it safe. But there was nothing safe about the way she felt around Camila, and especially about Camila, which made it all the more difficult to stop obsessing about word choice versus intent.
"The photos from today turned out great, by the way."
Lauren said nothing as the moments of silence ticked by. She didn't know how to express that she didn't care.
"And that photographer was pretty hot, huh?" Ally continued, simultaneously tapping away on the keys of her cell phone. "What was her name? Something exotic, I think."
"Jane," Lauren said, and almost smiled.
"Still, she was hot."
Lauren hadn't noticed. She vaguely recalled the lights shining down on her as she struggled to maintain a photogenic pose, listening as the woman's voice guided her from one captured moment to the next. She mostly remembered thinking about Camila. "How did you do it?"
Ally frowned as she looked up from her Blackberry. "Do what exactly?"
"Get over me." Lauren stared intently at her friend, searching for the answer in her eyes. "You said you'd liked me before... how did you get over me?"
"You're seriously asking me that question?" Ally sounded both startled and embarrassed. She looked away, as if debating whether or not to answer. And then, "There's no trick to it, Lauren. There's no one way to get over someone." She looked down at her phone again but made no move to resume typing on it. "I'm guessing that's what you're really asking."
"It is," Lauren admitted, and the thought that she might have offended Ally entered her mind. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked that."
"It doesn't matter."
"Of course it matters. Your feelings matter to me. Even the ones I didn't know about at the time."
Ally didn't respond right away, and the sound of surrounding traffic took the place of silence in the interim. "Lauren, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but... have you ever considered that maybe you only like Camila because you think you can't have her? That maybe you only allow yourself to feel something for her because you think it's safe?"
Safe; there was that word again, and Lauren frowned only briefly before resting her head against the window. She let the question loiter in the empty spaces of the limo as she watched the buildings pass. What was the purpose of finding reason to emotions? There was no such thing as safety where feelings were concerned. There was only the hope of love and the fear of love and both weighed down with equal force. "I can want her," she said finally, "and still fear having her."
"But would you still want her if you had her?"
"Yes," Lauren said easily, knowing it was true. "Not that there's any chance of that happening."
"You can't possibly know that."
"Well, I'd rather think that there isn't," Lauren admitted. "Even if she liked me... even if I could bring myself to hope that she'd return my feelings... what's the point? She'd always leave me in the end."
"Well, that's a dumb attitude."
"We're all with the bluntness today, aren't we?"
Ally shifted in her seat, looking serious. "Lauren, you can't go into a relationship thinking it's not going to last. Granted, odds are that it won't, but that's not to say that the journey to the breakup isn't meaningful. Just because two people find out that they're not made for each other after months of putting up with stuff like Mexican robots and impromptu penis rings doesn't mean the relationship was a total waste of time."
