Three Is A Crowd

Chapter 7: Fake Love

After the unusually friendly night they shared together, one would think that Camila and Lauren would tolerate each other better now, since they have had a very civil moment, after all.

Well, one couldn't have been more wrong.

Lauren is back to ignoring her again; her logic is that if she does that, then her silly little crush will vanish. Okay, no, she needs to clarify that it's not a crush. It's just an appreciation of Camila's assets like her legs, her butt, her pretty face, and gorgeous jawline; you know, just a normal response of a human being who could appreciate beauty when she sees it. So, in her assessment, if she ignores Camila enough and pick on her extra harder, she will eventually trick her mind into thinking that she doesn't like Camila at all. Mind over matter, that kind of thing.

Camila, on the other hand, wakes up excitedly with the thought that she's finally getting along with Lauren. And when she happily greets her 'Good Morning!', shock reverberates all throughout her body when Lauren responds in her usual sarcastic tone, and that's when Camila knows that it was all too good to be true.

Lauren is a bitch, and she'll always be a bitch, that's what she has come to realize and which she has to accept.

And so they part ways wearing a scowl and a frown, and both of them wishing they don't bump into each other today since they don't have English and Philosophy classes on Fridays.

Of course, fate has something else planned for them.

It's a typical Friday night and almost half of the student body are flocking towards the Delta Omega Gamma house because everybody who's anybody know that this is the place to be. A DOG party is where magical things happen, and that's why, as unusual as it sounds, Lauren and Camila, of their own accord but definitely not something they would prefer, find themselves in the same place other than their suffocating dorm room.

Obviously, they have different reasons for being at the party.

For Lauren, a raging party means raging horny people and that means more ass at her disposal. Meanwhile, Camila, despite her innate aversion to loud places and sweaty people acting like cave-people high on stone-age shrooms, is simply here because Dinah forced her to come with, and also, she wants to spend time with Kels.

It turns out, the quality time Camila was daydreaming about is basically impossible since her somewhat-boyfriend is nowhere to be found, and he's not texting back.

Looking around, she sees Dinah dancing with some guy on the makeshift dance floor, and Camila sighs dejectedly because why does she always feel alone in a crowded room? Is there a place here on earth, aside from a quiet bathroom or a Lauren-less dorm room, where she feels like she truly belongs? Is there something wrong with her?

She walks - or more like squeezes through a bunch of drunken strangers - towards where she assumes she could breathe more freely, but then she sees Lauren with a girl blocking the path she was about to take. Well, technically, she couldn't see Lauren's face because it's glued to the blonde bimbo's neck, but she can always pinpoint anywhere that messy tangle of dark hair, those thick eyebrows that's the only exposed part of her face at this moment, and her trademark leather jacket probably emitting that unmistakeable scent of arrogance and bisexuality.

She's not even aware that she has stopped walking and she's standing there just staring like a nincompoop. And it's like Lauren has this inexplicable spider sense because she suddenly glances up, while her lips are still mauling the girl's neck, and she stares directly at Camila with an undeniable humor in her eyes, and, boy, Camila has never swerved so hard in her life like she just did now. So hard that she almost had her face permanently implanted into the very sweaty hairy chest of a shirtless Jedd the Cokehead, and she barely manages to squirm her way out of his embrace before he tries to sell her drugs.