A Simple Folded Paper

49

It was now Christmas Eve. Camila woke up early that day, not by choice but because she couldn't sleep. It was weird to wake up on that day and not have her mother calling her because breakfast was ready and Camila had to hurry up or her pancakes and bacon would get cold. It was weird not helping her dad decorate the tree and even weirder not jumping on his back to put the star on the top. It was all so weird in general, not having her parents by her side. Luckily, she felt integrated with Lauren's family. Over the weekend, Camila helped Lauren and her dad put up lights around the exterior of the house and on the porch and helped Hannah garnish the Christmas tree and wrap her own presents that consisted of drawings. The only one getting a real present from Hannah was Lauren, who Camila helped buy in one of their trips to the mall.

On the last week, Camila tried to go visit her mother as often as she could but a part of her was pleading not to go. It still hurt to see her mother in that condition when her father was already living a life like nothing had happened. After the incident and the court's decision for the man to wait for his trial at home with an electronic bracelet, multiple relatives had contacted Camila's grandparents to know what happened. Of course, none of them contacted Camila herself to ask if she was okay, not that they could though, Camila still didn't have a phone and they didn't know where she was living or with whom.

On one of the day that her grandparents had paid a visit, they told her all the comments the rest of the family had made concerning to what had happened to her. To Camila's surprise, they were all pretty angry at Camila's father and we're offering sincere apologies for what had happened. Before leaving, her grandmother made sure to remember Camila to spend the Christmas with them.

Camila had to agree, unfortunately. She wanted to spend the Christmas with the people who she could call a family for the last weeks, who took her in their home, gave her food, attention and were there for her. But family was family and Camila felt obligated to go to her aunt's house, even because Lauren, her dad, and Hannah were going the girls' grandmother's house for Christmas too.

After a couple of minutes just staring at the ceiling, thinking of how she was going to bear spend a full day with people feeling pity of her, she rolled to her side to try and get back to sleep because she still had a few hours before she actually had to get up. To her surprise, she found her girlfriend staring at her.

"Hey", Lauren greeted softly, yawning in the end.

"Hey, did I wake you up?", Camila asked, gently caressing Lauren's cheek.

Lauren closed her eyes and leaned into Camila's touch, feeling the caress lullabying her back to sleep. "I don't think so", she whispered. "When I opened my eyes you were already staring at the ceiling. I thought you were sleeping with your eyes open", she continued, chuckling at the end.

"Nah, I was just thinking."

"About what?", Lauren asked, opening her eyes. She wanted to give Camila her full attention, sleep could wait.

"About everything, I guess."

Lauren grabbed Camila's hand and kissed all her 5 knuckles. "C'mon", she said and kissed Camila's nose, "let's go downstairs and make you some breakfast to get your mind out of those things, what do you say?"

Camila's frown immediately turned into a smile, Lauren always had that effect on her. "Sure."

~

After eating some breakfast, both girls went to the couch to watch some cartoons. Lauren fell asleep almost instantly and Camila just let her be. Almost every night since the situation, Camila had struggled with, at least, a nightmare at night, and Lauren had struggled with the same. Not that she had nightmares but she usually woke up to Camila screaming or moving a lot on the bed. Camila always cried in Lauren's chest after and they spent an hour or two just talking until Camila went back to sleep and Lauren let herself do the same. Camila always knew that Lauren was sleeping much less due to that and figured that she could let Lauren sleep that morning. She deserved it, so why not?