Gold Dust Woman

Chapter 2

Dammit Lauren.

Camila's chest cracked open as she read and reread the words on the note. I told her about you too. It was so cliche and so stupid but so, so Lauren. She felt kind of like she needed to throw up, and kind of like laughing, and kind of like she just wanted to toss the whole box in the trash and go to bed. But her chest split in two at the acknowledgment and suddenly she was sixteen years old, singing yet another song she wrote about Lauren fucking Jauregui into her Garageband app. She hadn't been able to look at the moon without thinking of Lauren since then.

Tears pooled along her eyelids and she had to blink a few times before she realized they weren't sad tears - they were angry tears. She wasn't completely innocent in the whole situation, she knew that, but Lauren had ripped Camila's heart out and stomped on it so many times it wasn't even the right shape anymore. It didn't fit in her chest and it beat without rhythm, and on the bad nights, she could still feel Lauren's hand wrapped around it, squeezing until she had to go hang her head over a toilet. Lauren, and her I love yous mixed with don't fucking touch mes; Lauren and her you're my world babys followed with this means nothings; Lauren god damn Jauregui and her perpetual cocktails of yes and no and maybe that Camila spent four years wasted on

She was so tired of being the yoyo tied around Lauren's finger, and yeah, maybe she did cut off her circulation, maybe sometimes she waited too long before coming back up, maybe sometimes she even cut the string before begging to tie another knot, but that didn't give Lauren the right to show up on her doorstep with a necklace and a note Camila would've sold her whole soul for a year ago.

There were just too many knots in the string for them to keep playing with the same damn yoyo.

Camila grabbed the necklace in her fist, not bothering to wipe her tears. They burned, like acid, dripping down her cheeks as she stormed outside. She didn't feel self conscious anymore. If anyone could make cartoon shorts, banana socks, swollen eyes and a messy bun look intimidating, it was Camila Cabello. She was too mad to feel inferior next to Lauren.

Lauren was no goddess, no matter how much 15-year-old Camila swore she was.

Lauren was not the sun.

"How fucking dare you, Lauren," Camila yelled, her voice scratchy, to the figure leaning against her car in the dark just outside of the apartment complex. Lauren tilted her head, releasing a long stream of smoke from her nose. She dropped the cigarette on the ground, stepping on it with her boot before taking a few steps forward. She hated herself for the millisecond of hesitation that came when Lauren's eyes met hers. Camila had always hated the dark, always hated smoke, always hated games, but there it all was right in front of her, wrapped in leather and signed in red lipstick - somehow the embodiment of everything she hated was the only thing she'd ever loved.

"Camz, what are you-"

"No. You don't get to do that anymore. You don't get to show up at my apartment in the middle of the night, you don't get to use that nickname or give me jewelry or tell me happy birthday. And you sure as hell don't get to leave me notes about the fucking moon." Camila was surprised at how steady her voice was, despite how much her body was trembling. Lauren looked surprised too, and maybe because it was the first time Camila had really yelled at her, or maybe it was because she knew Camila was right. Either way, Camila had said what she needed to say. But she didn't feel finished.

When it came to Lauren, she never felt finished. There was a part of her that thought they'd still feel unfinished even as they were both rotting in a grave.