don't say you love me... | camren au

...without tomorrow too

A/N: Last chapter :)

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"Marry me."

They are the words that make Camila think back to everything that's happened.

Not just in the past few months. She remembers everything. Since the beginning.

She thinks about the day she met the girl in front of her. The girl who has just proposed. Lauren Jauregui.

She thinks about how the two of them were barely freshmen in college when they did. Having the same classes. How there were thousands of people around them, yet they only saw each other. Call her crazy, but she knew back then that they were going to be something special. It took them years, yes, but here they are.

She thinks about the day they started their relationship. How they were clumsy messes, not being able to voice a single thought coherently. Everything was lip bites and blushes. It took them weeks of dating. Of hiding what they felt. Eventually, though, they did somehow admit their feelings. It was weird, ridiculous, almost, the way they trembled and couldn't say one sentence without messing it up. It was weird – how neither of them really wanted to say anything in the first place, in fear their feelings, their desires weren't reciprocated.

At the time, Camila wasn't sure if it, their relationship, was going to be anything to remember. Especially not years later, but– here she is. And, quite honestly, she's loving the thought of still being able to tell what she went through with Lauren. And– not only what she went through, no, howshe went through it, too. She remembers being a nervous wreck around Lauren at any given time. It makes her feel like this – this thing she shares with Lauren – is so much more, so much better than anything she could have ever even imagined.

She thinks about the day she knew something had changed. When she found Lauren on a park bench for the first time. High as shit. She was incredibly mad at her girlfriend because the girl hadn't talked to her, hadn't told her she smoked.

How she hadn't told her she only did it to feel less depressed.

Because, if Lauren had told her, Camila could have understood. Would have.

She now feels embarrassed. For always yelling at Lauren for making those wrong choices. Always yelling at her for smoking, for starting to drink, for hanging with the wrong crowds. For sitting on a park bench, high, without caring if anyone sat next to her; without caring if anyone did morethan just sit next to her. For getting mad at Lauren for everything when she, herself, didn't understand, when she, herself, didn't ask, when she, herself, didn't want to ask.

Yeah, she's mad at herself for only seeing what she wanted to see, for drawing conclusions she shouldn't have drawn.

She now realizes that it wasn't fair on her side, either. She always blamed Lauren for the end of their relationship. But now– she doesn't. Not anymore. Maybe, just maybe, if she had asked, at least once, she could have supported Lauren. Again, she could have understood her. But she didn't. And, as hard it is to admit to herself, she definitely didn't do everything right at the time.

So here she is. Realizing that, for a long time, she blamed Lauren. Lauren alone. She didn't stop for even one second to ask herself if maybe, just maybe, she was to blame, too.

And she's embarrassed. Just because she doesn't know what it's like to be an alcoholic – just because she didn't know what Lauren was going through at the time, because she didn't know what it meant to have an addiction you couldn't control – doesn't mean she had the right to– to do everything she did.