Hate that I love you

xi

"... Okay. So,"

Camila feels the bed dip beside her and she looks up from the screen to see Lauren looking at her expectantly. "Can we talk?"

"But we're already talking." Camila's tone heightened in uncertainty and slight hint of playfulness, picking up a questionable tone, though stating the plain obvious.

Sinu and Alejandro left her alone an hour ago to run some errands. Camila wasn't at all surprised because they always do, and she wondered if they really have to, whether it is as important as they make it out to be- or that they merely needed an excuse to be far away from her.

The company was their first priority, not their daughter. She'd accepted that a long time ago.

Lauren came by at her place soon right after so they were pretty much alone, with a few of Camila's helpers somewhere around the mansion. She wasn't always technically alone, but Camila often feels lonely either way. Other than Alessia, the rest of their workers weren't exactly the best conversationalists.

"You were upset the other day, and told me we'd talk- So we're going to talk." Lauren reaches over to pause the movie and close the lid of Camila's laptop. She'd already given her enough time to prolong this, procrastinate as she tends to do so, and it was going okay- they were enjoying the movie somehow. But Lauren could still feel that slight tension in the air and she couldn't just brush it off. It was bothering her. She had a feeling Camila wouldn't have brought it up if she doesn't insist.

Camila blinked and glance down at her laptop, then back at Lauren, "Talk?"

"Yes. Talk." Lauren nodded her head, "I know you love elephants. Elephants are cute, but I'm sick of it squeezing in the room with us. It's suffocating."

Camila blinked. She opens her mouth, only to close again. Most likely trying to decide what to say, or whether she'd take it seriously or not.

She soon opted to gasp softly and defensively snatched her elephant stuffed toy beside Lauren, a pout on her lips and her eyebrows scrunched down as she caressed the elephant's head.

She took the latter.

"Are you talking about Ellie? Don't say that. You're hurting her feelings." She hugged it against her chest tightly to cover her ears, scooting away from Lauren with wide eyes, feigning shock and fear.

"Camz." Lauren practically cooed, because she's being cute again and can't not. An amused laugh then slips out of her lips, leaning in to take the stuffed animal and placed it back down on the bed between them. "Really. I'm serious." She couldn't be mad when Camila was being like this.

Camila bit her lip. "Okay." She nodded but didn't move from her spot, leaving a few decent spaces between them. She registered the solemnity of her tone and didn't think it'd be a good idea not to take it seriously.

"You wanted to talk about something." Lauren quirked an eyebrow- a motion to encourage her to speak up and crossed her legs, facing her body fully to her. "So.. You start?"

I start. How do I start this? She didn't think this far through when she texted that message.

Camila tries to make sense of what's running through her head, because so much words that was anything but sensible wanted to spill out- until she finally managed to speak out a fairly decent enough explanation.

Although It turns out to be a bit of a mess still, it at least wasn't completely sculpted with lies to cover herself up. She tried to be as honest as possible, because she could see that Lauren was trying to fix whatever was broken between them. She wasn't going to lie and say there's nothing to fix.