Touched By You

"I think I did enough fighting for one lifetime, don't you?"

"You know, this kind of feels like you're being sly with Camila," Lucy nudged Lauren as they laid side-by-side. "Meeting in secret like this."

"I think she can let this slide." The green-eyed girl watched the twinkling of the night sky above their heads, knowing this couldn't be real but wishing with all her might that it was. "What do I do now, Luce?"

"I don't know," The older girl shrugged, her eyes as focused on the stars as Lauren's were. "You never died on me; not really. This is new territory for us."

"What would you do?"

"Drink. Smoke. I don't know," Lucy finally looked to her best friend. "I don't know what losing you feels like Lauren, I'm glad I never have to."

"You should've fought."

"I did."

"Not hard enough, not enough to stay." Lauren watched as the sky grew closer, the darkness taking over the blinking stars. "You should've stayed."

"I think I did enough fighting for one lifetime, don't you?" Lucy smiled at the girl beside her. "I think we both have."

"I need you." Lauren could see her best friend disappearing before her eyes. "I've always needed you, Lucy."

The older girl's eyes softened.

"I'm right here, Lauren."

Lauren jolted awake, her forehead matted in sweat and her breathing coming out in short bursts. For a moment her eyes flitted around the room as if Lucy would appear from thin air and make the nightmare that her life's become disappear.

But she was still on the couch with Leo on the floor beside her, the gaping hole in her chest opening up and widening at the realisation that her encounter with her friend had been a dream. It wasn't real. Lucy had never been there.

She stood from the couch, Camila's soft snores indicating the younger Cuban was still resting easy in their room. Lauren thought about peaking in but something stopped her. Since Lucy's heart stopped, it felt like Lauren's had as well. Nothing felt the same anymore.

It was like her entire soul had left her body and followed behind Lucy's.

Perhaps that's what it was like to lose a soulmate.

Because Lauren was sure, without a doubt, that Lucy had been hers. Not in the romantic sense, but in the sense that their souls were so intertwined that they could not live without one another. It's why the pull to be near each other had always been so strong. They couldn't leave one another behind.

Lauren wondered if her soul would ever return to the shell her body was starting to become.

She wondered if she would ever feel anything again.

She found herself perched on the balcony with a joint between her fingers, inhaling deeply and letting the effect of the drug swirl within her system. Her head soon feeling the familiar weightlessness she'd deprived herself of since her high school years.

She didn't quite know what bewildered her to decide to smoke, part of her thought that maybe it would bring her closer to Lucy. They'd always shared the habit in the past and smoking made Lauren think of the girl...it filled a fraction of the hole the girl had left behind.

I'm right here, Lauren.

The statement replayed over and over in her head until every puff of smoke morphed into Lucy's face and her lips began saying the words and Lauren was lost in what was real and what was not. The ache in her heart stopped lessening and instead became worse.