off camera.

chapter fourteen

posting this in honour of me turning 21 today lol i'm elderly

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Lauren rushes to answer the front door when there's a knock, pushing Keana out of the way and pulling it open. She grins, acting like she totally hadn't sprinted all the way there. "Hey!"

"Hi," Camila smiles, stepping inside and shutting the door behind them. Almost straight away, she holds her phone up, pulling Lauren close and taking a few pictures. Then, she pushes her away, takes one look at her outfit and announces, "Go change."

Lauren's face falls. Did Camila not like her outfit? She'd been throwing things out of her closet all day, stressing over what to wear, because Camila had texted, telling her that she's craving nachos so they're going to get some before heading to the party, which meant the beautiful white dress that Camila had gotten her for Christmas was off the table.

"Um... why?" Lauren asks, smoothing out her outfit. "Don't you like what I'm wearing?"

"It's beautiful, but I literally bought a dress for you to wear to this, and I'm pretty sure I told you to wear it in the card," Camila points out, grabbing Lauren by the shoulders and pushing her towards her bedroom. "Go put it on."

"But we're getting nachos, I don't want to get it dirty," Lauren pouts, resisting slightly as Camila pushes her forwards. "It's white, I can't get cheese all over it."

Camila shrugs. "Sounds like a you problem. Now go put it on, it's just polite, I'm wearing the lovely earrings you bought for me."

Lauren sighs, and she knows that Camila can be stubborn when she wants to be. After another encouraging nudge from the younger girl, she nods, "Alright, I'll go change."

Camila smiles satisfactorily. "Thank you, princesa. I know you'll look gorgeous."

Lauren's stomach squirms at the pet name, and she turns away under the guise of heading to her room to change. "I'll be right back."

Once she's shut her bedroom door behind her and she's safely out of view, she sighs, running a hand through her hair. She's an idiot for acting like that had an effect on her; it had, but she doesn't want Camila to know that. She knows she's being ridiculously obvious; she's almost kissed Camila about five times now, and made obvious hints on social media that Camila can't not have picked up on, and she promises herself that she's going to reign it in. Sure, they flirt, but it doesn't mean Camila really reciprocates, and she can't blame her after everything that happened last time. Camila will have bad memories, and she's not surprised that a friendship is all she'd want. She doesn't want to push any feelings she might be having onto her.

Maybe you can find someone else to kiss at midnight, someone fun, something casual, so you can stop thinking about Camila for a little while, Lauren thinks to herself, there's bound to be a cute guy or girl at the party who you could hook up with.

It doesn't feel right, because there's nobody she wants to be with except Camila, but she isn't going to make that first move. She feels incredibly guilty with the way everything went down before, and she finds it hard to believe that Camila would trust her enough to go to that next level when Lauren had practically stolen her first kiss while high.

When she thinks about that, she feels the heavy guilt in the pit of her stomach, and tries to push it away. Changing quickly, she looks herself over in the mirror, smoothing out the dress and wondering why Camila would treat her to something like this.

"Are you ready?" The younger girl asks, and at the sound of her voice through the door, Lauren takes one last look at herself and nods. You can get over her. It'll be hard, but you've gone through worse. You've gotten over worse, too.