Your Love Is My Drug (Camren)

2. Crash Landing

Chapter 2

The next time she visited, Lauren wasn't sure if Camila was out or if she was ignoring her on purpose. She sat leaning against the door for thirty minutes until one look outside the hallway window told her that it was getting dark out.

Not having a death wish, and also having some idea of how her presence would have been received in the first place, Lauren had gone prepared. She pushed an envelope with all of her contact information inside underneath the door, including the location of the studio where she would be spending a lot of her time for the next couple of months.

She told Camila she would see her soon.

As soon as clicked footsteps on the other side of the door got quieter, Camila pulled the envelope closer and placed her coffee back on the floor she was sat on as she flicked through various cards. Lauren sure was being persistent. She had given her the address of her apartment building. Camila wasn't familiar with it but she took a wild guess and assumed it would have a doorman at the very least.

"You'll get bored." Camila said out loud.

She sat there enough to be certain that Lauren was long gone and then grabbed her jacket on the way out. Camila needed to get away from this for a night. A day of Lauren Jauregui back in her life was enough to send her certifiably insane. She'd have to make sure the message to leave her alone was crystal clear the next time Lauren felt like dropping by.

It was a chilly night for mid-August.

Camila walked four blocks with her hands stuffed inside her jacket pockets, head held high to anyone who dared to look her in the eyes. As far as she was concerned, only pussies stared at the floor and avoided eye-contact in that neighbourhood. Camila didn't consider herself to be one of those and neither did anyone who thought they knew her.

She arrived at a building and spotted Jackson, one of the regulars and her best friend, sitting on the steps. He was in his late fifties and had one of the deepest, smoothest voices she'd ever heard. Camila had asked him to sing for her once and found that Jackson couldn't hold a tune to save his life. He'd asked her to sing in return and Camila told him to get bent.

She stroked his shaved head on the way past. "How you doing, Jackie?"

"Good, baby," he answered weakly, offering her a smile that creased his dark skin. "You?"

"I will be."

Camila walked inside the building and glanced inside different rooms as she walked past, seeing strangers and people she knew in various stages of a high. She felt antsy, eager to find Francis. In his own way, Francis made everything better. He was the healer. Camila had known him for three years and had initially been drawn to him because of his Irish accent and how much he seemed to know, about anything at all. Ten years older than her, she enjoyed his wisdom and dependability. He could do anything.

Camila knew Francis was difficult with other people, so she was grateful he seemed to take a liking to her right off the bat. The first time Camila had met him -accidentally, outside getting some air at yet another party she drank too much at, he'd looked at her in amazement. 'God, you're Hot,' he'd said. But just two months later, frustrated with the way alcohol wasn't taking the edge off anymore and the way that it wasn't fun at all most of the time, Camila found herself in his bed late on a Friday night.