Your Love Is My Drug (Camren)

17. The Great Escape

Chapter 17

The flight wasn't fine.

There wasn't even a small amount of turbulence for Lauren to be concerned over but instead was a couple of hours where she was heartbroken and confused while being stuck around strangers, where there was so much she had to talk about and think about that she hardly knew where to begin.

As it turned out, answers to her parents' plentiful questions didn't pour from her mouth after arriving at their house. She was tired. She was so unbelievably exhausted that all she wanted to was sit in between them on the couch with a blanket and an old musical on the TV while she fell asleep.

Lauren couldn't avoid their questions forever. Her parents didn't get through breakfast the next morning without discovering the truth and reaching to comfort their daughter. For the rest of the day they didn't talk about anything other than what events had led Lauren to the airport over the past couple of months.

As parents, they were concerned.

They grew less concerned with Camila the more questions Lauren answered in depth, and more concerned about her. Something that didn't help was Lauren's attention being pulled to her phone when they were trying to do what she obviously came to them for: help.

"Baby, don't answer that, we're talking," Clara said gently. "Troy can wait a little while."

Lauren looked at the caller ID and her chest grew tight all of a sudden. "It's Camila."

"Do you think she's calling to apologise?"

She nodded, her thumb hovering over the screen to accept the call.

"Will an apology fix anything?" Michael asked.

Right now, no, it wouldn't.

It was difficult, but Lauren declined it. She felt awful for doing so. A few moments later she noticed her mom talking to her but she hadn't taken any of it in and the look on her face told her so. She stopped, and she said, "I'm sorry, give me a second."

Clara was worried about the fast press of Lauren's thumbs as she composed a message. "Lauren, I know you're upset but you have to think about what you say before you talk to Camila. That's how you have to approach the situation you willingly walked into."

"I'm texting Nick. He can check on her." Almost as soon as she was finished, a new incoming call from Camila came through on her phone. Lauren was concerned as she always was for Camila, and she was no longer so angry at her after talking about it all day but she also knew it wasn't the right time to talk yet. She hated to think of Camila alone, so she asked Nick to go over. Lauren knew Camila would talk to him. Switching her phone off made her swallow guiltily and she switched it back on after a few minutes in case Nick called.

She would call Camila in a couple of hours when she went to bed. Maybe not to have the talk they needed to have, but to hear her voice and to explain and tell her that she was still there.

A little while later and her parents were still firing questions and opinions at her. Michael was trying to be supportive to her choices.

"As much as you want and do try to help Camila, you can't be the most important thing in her life. That's heroin. If at any point you feel like you're being used or taken advantage of, there's no shame in stepping back to work on yourself. That isn't being selfish, it's being smart."

"I know that, but I can't help but feel guilty for backing away for a couple of days," Lauren admitted. "And it's not just that, it's the fact that... my ability to help her and assess the situation objectively has been thrown out the window, if it was even there to begin with. I need a little quality time with with you guys to get things straight in my head again, that's all."