All or Nothing

10

"You're getting pretty good at this, kid," Camila tells Leo later that week when she glances up at the painting he's been working on over their last few sessions. Each week she sees an improvement, and she knows that he must be practicing hard at home – she'd gotten a text from Lauren a couple of days ago asking where Camila bought her art supplies because Leo wanted some of his own to keep at their place. "Soon you'll be even better than me."

"Not possible," he argues, but he flushes at the praise, a shy, but beaming smile on his face as he drags his paintbrush in another long stroke against the canvas.

"Sure it is. I was around your age when I properly started to paint." She was lost and alone, spinning out of control even though the Cabellos did everything they possibly could in order to try and help her.

She knows that Leo has his own problems – he's quiet and shy and reserved and she knows that it affects him at school, even if he never mentions it to her. She'd been able to sense Lauren's elation at him being invited to a sleepover this weekend and suspected that it might just be his first. Camila wonders if painting offers him the same sense of freedom, of control, that it offered her in her darkest moments, and hopes that it might be able to help him in the way it had her.

"And if you keep at it," she tells him as she stretches her arms over her head and hears the joints in her shoulders pop, aching from a day of sitting in front of an easel, "then you could really be something someday. You have the talent."

"Thanks, Camila." His cheeks are an even brighter shade of red than before and Camila chuckles quietly as she rises quietly to her feet and heads towards the mini-fridge in one corner of the room for a bottle of water.

"Want anything?" She asks before she shuts the door, but he only shakes his head and she twists the lid off the bottle and takes a long gulp while she studies him for a few moments. "Leo?" He only hums, distracted and still engrossed in his work. "Can I ask you something? About... about your mom?"

That gets his attention, his head turning to look at her, blinking at her slowly as though he's trying to get his bearings, and Camila shifts her weight a little awkwardly before forcing herself back over to the chair beside Leo's.

"Yeah?" He looks a little uncertain, like he's unsure what she's going to ask, and honestly, Camila doesn't even know if she should, but...

"I... We're going out on Saturday. On a date. And I guess I just... I don't want to mess it up, you know? Your mom and I, we're pretty different." It was something Camila had thought about initially – the impossibility that someone like Lauren Jauregui could ever want her, but aside from feeling out of her depth at the gala, she hasn't given it much thought since.

But she and Lauren are from different worlds and Camila is terrified that Lauren's going to realize that and put an end to this before it can even truly begin.

"So I was just wondering if you could like... give me some tips, I guess. About what she likes. Places she goes to a lot."

"You're asking for dating advice from a thirteen year old?" Leo asks her dryly, sounding more like Lauren than Camila has ever heard him, and then it's her turn to flush. "Cause I've never been on a date, Camila."

"I... I know that." Leo's eyes glitter with amusement at her stuttering, and Camila huffs out a sigh, running a hand over her face. "I just... you know your mom better than anyone else in the whole world. I figure it wouldn't hurt to get your input on things."

Camila's been nervous before, but she's never felt quite this much anxiety over a date, never been so, so scared of messing it up, because she wants it to go well, she wants there to be a second date, and a third, and a whole lifetime of them, but she's convinced that Lauren will spend an hour with her and realize that they have nothing in common, and things will crash and burn.