XYXX (Camren)

Chapter 9

“I think I fucked up.” Lauren said, entering Normani’s room and closing the door behind him.

“What did you do, Jauregui?” Normani asked.

“Okay, you have to believe me when I said I seriously thought this mall thing was a platonic thing but when we were there, she said something about it being a date so I think it was a date, but I didn’t shoot it down or anything, because thinking back on it, it was definitely a date, and I didn’t want to be rude or anything, and I was really enjoying myself and I didn’t want to ruin the whole day because of my misunderstanding and –“

“Woah, stop right there.” Normani said, cutting off Lauren’s rambling. “So what you’re telling me is you were on a date with Ariana.”

“I mean, technically, but I swear I didn’t know.” Lauren groaned, lying down next to Normani. “I may have fucked up.”

“Okay, okay, calm down. Tell me what happened.”

“I mean, we were texting since the party and we met up at the mall. I ended up buying her records, only because she told me she had a player and no records, and that’s, like, a cardinal sin. Then she ended up buying me frozen yogurt, we window shopped for a little longer, and then she had to go to the studio so we promised to hang out again later this week. Was it a date?”

“Total date.” Normani said with a shake of her head.

“Damn it.” Lauren said. “How do I fix this?”

“Well, first, what’s broken about it? What are you trying to fix?”

“…I don’t know.”

“Did you not have fun today?”

“No, I had a lot of fun. I mean, I really enjoyed myself, like, I didn’t have to really think about anything but the moment, and it was nice.” Lauren sighed. “I don’t know, I just feel horribly guilty about it all.”

“If you’re not doing anything wrong, why should you feel guilty?”

“I don’t know. I’m lying to her, aren’t I?”

“Are you? When you’re Laurence, you’re Laurence, aren’t you? You’re not wearing a disguise or anything. You just… are.”

“Yeah, I know, but something else feels really weird. I just can’t put a name on it.” He groaned.

“That is something you’ve got to figure out on your own.” Normani sighed, giving him a knowing look.

“I hate that look. That look means you know something I don’t.”

“I don’t know anything you don’t already know, so maybe do a little more thinking.” Normani said, tapping Lauren on the forehead. “You could do with a little more thinking.”

---

The first thing Lauren did when he entered his hotel room was shove the Beyonce album in one of his shelves. There wasn’t really a reason for him to not leave it on her bed for her to see, but something about it felt contrived. He lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling, ignoring the phone notifications going off in his pocket. There was a strange numbness about him that he couldn’t shake. After the third alert, he finally pulled out his phone and scrolled through the texts Ariana had sent him.

“Had a really fun time tonight.”

“Listening to the albums… they’re good!”

“Uh oh.”

He smiled slightly at the first two texts but furrowed his eyebrows at the last one, sent a good twenty minutes after the others. He hastily wrote out a response.