My Favorite Camren One-Shots (Part 3)

The Sky's the Limit

Lauren kind of knows it's wrong the second the words are out of her mouth. She can feel Camila's eyes burning a hole into the side of her face and in her head the alarm bells go off.

"And what's your friend's name?" Her co-worker with the dimples asks Lauren, although he's looking at Camila while he says it. What Lauren shoulddo right now is just tell him she misspoke.

Tell him that Camila is not a friend, Camila is her girlfriend.  Emphasis on should. Because what Lauren actually does is tell him that her friend's name is Camila, ignoring the way Camila is still glaring at her and the way her heart is beating in her throat.

*

"Do you want something to drink?" Lauren knows Camila can hear the way her voice trembles.

She'd tried to walk slower on the way back to her apartment, insistent on prolonging the inevitable. It hadn't worked, obviously. And now they're here, in Lauren's apartment and Lauren just knows she's not ready for what's about to happen.

"Lauren, what the fuck was that?" Camila sounds angry. She always sounds angry these days. Lauren doesn't try to think about the fact that the only thing she seems to feel these days is fear.

"I don't know." Lauren says, because it's the truth. It only seems to make Camila angrier, though. She's glaring at Lauren with this look in her eyes that just screams exasperation and exhaustion and this fury that Lauren didn't even know the other girl was capable of.

"What do you mean you don't know. Why the hell did you tell that guy that I was your friend? Why do you insist on doing this every time we meet someone?" Lauren doesn't know what to say. Her heart feels heavy and her head feels fuzzy and she's desperately trying to find something to say that could make this better, but she comes up empty.

"I just—I didn't—I don't know!" Lauren knows she probably sounds pathetic. It's just that there's this fear gripping Lauren's heart and all she wants to do is calm Camila down and talk about this like rational adults, but Lauren doesn't know how.

"Lauren, I can't keep doing this all the time. I can't be the only one that puts in effort only for you to pretend we're not even together." That's not true, Lauren thinks.

"That's not true." Lauren says therefore. "No, Camila, that's bullshit." Lauren knows she sounds angry. Kind of wants to sound angry, if that at least makes her voice stop trembling. "I put in effort, okay. I put in so much effort and I try so hard and you don't even notice. You never fucking notice." Lauren tries so hard. Sometimes she practices it in front of the mirror, saying 'Camila is my girlfriend' over and over and over again. Every time the words roll of her tongue, she gets this tiny tingly feeling at the base of her stomach. It feels nice, knowing she can say that. And then she meets someone and it just—it gets stuck somewhere between her brain and her mouth and while she tries to say 'Camila is my girlfriend' it comes out as 'this is my friend, Camila.' Lauren doesn't even know why it happens. All Lauren knows is that she doesn't think she's ever been this in love with anyone ever and the entire thing feels bigger than Lauren herself and it's scary. All Lauren knows is that it's scary, but that she's never been so glad to be scared.

"Maybe that means something." Camila says. The anger has left her voice, it's replaced by something much more frightening to Lauren. Something akin to giving up.

"What are you talking about?" She says instead, voice harder than she wants it to be. Camila looks away, rolls her shoulders uncomfortably.

"Maybe it shouldn't be this hard, Lauren. Maybe the fact that we need to try so hard to make this work means that—maybe it shouldn't really work at all." Lauren's heart feels like it stops. No, actually, that's not right. Lauren's heart kind of just feels like it disappears from her chest, leaving behind this giant gaping hole of nothing.

"Are you—Are we breaking up?" Lauren's voice trembles again, raspy and breaking over one simple sentence. Lauren never knew what she was scared of, but she knows that this is scarier than anything she could've possibly imagined.

"I guess so, yeah." Lauren can't do anything, just stares at Camila with these wide eyes. She doesn't even know what happened, didn't even realize this was an option.

"I—that's—Camz." Lauren looks at Camila with what she's sure is an almost desperate look in her eyes, says it with a desperate tilt to her voice. Camila just looks back with something that Lauren is pretty sure is pity.

Three days later, Lauren is staring down the highway through the window of a rental van, on her way to New York City.

 *

New York is like a breath of fresh air for Lauren. It's big and new and a little bit scary, but there's days where she's not even reminded of Camila once and she counts that as a victory.

Lauren finds a place to stay through craigslist. Her mother yells at her for an hour when she says she's going to move in with three girls she's never met before in a neighborhood that's certainly less-than-exemplary, but Lauren goes anyway. Lauren would probably go even if she would be forced to live in a crack-house somewhere. Lauren is just desperate to get out of Miami, where it seems like Camila's scent hangs in the air everywhere.

So that's how she ends up meeting Normani, Dinah and Ally. They take her in like she's a little puppy that they found on the streets and act like they've known her forever. They don't ask too many questions about why she's come to New York, allow Lauren to wallow in her room for two weeks.

The third week marks a change. It's Saturday night, the 16th night Lauren is spending in her new apartment. She's laying on her back in her bed, laptop propped up on her feet and Camila's Facebook page open in front of her. The box of tissues on her nightstand is almost empty, again. She's just trying to recall both when she last ate something and when she last had any human contact, when someone comes barreling through her door.

"Lauren whatever-your-last-name-is, you get your ass up and into a cute outfit because we're going out!" One of her roommates, Dinah-Jane, is yelling at her from a few feet away. Lauren is honestly a little shocked, doesn't even know how to reply at first.

"My last name is Jauregui. It was on the form-thing I filled out? I literally gave that to you like two weeks ago?" It's not really an answer to anything important that Dinah had said. Lauren doesn't really give a shit. She kind of just wants her roommate to leave her alone.