Don't Touch Me

"Breathe for me, Camila."

"Yeah, Camila Cabello, I'm here."

There were so many things Camila knew she felt but the unknown were the ones that caught her short.

There was Lauren.

On the phone to her.

Finally.

After three months of silence.

"I don't really know why I'm calling. How are you?"

"I-uh-Lauren-you-"

"This wasn't a good idea, was it?"

"Don't hang up!" Camila blurted out quickly, looking around her at the people's eyes she'd drawn before making a beeline for the nearest rest room.

She'd been out shopping with Dinah after the Polynesian had spent half an hour trying to convince her. Ally and Normani ended up tagging along and suddenly things felt like old times again for the gang.

Until Camila excused herself from their early dinner after catching Lauren's caller I.D. on her phone.

"You still there?" Camila couldn't believe how hard she was pressing her phone to her ear, as if the very action would have her teleported to exactly where Lauren was.

"How's Sofi?" The husky voice on the other line asked.

"She's okay, she was sad about...she's okay."

"And Al?"

"Can we stop?" Because Camila was feeling more than a little overwhelmed and this forced normalcy in the conversation was nauseating. "Just..." Suddenly she was short of breath because this was something she'd been wishing for since the second she got home to find Lauren missing. This call. This assurance that Lauren had been thinking about her as well. But it was suffocating, the amount of emotions swelling in her was suffocating her. "I can't-I-"

"Breathe, Camila, you're okay."

Camila felt tears well in her eyes and found everything blurred and she tried to follow Lauren's instruction but it was so hard. Breathing felt too strenuous.

"I can't, Lauren, I can't-I-"

"Remember that night we sat on your windowsill? It was right after I woke up from a nightmare, I was smoking and you were telling me how I was ruining my lungs but everything else was quiet. There weren't even cricket chirping. It was kind of a scary quiet but you told me that it was just because of my nightmares that I thought that. This is just your anxiety making you feel like this, Camila. You can breathe, you're capable of it." Lauren waited a moment to listen if Camila was catching on. "Breathe for me, Camila."

"You broke me." Camila whimpered out and Lauren squeezed her eyes closed as the words resonated through her. "I'm broken now."

"I'm-fuck-Camila, I'm so sorry. Lucy's called me and she keeps talking about how things are with you and-Jesus-I didn't want this, Camila. I didn't mean for you to be like this."

"You left!" Camila shook as she spoke, her hand tightening significantly. "How did you expect this to go, Lauren? And now you call? Why are you doing this?"

"Fuck, I knew this was a bad idea, Camila, I'm sorry-"

"Don't fucking hang up, okay? Just don't do that."

"Okay." Lauren sighed heavily. "I won't hang up."

"Why did you call?"

"To hear your voice, to know if you'll still pick up, I don't fucking know, Camila." Camila heard a long paused as Lauren exhaled again on the other end. "I thought maybe if I call and you're okay then it's proof that what I did was for the best."