Bound To You (camren au)

if you walk away, part 2

Her mom - an angel - picks up on the second ring. "Mija?" She sounds so worried. "Hi. Is everything okay?"

Camila gnaws on her nails - disgusting habit. "Hi, mom." She pauses. "Uh, yeah, I'm fine. Just wanted to see how you were doing."

"I'm good." It's quiet on the other line. Her mom's alone in the house, probably. "You don't sound fine, Camila."

"What?" Camila kind of laughs and kind of holds back tears. "No, I'm okay."

"You're not sick again, are you?"

Sick is code for a relapse. Or maybe any thoughts of wanting to off herself - Camila doesn't know. It's hard to tell which one she means. "No, mom, I'm not sick."

"Oh." Her mom sounds relieved. "That's good, that's very good." Then she's quiet again, and Camila can basically hear how hard she's thinking about all the other terrible stuff that could have happened to her. Paranoia might possibly run in the family. "What's going on, then? How are things over there? How's your huracán?"

"My-?" Oh. Oh.

Camila's face drops into her hands.

"Camila?"

"That's, um." Oh, god. Now she really is going to cry. "Sorry, it's stupid. But. That's what's wrong, I guess."

"What? What do you mean?"

And - how does she even begin to describe something like that? And to her mom? It's so fucking-

She sighs into the phone. "Me and Lauren," she tries carefully, "it's- it's complicated, between the two of us."

Then she waits.

"I kind of figured," her mom says.

Camila feels her face heat up. "Oh."

"She looks at you like you hung the moon, mija. I sort of thought it was an obvious thing and you just weren't talking about it because you have a girlfriend."

Despite her emotions running dangerously, deliriously high, Camila almost laughs. Well, she's not wrong. Leave it to her mom to call it like it is.

"Uh. Yeah, you got it in one, then. That's- that's how it was. How it is. But then, um." She balls her hand into a fist, drums it on her thigh, and her voice breaks. "Mom, I really messed up."

She explains it in the simplest terms she can without having a complete breakdown - how Lauren had confessed her feelings, how Camila had reacted, and how the two of them had been fighting nonstop and it seemed like both of them were sort of emotionally wrecked right now because of it. She doesn't go into detail - she can't. She keeps it as light and as vague as possible, almost like she's describing someone else's life, or a TV show she only caught glimpses of. They were best friends and shit happened and now they're not. It's too much to say out loud, otherwise - and she and her mom have always been close, but there are some things that she cannot talk about with her. Hence the use of "sick" as an incredibly nuanced catch-all. And hence this.

"Now she hates me, I guess." She sounds so childish - with this, she could've been twenty or fifteen, talking to her mother about how the older cheerleaders were excluding her. "And I just keep fucking everything up."

A long silence. Camila winces. "Sorry. Screwing everything up." More silence. "Messing everything up?"

Her mom whistles a little, on the other side of the line. Camila would be more perturbed, but this is what her mom does, when she's thinking, and always has. Never a tune, but she'll whistle one high, singing note, lost in thought.