Not Just One Night

Chapter 23

Camila's POV

"Lauren wait!" I could hear Ally at the end of the hall. From my bedroom door, I saw her block the brunette from leaving.

"Will you please move!" Lauren screamed, but each way that she went, my roommate jumped in front of her. I was stilled; standing at my door. My bare feet frozen to the hardwood. My chest exploding, my breath was hectic, my eyes burning, and my ears were ringing as Matt Healy's voice still filtered throughout the room from my phone, on the nightstand.

It's like my body wouldn't allow me to chase after her; it wouldn't allow me to follow her to the door and beg for her to stay only to have her turn around and see the look in her eyes change from adoration to fear that the girl she had been falling for, she no longer knows.

"No!" Ally shouted back but Lauren shoved past her and practically sprinted away. I wondered, in my muddled mind, how Ally had known to be waiting to stop Lauren's escape the moment she ran out of my room.

Had she heard the screaming? Had she heard the brunette shout in a deep rasp as she was losing faith, who are you? I prefaced the conversation by saying that I'd understand if she wanted nothing to do with me once she knew the truth, but now that we're here, I don't want her to go.

"Don't leave," I whisper but no one hears. Ally's standing in front of the door now, her arms stretched out; a small barricade from allowing Lauren to exit the apartment. She throws her hands on her hips, her long, unruly hair brushing against the top of her jeans, and I still smell Vanilla. I'm drowning in it. I fear that it will forever linger on the sheets now, taunting me with what I'll never have.

I'm such an idiot to have told her.

No. She needed to know.

I'm such an idiot for starting something with her at all.

I'd rather not have anything with Lauren than to have it end badly.

"Why shouldn't I leave?" her voice is loud and it booms, echoing to me. I latch on to it and savor the sound of it, wondering if I'll ever hear it again.

"Because what you know is not everything," Ally's voice is grounded. "You don't know what happened that night."

Lauren shook her head. "I don't need to know anything else! She lied to me!"

"She didn't," Ally defended.

Stop defending me I want to scream from half-an-apartment away. Let her leave if that's what she wants, and it clearly is.

"If she's lying about anything, it's when she says that what has happened to her is her fault. Because it's not Lauren."

It is, I think.

"It's not?" Lauren's voice lowers.

Ally shakes her head.

It is, I say again.

"It's not. I promise," my roommate argues. I watch the rise and fall of the brunette's back as she takes a heavy breath. Ally reaches over placing her hand on the bend of Lauren's arm, comfortingly. "Let her explain. Before you run away and completely write her off, let her tell you the full story, and then you can decide," she searches her gray eyes for a response. "Okay?" she asks when she doesn't get one.

A few seconds later, she nods her head.

"Don't leave," Ally insists walking around her and back toward where I'm still frozen in the doorway of my room. She stops at the end of the hallway, motioning for me but I don't dare move. I don't want to tell her what happened that night. I don't want her to be even more disappointed in me than she already is.