Not Just One Night

Chapter 26

Camila's POV

After exiting the subway, folding the note and shoving it into my bag, I sprint the next fifteen blocks to campus.

And although all morning, I thought I had been good on time, I realize that I'm nearly late for Lauren's class.

When I walk in, most of the students are already seated and she's standing at the front of the classroom talking to a group of three.

They seemed enthralled with her conversation, as does she, so I expect to go unnoticed as I take my usual place in the back of the lecture hall. Only briefly, I search my surroundings for Keaton, whom I haven't seen in a week.

But I don't find him.

I sit down and once I have, I bother to look back in her direction, I find those familiar green eyes staring at me and it becomes a full on war in my chest and my stomach.

She smiles and I reciprocate it. But she doesn't look long. A question has been directed to her, and she quickly answers, it never seeming like her mind was elsewhere.

Soon the crowd around her dissipates and she takes her place at the podium. The hushed whispering of conversations die down and when the room is nearly in complete silence, she greets the class and explains that we'll be starting a new film today.

It feels like forever since I've attended Film Studies, barely remembering the last movie that we watched, but I appreciate that today won't be a discussion. As much as I would like to listen to Lauren go on and on about the underlying social and cultural themes in some random movie from the fifties, I'd rather have time to myself to think. To clearly sort out my thoughts about my meeting with the lawyer, the rushed court date, the trouble I'm facing, but most importantly Lauren.

Writing the letter to her, helped, and as strange as it is to even consider, I do want something permanent with her, which is what I wrote back in the book, had she been wiling to take it this morning.

But I can't blame her for not wanting to see what I had written on the pages that she had read to me before. I guess she was right. Saying that what we have won't be temporary, seems like a lie, now that she knows the truth but I don't see it that way.

I'm not lying when I say that I want to be with her.

This is why I've never made promises or plans before. They seem so farfetched in retrospect. "I would never do anything to hurt you," Dinah's famous words during our relationship, and look at me now.

We can't say what will happen in the future. We can't make promises that we won't hurt each other, or move on, or fall out of love, or die even, but since being with Lauren, I realize even though we shouldn't make plans, sometimes we need to. It's a way of telling our minds; our hearts that there's something for us to look forward to. If I promise her permanence then I'll strive to make it happen. It's as simple as that.

And in the mess that has become my life in the past four months, I need to aim for something, anything positive to keep my thoughts away from the negative that overshadows me constantly.

Like I said, Lauren is the light at the end for me.

I watch her lean down, placing the DVD in the computer. There are several comments that I hear whispered; catcalls practically directed at her and there's a twinge of jealousy that ignites in me. I push it away quickly though.

Once the movie has started she makes her way to the back, using the staircase on the opposite side of the room. A few seconds after she has disappeared, the lights switch off, and me and fifty or more students are sitting in absolute darkness before the opening title of Casablanca flickers onto to the digital projector and then relays to the screen.