YOᑌ ᗩGᗩIᑎ

Chapter 17.

“I swear guys, we aren't lost.”

We were lost.

Lauren, who was driving the car had no idea where the hell she was going. We had been driving for over five hours now and according to the map, we were not at the right place but according to Lauren, we were. Castellow Hammock Preserve was not easy to find and specially not easy when Lauren was sitting on the driver's seat. Everyone had given up. Normani and Reyna who were yelling at Lauren for the first two hours finally accepted their defeat and left everything up to Lauren who didn't know what she was doing.

Dinah, I and Reyna's best friend Ariana just stayed back and watched their banter until Dinah had enough of all the bullshit, she too began arguing with Lauren while Ariana and I laughed our asses off. Ariana Grande was an air hostess too, just like Reyna she was a very outgoing and easy to be around with kind of person. Her and I quickly hit it off very well. Lauren who was far beyond annoyed with everyone being mad at her stopped the car in the middle of the road and got out of the vehicle just to piss the girls off even more.

Reyna and Dinah somehow managed to get the girl back inside and Normani sneakily got the car keys from the green eyed girl before driving towards the Castellow Hammock Preserve. Lauren was beyond pissed. Knowing how she actually took us to the other side of the woodland made her furious but she didn't say anything else. At times like these I could swear that there was an eight years old child inside a twenty nine years old grown up woman.

I brought my cellphone out to check the time, we were supposed to be at the forest three hours ago but thanks to Lauren we were late and would have to use flashlights to set up our camps. Well, I didn't mind though, as long as Lauren was around I was okay. I looked at Austin's text on my cellphone too, he wished me good luck and told me that he'd missed me. I didn't know what to reply so I just put the cellphone away.

Last night I visited my place again, that time I was with Reyna while we went out to buy some tin foods just like that guy in the outdoor store asked us to. Reyna, who didn't want me to go visit Austin alone went with me and played with Allison while I talked to Austin. He was very happy to spend more time with our daughter and Allison was more than happy to spend her time with her father as long as he bought her ice-cream everyday. Austin being the amazing father he was, accepted.

Luckily, Reyna didn't comment on anything. She was just...there for me while I visited my husband. Austin on the other hand was very surprised to see Reyna. He didn't know that I was actually seeing Lauren again and surprisingly Reyna played along and told him that she was just hanging out with Dinah. Austin didn't even know that Lauren was going with us and I hated to lie to him. Not that he would have said anything to me or would have tried to stop me.

That was all last night, this was present. With Normani driving the car we reached the Castellow Hammock Preserve within an hour. Turned out that we circled that place twice and everyone was blind enough to not see the sign on the side of the road but Lauren got the most glares. The small camping van that we hired was filled with silence when Normani stopped the car in front of the forests along with many other vehicles. Everyone glared at Lauren for making us late, she smiled sheepishly and laughed out loud shortly after.

We unloaded the van. Each of us hung our camping bags along with our folded tents on our shoulders and made our ways inside, “I'm so excited,” Lauren jumped up and down while she walked backwards. I remembered how she used to do that before, there were a lot of things which hadn't changed about her and I loved it.

“Oh no. You don't get to talk until we are done with setting up our camps. You just walk like a mute cat because we are late because of you.” Dinah threatened the girl who simply rolled her eyes but obliged nevertheless.