A Slow Dance With Reality

I Will Always Be There

Lauren twitched slightly, feeling her numbing ammunition in her stone cold gaze wearing off. It was weird, to have someone else talk to her about this. It was always her own mind tormenting her at night, always fighting her on a night's sleep without a nightmare. Turning she saw Shawn's ears turning red and the very tip of his nose going pink. He was about to cry...entirely uncommon for a boy. At least uncommon for the boys Lauren knew. "I just...if you need anyone that can relate kind of...you have someone now," his sudden movement caused Lauren to jump and finally turn to him fully. He was digging in his pocket for something, and pulled out a pen.

Rough calloused fingers grabbed Lauren's wrist, and that pen was used to write a seven digit number on her palm. "You don't have to use it, but if you want to it's there." His charming smile brought one of Lauren's own weak ones to appear, and soon he stood up to walk away, of course not before reminding Lauren of Camila.

Oddly the reminder got Lauren to chuckle. The thought of Camila pouting at the front steps like a child whose parents had forgotten her bringing an odd joy to her. "She's more stubborn than me sometimes," Lauren sighed, looking out at the field for a moment. The very field she once considered her lifeline. That field was her stage, the Cheerios were her gateway out of this town, and now Lauren wasn't sure she'd ever escape. What if her father was right? What if she wouldn't amount to anything?

"Shawn," Lauren called out quickly, twisting her body to face his departing frame as best she could. "Would you mind asking her to come to me? I don't...I like it here."

"Sure thing," he answered with a small smile, the tears having been fought back in the short time he'd gotten up.

"Thank you."

"Any time, Lauren."

The light chirping of birds sang out like music, different pitches and distances from her. For once she didn't feel the weight of the world suffocating the air around her, instead she felt like herself. Like she did when she was pregnant; sad yet calm and oddly content. Her walls were down, and it wasn't as scary as she thought it would be. Even as she heart Camila's hesitant steps behind her.

Lauren turned with a sad smile, finally standing on her weak legs to face her knight. "Camila," she nearly breathed, shoulders relaxing at just the sight of the girl. Why had she been so afraid to go to this girl before?

"Lauren."

"Hi."

Camila didn't respond, instead she allowed a silence to fall over the two, and Lauren appreciated the moment. She appreciated the cool winds that swirled around the two of them, and even appreciated the distance between the two. Physical distance didn't matter any longer, she knew that emotionally she was clinging to the girl before her; she loved the girl before her. In what sense she wasn't exactly sure of yet, but she wasn't going to focus on that right now, there was enough on her plate. "Can we go lay on the grass?" Lauren watched as Camila's brows pinched together in disgust at the thought of sitting on the bug infested ground, much less lay on it. "You can use my jacket to lay your head on." Increasingly Lauren was beginning to realize how one­-sided this conversation was getting, and panic was only now starting to settle inside her.

Did Camila not want to be around someone with so much baggage? Was she finally seeing how messed up Lauren's family was? How messed up she was? "Or...if you just wanted to make sure I was okay you could go home," Lauren continued, her eyes falling to the steel floor beneath them, creaking as she shifted her weight from one side to another.

The silence was killing Lauren, not knowing what Camila was thinking, only seeing the studied features. As if Camila was analyzing absolutely every piece of Lauren, another unnerving thing to the blonde.

"I­I think I'm just gonna go...I'll see you tomorrow, Camila." Her words rushed as she walked past the singer, stopping only when she felt a smooth hand grapple her wrist.

Brown eyes flicked between green, still studying and wondering what on Earth was going to happen and what Lauren was feeling. But still Camila couldn't find her words. She couldn't find any way of speaking to the girl before her. Because it wasn't humanly possible for one human being to be this strong. It simply wasn't possible.

Camila began to lead the way onto the field, still not speaking because she was simply too dumbfounded to say anything. "We don't have to. You don't want to and I should probably...do something. Go somewhere." Camila knew there wasn't an actual "where" Lauren would go. She'd just find another peaceful area to think too much on.

Slowly the two sat, right in the middle of the field, ignoring the two students that were currently occupying the track. And now Lauren was realizing how unnecessary words were, much like she realized that physical distance didn't mean anything. Camila was here speaking wonders by just being there. She was telling Lauren all Lauren ever needed to know. Camila wasn't going anywhere, no matter how much of the bad that she saw in Lauren's life, she was still there.

For the first time, Lauren didn't fight the tears that were coming down her cheeks. And even better, she was recognizing them as tears of joy. Her fingers grasped onto Camila's shirt for dear life as her silent tears fell, and the real healing finally began.