Happier

3

Lauren frowns. "How does it end?"

Camila shrugs. "I don't know. How do you want it to end?"

"Okay, hear me out," Lauren starts. "Amnesia starts going through her old diaries to try to figure out why she would forget only Fiancee. It's revealed that Fiancee turns out to be, like, this huge serial killer, as Amnesia wrote in her diary, and she just found out so she was leaving their house that they share together, about to call the cops, when Fiancee arranges the car crash which gets Amnesia in the hospital. Amnesia only forgot Fiancee because her subconscious wanted to block out all the memories of Fiancee because her finding out about the serial killer thing was really traumatic."

Camila stares at her, open-mouthed, completely flabbergasted.

"I... I thought you didn't like... that's not really romance," she says.

Lauren makes a noncommittal noise. "I was planning on doing romance, it just all of a sudden came out like that."

What Camila really wants to say is that she's never thought Lauren was more beautiful in that moment, red-painted lips moving and her stunning mind working a mile a minute, correlating a story with eyes shining and nails moving against the edge of the table; dysfunctional but somehow completely focused; the passion clear in her raspy voice.

What she says instead is, "Let's work out the plot holes in that, okay?"

Lauren doesn't seem to take offense to that- she actually listens, nodding and periodically chiming in when Camila says that she'd rather have Fiancee be a mafia boss (that way she'd have more power, which would make the car crash and all the control she has more plausible) and Fiancee should actually be madly in love with Amnesia, so it should be Fiancee's right-hand-man or something to get Amnesia in a car crash so she wouldn't rat them out. Lauren responds and says the most logical things at the right moments, and all of a sudden Camila finds herself being more excited than she's been in a long time to write a book.

She still doesn't like Lauren, though. This is what she tells herself as Lauren beams at Camila approving her storyline. She still broke her heart. She still hurt her more than anyone has hurt Camila before, ever, and she doesn't even know it.

But looking at Lauren's huge, honest eyes, Camila decides that she doesn't have to hate her. She just doesn't have to trust her. Maybe they can become acquaintances. Maybe even friends.

Nothing more. Camila will never let Lauren become anything more to her ever again.

She promises this to herself, in this moment, staring Lauren right in the face; she's beautiful, always has been, but Camila cannot put herself through that again.

Friends, she tells herself. Nothing more. No matter what.

-

The more Camila and Lauren hang out (strictly professionally, as Camila is quick to inform everyone who asks) the more Lauren becomes uneasy. The whole thing started the moment Lauren asked Camila if they knew each other in high school that first day they met, but it's gone way past that. She doesn't know how to explain it exactly, but every time she tells Camila something about herself, she gets the intense feeling that this has all happened before. Like history is repeating itself. It's shouldn't be this weird- of course she's shared all of these facts about herself to other people before. But something in the way Camila's lips curve up slightly when Lauren talks about her family or something makes her brain spark, but it goes out before she can think about it further. It's like she's supposed to remember something that's just on the tip of her tongue; so close, but still so out of reach.