Thinking of Your Skin: The Truth Behind Camren - Book Two

Chapter 27: Wandering

This time, the kiss lasted much longer, and more started to follow after it. Olivia placed her hands on my waist and pulled me even closer to her, shifting a bit so that we were pressed up against the wall.

Holy shit. I had a beautiful stranger pinned up against a wall and we were making out.

And I was overthinking every single second of it. Her hands felt amazing as they began to wander all over my body, and her lips were on fire, but all I could think about was what it all meant and why I was doing it and why I had drank so much and how the heck I had let it all get to this point and what the heck Lauren was up to and...

I abruptly pulled away from Olivia, sliding my hands from her face to rest on her shoulders.

"What's wrong?" she asked, placing her hands innocently on my waist again.

"N-nothing, I just..." I began, avoiding her eye contact.

"Camila?"

I slowly looked up into those magnificent eyes again, completely silent.

"Are you alright?" she asked cautiously.

I was trying to be, but I had made the mistake of trying Lauren's approach to healing. That wasn't me. I just wasn't programmed to go out and drink and hook up with random people like that. Sure, maybe it would be fun once in a while and Olivia had been absolutely stunning, but that wasn't what I wanted; that wasn't going to make me any happier and I knew it.

I rolled over onto my side and signed, part of me wishing that I could be that girl, that I could be Lauren. I wished that I could somehow magically make all of the loneliness and emptiness go away. The music had definitely been helping, but I needed to pour my heart into someone else, not just something else, and in the right way.

This morning revelation was extremely interesting to me, not because of what it was, but because of what it meant. It meant that I was finally getting over Lauren; that I could see myself pursuing something with somebody else; that I actually wanted to start trying to.

I didn't want the random hookups and the warm body by my side at night. I had never wanted that. I wanted the connection, the conversations, the real stuff. That's what had always been important to me. I couldn't let myself lose sight of that just because Lauren was doing it.

Olivia and I had parted ways after I apologized for wasting her time. That's all that so many people were doing to each other, right? People hooked up because it was 'fun'. How fun could it be waking up the next day and realizing that you're still alone, if not more-so than the night before?

Maybe it worked for some people. Maybe it was fun for them. Maybe I had been born into the wrong generation. Maybe Lauren and I could've had a shot in another timeline.

That last maybe was the one that always made me jolt up out of bed and start my day. That maybe was way too dangerous to dwell on.

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June 1st, 2017

9:00 A.M.

Lauren

It had finally happened. We had been recording new songs, performing at various events, and doing interviews for months now...and yet suddenly it was all hitting me at once that Camila wasn't a part of any of it.

Maybe it was the fact that we were actually performing our first new single without her. We weren't up there singing Camila's parts anymore. She had no parts anymore. And it was suddenly fucking destroying me.