"Ah, Lauren, you are finally home." Clara smiled at her daughter, gesturing towards Camila. "This is Camila, Alejandro's daughter."
Lauren licked her lips and walked up the stairs.
"Well, say hi. And don't even think about acting all hostel towards her, this isn't her fault either."
"Hey," Lauren murmured, holding her hand out to Camila. "I'm Lauren."
Camila's hand took ahold of Lauren's and all Lauren could think about was how those hands were gripping and scratching at her back on Saturday night. "Hi,"
"Mom, can I go over to Brad's? We have a paper due tomorrow and I don't understand the evaluation part." Lauren asked, ignoring the glare Camila was giving her.
"Couldn't you have discussed that in school today?"
"We were really busy helping Dinah with her science project." Lauren lied and her mom seemed to soften at that.
"Ok, sure. But be home by eight so we can all sit down to dinner."
"Sure thing, mom." Lauren agreed, smiling sweetly at her mom but it dropped as soon as the woman disappeared inside.
"What? You are just going to leave and ignore that anything happened between us?"
"There is no us. It was a one night stand, we were both drunk."
"So you just come on to random, drunk girls, sleep with them and never call them again."
Lauren nodded like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Pretty much."
"You are completely different to the girl I met on Saturday." Camila muttered, her eyebrows creased into a little, hurt frown.
"What do you expect? This perfect love story with a girl who slept with you in her best friends bathroom and then fell asleep beside you on the sofa?" Lauren asked, her face softening slightly. "You're hot but I'm just not the relationship kinda girl."
"I'm not asking you for a relationship, Lauren, get over yourself. I just want to talk about this."
"What is there to talk about? We slept together and now we are about to be sister."
"step sisters, saying just sisters sounds sick."
"Well, isn't it? Sick, I mean. We are going to be family soon, sisters."
"You know what, fine." Camila huffed, throwing her hands up and turning to walk into the house, glancing back over her shoulder to tell Lauren that she was being stupid but faltered when she noticed Lauren was shamelessly staring at her ass. "Are you kidding me?"
Lauren lazily dragged her eyes up to Camila's, a smirk covering her lips. "What?"
"Go to hell."
"I'm already on my way." Lauren shot back, grinning when Camila huffed and disappeared inside.
Lauren hopped back down the steps, pulling her keys out of her jacket pocket and got into her car.
Brad was just leaving his car when she pulled up outside his house, trying to juggle his bag, keys, phone and a mcdonalds bag.
"Brad," she called, skipping up next to the boy, taking the keys from his hand.
"Thanks," the boy smiled thankfully, walking inside his house when Lauren opened the door. "What're you doing here? Did your first time meeting your sister go that bad?"
"Yeah, that wasn't the first time we met." Lauren murmured, following the boy down the stairs to the basement, where his room was located.
"What do you mean?"
"You remember the girl from Saturday? The one I fucked in your bathroom then fell asleep with right there," Lauren pointed over to the sofa in the corner and Brad nodded.
Lauren raised her eyebrows at the boy, which seemed to prompt the boys mind to start actually working. "No way! She is your new sister?"
"Mmhm. I pulled up outside my house and thought she was stalking me at first."
"Dude, that is so unlucky. She was so hot."
"I slept with my soon to be sister and that's all you care about?"
"It's not like you intentionally went over to her knowing she was your sister. You didn't know so that doesn't make it all that bad." Brad reasoned, holding his fries out to Lauren who shook her head. "I mean, would it really be that bad anyway? It's not like you guys are biological sisters, you know? It wasn't incest or anything."
"I know but thinking about it makes it feel weird. We are going to be sisters."
"Step sisters," Brad corrected, taking a bite out of one of his chicken nuggets. "That's different."
"But we will still be spending Christmas together and sharing a room and taking family photos. Doing sistery things."
"True. God, I can just imagine Christmas dinner, the sexual tension over the turkey." Brad teased, laughing when Lauren punched his arm. "I'm kidding. It's not that weird because you didn't know."
"But it would be weird now, because we know?" Lauren asked carefully and Brad shrugged lazily.
"I don't know, to me, no but to some people, maybe. I guess it just kind of depends of a persons perspective of it all. I mean, you guys aren't genetically related but your parents could have a kid together and you would both be it's big sister, which, yeah, is kind of weird."
"Mm." Lauren hummed, sitting down on Brad's spiny desk chair. "It's not like we will be hooking up again, anyway. Like you said, there's a reason she didn't leave her number."
"How did you even get away, anyway? I thought your mom was adamant that you were spending some time with the new addition to the family?"
"I said we had to finish a paper so she let me come over until seven. She still wants us to have dinner together."
"Man, I wish I could be there, that is going to be so awkward." Brad laughed.
"Mm, thanks for the support, buddy."
"This is no ones fault but your own, Jauregui."
"How is this my fault?"
"If you just had the will power to tell pretty girls no, you wouldn't have slept with your soon to be sister."
"Would you have said no to her?" Lauren asked, raising her eyebrows at her best friend.
"Well, no, but she's not my sister."
"Shut up, loser." Lauren huffed, chucking one of Brad's pens at him.
–
The silence was killing her, this was the reason she and her mother never ate dinner at the table, it was awkward and the fact Camila was sitting across from her, staring at her over the rim of her glass or through her eyelashes was making her body temperature rise.
"Lauren?"
"Hm?" Lauren hummed, raising her eyes to look at her mother. "What?"
"How did the paper go?"
"Yeah, good. We finished it."
"That's great." Her mom smiled and Alejandro nodded.
"Camila has been worried about starting a new school, you wouldn't mind showing her around, would you?"
"Dad, I told you I will be fine."
"Nonsense, love. Lauren wouldn't mind at all, would you, Lauren?"
Lauren glared at her mom briefly before nodding, flashing Camila a blatantly fake smile. "Sure. It's no problem at all."
Camila glared over at her, her fork poking absentmindedly at the food in her plate.
"That's great. You girls really need to get along, you will be rooming together after all."
"I'm sure we will get along just fine." Camila grumbled, her eyes not leaving Lauren.
Lauren was obviously better at this kind of thing, putting up a face, because the smile on her face looked marginally more real now. "Yeah, it's like we had met before today, I just felt that familiarity, like I know Camila better than I probably should after only a few hours."
Camila was glaring harder at her now but their parents didn't seem to notice, both of them just happy that they were apparently getting along.
Lauren felt herself smirk at Camila's glare, winking at the younger girl who scoffed and focused back on her dinner.
Their parents seemed more comfortable talking after that little show, asking both girls the odd question but other than that neither girl said a word.
"Can I be excused? I have homework to finish." Lauren asked, sliding her plate away from her and looking up at her mother who nodded.
Lauren got to her feet, giving everyone at the table a forced smile before heading upstairs, halting at her bedroom door way. When she opened the door everything was different, her bed was still moved up against the left wall but her desk that was up against the right wall was now replaced with a second bed and was set up against the wall of the foot of her bed. There was a few boxes on the other bed, some labeled 'clothes' and the others labeled 'stuff'.
Lauren sighed, feeling more than a little pissed that her mom was so blasé about invading the one place she had that was her own, and fell back onto her bed, her hands clasped over her stomach.
She hadn't really wanted to believe that this was happening but the sight of the bed against the opposite wall made it pretty difficult to deny that this was happening.
"Good night, dad. Clara." A voice called from outside the door before it opened, Camila's eyes surveying her for a second before she moved to pick up the boxes on her bed. "So much for homework. You're a good liar, though, I'll give you that."
"Sue me for not wanting to sit at that table for a minute longer, that was the longest hour of my life." Lauren groaned, reaching over to flip the light on her bedside table off, plunging the room into darkness.
Camila huffed, midway through moving the boxes, and Lauren grinned. "Really?"
"I'm tired. It's been a long day." Lauren murmured, pulling her shirt over her head and throwing it onto the floor, shuffling out of her pants before sliding under the duvet.
"It's not like I was busy or anything."
"We share the room now, there has to be a little give and take, sweetie."
"Fuck you." Camila grumbled, getting under her own duvet.
Lauren peered through the darkness at her pale blue walls. She knew she wouldn't be getting to sleep anytime soon, she wasn't even all that sleepy, it was only half nine.
"Why didn't you call me?" Camila asked.
Lauren was silent for a few seconds before muttering against her pillow. "You never left your number."
"Yes I did."
"Do you really think I wouldn't have called you if I had your number?"
"Well, I don't know, usually people who sleep with someone after knowing them for a few hours don't plan on calling the person the next day." Camila sniped.
"Hey, fuck you. If you aren't forgetting you're the one who ducked out the morning after."
"Because I had to go home and pack to move here."
"Like you couldn't have woke me."
"You looked peaceful." Camila answered quietly making Lauren scoff.
"Go fuck yourself."
"You're acting like a child."
"And you're pissing me off. Now shut up and let me sleep before I kick you ass out to sleep in the bath tub." Lauren growled, loudly throwing herself to lay on her stomach.
"Whatever."