"What. The. Fuck. Jauregui?" Sam said as soon as she walked into the pub.
The rest of the band looked marginally sober as they howled with laughter at Lauren's appearance.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," Lauren grumbled, sinking into a seat.
"You're wearing braces" Kyle guffawed.
"Why are you wearing braces"
She looked at Lucy and sighed. It looked like she was doing this quick and clean, like ripping off a band-aid.
"I have to quit the band."
"You're wearing braces because you have to quit the band?"
"Amazingly yes" Lauren nodded.
"Clarify?" Ian suggested, stuffing his face full of Sam's chips.
"I got a permanent gig playing guitar."
"No fucking way."
"Is it so unbelievable?"
"No, Lauren it's just...that's incredible." Kyle always was the sweet one.
"Any room for the rest of us?"
Lauren made a face.
"You've replaced us that quickly?" Sam asked, clutching his chest. "Brutal, man. My broken heart."
"I'm sorry, guys. Seriously" Lauren said, voice sobering. The band sucked, but she'd been through a lot with these guys. A lot of bad gigs, anyway.
"Our forgiveness depends on how awesome the gig is," Ian told her.
"You ever heard of Camila Cabello?"
"The twat off the tellie?"
Lauren winced. "That's the one."
"You're playing for X-Factor?" Lucy asked with a frown.
"Only sort of. I've been hired into Camila's backup band. She got signed to SyCo after the X-Factor."
"You're shitting us" Ian said.
"No."
"Really?"
Lauren shrugged. "Really."
"Camila Cabello? And that's why you're dressed like that?"
"They got us stylists."
"Stylists" Lucy whistled under her breath.
"So what's the kid like?" Sam asked with a snort.
"Oh, you know" Lauren said, looking around at her old bandmates' faces. They were all judging her, she could tell. She could see it in their eyes. They were thinking sell-out.
"Spoiled brat?" Ian offered.
"Pop princess?" Lucy laughed.
"Complete wannabe?" Sam nodded.
"All of the above?" Lauren suggested, and her bandmates roar with laughter.
Lauren laughed too, but the image of Camila toeing the carpet as Simon directed her around flashed before her mind. She wasn't entirely sure Camila was the spoiled brat she thought she was, and hearing them rip on her makes Lauren shift uncomfortably in her seat.
"Well, good luck surviving that gig," Kyle said, clapping her on the shoulder.
"If it gets to be too awful, you can always come crawling back," Ian offered. "We might even let you play the triangle for awhile."
"Yeah, you wish we played songs complicated enough to have a triangle in them" Lauren snorted
____________________________________
Walking up to the studio Monday morning felt like a turning point in Lauren's life. She was going to record an album that was going to get national exposure, major promotion, and a tour.
The last two weeks had been preparation, but this felt like the beginning of the rest of her life.
She took a deep breath and pushed through the front door.
Signing in and getting clearance for the building took longer than Lauren would have liked, when she was itching to actually get into the studio, to know what it felt like to properly record music.
Finally, though, she was granted a visitor pass, had her photo snapped for an ID badge, and was directed into the studio itself. Heart in her throat, she walked down the hall to the recording booth and peered into the room.
Unable to really sleep the night before, she was the first one there and the room was empty and dim, with just a single light overhead revealing the shadowy shapes of the instruments they would play. Lauren breathed in deeply, trying to see if there was a unique smell to this place where all her childhood dreams would be realized.
Mostly it just smelled of lemon cleaner, but she'd take it.
She stepped into the control room, trailing her fingers gently over the buttons and knobs and levels that covered the soundboard, careful not to move anything. She didn't really know how anything worked, and suddenly she wanted to. She wanted to know every aspect of how music was made.
She didn't know how Camila could be content with just showing up and singing. Lauren wanted to write the music and the lyrics, pouring her heart out onto the page; she wanted to produce the album, tweaking every note until it was just right. She wanted everything.
"Hey" a man stepped into the room behind her, his gaze tracking down to the visitor pass that hung around Lauren's neck. "You one of mine, then?"
Lauren nodded. "I'm Lauren. Guitar."
"Well Lauren Guitar" the guy laughed " I'm James Sound Engineer. Welcome to my studio. You ever been in one of these before?"
Lauren shook her head shyly. "What gave it away?"
"Nothing kid don't worry. You just look young and happy to be here."
"That's not normal?"
James cracked a smile. "Ask me again by Wednesday. Thursday tops."
"Eh" Lauren shrugged. "I'm getting used to long days and no sleep."
"The life of a rockstar, eh?" James laughed.
"You've got to be hardcore to live hardcore " Lauren deadpanned. A loud bark of laughter drew her eyes to the doorway, where Camila hesitated, half in and half out of the room.
"Camila!" James said. "You look younger."
"Not possible" Camila shook her head. "I'm five weeks and three days older than when you did my charity single."
"Such maturity," James agreed. "Your dimples make you look twelve."
"Nah. I was cuter when I was twelve."
"Not possible," James parroted. "Working with you is like recording an album with a kitten."
Lauren snorted and Camila offered her a small smile, Lauren didn't know whether it was a put-on, or if Camila genuinely felt shy around her. She supposed she hadn't given the kid reason to think she'd be friendly, so far.
She felt a bit bad about that, actually.
"Whoa." Dinah appeared behind Camila, her eyes going wide at the sight of the studio. "This is so cool!"
Ally and Normani were right behind her, and the girls piled up in the doorway in a clump of overexcitement, pushing at each other to peer into the room, Camila tangled in their midst.
"Okay, okay, stop abusing our little star," James finally laughed, reaching out to tug Camila towards him. "I take it you're the rest of the band?"
"Present and accounted for," Normani offered, pushing past Dinah and Ally to be the first of them into the room.
"Simon tells me none of you have ever professionally recorded an album before—except for Camila, of course. It's not that difficult. You just have to remember two things: don't touch anything, and do everything I tell you. Got it?"
Lauren rolled her eyes, but nodded along with the other girls. She wasn't very good at doing what she was told, and she had already touched nearly everything in the room. Oh well.
"We'll lay down the instruments first, and then do Camila's vocals, okay?"
Everyone nodded, Lauren practically bouncing on her toes, ready to go.
A man stuck his head in the room, eyeing each of them in turn. "Everyone here?" he asked James.
"Looks like."
"Great. Tim?" The man waved back into the hallway, and a large man holding an even larger camera shuffled into the small studio space. "Just record everything they do." The first man's eyes swept to the girls" Don't be afraid to be cute, or silly. That's what fans like. Joke around, act like friends."
Lauren frowned. They didn't have to act like friends. They were friends. At least she, Dinah, Normani and Ally were.
The other girls looked slightly uncomfortable as Tim pointed the camera at them, a little red light at the front telling them he was recording already. Lauren chewed on her lip, unsure of herself. She didn't want to act silly just because some suit had demanded it. She was recording her first album; she wanted to take it seriously.
She turned her back on the camera, resolved to worry about it later. For right now, she was nervous enough about getting into the booth.
"Ready girls?" James asked, gesturing them forward.
Lauren stepped into the booth, looking back at James in the control room, his hands on the soundboard, ready to make Lauren sound the best she could, and her breath caught. This was really happening. It didn't matter if there was a camera trained on her every move. It didn't even matter that she didn't like the music.
She, Lauren Jauregui, recently unemployed loser, was recording an album.
The day was long, going over the instrumentals over and over again, trying to get everything just right. By the time Camila stepped into the studio in the late afternoon, Lauren was more than happy to sit back and let someone else have a turn. She piled onto the couch in the control room with the other girls, in a tangle of limbs as they tried to cram four bodies onto a couch meant for two. Tim stood in the corner, taking up more room than Lauren thought possible, the camera zoomed in on nothing but Camila.
The way it had been all day. Lauren didn't know whether to be relieved or annoyed.
In the booth, Camila stepped up to the microphone, large headphones pulled firmly over her head, dwarfing her round, smiling face.
"Adorable motherfucker" Normani muttered to Lauren's right.
James started up the instrumentals, and Lauren smiled at the sound, amazed to think that it was her playing. She wrapped an arm around Normani's neck, giving her a little squeeze. Dinah turned to grin at them, and Lauren beamed.
James signalled Camila into the song, and the girl closed eyes and started to sing.
"I'm watching you with her, thinking I had you
How was I ever so dumb? Boy I should've known that you're the one, Boy I should've known that you're the one" Camila sang, and Lauren wrinkled her nose.
"Who the fuck wrote this?" She muttered under her breath, making Normani snort.
The lyrics were truly terrible, embarrassingly earnest and awkward. But James was nodding as Camila approached the chorus.
Camila belted out, her voice soaring up into the note. Lauren had heard her practice the song before, of course, but she never heard her really go for it like this, giving it her all and hitting the high note perfectly.
The silence in the control room told Lauren she wasn't the only one who was impressed, watching Camila belt her way through the chorus.
"She may look like an overgrown kitten, but the kid can sing," Normani finally said.
Ally giggled and Lauren let her eyes drift back to Camila, finishing up the first take of the song. She was good, better than Lauren had realized, genuinely talented.
It was a shame she was wasting it on songs like this, Lauren thought with a shake of her head. It was criminal, really, that she was being given this music, and sold based on her face more than her voice, when she was really talented.
When they were all really talented, and yet making this record for a bunch of twelve-year-olds who would throw it away in a year, or six months, or even less
And Lauren, Normani, Dinah and Ally would get stuffed into the trash with her.
It sucked, basically.
She slumped down into the couch to watch Camila finish that evening's recordings, listening to the girls laugh and joke around her, the camera focused on their every move. Lauren would love to hear them play some real music; she'd even love to try Camila's voice on a real song, something written out of passion and pain, not a carefully calculated number designed to sell.
The evening wrapped up late, but the girls were buzzing with energy, still high on their first day in the studio.
"We should go out!" Ally crowed, bouncing excitedly on her toes.
"We have an early morning," Dinah said hesitantly.
"I'm not going to sleep anyway" Ally argued. "I feel like I'm about to jump out of my skin."
"Just one or two drinks Dinah?" Normani wheedled and Lauren smiled as she saw Dinah waiver.
"Well...what about you, Camila? Back to that same place?"
Camila smiled, opening her mouth to respond, when James cut him off. "Not Camila. The rest of you go have fun, but Camila needs to rest her voice for tomorrow."
Camila's mouth twisted into a moue of disappointment, her eyes dropping down to her feet. "No worries. You girls go ahead."
Dinah still looked hesitant, but Lauren herded her along with the other girls out of the studio, waving goodbye to James and Camila. "She'll come another time," Lauren assured her, desperate to get away from the pressure of the camera.
"I feel bad leaving her out," Dinah argued.
"Think of it this way," Normani shrugged. "There's going to be plenty she leaves us out of. Parties and awards shows and movie premieres...Camila will get invited to tons of things that we won't."
"Comforting Mani, thanks" Lauren said dryly. "But it does mean I don't feel bad about having a drink without her tonight!"
"Okay, okay" Dinah agreed as they spilled out onto the street. "But nothing crazy, alright? We have to be back here at eight tomorrow."
"I promise," Lauren swore.
__________________________
The club was hot and sticky and loud, the music pounding, reverberating through the floor beneath their feet.
Lauren was dancing, throwing her head back and laughing, the hot buzz of alcohol radiating through her body. Ally was somewhere nearby, her feet and arms moving wildly, unselfconsciously, even as other clubbers ducked out of the way of her spastic motions. Lauren giggled, her heart warming at the sight.
Dinah and Normani stayed by the bar; Mani didn't dance and Dinah didn't drink. Not much of a celebration, Lauren thought, but it didn't dampen the joyous buzz that kept her thrumming to the beat of the music. She was a rockstar and she'd dance if she wanted to. That was the point of putting in all the hard work, wasn't it? She mused. Long days for the sake of even longer nights.
She blinked her eyes open and caught a gaze lingering heavily on her. It was a tall, dark hair and dark eyes. Lauren felt her face heat under the girl's scrutiny, licking her lips unconsciously, letting her gaze trail down the girl's tight body. The girl drifted closer now that Lauren's attention was on her moving into her orbit, dancing close.
Lauren spared a thought for Dinah and Normani, surely watching from the bar. She hadn't quite gotten around to telling her bandmates that she was gay.
But the girl was wrapping a hand around her waist, guiding her close, slotting their bodies together to move to the music, and Lauren forgot about everything except the feel of another body against her own.
She was celebrating, after all.
So Camila's birthday was yesterday...she's 20 now, they grow up so fast 😭😂 but yeah it's sad that none of the girls wished her happy birthday.....
I hope that you like it
Sorry because mistakes! 🐶
-Michaela