My friend was proof-reading this for me and when she finished, she yelled: THAT'S SOME POETIC SHIT RIGHT THERE
//
from the faun forever gone
in the towers of your honeycomb
I’d-a tore your hair out, just to climb back, darling
towers – bon iver
//
They’re dancing, bodies pressed together in the darkness of the club, music so loud that they couldn’t hear each other over the beat, even if they tried—
—and yet, when Lauren pulls her in by her hip, curling her fingers right over the edge of Camila’s skirt, Camila has no trouble hearing the words when Lauren says, “I asked her. For real. Camz, I really asked her.”
It hits her body before it hits her mind; the sting in her stomach, the pounding in her head, the sudden stumble in her step that has nothing to do with the alcohol.
Camila stares at Lauren and she knows that it’s true. Right there in the glint of Lauren’s eyes. The excited tremble of her bottom lip. The proud curl of her smile.
She steps forward to hug her best friend close.
When she finally manages to breathe out an answer, the syllables slice right through her throat, tearing through her skin so harshly that Camila is surprised she isn’t dripping blood all over Lauren’s gorgeous white top. “Oh my God, really? Laur, I’m so happy for you.”
They’re dancing. They keep dancing. Bodies pressed together in the darkness of the club, music so loud that Camila can barely hear the sound of her ribcage cracking open beat by beat, second by second.
She knows that Lauren couldn’t hear it, even if she tried.
//
Any time Lucy says anything, she articulates with her left hand, breaking the light with the ring on her finger. She’s all excited smiles and can you even believe this is really happening and pulling Lauren into her at any chance she gets, giggling into her neck, and looking beautiful. She looks beautiful. They both do – beautiful and happy.
“I’m so happy for you.”
Blood is dripping down Camila’s throat when she says it. Blood is staining the fancy white table cloth when Camila looks at Lauren and says of course I’ll go dress shopping with you. Blood on the glasses at every congratulations. Blood on the plates at every it looks gorgeous. Blood spilling right from her veins at every that sounds amazing.
Blood. Blood. Blood.
After dinner, Lauren pulls Camila into her in the darkness of the hallway while Lucy is on the phone calling her parents.
“Camz,” Lauren says, lips against Camila’s cheek, the vibration of her voice hitting Camila’s heated skin. “I’m so happy I get to share this with you. I love you.”
For Lauren, she’ll bleed until her heart dries out, so Camila says it and she means it – she will mean it, always, even if it will drain her drop by drop.
//
There aren’t enough profanities to whisper when Lauren exits the dressing room and Camila feels like she will never breathe again.
She just looks and looks and looks at everything that isn’t hers – the sharp lines of Lauren’s shoulder blades, the edgy point on Lauren’s wrist when she brings her hand up to run it through her wavy hair, the tip of Lauren’s tongue wetting her lips, slightly parted in a way that makes Camila think of darker nights and younger light, and Lauren’s skin so smooth and soft that it burns in the ashes of Camila’s memory, in the thoughts she’s tried to take the oxygen out of so many times before already. Lauren’s eyes on her, testing Camila’s reaction, her eyes, her eyes, her eyes, always her eyes.
“Do you think she’ll want to marry me in this?”
Camila’s throat is too tight to answer, but she thinks Lauren can see it on her face, anyway, because Lauren holds out her hand and Camila doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to touch even an inch of Lauren’s body when she’s wearing a fucking wedding dress – but it happens, like it always happens.
Lauren’s fingers curl in the hair at the nape of Camila’s neck as she pulls her close, and Camila thought she’d been past heartbreak, thought she knew her breaking point, but it turns out that she wasn’t even close.
There are layers to being shattered, she realizes – and every single broken thing can be split smaller, again and again. Broken things breaking things.
//
“I can’t believe I get to marry my best friend,” Lauren whispers, so close to Camila’s lips that Camila can taste the liquor on them. Her own mouth is still burning too. “I mean – you’re my best friend, of course.” Lauren giggles and it rips right through Camila’s chest, slashes through every nerve in her body which she’s been desperately trying to keep alive ever since Lauren snuck into her bed ten minutes ago, half naked. “But Lucy…” Lauren continues. “Fuck, she’s just so fucking wonderful – and I just can’t believe – I can’t believe we’re really…” She sighs. “You know what I mean, Camz?”
Camila stares up at the ceiling and tries not to think when Lauren reaches over and pushes the hem of Camila’s shirt up, pressing her hands against the bare skin of Camila’s back. Then, she giggles again, “Of course, when I’m married we can’t do this kind of stuff anymore. I’ll have to behave. Not get drunk anymore and live in an actual house together with my wife – not in this crappy apartment with you. We can’t cuddle like this. I think.” She pushes her nose in the crook of Camila’s neck. “Unless Lucy will let you sleep in our bed with us – I’d be up for that.”
Lauren’s fingers burn into Camila’s like hot iron. She closes her eyes and tries not to feel anything – not the flick of Lauren’s eyelashes against her jaw, not the tension in her stomach when Lauren runs the tip of her finger right over the edge of Camila’s bare hip, not the way Lauren’s mouth keeps brushing against her pulse point, the line between talking and kissing vague and blurry in the darkness of the apartment—
“Camz?” Lauren says then, waiting for Camila to reply.
“Yeah?” Camila breathes out when she’s finally found the courage.
“I don’t think we can—” Lauren stops talking, her breath hot. “I mean – not like before. Not anymore. You know that, right? You know we can’t do that anymore, don’t you?”
Camila doesn’t know what hurts more; the way Lauren is telling her they can’t keep doing whatever it is they do, or the way she’s implying that what they’re doing is all because of Camila, rather than the both of them.
She opens her mouth to reply, thinks that if she’ll part her lips an answer will magically roll of her tongue, but before she can even make a sound, Lauren pushes herself up and kisses Camila hard. Liquor and heat andLauren—
Camila pulls back. “Fuck – Laur, you just said we—”
Lauren kisses her again, swallowing the rest of Camila’s sentence with her mouth, taking her resistance with her hands, fingers travelling fast, down to the waistband of Camila’s underwear. The alcohol is spinning in Camila’s head when Lauren’s fingers slip right between her legs and she moans out.
They can’t. She knows they can’t.
But then again, they never could, so Camila bites down into her forearm and lets Lauren touch her – right where she can feel her heartbeat pulsing, right where she has been burning and slippery and tense since the second Lauren crawled into her bed wearing nothing but her panties.
What difference does it really make?
//
She’s got a speech to write.
She’s got a speech to write in which she tells everyone – Lauren’s parents and Chris and Taylor and all of Lucy’s extended family that she has never met before and Vero and Keana and everyone else from school and college and all these strangers that are still somehow part of what Lucy calls an ‘intimate wedding’ – that Lauren is the most amazing best friend Camila has ever had.
A speech about promises and lifetimes and loving fearlessly. Something about how Lucy makes the green of Lauren’s eyes shine brighter, even though that’s scientifically impossible. Something about how Lauren wouldn’t shut up about Lucy for forty-eight hours after the first time they went out together. Something about Lauren – wild, reckless, look-at-me-living-life-not-tied-down-to-anything Lauren – telling Camila I want to fucking marry her, Camz in a hushed whisper while Camila is eating cereal on the couch and Lucy is in the shower after the first time she sleeps over. Something about Camila almost choking on her breakfast because she just can’t believe it.
(Can’t believe Lauren is standing in front of her a giggling, nervous mess of emotions, even though the hickeys she made on the insides of Camila’s thighs days ago, all of her dripping down Lauren’s jaw, haven’t even faded yet.)
She can’t bring herself to do it.
She puts the tip of her pen to the paper and wants to write about the time she had a fever and how Lauren stayed in bed with her for four days straight, skipping all of her classes to stroke Camila’s sweaty hair out of her eyes and kiss her temples.
She wants to write about college, about coming home from Christmas break on January 2nd to Lauren dragging an old Christmas tree that someone had already thrown out up the stairs to their room, telling Camila I don’t care that it’s January, we’re going to have our own Christmas together. She wants to write about the lights and the hot chocolate, about searching the shelves of the local department store for the discounted decorations. She wants to write about the first time Lauren made her come using only her mouth, and the near black-out she experienced as a result.
She wants to write about school and six-year old Lauren whispering a mix of Spanish and English into her ear any time Camila couldn’t understand what Miss Julie is saying. She wants to write about borrowing books from Lauren, reading the underlined passages over and over again with a flashlight under the covers in her bedroom, feeling her heart burn with every sentence that Lauren loved enough to smudge the pages for.
She wants to write about the tension and the heat and the truth about the stinging sensation in the center of her chest; all the times she’s choked on her own breath with another one of Lauren’s this doesn’t mean anything, it’s just for fun echoing in her ears.
She wants to write about the week they spent trying to paint the cover of To Kill A Mockingbird right on their kitchen wall – eventually getting more paint on each other than on the walls.
She wants to write about Lauren grabbing her freezing hand during high school football games and holding it tucked away in the inside of her coat pocket. About the kiss Lauren pressed to Camila’s bare shoulder, right after zipping up her prom dress. She wants to write about what happened behind the softball field, about Lauren pressing into her, the first kiss slow and hesitant – fifteen too young to want forever, but wanting it anyway.
She doesn’t write any of it.
She brings the tip of her pen to the paper and writes, The first time Lauren went out with Lucy she chatted my ears off about it for at least forty-eight hours.
It will earn her a laugh.
It’s also the truth.
//
They end up on the beach, the night before the wedding. A bottle of wine between them, bare feet in the sand.
Lauren says, “I can’t believe I’m getting married tomorrow,” and Camila still can’t believe it either.
She knows that if she wants Lauren to know, she has to say something now. She takes another gulp of wine, trying to drink the courage into her veins.
“You look fucking gorgeous, you know?” Lauren says. “In your dress, I mean, but also right now.”
It doesn’t help. Another gulp of wine, the red staining the corner of Camila’s mouth. Lauren stares at it – longer than she should.
“I want you to ask you something,” Lauren says.
“No,” Camila says – the first thing she’s said since sitting down. “Laur, don’t.”
Lauren’s eyebrow quirks. “You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
They’re sitting too close to each other, always too close. Camila can count the summer freckles on the bridge of Lauren’s nose. She stares at Lauren’s eyes and then at Lauren’s mouth. She’s too drunk to want to hide it. Lauren doesn’t avert her gaze either, not even when she breathes the question against Camila’s lips, “Do you think I should marry her?”
Camila knows the moment is now. She knows, so she says, “I don’t know if you should, but I know that I don’t want you to.”
She says, “Remember when we had a Christmas tree with crappy decoration in our college dorm for the entire month of January? Remember when you whispered Spanish in my ear? Remember all the times you fucked me so good that I almost blacked out? Remember the To Kill A Mockingbird painting? Remember the softball field? Remember what it feels like to kiss me?”
She says, “I don’t want you to marry her, Laur. I love you. I love you. I love you. Even if it will kill me drop by bleeding drop.”
She says, “Sometimes when the light is right and you look at me, I swear your eyes get brighter too, even if it’s not scientifically possible.”
She says it all, but it doesn’t sound like it.
It sounds like, “If you want to.”
The words bleed right out of Camila’s throat – broken things breaking things – and Lauren smiles.