"This is not going to end well for you, Y/N. You tried this before. Remember what happened?"
Phantasm's warning was drowned out by the pulsing beat and high-octane rhythm flowing from the speakers of the club. After crying my eyes out for what seemed like hours, I decided to drive somewhere where I can forget—where I can numb the pain. And as was proven and tested, alcohol does that.
So now I'm here in this deafening place to try and at least soften the pain I was feeling.
I made my way up the stairs and into a private room where they had an isolated bar and view of the dancefloor for VIPs. The bouncer didn't give me any problem, recognizing me immediately as I made my way to the bar. The sound in this part of the club wasn't as loud as downstairs so the pulsing in my brain had a break. And soon enough, hopefully, my heart would get its break too.
I asked the bartender to get me a martini as Phantasm continued to try and stop me. "This is not the way to move on. Let's just go home."
I chuckled bitterly and placed my phone on the counter. "Don't worry, I used up all three already right? I won't make a stupid wish this time."
"That's not what I mean," she said with a sigh. "Even if you forget about the pain today, do you think it'll be the same tomorrow? Or the day after that? The pain won't go away just because you drink."
"At least for tonight. At least for one night. Just let me forget the pain."
Phantasm looked at me with pity. I knew she was disappointed in me and maybe even disappointed in herself for not stopping me. But she wasn't the one who felt like a thousand arrows wedged themselves in their heart. She wasn't the one who wanted to break down.
"It's midnight in ten minutes. Your wishes would reset so it won't be possible for you to drunk wish again."
The bartender served the martini in front of me and I readily drank it in one gulp. There was no use trying to act coy anymore since I needed to get drunk and fast. As if reading my mind, the bartender took the empty glass and prepared another one silently.
It was after four, maybe five glasses, when I realized I was already drunk. Phantasm left me alone on the third one and I didn't blame her. I must look like a mess right now. Luckily, the bartender wasn't saying anything so I didn't need to make small talk. He just continued to refill my glass amidst the arrival of some new faces.
I was in the club for about an hour when he arrived. By this time, I was positively smashed and I barely had a grip on what was happening. I waved at the newcomer from the bar when he saw me. He was the last person I expected to call but in the end, he was the only one who had an idea about what I was feeling.
"Y/N, are you drunk?" he asked, sliding into the stool next to me.
"Shawny! You're here," I drawled out. He looked at me from head to toe and furrowed his eyebrows. I wonder if he still saw me as his idol after seeing me like this.
"Uh... I shouldn't be here. I'm not legal yet," he said.
"Oh don't worry about that boy, you're not here to drink." I laughed and drank the martini in front of me. "I am."
He looked confused and normally I would've felt sorry for him but after numerous drinks, I had no emotional capacity to care anymore. Hooray for small victories I guess.
"Why did you call me? I'm actually glad you did because you shouldn't be alone at your state."
"Because you're my only friend, Shawn," I answered, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. "Because Camila fucked me up."
"What—what did Mila do?"
The olive fumbled around the glass as I rotated my wrist. I tried to focus on it but ultimately failing as the glass almost fell from my grip. Shawn's hand readily reached out and took it from me, placing it on the far end where I couldn't reach it. I took a deep breath and pointed at him.
"Karla Camila... Cabello... Estrabao," I started, "is a liar. She lied to me Shawn—to us."
"What do you mean?"
"She wasn't dating me, she was secretly dating a rockstar try hard," I cried out. Shawn looked around at my outburst and I noticed some faces turned towards us. "What are you looking at?" I yelled at them.
"Shh!" Shawn said, covering my mouth with his hand. "Come on, let's move somewhere else."
He helped me up and walked me over to a couch on the far end where there weren't a lot of people. I looked back at the bar and saw Shawn left my martini on the counter. "Nooo I can't leave marty alone."
He dropped me off on the couch and I could barely hear him talking to someone. "Hi, can we please have some water? Thanks."
"No problem, sir. Also here, your friend left her phone at the bar."
I wonder what Camila was doing right now. Was she still crying? Was she getting drunk like me? Did she even care about the way we broke each other? Or was she in Michael's arms now? She should, that's who she belongs with anyway.
"Okay, Y/N," I heard Shawn say as he dropped beside me. "If you can, tell me what happened. Tell me the whole thing."
Drinking my pain away did what I wanted it to do. It stopped all the pain and made me forget the emotional distress I was in. However, the memories were still there—vivid and distinct. But instead of feeling hurt, I just felt indifferent and... numb.
"Shawn... you were right about her dating someone secretly. But it wasn't me." I looked at him and saw his eyes intently on me. "She was dating this guy named Michael. She didn't reject me even though she was dating him. She kissed me... while she was still with him. I was—" I stopped and swallowed the lump in my throat. "I was an alternative if she and Michael broke up."
"Y/N—"
"How fucked up is that, Shawn?" I cried out. Slowly, I felt the pain coming back as the haze of alcohol started to disappear. "I was side-lined like a fucking reserve."
Shawn opened his mouth but closed it immediately. It seemed like he was just as conflicted as I was. "What—what're you gonna do now?"
I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms. "I just want to forget, Shawn. At least for tonight."
I wonder if this would've gone the way it did if I didn't make that wish months ago. If Camila never loved me, would I feel this way? If I didn't have the memory of her touch, her laugh, her kiss... would I be okay?
In the end, was all of this hurt my fault?
"Since the first time I met Mila, she already had me hooked," Shawn said with a smile on his face. "I saw her smile and I immediately thought 'can I make her smile like that'? And when I did, I couldn't explain the happiness I felt. When I fell for her, I fell hard and I didn't regret any of it. I'll gladly fall for her again if I need to."
I rolled my eyes. "Shawn, this isn't helping, what're you—"
"Y/N, listen," he interrupted. "I'm not saying what Mila did was right. I'm not saying you should get off your ass and forgive her. But if you really love her as I do, or even more, I know that you know she's not that kind of girl. I know there's a reason she did what she did. And I know that the last thing she wanted was to hurt the person she loves."
I began thinking for a minute before grabbing my phone from Shawn. He looked confused but I just continued to type something on it. I blinked a few times, clearing the haze from my mind and making sure I was typing coherent words. It took me about fifteen minutes before I finally finished writing a message to Shawn. I heard his phone ding and he looked at me once before reading the message I sent him.
"Treat you better?" he asked.
I placed my phone beside me on the couch and asked a waiter to get me a martini. "It's a song... for you. You said you wanted to work with me so just edit some stuff there and you'll get your song."
"I know I can treat you better than he can. And any girl like you deserves a gentleman," he read out loud. "Is this your song for Michael?"
"No it's your song for me. I just changed the pronouns so it wouldn't be obvious." I sighed and rubbed my swollen eyes. "Shawn... you don't know the things I did throughout my life that ruined Camila's. I am an asshole. A selfish... motherfucking asshole. And you—you're not. You're the one Camila deserves, not me. You could treat her better."
"You're... giving up on her?" he quietly asked. I began to wonder if it was the right thing to do. Would I ever get over Camila? But the way Shawn described her, the way Shawn believed in her, was something I didn't do. I decided to wish Camila was mine when she rejected me, but when she rejected Shawn, he was just happy being her friend.
I was a different kind of fucked up.
Shawn grabbed my arm and turned me towards him. "Y/N, no. Camila loves you and if you just—"
I pulled my arm from his grip and turned away from him. "Shawn, just go. You have your song, now leave me alone."
He didn't say anymore after that. I just wanted to feel numb again and forget about the pain. Deep in my mind, I knew things with Camila wouldn't last. I knew that one of these days I was gonna get hurt and maybe I was even prepared for it. But being prepared for it and actually experiencing it were two different things. It didn't matter how many walls I erected around my heart when Camila became my heart altogether.
By my third martini, Shawn wasn't beside me anymore. I don't know where he went or what he was doing but I was just thankful for the silence. I was finally buzzed again when I noticed that my phone wasn't beside me anymore. However, I didn't have the strength to care so I just drank the thought away.
I don't know how many martinis I had before I felt myself slowly starting to lose consciousness. When I looked around, everything was a blur and no sound escaped my lips anymore. I closed my eyes and fought against the haze surrounding my mind.
"Y/N? Babe, are you okay? Can you hear me?"
The voice sounded familiar, yet so distant. It was a voice I've heard so many times that I practically had it memorized. And yet, this time, the name escaped me. I opened my eyes and fought through the urge to keel over so I could see who was in front of me. My vision was blurred and I couldn't focus no matter how hard I tried. I watched her kneel in front of me and place a soft hand on my cheek. I relaxed under her touch and let my lips brush against her palm.
"You'll be okay, I'm here. I'll take care of you."
She wrapped her arms around me and I could faintly smell the scent of strawberries wafting off her. The last thing I thought about was the distinct strawberry taste of Camila's lips before I let myself pass out against this stranger's touch.
-//-//-//-//-//-
Getting drunk is fun and all but no one ever talks about how fun waking up the next morning is.
Because it fucking isn't.
The moment I opened my eyes, my head immediately started pounding and I found myself grabbing one of my pillows and putting it over my head. Bad idea though because once I started running out of air, the pounding in my head multiplied ten-fold.
I tried moving my arms but my limbs felt sore for some reason so moving even an inch added to the headache I was already sporting. I decided to take a deep breath and move myself to a sitting position. My whole body basically screamed in pain and I had to bite my lip from letting out a squeal. Once the pain finally subsided, I used that time to look at my surroundings and let the memory of last night play out in my mind.
In the midst of me trying to remember, I noticed a glass of water on the nightstand and a pill next to it. I picked up the pill and noticed a little note under it that read: Drink Me :). Carefully, I grabbed the water and drank the pill then grabbed the note and turned it over. There was someone there, in the club, when I got drunk. After Shawn left, a girl appeared and hugged me.
All of a sudden, my heart raced. Was it Camila?
As the pain in my head subsided, everything finally became clearer. That was when I realized I was in my underwear. I immediately stood up and grabbed the blanket to wrap it around my body. My legs buckled underneath me and I had to lean on the table for support. I tried to scour my mind for a reason why I was almost naked but couldn't find a single answer.
That was when the door to my bathroom opened and my jaw almost dropped to the floor.
Lauren Jauregui came out of my bathroom in only her underwear.
We just stared at each other for a few seconds before I saw a blush make its way to her cheeks and she quickly covered herself up in a towel. I finally closed my mouth and turned around, my heart racing so fast and my body getting warmer by the second.
"I—I—Uh—I'm sorry—I—I didn't know," I stuttered heavily. Good job, Y/N, she won't think you're a creep with that at all.
"No, it's—it's my fault I shouldn't have—" she stuttered back. God, we were a mess.
I heard some shuffling noises before she called out to me. "Umm... you can turn around."
I slowly turned around and saw a towel tightly wrapped around her. This wasn't helping me at all as my eyes traveled from her soft hair to her slender shoulders to her firm legs that—shit! Get it together, Y/N!
After blinking a few more times to try and compose myself, I finally found the words to talk to Lauren. "I—I'm naked. Did we—"
It was time for Lauren's eyes to widen. "No! No, I—umm—you don't remember?"
"Sorry I—" I scratched the back of my head. "I have a hard time remembering when I'm drunk."
"Oh, umm," Lauren started, then cleared her throat. "Shawn called me from your phone. He told me you were drunk and that he needed help to get you home. I guess I was the only other person he knew in your contacts."
I was about to ask what she meant by 'only other person' when I remembered the whole reason I was drinking last night. I shook her face from my mind and focused on the girl in front of me.
"So you guys took me back here?"
She nodded. "I told Shawn I could handle it when we arrived here. And then you kinda—umm—threw up in the lobby."
"Oh, fuck."
"Yeah... so I kinda had to take your clothes off," she said the last part with a flip of her hair. "I—I didn't look or anything, I just—umm—"
"It's okay, but don't tell me I got some on you." She nodded and I winced. "Fuck, sorry."
She giggled. "It's alright, no harm done. I had someone bring me some clothes here earlier and that's why I needed your shower."
A sudden realization hit me. "Wait, you've been here since last night?"
"Y—yeah. I didn't want to leave you alone until you were awake."
"You didn't have to do that, Lauren." The thought I tried so hard to hide ever since she gave me that notebook came back again. Could it be that Lauren felt something for me? But why? I didn't even do anything special for her. And yet, she always put in effort in everything she did for me.
She smiled and I began to wonder why I didn't notice how beautiful it was until now. "I want to take care of you, Y/N."
I opened my eyes and tried to say something but found myself unable to form any words. An awkward silence fell on us at that moment. We found ourselves looking away whenever we stared and it was frustrating because we were never like this before. What was going on?
"Do you umm... need to use the bathroom?"
"Yes," I immediately said, moving past her with our arms brushing together. Shivers crawled up my arm and I immediately closed the door before Lauren could see my reddened cheeks.
I grabbed the sides of the sink and took deep breaths. Calm down, Y/N and stop being hyper aware of Lauren. She's your friend and even though she looked sexy and beautiful in her underwear you shouldn't be thinking about her like that.
I watched my reflection in the mirror and realized I looked horrible. My eyes were redder than my cheeks and my hair looked like a weed infestation. I decided to wash my face first in hopes of waking myself up and removing the headache I still had. After that was brushing my teeth and gargling some mouthwash until the undeniable taste of regret was gone from my mouth.
After I made sure I looked even remotely presentable, I grabbed the bathrobe from the hamper and wore it. When I caught my reflection again, I couldn't help but heave a big sigh.
Look at what Camila made you do, Y/N. You've become a shell of your former self. You let her become your whole life that now that you lost her, you didn't know where to pick up the pieces anymore. Amidst all the pain and tears she's caused, were the happy memories really worth it?
I let the question hang in the air and decided to move out of the bathroom.
Lauren was dressed and on her phone when I stepped back into thd room. She looked up as she heard the door open and smiled at me. "Are you feeling better?"
"Yeah, thanks to you."
She bit her lip then moved closer to me. "Your phone is in your pants which are on the sofa. And Y/N," she called out, "I know what happened with you and Camila. I don't know if you want to know but... she's been crying so much."
I crossed my arms and gave her a sad smile. "Well that makes two of us."
Lauren slowly raised her hand and caressed my cheek. Her touch was so gentle, like I was a priceless piece of art she was trying to feel yet preserve at the same time. It took only a few seconds before her hand fell to her side.
"Well, someone's waiting for me downstairs. I have to get back to the apartment," she said.
I nodded. "It's okay. I just really appreciate you taking care of me. You got me home and you even helped me with my hangover. Honestly, just thank you."
She shrugged and grinned. "Look at it as payment for taking care of me when I was drunk."
"Ah yes, drunk Lauren who passed out at the back of my car."
She laughed. "I must've been a mess."
"Not really," I said with a chuckle. "Only when you did that thing."
Lauren tilted her head to the side. "What thing?"
I debated whether to tell her the truth about what she did that night. I mean it was something we could laugh about, right? There was no harm in telling her the truth. "Well, you were drunk and I'm pretty sure you didn't know what you were doing." I tried laughing it off but Lauren was only looking at me curiously. I cleared my throat and continued. "You kinda—umm—you kinda... kissed me?" I didn't mean for the last part to come out as a question.
Lauren leaned back and looked away. She was visibly surprised and I decided to diffuse the situation before it got out of hand. "Oh, but as I said, you were drunk and it was probably just a spur of the moment thing. You couldn't even remember it, you know. That means it wasn't important."
She continued thinking for a bit before she finally looked at me and smiled. "Well, that's a shame."
"Oh not at all! I don't mind it. You didn't know what you were doing after all."
"No, it's a shame I did it while I was drunk."
"I'm not angry really, I—wait what?"
I was too surprised by what Lauren said that I didn't notice her step closer to me until our faces were only inches apart. Then, with a swift move, she wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me down to her lips.
We just stayed like that for a while, our lips together, unmoving, while my eyes were as wide as saucers. It seemed so long when Lauren finally pulled away and looked at me. But she didn't pull away far, our faces were still close to each other that I could feel her warm breath against my skin. As I looked into Lauren's eyes, I could feel them slowly pulling me in. There was desire there but also care and gentleness. I heard a voice inside my head telling me this wasn't right. That letting Lauren in when I didn't love her would result in her getting hurt like me. But then again, that strange voice sounded strangely like Camila, the girl I trusted and broke my heart.
Was it really wrong to accept Lauren's help of putting back the pieces of my heart that Camila broke?
Pushing all inhibitions out of my mind, I closed the distance between the two of us and met my lips with hers. We moved together, in tandem, like two lovers separated and now found each other. Her hands moved to my hair and I felt her hands across my scalp. I responded by cupping her hips and pulling our bodies together. The movement made her moan and I used the opportunity to assault her tongue with mine.
Camila's face slowly disappeared from my mind as it was replaced by the desire Lauren and I had for each other. My heart knew this was wrong—that Lauren was only a distraction, maybe even a rebound. And yet with every touch and every moan, my heart's voice became hushed until I couldn't hear its cries anymore.
And it was at that point I pushed Camila out of my mind completely and let the passion Lauren and I had reach its inevitable conclusion.
A/N: Yes, you two did it 😏 No, I'm not writing smut 😬