Through Her Eyes (Camren)

Chapter 9: Friends of Friends

“I hate you,” Lauren said to her flimsy coffee cup. It was eight in the morning and Cocoa’s had just opened. Lauren was being forced to work another weekend shift. The Los Angeles air was smoggy and disgusting, sticking to Lauren’s skin, suffocating. The cars outside the store were too loud and Lauren’s iPod was out of batteries. “I hate you so much.”

The coffee cup did not respond.

Lauren glared harder.

“I hate you too,” Normani told her easily, flipping a page in her brightly colored magazine.

“Not you.” Lauren frowned at the cover of the magazine, trying to recognize any of the faces of the celebrities. “The coffee. I hate the coffee.”

Normani glanced disinterestedly at Lauren’s white Styrofoam cup. “Sure,” she said, looking down at her magazine again. “You’re pissy because of coffee. That makes sense.”

Lauren frowned harder, examining the cup. It was plain and white, the coffee inside gone cold already. Boring and hardly worthy of being the bane of Lauren’s existence.

Of course, if Lauren didn’t blame the coffee she’d have to admit to the real reason she was irritable, which did not happen to be the time of morning or even the cold coffee she was forced to sell. The reason of course was Camila.

If Lauren had not been nineteen, she would have been sure Camila was giving her gray hair. At the very least, Camila was making her pull her hair out.

The previous night Camila had seemed confused when she’d left, talking quietly about things that Lauren didn’t understand, and of course Camila always talked in a way Lauren hardly understood, but last night had been different, it had felt different, like maybe even Camila didn’t know what she was talking about.

The last place Lauren wanted to be now was at Cocoa’s. Or anywhere that was not with Camila, really.

The bells over the coffee shop’s front entrance jingled to signify a customer’s entrance and Lauren transferred her glare from the Styrofoam cup to the small woman walking towards her.

“Good morning,” the woman said with faux cheerfulness. “I’d like—”

“Screw off,” Lauren snapped, narrowing her eyes at the customer’s mousy little face. Short blond hair and blue eyes, a dressed in a neat blue dress. Not Camila. “Starbucks is down the street.”

Not Camila blinked a few times, glancing from Lauren to Normani, who did not look up from her magazine. “But I don’t want Star—”

“Screw off!” Lauren yelled, and Not Camila quickly turned tail and all but ran out the door, the annoying little bells left jingling in her wake.

Lauren promptly went back to glaring at her coffee.

“I hate you.”

——-

Lauren worried about Camila for the long hours she spent working at Cocoa’s, couldn’t take her mind off Camila or Michael all day, if there was a Michael. Laure’s dad was called Michael but she was sure Camila was not talking about her father. She worried and worried and waited and waited and when Camila finally came that night she was smiling brilliantly and cheerful as ever.

“Camila,” Lauren said, almost surprised to see Camila so happily digging through her trash, just as she always was.

“Lolo!” Camila pulled an apple core out of the trash to show Lauren proudly. “I’m going to plant a tree,” she said, eyes bright.

Lauren frowned. “Didn’t you already?”

Camila tilted her head oddly.

“You already planted a tree,” Lauren reminded her. “An apple tree. Don’t you remember?”