The Average Girl *** (Camren)

Chapter 34: Listening

Narrator's POV

Dinah hoped that Lauren would go to the cafe and talked to Camila. A week had passed. It turned out Camila was still going to the cafe. It meant Lauren did not go there to meet Camila as she asked Lauren for it. Dinah, Jade, and Lucy were out of ideas. Camila became more and more reserved than she had been. Camila still did her work and ran her business, but she stopped going to the club and barely hung out with them anymore. If they missed Camila and wanted to spend time with her, they would go to her place.

Dinah, Jade, and Lucy could only hope that Camila would let her feeling go and live her life again as the time passed. It took more than three years for her to move on from her first, one and only, relationship. They just hoped that this time it would not last longer than the first one. Although Camila and Lauren did not break up from a relationship, it did break hearts. It was even worse since it was her own fault. Camila, who hardly regretted things, must regret it more than anything in her life.

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Lauren did not go to the cafe to meet Camila as Dinah requested. She did not go there, but she could not get Camila out of her mind after talking to Dinah. On Friday, she walked past the cafe to see if it was true that Camila was there every morning. She did see Camila sitting there at the same spot with the same expression, sadness. Normani also told Lauren that she saw Camila each time she passed the cafe.

Lauren decided to meet Camila as she could not stop thinking about it, about her. Only by imagining how sad she looked, Lauren did not have the heart to ignore Camila any longer. She was trying to move on from Camila, which was not easy, but she had to. How hurt she was by Camila, she did not hold a grudge against Camila and still cared about her. 

Lauren knew that she had been slowly falling in love with Camila since they made love for the first time. However, she held herself from giving her heart away since she thought everything was too perfect to be true. She was right by doing that. Otherwise, she would be worse than Camila today if she had her heart crushed into pieces.

On Monday afternoon, Lauren went to the cafe with Normani. She wanted to check with the cafe owner if Camila was there every morning. Fortunately, the owner was willing to help them. She told them that Camila indeed visited the cafe every morning since February. She would come at the same time, sit at the same place, and order the same thing. There was once when her usual place was taken. She asked the customers to move that she would pay for everything they had. Since then, she had that table reserved every morning until now.

To convince herself further, Lauren asked for the camera footage. The owner was unwilling to share it at the beginning, but Normani talked her into it. She agreed and show them to Lauren and Normani. What the owner stated was well recorded. Camila even came every weekend. She never skipped a day. She came earlier, and she left when Lauren's office hour started. The owner said she barely talked, but she was a good person.

Normani asked the owner why she could tell that Camila was a good person. The owner said it was not the decent tips she left every morning. Camila would ask the staff to prepare some food if there were homeless people outside the cafe. She also paid for a few people who came and did not bring enough money or left their wallets.  The only thing that sometimes could piss certain customers off was that she did not like to be disturbed. She would rudely tell them to fuck off if they annoyed her.

After gathering the information, hearing from the cafe owner, and watching the came footage, Lauren decided to come and meet Camila tomorrow morning. She did not know how it would be, but she would give Camila proper closure as Dinah suggested. The whole night, Lauren was anxious thinking of how tomorrow would be. She could not fall asleep until midnight passed. She finally slept at two in the morning