Not Just One Night

Chapter 7

Camila's POV

I knew she wouldn't be there, but as soon as I left class I called Ally told her to wait for me outside of the English building and we walked to the restaurant Lauren and I had planned on meeting at. For at least an hour, my roommate and I sat on the brick wall next to the outside seating, as I watched thousands of faces pass by on the street, none of them belonging to Lauren. I guess I was giving her the benefit of the doubt, hoping she'd show for our date, hoping she'd give this a chance but as Ally explained over and over, there are rules about these sorts of things. I couldn't refrain from replying, "People break rules everyday, Ally." But she insisted that it wasn't fair to expect Lauren to risk her job for someone she's only known a week.

But still, I wish she would have at least came to the restaurant if nothing more than to talk. Even if she was going to end it, I'd rather do it as adults, instead of her practically running out of the room, leaving me even more confused that I already was before.

To my dismay, she never showed and Ally and I had sat outside of the sushi bar so long that our own stomach's started to growl, so she suggested that we get take out from the diner on the corner of our street and hesitantly I agreed. I probably would have sat there all night, looking for her, had Ally not been there.

Before walking away, I took one more look around the restaurant willing Lauren to magically appear. But she didn't.

The walk back to the apartment was short. No more than fifteen minutes and Ally effortlessly filled it with conversation about anything other than Lauren. She talked about Troy for the majority of the time, telling each detail on how they had rekindled. It felt so misplaced, having to listen to all the sappy words they had exchanged when I couldn't even keep a girl around for twenty-four hours. When she wasn't talking about him though, she touched on classes and how I thought mine would fair this semester but that only led to the mentioning of Film Studies, and then I was right back to talking about Lauren. She allowed it to go on for a moment but knew if she gave me too much leeway, I'd go running into an hour long conversation, going back and forth on whether or not Lauren and I had a chance.

After grabbing our food, we ended up back at the apartment, in the living room, sitting on the floor sharing a caesar salad, and two orders of greasy fries. We discussed our schedules for the next day, deciding if we could walk together or if we should just plan to meet for lunch somewhere on campus. My classes didn't start until eleven, so I told her I'd wait for her outside of the communications building when it was over, and we'd grab some pizza or something. For a while, I was able to not think about Lauren. Ally kept the conversation going long enough to push the thought of her back. She didn't reappear until I was lying in bed, several hours later, alone.

The sinking realization hit me that most likely Lauren will never be in my bed again. She'll never lay, wrapped up in my arms as I read to her my favorite lines from books she's probably never even heard of and she'll never fall asleep on my chest, and I'll never whisper goodnight to her, hoping that I don't wake up the next morning, finding her gone, after realizing that she could do so much better than me. And once the smell of her perfume is gone, it's gone. There's no recreating it, there's no getting it back, and that's a feeling that I didn't know could hurt as bad as it does.

Ally says that I'm too invested already, but am I really okay with letting her go so easily?

I like Lauren. In fact she's the only person that I've connected with since Dinah. I'm not an idiot for wanting to see where things could possibly go with her and I.

I just need to talk to her, more than what we did after class. I've got to explain myself, and why I lied about being in college and I have to convince her that we could make this work. It doesn't have to be over.