Not Just One Night

Chapter 12

Lauren's POV

I turn the volume up until it's almost too much to bare. This particular song has been on repeat for the past hour, and no matter how loud it gets, it doesn't drown out nearly enough.

I've been hidden away in my room since leaving work, and I've still not gotten a hold on my emotions that somehow snuck their way in. Just when I thought I had my shit together. Just when I thought I had found some solidity in asking Camila to walk away, a day like today had to happen.

If I lie still enough, I can hear Ally's plea. "Just sign the paper, Lauren," and with my eyes closed, I can see her slide the white sheet across my desk. Reading in bold at the top, Class Transfer Form.

I replay the moment in my head and somehow, there's still a free falling in my chest; a numbness across my body that refuses to dissipate.

I feared this would happen. I'd push Camila too far, and she'd run, and she had. The request to leave my class was evidence enough. And what fucking sucks the most, is that she couldn't even bare to face me herself. I didn't even get a proper goodbye because I had hurt her so much that she sent Ally, her roommate, who took the opportunity to speak not only on Camila's behalf but she threw in her own two cents worth.

I asked simply, "How is she?" Not having talked to or seen the brunette in forty-eight hours. Over the past twelve days, it had been the longest we had went without speaking. I should have been ecstatic because she was doing exactly what I asked of her, staying away, but I wasn't happy. I was hurting.

Ally, with no holds barred, effortlessly put me into my place. "Do you actually care or are you trying to make yourself feel better?" she scoffed. "Considering you're why she hasn't left her bed in two days, and why she has barely eaten, and most importantly why she won't even talk to me because she knows the moment she opens her mouth she's going to finally break and she doesn't want to waste a single bit of emotion on you, when you wouldn't do the same."

But I had. Of course I was upset in losing Camila.

I turned the music louder to drown out the way I can still hear Ally say, "Look I know you're a teacher and I really should be polite but you fucking broke my best friend."

Her words echo in my head to the chords of the song, but what I want to know, is how can I break something that was never even mine?

God, the very thought that I'm so agitated over losing something that I had no claim to, is depressing.

As Ally pointed out, "She wasn't yours, and you two were barely more than strangers," but time had no telling of the connection that we had. Her short existence in my life had been monumental and walking away from a rarity like that, seems nearly impossible, but I know I have to.

"Just sign the paper," she pleaded again. There was a desperation in her eyes, saying that she knew it would be unacceptable to go back to her roommate without my signature. "Please, so all of this can finally be over."

I'm aware that my actions scream otherwise, but what if I don't want it to be over? I wondered what Camila would think of me if I refused to allow her to drop my class? Would she call me conflicting? Was I being conflicting?

Even though my words were harsh, I had made my point Wednesday. But would not signing the paper, confuse the lines I had so clearly set?

Did I have the nerve to refuse her request.

Maybe I should just sign it, I thought. I don't want to hurt Camila any further. She deserves better than how I've treated her. She deserves better than what I can give her right now, even though all I want is to give her everything.

I wanted to ask her to wait for me instead of telling her to leave, but I knew it wasn't fair. Ally confirmed that.

"You have no idea what Camila's been through. It has taken her a year," Ally emphasized holding up a single finger, "One whole year to get over her last girlfriend who completely wrecked her entire life and I don't mean just emotionally, but literally someone who nearly ruined everything that Camila had been working toward and then you show up, just as things were getting better and you do the exact same thing. So I'm sorry but being polite isn't the priority anymore. Camila is. And as her best friend, I'm asking you to just sign the paper so we can all move on from this."

Ally was right. Camila deserved more; someone to not only tell her that she's worth the risk but to show her.

I hold my eyes, tightly shut, picturing the way that Ally reached over, sliding the form further to me, and even though it weighed nothing, it was like a boulder when it collided with my chest. She grabbed a pen from the container on the desk, the one that Camila had knocked over the last time that she was in my office. She removed the lid, and extended it to me. "Please," she whispered. "For Camila."

I turn the music one notch louder, and a tear falls against my cheek.

I regret it.

I will always regret it.

But I signed the paper.

Camila's POV

Shouldn't it feel better than what it does? I wonder. Holding the white piece of paper, staring at Lauren's signature. I can feel Ally's eyes on me, standing at the edge of the bed, but I don't know how to respond, once she's handed it to me.

When I sent her with the form, I was unsure of what I really wanted. Part of me desperately needed to transfer out of Lauren's class for fear that I wouldn't be able to survive seeing her for two hours, two times a week. But the other part of me, the one that still completely craves the taste of the brunette on my tongue, and the scent of her on my sheets, hoped that she would refuse to sign it.

For what it's worth though, I can see the hesitancy in her messy signature.

"What did she say?" I ask Ally, folding the paper in half, laying it on the nightstand. She had been gone for two hours, and although it had been days since my roommate and I had spoken, I was desperate to know how the conversation went between Lauren and her.

"She asked how you were," she offered. I can only imagine how Ally had dramatized the entire situation.

"What'd you say?"

"I was honest," she replies sitting down on the edge of the bed. "I told her that you were taking it hard but rightfully so. And then I told her that she had broken my best friend," she shy's away, her words faltering at the end out of fear of my reaction to the bold confession.

"I'm not broken, Ally," I admit. I'm not. I'm just hurt. What Lauren had said to me after class on Wednesday, wasn't shocking. Every word, had already been spoken. She had told me that we would never work but instead of yelling it, she had whispered it into my ear as her hand trailed down my taut stomach, teasing the skin at the top of my shorts. I had heard her say, 'we can't' just before she dipped her head between my legs, running her tongue along my upper thighs. And she had said that I needed to just walk away but instead of an order, the first time it was more of a plea when her resistance was wearing thin and she knew she couldn't stay away from me for too long.

Her words weren't shocking.

It was how she said them.

There was so much anger, resentment, and blame and that's what hurt. That's what left me confined to my bed for two days. I wanted to fight, and had she said those familiar words in a whisper, or followed them with a gentle touch against the warmth of my skin, I wouldn't have given up. But she said them through gritted teeth, and with clenched fists, so I willed myself to stop fighting for something I was sure I could never have.