Never Let Me Go (Camren/Norminah)

Chapter 21: My Favourite Forever

"Okay Lauren, hold on. Whoa, don't move to quickly or you're going to throw up."

Lauren could feel her pulse vibrating with an unreal abandon against her temples. Nothing felt normal, the room happened to be cocked at a forty-five degree angle and the doorway she had been ushered through moments ago was now seemingly duplicated itself in front of her.

"I don't feel so good." She murmured, the sour taste of cheap vodka coolers covering the inside of her mouth.

"You need to sit down." Lucy guided her to the nearest soft surface, a smaller than average couch tucked at the far corner of the living room and out of the way of most other commotion from fellow partygoers. "There's no way I'm letting you vomit only an hour into the night, this has got to be a record."

"Killjoy." Lauren sat down, leaning against the cheap and not-at-all comfortable back of the couch.

" You can call me all the names you want Lauren, I still refuse to let you hurl all over Mr and Mrs Fletcher's really well steamed living room carpet because you took those shots like a sailor. Now sit back and don't say a word, just focus on breathing."

"I don't call you names."

"You call me names all the time." Lucy rolled her eyes, sitting comfortably at her side and looking out to the rowdily growing crowd of underage high-school kids. "Throughout the eighth grade, you called me Lulu, ninth grade you called me Lucille, ten grade it was Lucinda, and last year you made the executive decision to go with Lucifer."

"What's wrong with that?" Lauren shifted her gaze to the girl.

"Well for starters, neither of them are my actual name."  Lucy chuckled. "And for finishers, I'm pretty sure Lucifer has got something to do with hell."

Lauren sighed, lifting her arm and slinging it heavily across Lucy's shoulders. "You know what baby girl? You're not half bad." She purred.

"Not half bad?"

Lauren felt Lucy's dark eyes flash at her with a very playful irritancy, and she made the executive decision to ignore it. "What am I doing here?" She asked softly, her voice somewhat drowned out by the sound of heavy bass. "Is all this just me now? Are things never going to change?"

"Shut up Lauren, you sound like the inside cover of my sociology textbook." Lucy leaned against her, nudging the set of inebriated green eyes in the shoulder. "If you don't want to be here anymore, we can just go home. I can sneak you through the back of my house, wait until you sober up then face your parents."

Lauren looked down at her, and despite how out of it the night seemed to have strayed, could easily notice that she was out of place. Lucy had never touched a drop of alcohol in her life, yet she would sacrifice her night in a heartbeat to make sure the green eyed girl didn't end up alone somewhere."You know... there are a number of other names for you I could conjure up off the tip of my tongue."

"Yeah?" Lucy sounded at the moment, highly uninterested. "And what would they be?"

The girl's long eyelashes were discernible against her tan complexion, the gentle slope of her cheekbones and even more so the shape of her lips catching Lauren's eye in a way they hadn't before. It was more likely than anything the alcohol, the sound of a heated rap song blaring at the back of the room and some incessant teenagers who had chosen to adorn their family's kitchen with jello shots and flavoured vodka. "Perfect." The green eyed girl managed to murmur, knowing that the war was deaf on Lucy's ears. She straightened up, taking her friend by the arm and getting to her feet.