Chapter 1

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NOTE: Camila was just trying to be nice when she bought Lauren the massage kit for Christmas...she didn't realize HOW nice a gift it truly was.

Rated: Fiction M - Humor/Romance - Smut

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Lauren twirled the box in her hands several times as she bit her lip. Downstairs the sounds of obnoxious laughter filtered up to her bedroom along with the faint hum of Christmas music, but the raven-haired shut her eyes and tried to block it out.

Her parents' annual Christmas Eve party was underway and Lauren had retreated upstairs to the sanctuary of her bedroom to avoid having to have yet another drunken conversation with one of her mom's annoying friends or her father's gross co-workers.

But really, if she were honest, her retreat had more to do with the present in her hands than anything else.

Earlier that day at school, she and her classmates exchanged Secret Santa gifts. Lauren had received a beautiful cream-colored scarf from Ashlee that her friend had knitted. The raven-haired was quite pleased with the present—and the fact that Ashlee had been her Secret Santa—and was happy with how the class meeting had gone that day. And then...Camila Cabello happened.

For whatever reason, the brunette thought it was a good idea to give everyone a present, even though the brunette only needed to give Ally a gift. Lauren assumed Camila was bored—now that Shawn broke up with her, surely Camila had a lot of time on her hands. Or maybe Camila needed an excuse to give her ex-boyfriend a present and thought that if she bought something for everyone, Shawn would have to accept Camila's gift to him. Perhaps Camila just really was generous. Well...for whatever reason, the brunette did it.

Everyone was really quite stunned by Camila's gesture—especially since Camila's Secret Santa had failed to give the brunette a gift at all. And to make matters worse, Camila's presents had been spot-on. Every present she gave fit the receiver as though she knew each person so well. It was the reason Lauren had yet to open her own present. It was actually kind of weird, the raven-haired thought, that she hadn't unwrapped the gift. Instead, she just kept looking at it...or holding it...shaking it as though it would whisper what unknown surprise was inside.

Lauren didn't want to open the gift in front of the club and Camila out of embarrassment—the origins unknown—and luckily she had been spared reveling what was inside because Mr. Reid had suddenly appeared in the choir room, doubled-over, sweaty profusely, and extremely out of breath. Apparently, the string quartet he had hired to perform at the school assembly was stuck on the road buried under a few feet of snow. He had practically begged Mr. Cowell to have the choir club perform, and Lauren thought for a moment that her teacher would decline out of bitterness that our club wasn't asked to begin with. But sure enough, Simon agreed—despite the choir club's grumblings and reminders of their caroling debacle earlier that week—and everyone was quickly thrown into a whirl-wind of brush-ups on Christmas songs and a few new ones that Mr. Cowell wanted to try out in hopes that the school would be a little more receptive.

They weren't.

Although Lauren quite liked Mr. Cowell's mash-up of Deck the Rooftop and the boys' rendition of Jingle Bells, they were losing their audience quickly. No one had thrown anything yet, but the boos were audible and everyone was mostly talking about their performance anyway. That was until Camila happend.

It was never the plan for the tiny brunette to sing a solo, but Camila must have sensed that something needed to be done. So with a quick word to the band, Camila stepped forward on stage as the open notes to O Holy Night started to play. The other choir members had no idea what to do. They hadn't practiced the song and most were unfamiliar with the words. Lauren wasn't. It's her favorite. But she didn't know where to stand like everyone else and Mr. Cowell was no help—wide-eyed and pulling his hair as he watched the brunette take her place.

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