Anatomy Of Love (Camren Fanfiction)

Chapter 7

The moment Lauren walked away was the moment Camila felt her world shatter into tiny pieces.  She ran after the older one but she was no where to be found. Lauren was gone. 

Camila stood in front to the Harvard banquet hall while a sea of unfamiliar faces walked past her. She tried to smile, she really did, but for once her cast-iron confidence failed her. Hot tears streamed down her face as she quickly made her way back to the apartment. She walked through the streets of downtown Boston, the luxuriant air ruffling through her long, brown locks. Camila thought of all of the arguments she had with Lauren- they fought over misplaced “borrowed”clothes, and Camila forgetting to put the milk back in the fridge, and other meaningless riffs. Nothing compared to the pain she saw in Lauren’s eyes. I caused that, she thought to herself. Camila felt tackled with guilt, overcome. She shouldn’t have taken out her jealous rage on Lauren. The thought of causing Lauren pain was a burden to loathsome to bare.

Camila barricaded into her apartment, running towards Lauren’s room. Her heart sank when she found it empty. She left me. I made her leave. Camila’s breathing became labored as she made her way into the kitchen in search of something to dull this gut-wrenching pain. The tightness in her chest was so painful she could barely catch a breath.  Camila filled a teacup with vodka and drank it down in one long swallow. The brunette wasn’t much of a drinker but she was in desperate need of something that would make the incessant thoughts that raced through her head cease. She left me. I made her leave.

The plastic composure she had cultivated for the past twenty years, that singular ability to draw a curtain across her emotions, crumbled as she as cried. I can’t fix this. She refilled her glass and walked back to the living room, where she collapsed in a heap. 

“Why didn’t you just come right out and say it?” she reproached herself aloud. “Say what you’ve wanted to say for the past eight years. I love you Lauren. You can’t be with Jackson because I’m fucking in love with you. Why can’t you just be vulnerable? Why do you always have to put up a fucking facade like everything is perfect?” she whispered, her breath hitching in her throat. She bit her lower lip and felt fresh tears stinging her eyes. 

The apartment was so deafeningly silent, she could hear the hum of every electronic device in the room like a chorus of white noise playing against the symphony of jumbled thoughts crashing around in her head. 

 Is this the end of our fifteen year long friendship? Will she ever forgive me?All the questions in her mind were now weighing a thousand times heavier on her heart.

Panic ran through Camila at the thought of losing her friend, the fear of the unknown clawing at her heart. Camila called Lauren’s cell phone obsessively, leaving heartfelt voicemail messages, ones apologizing profusely.

2:05 AM… Camila glanced at the clock and watched the thin black hands move slowly, gobbling up minutes. She paced throughout the house in a frenzy. Lauren hadn’t returned any of her calls. She grabbed her phone and frantically typed out a text in a last ditch effort to make amends.

[2:10AM] Lauren? Please answer me… 

[2:11AM] I need to know that you’re okay. I need to you to know that I’m sorry.

[2:19AM] Laur? I can’t sleep without you here

[2:20AM] Babe… answer me… please

[2:21AM] I need you

[2:34AM] I need my person…


3:46 AM…Camila sat cross-legged in the middle of the living room floor, in a baggy Harvard sweatshirt and thigh-high gym shorts. She stared at the clock, listening to the ticking to make sure her own heart was still beating. A leather bound journal lay open bedside her, a ballpoint pen clamped between her teeth. There was a smudge on ink on her chin. Ever since she was young, writing had been her escape. She wrote to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect. Her writing unearthed thoughts and feelings that her mouth could never utter. Her writing told the most important things that were hardest to say. She sniffled through her tears, as she thought of Lauren. Camila yanked the pen out of her mouth, grabbed her journal, and began to write.

For L.J
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, 
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. 
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way than this: 
where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

An hour later, she had covered half a dozen pages. So engrossed was she that the unexpected sound of the door closing severed her concentration like a chain saw.

“Lauren” she muttered weakly. Desolate, Camila sat in the darkened living room, her knees curled up beneath her bottom. She hadn’t eaten, couldn’t sleep. Her only companion was constant anxiety and doubt. There wasn’t anything she could do until Lauren was ready to talk.

Lauren lifted her head and glared at the younger girl, her piercing green eyes boring a hole through the younger one.

“I’m so sorry.” Camila whispered, her voice low and apologetic. Her throat felt thick and uncooperative. Her hands were clenched so tightly together that the blood flow to her fingers were restricted.

The blankness in Lauren’s eyes caused Camila to shiver. Lauren has never looked at Camila that way, as if Camila didn’t matter, as if she was just another girl, as if they hadn’t shared a fifteen year unbreakable bond. She stayed expressionless in her silence.

“Laur, please say something.” Camila could tell by the way Lauren’s eyes narrowed that she was struggling to maintain her own irritation. 

Lauren took off her leather jacket, slipped out of her black stilettos and flipped her deep-wine hair back into a ponytail. Lauren composed herself, turned and walked towards her bedroom. Even though they had just locked eyes, she pretended like she hadn’t seen Camila at all.

“Please say something.” Camila repeated,it came out like a feral plea. And had zero effect on Lauren. As slippery as a ghost, Lauren shot right past her and yanked her bedroom door open. Camila followed her and held her hand against the door, wedging it open. “No! You don’t get to ignore me. I fucked up and I realize that. But.. I can’t sleep without you. I can’t breath without…” Camila’s voice broke as she clutched her chest.

“I trusted you! And you judged me,” Lauren shot back. “You’re the only person that knows how deep my insecurity runs. The only person that knows I cry myself to sleep because people feel like my only redeeming quality is my “pretty” face,” Lauren shot back. “I thought you were the only person that truly knew me but your statement tonight shows that you’re just like the rest of them. I’m sorry I can’t keep up with your perfection.” She swallowed down the bitter disappointment of realizing that the person she once had on pedestal viewed her like the rest of the world. 

Silence crackled in the room like the deadly calm before an electrical storm. A muscle leaped in Camila’s jaw, twisting convulsively. 

“Perfection?” Camila questioned, the ache in her throat was complicated by the tears stinging her dark eyes. She walked towards Lauren and closed the space between them. “I wish I could be as carefree as you. I wish I didn’t have a family relying on my “perfection”. I wish I could stop my brain from wanting to control every minuscule detail of my life. Do you think it’s easy being me? I’d trace lives with you in a second,”she whispered ,her gaze frozen in misery. 

“You’d trade lives, huh?” Lauren shot back bitterly. “You had a parents who loved you. You had fucking food in your refrigerator, which, in case you never noticed, was something I did not have, because my parents were too busy mourning over Christopher to go grocery shopping!” she shouted, her voice gaining volume with every word. “You had someone show up at parent-teacher conferences. You never had to wake up your father up after he’d passed out wasted on the couch while he drunkenly bargained with God to take his daughter instead of Christopher…” Her voice caught. “ I wouldn’t wish my life on my worst enemy. You had everything… and all I had was you.”  Her voice broke with a vulnerable tremble and Camila felt her heart breaking as well. Lauren turned away and jerked the door shut.

Lauren didn’t allow her tears to escape until she was inside her bedroom with her door securely shut. Only then could she vent her misery. This whole argument spiraled out of control and all she wanted was to be able to move past this fight and for things to be back to normal. But Camila’s words replayed in a continuous loop through her head. I’m obviously the only one who you cares about your reputation? I thought you were smarter than that. You honestly thought you could fuck your way to becoming a doctor?Lauren wept bitter tears until she didn’t think she could stop. Her eyes burned and there were no more tears left to shed.

4:57 AM… For the first time in five years, Camila sensed a panic attack coming. Being a perfectionist, Camila never gained the proper coping skills when things didn’t go her way. In fact, Lauren had always been there when one happened, always able to sense a pending attack and had the ability to calm her before it got worst. But Lauren was now the source of her anxiety and she wasn’t there to help.