My Favorite Camren One-Shots

You'll Come Back

I wrote this at 3:30 in the morning. It was only after I finished writing that I noticed my transition from first to third person, which is something I don’t usually do. I’ll put a major trigger warning right here. This is about domestic violence and there are some pretty dark scenes.

They say falling in love is like being on drugs- that satisfying high… but that wasn’t us. Our love was like the comedown. It was the crashing waves of nausea and dizziness that followed that feeling of a certain weightlessness.

I cannot put into words the sickening feeling left in the pit of my stomach the first time she put her hands on my body in a way that was not tender or soft, nor the look on her face that, in that exact moment in time, could only be described as something inhuman.

She didn’t bother pretending to be sorry. Instead, she’d reached her hand up to stroke the slightly throbbing wound on my right cheek. For nearly a second, the angry Lauren faltered, but she growled in distaste when I pulled away. “You’ll be fine. Don’t be so fucking dramatic,” she breathed with a shrug and a short laugh. It wasn’t a lighthearted, just-heard-the-best-joke-of-my-life laugh. It was a cruel, sadistic chuckle unlike anything I’d heard.

The second time she did it, she didn’t stop. The blows were coming, quickly and strategically, giving me no time to recover from one before another had landed. The process lasted until all her anger had been spilled from her tightly enclosed fists to nearly every area on my upper body.

“I’m sorry you made me do that.” It was far from an apology, but I took it.

I took everything she threw at me. I took every aspersion, scream, slap, kick, hair pull… I took times three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten. Because you let the people you love fuck you up the most.

I started fighting back the fourteenth time. Her eyes glinted with uncertainty before an almost satisfied grin emerged. She pushed, and I pushed back harder. Everything after that was a game.

~~~

“For the love of God, will you please shut the fuck up?”

“What’s wrong?” I questioned mockingly, “Can’t take hearing the fucking truth?”

“You bring this upon yourself, Camila! I’ve given you nearly four years of my time. Can’t I get a goddamn break?”

“A two month trip to a foreign country is hardly a break. And you’re going with another woman. Jesus Christ, do you not understand how messed up that is?”

Lauren visibly tensed, running a hand through her hair angrily, “She’s my fucking secretary, Karla. Are we really going through this again?”

The explicit texts I’d stumbled upon in Lauren’s phone had proved quite the opposite, but I didn’t bother to comment.

“Don’t expect me to be here when you get back. I’m not waiting for you.”

~~

That was a lie. I waited- two months and four days, alone and on the couch for the most part, with a TV remote and a developing alcohol problem. Dinah came over for the first time (unannounced), clearing empty bottles and cans of beer from the coffee table as I lay silently on the couch, watching a rerun of Criminal Minds from season three.

“You’re a fucking mess, Mila.”

“Lauren’ll be home tomorrow. I’m fine.”

“I told you, girl, you can’t just wait around on her. You’d be better to leave her sorry ass. You can come stay with me.”

“You don’t understand, Dinah. I love her. And she loves me.”

Dinah didn’t bother trying to contain her scowl as she said coldly, “She has a really fucked up way of showing it.”