a supercut of us

xxxix-xl

xxxix.

Spending the summer in L.A. is not Camila's idea of a summer well-spent, but due to Mark's schedule, it's what she ends up doing. He'll be busy on a personal project come the end of August and so they have until then to finish the songs they had planned.

L.A. is also where she's recording that collaboration with Niall that had come up as part of the negotiation process for Powerful. Niall had sent her the lyrics with a proposed melody and she'd emailed him a few suggestions she has no idea if he took or not. She can't say she cares. And she feels bad for not caring because she loves Niall and her job and she's building a reputation of professionalism and hard work, but she's really not comfortable with the circumstances around this feature and she would be lying if she said she's rooting for the song's success. For her, it's ultimately about staying in the public's memory until she releases her album next spring.

The best part of her current situation is that Sofi is on vacation so her family comes to stay with her and they have lots of fun during her free time. Lucy joins them too, when she's around, but she's only present intermittently since she's splitting her summer between Colombia, Puerto Rico and L.A. to spend time with everyone she loves.

After missing Lucy's slam, Camila had taken it as a sign that she shouldn't be making love songs with Mark and so they'd started digging deeper into that period she'd had of being single. In a way, they'd already been doing that, it's just that she is no longer overeager to get to the songs about Lucy, no longer with her eyes set on the finish line because she cares more about what comes after. She's putting all her heart and soul into remembering who she was in that time, what she had learned and how those two years had shaped her into someone who was ready to love again.

They've been talking a lot about love, she and Mark. Not about her relationships, as she had with Jack, but about love as a concept. It's hard to think back to how she'd rebuilt herself after Lauren since that seems like it was a long time ago now. She has trouble accessing how she'd rationalized or internalized or felt love in between Lauren and Lucy, and that's even more of an issue when it comes to romantic love, which has become irreversibly attached to her girlfriend.

They talk about it, its different colors and shapes, the way love is felt through life, how it isn't static and how it often can be confused with so many other things.

"I believe," Mark says one late afternoon, when they're watching the sun set from his backyard, "that you should put yourself in past Camila's shoes and write a letter to love. Then we'll see if we can turn it into a song, but I really want you to try this exercise."

She follows his advice. She leaves his house, has dinner with her family, watches silly YouTube videos with Sofi and stays up after everyone's gone to bed, writing on a notebook in the kitchen, surrounded by her old journals.

She remembers that there was a longing for romance she used to feel, but it wasn't desperate. She was happy as she was, but a part of her wondered how nice it would be, to share herself with someone. And it's that part of her that has her racking her brain and her diary entries in search for memories that tell her a little more about who she was two years ago, what made her long and dream.

There was a conversation she had with Taylor, who was also single at the time, about all the disappointing boys in their lives. They had drunk wine and made fun of them, the terrible jokes of one, the poor sex skills of another, and eventually moved on to wonder why they put so much weight on love when they were fine on their own — when, whenever they happened to be single and without a crush, they lived stress free and enjoyed doing what they wanted with who they wanted, and went through way less emotional rollercoasters.