Imaginary Lover // Camren Fanfiction

Chapter 15

*Flashback*

Lauren hauled her luggage out of the boot of the taxi and trailed it along behind her into the departure and arrival area of Farenfore Airport. She breathed a sigh of relief. Now she really felt like she was going home. After spending only a month living in New York, she felt she fitted in there more than she ever had in her town. She was beginning to make friends; more importantly she was beginning to want to make friends.

"The plane is on time at least," Mark said, joining the small check-in queue.

Lauren smiled at him and rested her forehead against his chest. "I'll need another holiday to recover from this one," she joked wearily.

Mark chuckled, kissed the top of her head, and ran his hands through her dark hair. "You call coming home to visit our families a holiday?" he laughed. "Let's go to Hawaii when we get back."

Lauren lifted her head and raised an eyebrow. "Of course, I'll just let you tell my boss that. You know I need to get back to that project urgently."

Mark studied her determined face. "You should go it alone."

Lauren rolled her eyes and leaned her forehead against his chest again. "Not this again." Her voice was muffled in his duffel coat.

"Just listen." He lifted her chin up with his forefinger to face him. "You work all the hours under the sun, rarely take time off, and stress yourself out. For what?"

She opened her mouth to reply.
"For what?" he repeated, stopping her.
Again she opened her mouth to answer and he jumped in. "Well, seeing

as you're so reluctant to answer"—he smiled—"I'll tell you what for. For other people. So that they get all the glory. You do all the work, they get all the glory."

"Excuse me." Lauren half laughed. "That job pays me extremely well as you well know, and at the rate I'm going, by this time next year, if we de- cide to stay in New York, that is, I'll be able to afford that house we saw—"

"My dear Lauren," Mark interrupted. "The rate you're going, this time next year that house will be sold and in its place will be a skyscraper or terribly trendy bar that doesn't sell alcohol or a restaurant that doesn't serve food 'just to be different.' " He made quotation marks with his fingers, mak- ing Lauren laugh. "Your firm will be hired to do the interior design, and your boss will give you the assignment; you will no doubt paint it white, put fluorescent lights in the floors and refuse to include furniture in the plans, in case it clutters the place," he teased. "And other people will get the credit for that." He looked at her in pretend disgust. "Imagine. That's your blank canvas, nobody else's, and they shouldn't take that away from you. I want to be able to bring our friends in there and say, 'Look everyone, Lauren did this. Took her three months to do, all it is, is white walls and no chairs, but I'm proud of her. Didn't she do well?' "

Lauren held her stomach from laughing so hard. "I would never let them knock down that house. Anyway, this job pays me lots of money," she explained.

"That's the second time you've mentioned money. We're doing fine. What do you need all this money for?" Mark asked.

"A rainy day," Lauren said, her laughter dying down and her smile fading as her thoughts drifted to Taylor and her father. A very rainy day, indeed.

"Just as well we're not living here anymore then," Mark said, looking out the window, "or you'd be broke."

Lauren looked out the window to the wet day and couldn't help feeling that the week had been a complete waste of time. She hadn't exactly been expecting a welcoming committee and buntings to be hung from the village shops, but neither Taylor nor her father seemed to be in the least bit interested in whether she was home or not and what she had been up to in her time away. But she hadn't returned to share stories about her new life in New York, she had returned to check up on them.