Imaginary Lover // Camren Fanfiction

Chapter 40

A/N: I honestly don't know which ending I want : the happy or sad one? so this story still has like 3-4 chapters, I still didn't finish the drafts

One week on from that morning and Lauren found herself moping around the house in her pajamas, dragging her slipper-clad feet from room to room early on a Sunday. She stood at the doorway of each room, gazed inside, and searched for . . . something, although she didn't quite know what for. None of these rooms offered her any solution and so she wandered on. Warming her hands on a mug of coffee, she stood still in the hallway trying to decide what to do. She didn't usually move so slowly and her mind had never felt so clouded before, but she was a lot of things now that she never used to be.

It wasn't as though she didn't have things to do; the house was due its daily scrub from top to bottom and there was still the problem of the children's room in the hotel to be completed. Never mind completing it, it wasn't even started. She was a talented professional woman, but this month she had felt like a schoolgirl again, ignoring her pencils and pens and avoiding her laptop so she didn't have to do her homework. She was looking for a distraction, a decent excuse to, for once, drag her out of the mindless block she had found herself in. Vincent and Benjamin had been on her back all week, she was losing even more sleep than usual because she had simply no idea what to do and, being the perfectionist, she couldn't begin it unless it was completely clear in her mind. To pass this on to Keana would be a failure on her part.

She hadn't seen Camila since her party last week; she hadn't received a phone call, a letter, nothing. It was as though she had disappeared off the face of the earth and as well as being angry, she felt lonely. She missed her.

It was seven o'clock in the morning and the playroom was alive with the sounds of cartoons. Lauren made her way down the hall and popped her head into the room.

"Mind if I join you?" I promise I won't say anything, she felt like saying.

Luke look surprised but shook his head. He sat on the floor, straining his neck up to see the television. It looked uncomfortable, but she chose silence instead of criticizing him. She collapsed on the beanbag beside him and tucked her legs close to her body.

"What are you watching?"


"SpongeBob SquarePants."


"Sponge what?!" She laughed.


"SpongeBob SquarePants," he repeated, not taking his eyes away from the television.


"What's it about?"


"A sponge called Bob who wears square pants." He giggled.


"Any good?"


"Mmm-hmm." He nodded.

"Seen it before twice though." He spooned more Rice Krispies into his mouth messily, spilling milk down his chin. "Why are you watching it again, why don't you go out into the fresh air

and play with Sam? You've been inside all weekend."
She was greeted with silence.


"Actually, where is Sam, is he away?"


"We're not friends anymore," he said sadly.


"Why not?" she asked in surprise, sitting up and placing her coffee cup on the floor.
Luke shrugged.

"Did you have a fight?" Lauren asked gently.
Luke shook his head.
"Did he say something to make you sad?" she probed. He shook his head again.
"Did you make him mad?"

Another shake of the head.
"Well, what happened?"
"Nothing," Luke explained. "He just told me one day he didn't want to be my friend anymore."
"Well, that's not very nice," Lauren said gently. "Do you want me to talk to him for you, see what's wrong?"
Luke shrugged. There was a silence between them as he continued staring at the screen, lost in thought.
"You know, I know what it's like to miss a friend, Luke. You know my friend Camila?"
"She was my friend too."

"Yes." She smiled. "Well, I miss her. I haven't seen her all week either."

"Yeah, she's gone now. She told me so; she has to help someone else now." Lauren's eyes widened and anger welled inside her.

She hadn't even the decency to say good-bye to her.

"When did she say good-bye to you? What did she say?" At the startled look on Luke's face, she immediately stopped firing questions so aggressively. She needed to keep reminding herself that he was only six.

"She said good-bye to me the same day as she said good-bye to you." His voice went up a pitch, as though she were crazy. His face crumpled up and he looked at her as though she had ten heads, and if she weren't so confused she would have laughed at the sight of him.

But inside she wasn't laughing. She paused and thought for a moment and then exploded. "What?! What are you talking about?"

"After the party in the garden, she came to the house and she told me that her job with us was finished, that she was going to be invisible again like she used to be but she would still be around and that meant that we were OK," he spoke chirpily, turning his attention back to the television.

"Invisible." Lauren said the word like it had a bad taste.

"Yep," he chirped. "Well, people don't call her imaginary for no reason, doh!" He hit himself on the head and fell over onto the floor.

"What is she putting into your head?" she grumbled angrily, wondering if she'd been wrong to introduce a person like Camila into Luke's life. "When is she coming back?"

Luke lowered the volume on the TV and turned to her with that crazy look on his face again. "She's not. She told you that already."

"She didn't." Her voice failed her.
"She did. I heard her talking in your room."
Lauren cast her mind back to that night and to the dream she had, the dream she had been thinking about all week, the dream that had been bothering her, and suddenly realized with a sinking feeling in her heart that it hadn't been a dream at all.

She had lost her. In her dreams and in real life, she had lost Camila.