Boss of Me
“No,” Laura says in a hushed voice, “what you should be more worried about helping me create a believable backstory for the two of us dating.”
Carmilla raises an eyebrow at this, I mean, what’s so unbelievable about her getting a cute girlfriend? Highly unlikely until now, but hey she’s not going to be the odd one out.
“I don’t see the problem, what’s so unbelievable?”
“Well okay to start I’m really not good at lying…” she takes a deep breath as she continues, “I mean, usually I don’t do things like this. I’ll tell you right now why we broke up.”
“And I care because?”
Carmilla is playfully punched in the shoulder, “You care because you’re my girlfriend now!”
“Okay! Okay, jeez.”
Laura continues to ramble “… Dani she was so over protective! I don’t need that. It was one thing after the next, ‘Laura don’t do this, don’t do that,’ like, I have a dad for that you know! I just wanted someone to see me as an equally capable person, but she was just so-“
“So in over her head?”
Before Carmilla is met by any scolding, Laura actually smiles once since her breakup with Dani.
“Hah. I guess you could say that,” and then eyeing her says, “no more tall jokes.”
“Why would it be… low of me?”
Now she definitely can’t stop laughing. She hadn’t laughed like this in a while, even with her ex Dani. It’s like her laughter seamlessly bubbles into her too.
“Alright!” she elbows Carmilla in the gut who lets out a slight wince, “We need an actual backstory now.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Ma’am?”
“No way, my parents aren’t going to buy that, and I sure as hell am not!”
“Fine, what do you want me to call you then?”
“Call me by your name.”
“What?” Carmilla looks confused, clearly not getting the modern reference.
Laura looks at her pointedly. “That’s a movie reference.”
“Which movie?”
“The one with the two guys, one’s older and the other’s younger…” she patiently waits for her to get it “the younger guy yknow… he does…” gesturing with awful hand motions “the thing. With a peach…”
A look of realization comes across Carmilla’s face. “Wow. Sorry, I’m… peachless that sounds disgusting.”
At this point, Laura’s practically rolling her eyes at her girlfriend’s jokes. Wait girlfriend? She keeps forgetting this is all temporary, that her parents might get to see this girl once and that’s it. She must have looked disappointed to make Carm look at her concerned.
“Man, was my joke really that bad? I’m sorry Creampuff… I can stop-“
“No,” Laura says sharply, “no, no it’s fine. Anyways” She smiles trying to cover up her unfortunate realization, “Creampuff,” she smiles reassuringly, “I like that.”
“I like that too,” Carmilla says wistfully.
Both were like magnets, drawing nearer and nearer each passing second. It began to dawn on them, things were going to end after her encounter with her parents. She didn’t want to think about it since things were going so well between them. Way better than she could’ve even hoped. To put such thoughts at bay, Laura proposes a date before they go to meet her parents.
“Carm?”
“Yeah?”
“Could we go on say… a date before you meet my parents?” She doesn’t dare look up out of fear.
“Yes.”
Carmilla’s already saying yes before Laura can talk herself out of it, and even think about retracting what she proposed. Trying to cover up her eagerness, she awkwardly coughs and continues talking and lets Laura get lost in their discussion about all things philosophy and the stars.
“And speaking of stars,” Carmilla tries to say smoothly as possible, “we should go out at night and have a picnic, I can show you all the constellations and everything I know.”
“Everything you know?” Laura looks at her curiously.
“Everything I know,” she says with a wink, “and more of course. After all, I guess we never came up with a backstory for your parents huh?”
“We don’t have to.” Carmilla gets a grave face, automatically fearing the worse.
“We pretty much have one now,” she smiles and Carm looks relieved.
By now, all their countless coffee cups are drained with life sucked out of them. She starts to pick up after Laura and herself, but not before informing Laura exactly what her plans are. At least what some of them are.
“I’ll text you the place and everything okay then Creampuff?
“Sounds great Carm,” Laura waves her off and she feels superbly dumb waving back yet satisfied at the same time. She really can’t help but smile like an idiot. And she doesn’t consider herself a daydreamer, but all she can think about is her fake girlfriend that’s all too real in her life. Thinking to herself, she really doesn’t believe any of this is fake. It couldn’t be. But it’s just too good to be true and that’s what worries Carmilla.
Later that night, Laura’s sleepless. She’d be lying if she said hadn’t been restless because of having moved too quickly for her own good. Carmilla’s amazing. In fact, too amazing. She’s better than Dani. Isn’t this wrong to compare them so much? She’s so into Carm, she can’t get over it. But she’s also having a hard time getting over Dani. It’s all just moving so fast, her and Dani never were this close and between her and Carm it’s only been about a week or two. Her weary eyelids finally shut.
Probably too confident for her own good, Carmilla slaps the digits of Laura’s number in and shoots out the text, basically encapsulating a full play-by-play on their whole shindig for today. She’s never been so psyched. It’s nearly Valentine’s Day. She’s pumped so Carmilla’s not one to fret, she understands people are busy, they’ve got busy lives, right? I mean that’s what she told herself for the past hour when she waited for Laura to respond. And when she responded, boy was it a response.
“Carm, I’m sorry… I need more time.”
She doesn’t want to believe it. No way.
“Like to get ready?”
“No. You know what I mean.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
No, Carmilla shakes her head. Not as sorry as she is. She was supposed to be a fake girlfriend to Laura. Fake. Fake? Then why did this hurt so real, and so bad? Crashing onto her bed, she begins to cry and be filled with regret. I was supposed to be a fake girlfriend, she says to herself. What did I do wrong? How could this happen? I thought everything was going great, isn’t this what she wanted, something as familiar to her as a real relationship? It’s supposed to have been fake, but this seems all too familiar to her, and real.