At first, it's bearable.
Lauren is pretty sure Camila just thinks of her as a friend. It's sort of unsettling, the way Camila looks at her sometimes, like she's the first person Camila has ever seen or something. Like the fact that Lauren exists rewires her whole brain.
But it's not a big deal. It's actually a really tiny speck of their relationship when you put it into perspective. Because Camila is probably one of the coolest people Lauren's ever met, in a complete un-cool way. She's clumsy and goofy and humble, and she cries even more than Lauren does, for just about every emotion, and Lauren thinks that they could talk for hours about absolutely anything. So she ignores the twist in her stomach that she gets when she catches Camila staring at her sometimes, partly because it's okay, and partly because it isn't.
Mostly it's bearable. Until Camila gets drunk at the after party of the night they perform Anything Can Happen.
They're dancing, or at least Lauren's dancing, with Camila just swaying in her pastel dress in front of her. Lauren is trying to ignore the way Camila is looking at her when Camila raises her hand and sets it on Lauren's waist.
"What are you doing?" Lauren stops in her tracks, her pulse jumps. She misses the next beat of the song.
Camila presses her palm into Lauren's side, with urgency. "I needed to know if you were real." She says. "And you are. I can feel you."
Words tangle themselves in Lauren's windpipe. "Of course I'm real," she half-laughs, half-shouts over the music. "Why wouldn't I be?"
"Sometimes I forget. I don't always understand how such a pretty person could be real." Camila has both of her hands on Lauren's hips now.
Panic starts to set in. "Camz, you're drunk," Lauren says, laying her hands over Camila's. "Do you want to go back to the room and sleep it off?"
Camila shakes her head like a child. "I want to kiss you," she says. "I want to feel your lips."
Before Lauren's thoughts can catch up, their mouths are pressed together and Camila is squeezing Lauren's waist through her dress, so gently Lauren barely feels it. Barely feels the walls closing in and floor dropping out from beneath her.
Camila pulls back first, cheeks pink but relatively unfazed.
All of Lauren's atoms have been rearranged.
"You feel even less real now." Camila says. "I liked it."
Lauren misses the next beat of the bass and the next after that as she turns on her shaky heel and stumbles away.
*
Camila never stops looking at her.
It's less bearable than before but Lauren is determined to grit her teeth and get through it. She imagines her relationship with Camila as getting a piercing. It doesn't really make sense, if she's honest, but she really likes piercings, and thinks that if she relates the two it'll somehow make things easier.
It doesn't, of course.
Camila gets drunk again and comes knocking on Lauren's door the night they've been eliminated.
As soon as Lauren opens the door, she's kissing her.
"I still want to do that," Camila says when she pulls back for breath, ignoring the way she's turned Lauren's blood to liquid nitrogen. "Lauren, I like you. I like you like girls shouldn't like other girls but I don't care. It's really bad but I don't care."
"I don't think this is a good idea." Lauren says. She stretches her arms across the width of the doorway like a barrier, trying to keep Camila from pushing past her and coming in.
Camila blinks, then nods her head in agreement. "Me either. But I want to keep kissing you anyway. Can I?"
She doesn't really need to ask permission, since she leans in and does it anyway. Lauren tells her this after Camila pulls back again, this time smiling like she's not tearing apart Lauren's life. Like Lauren's knees aren't going weak with fear.
"You like kissing me," Camila says, voice dreamy from alcohol and, most likely, the taste of Lauren on her lips. "I like kissing you, too."
She does it again, and again, and again, until subconsciously Lauren's arms drop from the doorway and Camila pushes herself inside, kicking the door shut behind her.
*
Lauren thinks they're being subtle until one day she's scrolling through her Instagram feed and accidentally clicks on a photo someone's tagged her in. Her heart falls out of her chest when she sees it.
It's not real, of course, it's just a really realistic fanart of her and Camila. Kissing. Of her and Camila kissing. And underneath them is a drawing of the sun and the moon doing the same thing, and Lauren recognizes it as the drawing Camila's been obsessed with for as long as she can remember. The caption tags both Camila and Lauren and says simply, "the sun and the moon."
It feels like getting a million piercings all over her body all at once. Overwhelming, unbearable.
Lauren doesn't panic. She stays surprisingly calm. She closes one app and opens another, Tumblr, and the first post on her dash is from a suggestion blog. It reads, "be your own sun and be your own moon." She reblogs it without thinking.
It feels like a sign.
*
Camila, still, never stops looking at her.
Even after Lauren breaks off their weird kissing(-and-sometimes-a-little-more) arrangement, and even after she starts going out with Luis.
It jabs at Lauren behind her ribs all the time. At breakfast when Camila chops up a banana to put in her cereal, or when Camila drops her mic in rehearsal for their next performance, or when Lauren can't sleep and Camila's presence right next to her feels like a thousand humming wasps begging her to come closer.
She knows she'll get stung.
She still debates the pros and cons of kissing her again anyway.
But then she closes her eyes for a few seconds to gather her thoughts and when she opens them again, Camila is staring at her in the darkness, and the all-too familiar fear shoots up her spine and Lauren remembers how similar wasp stings and piercings feel, except that wasp stings are much less worth it.
So Camila keeps staring, and Lauren keeps throwing herself at Luis with a passion she never knew she had, and it's bearable. Still the sort of grit-your-teeth-and-clench-your-fists bearable, but bearable.
*
It's not until after Lauren and Luis have officially broken up and Lauren is half-way recovered that Camila decides to try again.
Lauren is sitting at the kitchen table stirring her coffee when Camila comes out of the studio lounge with her phone in her hands. Her steps are sharp and certain, and Lauren picks up her head, nodding at her. Camila stands a little taller.
"Hey," Lauren croaks, voice even more raspy than usual from crying. She cringes at the sound of it.
"Hi," Camila says, sitting across the table from Lauren, still seeming very determined. Alarms sound in Lauren's head but she tries to ignore them. Tries to be normal.
Camila puts her phone face down on the table and takes a deep breath. She looks like she's bracing herself for something.
"Are you okay?" Lauren asks.
Camila just swallows and sets her jaw. "I would be better if I were drunk, I guess. Makes it easier."
"Makes what easier?" Lauren asks, narrowing her eyes.
Camila just shrugs and picks at the lint sticking to the rubber of her phone case. "I'm usually drunk when I do stuff like this."
It feel like this, Lauren remembers: panic. Big, burning panic. Like the sun. "Camz, you're not making sense."
"Go out with me. On a date."
And. Can't breathe. Lauren can't breathe. "What?"
"I want you to go out on a date with me, Lauren. I have tickets to see The 1975. Please, come with me. Just one night."
Lauren is suddenly standing up, her coffee mug falling off the table and shattering on the floor in the process. She doesn't even flinch, just starts scrambling backwards, and Camila is still looking at her like she hung all the fucking stars in the sky.
"I can't," Lauren says. "Fuck. God, Camz, I can't."
"Okay." Camila says. Lauren steps away from the table, hands up in surrender, and Camila doesn't make a move to come any closer. She stares at the broken mug on the floor like it explains everything. "I understand."
Lauren doesn't wait for Camila to change her mind. She turns on her heel and very nearly runs away.
*
That same night, Camila is sitting on Lauren's toilet and watching her brush her teeth while she's getting ready for bed. Lauren sort of wishes she could pull Camila's eyes out of her head and reset them, make them look at anyone else the way they look at her.
"Are you sure? About what you said earlier?" Camila mumbles, averting her eyes for the first time since she sat down, as Lauren spits out the last of her toothpaste into the sink.
Lauren looks at Camila through the mirror, feels the smoke from the house-fire in her chest rising up into the chimney of her throat. She swallows.
She says, "I'll go."
*
Lauren is pretty sure that Camila falls in love with her the night of the concert.
It's partially her fault, if she's honest, because she makes too much eye contact with Camila while they play Fallingforyou and when they go to the bathroom after the song ends, Camila's innocently drying her hands with a paper towel when Lauren kisses her so hard she nearly goes blind.
"Why'd you do that?" Camila gasps when Lauren pulls back, leaning her forehead against Camila's as she breathes hard on her cheek.
"I don't know," Lauren says. It feels like a better answer than, "I wanted to feel something other than paralyzing fear for once."
And then she kisses Camila again, and again and again after that, until Camila turns them around and presses Lauren against the wall until she can lift her feet off the ground and wrap Lauren's legs around her waist, and then Lauren can't feel the beat of the bass anymore but instead Camila's hands and her tongue and the absence of terror, absence of panic, just Camila.
It's after that that Camila pulls pack and Lauren can see the shifting of the lights in her eyes, and knows something's changed.
She doesn't call it love. It looks like something else, something Lauren doesn't have a name for. Like at first, Camila looks at Lauren like she hung all the fucking stars in the night sky. And then, all of a sudden, Lauren becomes the moon.
"We should go back now," Camila says, voice quivering as she slides Lauren back down the wall until she's steady on her feet.
Lauren feels the bass of the music and the warmth of Camila's hands over the fabric of her shirt and doesn't know what she's scared of more: the fact that Camila is right, or that she wishes she was wrong.
*
It takes a few months to realize that more than just the lighting shifted the night of the concert.
Camila starts acting differently.
She starts dodging Lauren's kisses, going out at night instead of waiting for Lauren. When Lauren wants to make plans, she's always busy. Lauren doesn't understand it. She's supposed to the bitch, not Camila.
It gets old really fast.
"What's your problem?" Lauren snaps, leaning her palm against the door of the fridge, trapping Camila behind the u-shaped island. Camila still hasn't looked at Lauren since they left that concert bathroom, and it rubs her the wrong way.
"I don't know what you're talking about." Camila says, burning holes in her shoes. "Can I please get back to the booth? I'm supposed to be recording."
"No," Lauren says, reaching out to tilt Camila's chin up. "Look at me, Camz. What's wrong with you?" Camila turns her head, breaking contact with Lauren's hand. She starts to back away.
"There's nothing wrong. Please just leave me alone, Lauren."
Lauren steps forward. Their toes overlap. "No. You've been weird ever since the concert and I want to know why. Just talk to me, Camila."
"You used to call me Camz," Camila snaps, suddenly lifting her head and glaring into Lauren's eyes. "Explain that, then. Since everything needs to be explained."
"Oh my God. Jesus, Camila, or Camz, whatever; this is beside the point. Why are you deflecting?"
"Why are you pushing me?" Camila spits, angrier than Lauren can remember or understand. She shoves Lauren's hand off the fridge, eyes flashing. "You're always the scared one, Lauren. Why are you trying to act brave now?"
"I don't get you!" Lauren says, grabbing Camila by the shoulders. She wants to shake her until she snaps out of it, until she becomes the Camila she knows. Until she looks at her like she used to.
Camila shrugs Lauren's hands off. "You don't have to." She hisses, eyeing Lauren with disgust. "You take what you want from me and move on with your fucking life. I'm tired, Lauren, that's what the fuck is wrong. And I'm angry. Okay? Are you happy? I'm tired of being in love with you and I'm angry I was stupid enough to fall for you in the first place."
There's no oxygen in the room. Lauren gasps for breath.
"What did you say?"
Camila scrunches up her face and falls back against the countertop. "I didn't mean to say that. That wasn't how I was supposed to say it."
"You--you love me?" Lauren still can't breathe.
Camila swallows thickly and nods, like she's admitting defeat. "It's worse than that. I'm in love with you. I'm in it. I'm drowning in it. I'm six feet under in it."
Lauren feels faint. The floor gives out from beneath her. "I think I'm gonna be sick." She says.
Camila starts to cry.
*
Everything after that just sort of--stops.
Lauren doesn't come knocking on Camila's door after midnight anymore, or make out with her whenever she's bored between shifts in the booth. They finish recording. They go on tour. Lauren makes out with Brad a few times when she's high off his weed. Everything is changing and yet nothing moves.
It all stops.
One night after a show, with all the girls laying on the floor of someone's hotel room, Dinah, Ally, and Normani all asleep, Lauren stops pretending to be enthralled in her phone and looks over at Camila. She's already looking back.
"I feel like I should apologize." Camila says quietly, hands pulling away from Dinah's hair and twisting nervously.
Lauren wants to shrug and reply lowly, "Wanna get out of here?" like she would have before. She wants to flip the switch behind Camila's eyes and light them up again.
But she can't. Being with Camila like she was before is impossible, because Camila is six feet under in love with her, and Lauren is too young to die.
"Don't." Lauren says.
It doesn't feel like enough.
*
That night, when Lauren can't sleep because she's hyper aware of the way Camila keeps turning in her bunk and mumbling in her sleep, she scrolls through Twitter in hopes of distracting herself.
It backfires.
Someone she follows retweeted it, and at first Lauren almost screams, or starts crying out of anger or fear or sadness. It's a simple thing, just an edit of half of her face and half of Camila's, but it's the words that sting. Like piercings. Like wasps. Like lights burning themselves to life: tell me the story about how the sun loved the moon so much, she died every night to let her breathe.
For what feels like the thousandth time in Lauren's life since she's met Camila, Lauren. Can't. Breathe.
It's a sign.
She just doesn't know what for.
*
It's the night after their last show. Lauren sitting on the hotel bed trying to draw when the door slowly opens and a crack of light falls in.
She knows it's Camila.
"Come in."
Lauren doesn't look up from her sketchbook until Camila is casting a shadow over it. "Hey," Camila says, and Lauren lifts her head to look at her. Her face is washed, hair tied back, and she still looks so pretty. Lauren vaguely feels kind of alarmed by it, by how pretty Camila always is, and snaps her sketchbook shut.
"What's up?" She says. Trying to be casual.
Camila shrugs, sitting on the floor by Lauren's feet that hang off the bed. "I guess I just wanted to talk to someone."
"Is Dinah out? Ally's in her room with Normani," Lauren says, voice a little too sharp. Camila flinches, but shakes her head.
"I wanted to talk to you. I miss you. I miss having the best friend I did when I was fifteen."
"You kissed me when you were fifteen." Lauren says. Her mouth feels out of her control.
Camila swallows, playing with her toes uncomfortably. "I loved you even then, I think. I always knew how important you were, how much you meant. I always knew. I thought you did, too."
"Were you wrong?" Lauren hears herself ask.
Camila looks up, then, eyes shining. Lauren doesn't have time to wonder if it's from awe or tears. "Was I?" She asks.
The next thing Lauren knows, Camila is kissing her.
It feels less like an answer and more like drowning.
*
The next morning, with the sunlight streaming through the blinds and warming Lauren's skin that isn't covered by her sheet, Camila runs her hand up Lauren's arm and starts singing under her breath.
"You're so cliché," Lauren mumbles into her pillow. "Fallingforyou? Really?"
Camila just keeps singing. Lauren listens.
If she was someone else, someone who didn't go weak at the knees at the thought of falling in love, she might say it feels like breathing. Like a question no one in the room is brave enough to even ask.
*
It's a strange thing, what Lauren and Camila have: it's too complicated to be called friendship. Too intense to be called anything less. Not distinct or discussed enough to be called anything more, but so much that it's impossible to push to the side and ignore.
It's a metaphor unto itself, a living, breathing, kissing string of words that twist themselves around to mean something else.
Lauren doesn't bother trying to decipher it anymore.
She lets Camila come to her and press her lips to hers in the dark, lets Camila look at her with eyes blank where they used to be bright, lets herself slip under for minutes, hours at a time with her until she can't stand it any longer and comes back up for air. She lets herself learn to drown.
It's a strange thing, what Lauren and Camila have. It's a song that neither of them have ever heard before. They try to dance, try to learn the rhythm, try to sing, try to learn the lyrics, but there is no repetition. There's no groove to fall in to. It's just a song.
All Lauren does is try to remember.
*
They've been together four years.
Well, almost.
The five of them are sitting in Dinah's living room back home, gathered around a photo album Ally put together and trying to count down the minutes until the air-time of the exact moment they got put into a group even while crying.
They miss it, naturally.
At first they don't notice. Then, with her red nail still fondly stroking a picture of Normani in one of their music videos, Dinah checks the time on her phone and shouts, "We missed it! It passed four minutes ago!"
Everyone laughs. Except for Ally, of course, who starts crying and lecturing them about how much she loves them all. Dinah and Normani squish her in a three-way full body hug, partly to shut her up and partly because they love her too, and Camila takes Lauren's hand under the coffee table.
Lauren tries not to look at Camila when she squeezes her hand and instead her eyes fall on a picture at the bottom corner of the album. It's them standing on the X-Factor stage, all holding hands, young and shining in puffy dresses and dreamy eyes, smiling at the possibility of the future.
And Lauren remembers.
It still feels like drowning.
Camila tugs on Lauren's hand until they're standing up. Then she's wrapping her in a hug, so tight Lauren doesn't know where her body ends and Camila's begins.
She doesn't want to cry. That's why she pulls away and just leans on Camila instead, arms hanging limp by her side.
"You know, if there's one thing I could go back and tell myself before we sang that song," Camila whispers into Lauren's ear, lifting her hands to set them on Lauren's waist, "is that out of all the things that could happen, I'll be glad about the things that do. That in four years I'll be grateful that out of all the versions I could have chosen, out of everything that could have been, that this is what I have."
Lauren thinks, that if a thousand wasps weren't swarming in her throat, she would tell Camila she's glad too.
But God, she's still so afraid of getting stung.
Instead, she gently squeezes Camila's side and says, "I'll always feel you. I'll always know."
*
Lauren is smoking on the roof of a hotel in some city, she's lost track at this point, when she hears the door to the stairwell creak open shyly.
She knows it's Camila. She did promise she always would, after all.
"Hey, you," Lauren says, not turning around. She takes another drag. "Couldn't sleep?"
Camila shuffles nearer behind Lauren's back, and Lauren can sense that she shrugs. "I'm not really that tired." She plops down ungracefully next to Lauren, knees banging together. "Are you smoking?" She asks, even though she doesn't need to. The burning bud between Lauren's fingers is enough.
Lauren just simply extends her hand towards her, an offer. A jolt of surprise shoots through her when Camila smirks and takes the cigarette, raising it to her lips confidently, breathing in deep, then sputtering and coughing her lungs out. "Shit," she gasps, hands on her chest, "how do you do that?"
"Practice," Lauren says, knocking Camila's shoulder with her own. She winks, making Camila blush like she's still fifteen, still pining after Lauren's breath.
Camila inhales deeply, sitting up taller and rubbing her palms against her fluffy pajama pants.
"What are you nervous about?" Lauren asks.
Camila lets out a laugh, nervy and breathy, and shakes her head. "You know me too well, Lo. Just--let me--just, like, stop, for a minute, okay? Please?"
Lauren feels Camila working her alchemy magic when she turns and presses her knees into Lauren's thigh, turning Lauren's blood to lava, turning Lauren's skin to stone, her heart to a balloon ready to be popped by a single pin. Camila has always been a single pin. "Okay," Lauren says.
"I just--ugh, I don't even know, Lauren. I fucked up before in the kitchen. I royally screwed myself then."
"Camila, that was so long ago. Don't worry about it." Lauren vaguely thinks she'd rather be a cigarette flicked off this roof than herself, stuck here next to the scariest person she's ever met. She sort of wants to say, "We've been okay, please don't ruin this."
"I can't not worry about it, Lauren, and you know that," Camila says, breathing heavily, getting worked up. "I think about it everyday. Because you said you were going to be sick after I said it, and you still look nauseous whenever you see at me, and it's eating me alive. I can't breathe with this on my chest."
Lauren bows her head, heart racing. "You don't make me nauseous, Camz."
"What do I make you, then?" Camila says, and she sounds so helpless.
Lauren almost says, "You make me something that I'm not. You make me a horrible person who's too afraid to love you. You're an alchemist, Camila, and everything you touch changes. You changed me. Undo it. I don't want to be this person anymore."
"You make me crazy." Lauren says. "I can't think straight when you're in the room."
"That's not fair," Camila says. "You make everything clearer for me, Lauren. You're like, I don't fucking know, prescription glasses or some shit. I can't see when you're not in the room."
"Why are we having this conversation?" Lauren snaps, suddenly feeling like her body doesn't fit right.
Camila sighs, and it's almost like she's trying not to cry. "Because, Lauren," she says, hand over her heart, "I'm not angry anymore. I'm not tired. I'm still in love with you. I've always been in love with you."
Lauren stares out over the city, realizes all the blinding lights could never compare to the way Camila used to look at her.
"You're a liar." Lauren says. It's so quiet, so afraid. "You look at me differently. Ever since we kissed at the concert, you changed. You feel differently."
It's almost palpable, the way Camila's anger flares up beside her. "What the fuck." She says, balling her hands up. They're so tiny. She's so tiny, such a small thing in a vast world waiting to swallow her whole. And yet she's swallowing Lauren whole. "I can't believe you would even think that."
"I don't know what to think," Lauren says, covering her face with her hands. "You know I'm a coward. You know I can't be brave unless I'm angry."
"Then get angry!" Camila shouts, suddenly pushing herself up to stand. Lauren widens her eyes, staring up at her in awe. Frustration flushes her face and neck, her hair shrouds her like a black cloud. She's always been so beautiful. "Tell me what the hell you want, Lauren. Yell at me! Get it all out! I'm tired of you bottling everything up and not expecting consequences for it. I'm tired of you being so fucking selfish."
That does it. That works. All the fear Lauren has been pushing down rises up, all at once, in a surge of rage. "Oh, so now I'm the selfish one? How the fuck did you get to that conclusion, Camila? Because I don't spend all my time chasing after someone who doesn't want me?" Lauren feels herself derailing, speeding off the tracks too fast to stop, or think. She stands up and gets in Camila's face. "Did you ever even think of that, Camila? That maybe I don't want to be with you?"
Camila's crying, but more out of anger than anything. Her nostrils flare as she steps even closer Lauren, shaking with emotion. "How fucking dare you." She spits, teeth gritted. "You are the biggest coward I've ever met, Lauren. You'd rather smash someone else's heart to pieces than trust them with your own."
"I never!" Lauren tries, voice cracking, but Camila cuts her off with a flash in her eyes.
"I tried so hard to leave you alone, Lauren. You don't get it. Don't you think that if I had a choice, I would throw all these feelings away at the drop of a hat? Love doesn't work that way. Love shoves it's way into your life and pins you down and beats you until you can't move. And I tried. So don't fucking blame me for falling in love, when that takes two people to do."
"You're saying I did this?" Lauren snarls. "You can't love people into corners, Camila. You just can't. But you took me to that concert and you fell in love with me and shoved me into a fucking corner."
"I tried!" Camila screams, full on sobbing now. Her words sound almost like another language. "You keep fucking bringing up that concert, and you know something? You only agreed to go because I begged. Because I was desperate to be with you. I swallowed my pride to be with you. And when we got there, I decided I was done. I tried that night to stop being so desperate. But then, you fucking jackass, you kissed me in that bathroom and my pride clawed it's way out of my mouth."
Lauren feels tears on her face, heavy and hot like the shame weighing in her skin. She looks at her sneakers. Camila is ruthless.
"Why do you think I disappeared, Lauren? Why do you think I stopped even looking at you? I was trying to let you be brave. But you're still too fucking chickenshit to try."
"I was confused," Lauren stutters, subconsciously looking anywhere but Camila, looking for a way out. "We never talked. All you did was push for something more, I didn't know you were waiting."
Camila looks up to sky, eyes helpless. "Just stop lying to yourself, Lauren. God. You knew. That's why you were scared. You were scared I would stop."
And there it is: the pin. Shoved straight through her skin, right into the heart of her heart. "I can't," she starts weakly. "I--"
Camila puts her hands up, surrendering. "Stop. Oh my God, just stop. You don't have to be scared anymore, Lauren. I'm quitting. I've quit. I give up."
She keeps crying, though, and doesn't move. It's like she's still waiting and she doesn't even know it.
Lauren is still going too fast, still not thinking. Lauren is ice and Camila burns. She steps forward and presses her mouth to Camila's, angry, afraid, all too much and all at once.
Camila kisses her back.
Lauren knows her. She knows she always will.
*
The next morning, Lauren wakes up to Camila getting dressed in the open doorway of the bathroom. The memory of the night before floods into her mind, pounding into her brain. She closes her eyes again.
"Lauren," Camila says, going still. "I know you're awake."
She guiltily opens her eyes again. "Hi."
Camila offers her a weak smile. "Morning."
Lauren sighs, sitting up in the bed, letting the sheet fall off of her. Camila doesn't even blink at the sight of her bare chest. "Do you want to talk about what happened last night?"
Camila leans against the doorjamb, and frowns in thought. "I think I provoked it," she says slowly, "but I meant everything I said. Even the stuff at the beginning."
Oh. Yeah. "You're still in love with me." Lauren says.
A sad smile etches itself onto Camila's face. She's unfairly beautiful, even when her heart is broken. "Still six feet under."
"I'm too young to die, Camz. I'm so scared of dying." Lauren sounds like a child. She can't help it.
Camila nods, slowly, like it's really sinking in. "I know. And I understand. And I'm sorry, Lo, really. For everything. I think I clung to you hoping we'd both drown."
It strikes a nerve. "I always used to think of kissing you as drowning." Lauren blurts.
Camila's mouth goes slack with shock. "Really?" She says. "Oh."
"I wanted to think of it as breathing. Really, I did. I just--I don't know how. And your kisses, they made my lips go numb, but it was like, from wasp stings. And your touch was like getting a piercing. And I like piercings, really, I just wish they didn't have to hurt."
She doesn't mean to make Camila cry. But Camila is wiping her face with her hands anyway. "I'm sorry." She says. "I wish I knew."
Lauren can't stop talking. "And there's this thing, that the fans say, about us. That we're the sun and the moon. There's this quote, and the first time I read it I almost cried, because it says that the sun loves the moon so much that she dies every night to let her breathe. You're the sun, Camz. And I'm so sorry."
Camila shakes her head, trying to smile. "That's the thing, Lo. I'm already dead, remember? Already six feet under."
It feels like saying goodbye.
*
And it is, for a while. Years, even. All five of them agree to take a break and they each go on their own paths, and for a while, Lauren forgets anything ever happened at all.
Which is impossible, of course.
Because it takes a while, it takes years, but Lauren wakes up one morning before the sun rises and she climbs out onto her roof to watch it, and she allows herself to smoke a cigarette, and she remembers. It stirs in her chest, warm and undulating, and for the first time Lauren can remember since she met Camila, her breath doesn't fall short. Her skin doesn't prickle. The fear doesn't come.
The sun is completely up when Lauren finally stops staring at the cigarette burning out between her fingers and realizes that she should probably go inside and call her.
"Hello?" Camila picks up at the third ring, voice groggy and heavy from sleep.
"Hi," Lauren says. She brings a hand up to her hair self consciously. "Sorry I woke you."
Camila sighs, and Lauren hears her flop back down on her pillow. "You should be. What's up?"
Her chest tightens. But just for a second. Just to remind her that she's come too far to stop digging now. "I just watched the sun rise." She says.
Camila snorts. "How tumblr grunge." She says. Her yawn stretches through the phone. "No, but really, why the fuck did you wake me up at six o'clock in the morning."
"I just watched the sun rise, and the moon is still up." Lauren says. She doesn't know how else to say it. "I looked it up and that happens a lot. Did you know that?"
"Sounds interesting," Camila says, voice muffled by what Lauren assumes is her pillow. "Now stop talking in metaphors and spit it out."
Lauren's breath falls short.
She picks it back up.
"Did you die last night?" She says.
"Almost." Comes Camila's answer. "This drunk college kid was driving on the wrong side of the road and almost murdered me." Then, a pause. "Wait, what?"
Lauren takes a shaky breath. "Camila, maybe they were wrong. Maybe the sun and the moon can breathe together."
She hears Camila sit straight up in her bed. "What the fuck." She says. "Lauren, are you--what?"
"Oh my God," Lauren says, groaning. "I'm trying to tell you I want to try again. I'm not scared anymore, Camz. I want to be with you."
It feels like breathing.
Camila laughs through the phone. "Oh," she says. "Okay. Sorry. I'm still half asleep. Am I dreaming?"
Lauren could cry. "No, you're awake." She says.
"I mean, it is six o'clock in the morning. I'm usually asleep for at least five more hours right about now."
"You're not dreaming." Lauren says. Camila laughs again, more alert. It fills the balloon in Lauren's chest.
"Okay." Camila says. "Good."
"Yeah," Lauren agrees, smiling to herself. "Good."