My Salvation

12.

(SLIGHTLY UNEDITED)

Chapter twelve | Dinner (pt 1.)
Camila:

I walk down the stairs; head spiralling as I try to come up with a variety of sentence starters. I'd prefer to make this dinner as quick, and as painless as possible, but seeing as me and Lucas have somewhat of a rocky history that might be hard. Not to mention I saw him on the verge of having sex with his girlfriend only a few hours ago.

The pitter-pattering of foot steps grow louder as my younger sister runs down the stairs. She looks utterly adorable. Her hair is in pigtails, and she's wearing a white dress, with white bows either pigtail. She has somewhat curly, medium length hair, so pig tails look extra cute on her.

Approaching the bottom of the stairs, I can already see Mark shaking hands with Lucas, and another man, who I assume is his father. Though his dad has grey hair mixed into the rest of his black hair, and he obviously is much older looking, they look awfully similar, They share the same defined features, like their jawlines, and raised cheekbones. If I'm being honest, they both resemble something of a greek god, lucas more so, as he looks much more youthful than the man beside him, who I'm now only noticing is shaking my brothers hand.

"Hi," Lucas says, giving me a small smile as I walk up to them. Lucas is dressed in a long sleeve, white button up shirt, an dark grey pair of jeans and some Jordan's. Both items of clothing look ironed, but not very well as there's still several crinkles through them. There's a few rings littered across his fingers, and one necklace with a silver chain and a small pendent. His sleeves, which have been rolled up a little bit, fall down slightly as he gives me a quick, awkward wave.

"Hey," I respond, returning the smile.

Jess grins brightly, putting her hand on my back, in a way to show me to Lucas' dad, I suppose. "Henry, this is Camila! She's in Lucas' grade," the man nods, and gives me a warm smile; his arm extending towards mine.

We briskly shake hands before he speaks,"It's very nice to meet you Camila. I didn't know you knew my Lucas," Henry turns his head to the boy next to him, and for just a second, it looks like he's gritting his teeth.

Lucas shrugs and it looks as though he's avoiding eye contact with his father.

"It's nice to meet you too sir, and we only recently met, so that's probably why," I try to ease the sudden tension by giving a slight laugh after my response, but it doesn't work.

Mark, clearly noticing, claps his hands together, "Well," he says with a deep breath, followed by an exhale, "Dinner should be ready in about ten or so minutes, so you kids can go off and do something whilst Jess and I catch up with Henry." Obviously, it's not really a suggestion, so we all nod, and decide to make our way to the backyard.

Lucas:

'my Lucas' he says. Acting like we're one happy little family. Acting like he's always there for me. It's fucked up. My friends know he's hardly a father, my girlfriend knows, hell even Mark and Jess have a pretty good idea of how our relationship is. So why? Why do we go to these fucking dinners with our neighbours and pretend to love each others company.

I sigh loudly, rolling my eyes at the thought of my 'father'. "You okay?" Camila asks, for a moment I forgot about the fact that we've both been walking around in circles around her backyard.

I shrug, glancing at her quickly, before looking back down at the rock I've been kicking around for the past five minutes. "Fine," I intend on saying it louder, but it ends on coming out as a mumble.

She nods. From the corner of my eye, I see her arms crossed over her stomach, and her thumbs flicking the nails on the other fingers. I step to close to my rock to be able to kick is once more, so I silently so goodbye to that excuse of not talking. "Are you okay?" I ask her.

It's now her who is shrugging her shoulders and mumbling "Fine."

We stay in silence for a few beats, before she speaks up again, "So," I turn my head to her, giving her my attention. "Your dad seems like a dick," I snort, and then she laughs.

"Yeah, he really is," I agree, she gives me a sympathetic smile. "What about yours?" I ask, taking a leap of faith. She's mentioned her mom before, but not her dad.

Camila's smile falls, her face going stiff and stern, "He left when I was ten, so that's that, I guess."

"I'm sorry," I say looking into her eyes, which are dropped to the ground.

She shakes her head, breathing in, "It's not biggie, you win some, you lose some, right?" Camila gives me smile, but I know it's not real, her real smiles don't look like that.

I change the topic, but not to another comfortable one, "So hey, I'm sorry about earlier today, I totally forgot to close my blinds and I was just sort of wrapped up with Blair and everything and she was on me and I was-"

"Lucas!" She says, stopping my rambling, which was rapidly getting more and more descriptive and awkward. "It's okay, I should probably just close mine more often."

"No, really that was my bad and in situations like that, I should be the one to close my blinds, so I'm very incredibly sorry, and it won't happen again." I can feel the embarrassment creep onto my cheeks as she gives me a smile. This time it's one of her real smiles.

"Dinners ready!" I hear Carlos call out to us, and all of a sudden I wish I was at the bottom of an ocean.

I imagine Camila sees my reaction because just for a moment, she places a hand on my bicep and says, "If your dad is being a dick during dinner, just imagine his face being blown up." She says this with a peaceful expression; well, it's between peaceful and psychotic, I'm not sure.

I nod, sigh, and we begin walking towards her house.

———
A/N

okay!! here is chapter 12! i'm actually very proud of myself for writing this so quickly, but it is a little bit unedited, so, sorry about that.

i decided to spilt this dinner into two chapters as i feel like writing shorter chapters keeps me motivated, i hope that's okay with you guys.

i hope you like this one!

-juniper x