Chapter Text
A few weeks after Total Drama ends. The contestants are back home, and a few have stayed in touch.
⸻
Lauren had never thought much about her own heart.
She liked chaos, she liked loud things, and she liked things that scared most people. Love—real, soft, vulnerable love—had always felt… boring. Predictable. Weak.
Until Dawn.
Dawn, with her patient voice and eyes that saw everything. Dawn, who had told her once, “You’re not as unpredictable as you think, you just want to be understood before you’re judged.”
It hit Lauren like a falling piano: somewhere between the arguments and the weird conversations, she’d started feeling things. Not just liking, not just fascination. But something that sat behind her ribs and ached every time Dawn smiled.
⸻
She started texting Dawn more. Sending her pictures of mushrooms with eyes drawn on them. Updates about the grave she was restoring in her backyard. Random, sometimes terrifying compliments to her like:
“If you were a curse, I’d keep you anyway.”
Dawn always replied, always kind, always amused.
But never more than that.
⸻
After awhile, Lauren couldn’t take it anymore. One late night, under a dim streetlight by Dawn’s favorite park, she finally confessed.
“I think I like you,” Lauren blurted. “Like… not ‘I want to tie your shoelaces together’ like. Like like you.”
Dawn’s expression softened in the worst possible way it was gentle, understanding… but not surprised.
“Oh, Lauren…”
Lauren tried to laugh, but it sounded hollow. “Too soon? Too weird? Too me?”
Dawn shook her head. “You’re… amazing. And real. And I’m glad we’re friends. But I don’t feel that way.”
Lauren stared at her shoes. “I knew.”
“I know you did,” Dawn said softly. “But you were brave enough to try.”
Lauren nodded, eyes shining in the dim light. “I don’t want to disappear from your life.”
“You won’t,” Dawn promised. “Not unless you walk away.”
⸻
The next morning, Lauren sat on her porch with her sketchbook, drawing a version of her heart with tiny thorns wrapped around it.
Not bleeding. Not broken. Just… almost.
She didn’t regret telling Dawn. But it hurt.
It was a clean hurt. The kind that meant something had been real, even if it didn’t go the way she hoped.
⸻
And as the days progressed, she still messaged Dawn. Still sent weird photos. Still made her laugh.
Lauren was learning that love didn’t always mean getting what you wanted.
Sometimes, it meant letting someone stay in your world—even if they couldn’t give you back the same kind of love.
Since then, Lauren didn’t stop talking to Dawn.
She couldn’t. Not really.
But she did stop checking her phone every five minutes. She stopped reading into every “lol” and late reply. She let herself breathe again without tying every inhale to someone else’s heartbeat.
It wasn’t easy. The kind of crush she’d had on Dawn wasn’t like the others—this one had roots. It grew in her spine and her stomach and behind her eyes.
But she was learning something: just because someone didn’t love you back, didn’t mean you weren’t worth loving.
⸻
So she poured herself into other things.
She started painting—big, strange murals in her garage, full of spirals and eyes and stars that bled into flowers. Her mom didn’t know what to think of it, but Lauren didn’t care.
She even started a local art page online. People liked her stuff. Really liked it.
Someone messaged her one day:
“This is raw and beautiful. Like haunted hope. You’re amazing.”
It wasn’t Dawn. But it still made Lauren smile.
⸻
One weekend, Noah visited out of nowhere.
He leaned against her fence and said, “You’re doing that thing again. The dangerous healing.”
Lauren raised an eyebrow. “What, emotional healing?”
He shrugged. “Scary stuff. Good on you.”
They shared lemonade in the yard, watching a crow try to fly off with a plastic spoon.
Noah looked at her and said, “You know, you don’t have to fall in love with every light you find.”
Lauren replied, quiet but steady, “I didn’t fall in love with Dawn’s light. I fell in love with how she saw me.”
“And now?” he asked.
Lauren looked down at her chipped nails, her sketch-stained hands.
“I’m learning how to see myself.”
⸻
Later that night, Dawn messaged her:
“Saw your new mural on your page. It’s beautiful, Lauren. You’re glowing.”
Lauren looked at the message, then at her reflection in the dark window. She didn’t feel the same ache anymore. Just warmth. Like the glow was hers, not borrowed.
She wrote back:
“Thanks. I think I finally figured out how to light things from the inside.”
And she meant it.