Flirtatious

Chapter 5 :: Spontaneously Erupt

Chapter 5: Spontaneously Erupt

                  Melissa had an odd hobby of carrying a small sketchbook around with her wherever she went. The book was big enough to draw a good sized sketch on it, but small enough to carry around in a common sized tote so unless she was going clubbing or going on a date, she usually lugged it around with her.

                  The sketchbook was her one piece of release and it worked wonders on her boredom when she was waiting for something or in this case someone – the someone being Lacey Lee: Fashionably Late Extraordinaire.

                  She sat in one corner of the warmly lit café, away from the draft of the cold evening air coming in from the front entrance as gatherings of people fluttered in and out for their coffee addiction. The waft of the aromatic coffee beans tingled her nose, and as she brought her cup of mocha to her lips, not once did her eyes leave the sketch on her book.

                  Although it was a bit nosy at times, Melissa liked sketching at busy places filled with people. She liked to watch them, study their figures, postures, their sense of style, and when she found a good subject, she would sketch them up in clothes that she was inspired by studying the subject. Today was no exception as she drew a trench coat in the style of a flared dress with lace hems onto a young college student wearing jeans and a gray NYU hoodie. She dressed her short, unkempt, brown hair up with a white flower hairpin, but before she could decide on other adjoining accessories, she was startled by a familiar voice calling her name, and hurriedly shut her book closed.

                  She looked up and smiled as Lacey approached her, but her lips quickly changed its angle when Lacey snatched her mocha and took three gargantuan gulps out of it. “Buy your own,” she complained as Lacey licked her lips and placed the mug back down.

                  “Sorry, thirsty.”

                  “You don’t sound very sorry.”

                  “It’s because your mocha is delicious so I’m not.”

                  Melissa only responded with a quick eye roll before taking her sketchbook off the table and slipping it back inside her bag as discreetly as possible. If it was Sarah, it might have gone unnoticed, but Lacey was unusually sharp and if the narrowing of her eyes in the direction of Melissa’s bag was any indication, she definitely noticed the book.

                  It wasn’t as if her friends didn’t know about her hobby, but Melissa preferred not to fuss over it because she didn’t like sharing her drawings. The first instinctive thing anyone did when they found out she had a bit of artistic ability was to ask to see her sketches, and she hated people looking over them. There were only two possible responses. The first was the awkward smile they gave her if they didn’t particularly like her sketches or her designs. The second was the enthusiasm they showed if they genuinely liked them, which in Melissa’s case, was even worse than the first response.

                  Having people like her designs only served to remind her she spent the last five years floundering over a single man, and four of those years she spent saving every pay cheque she received to fund him through medical school. Well, that worked out well. Now Karlin was interning as a doctor at one of the hospitals in Manhattan and she was still holding only a high school diploma with her dream of becoming a fashion designer covered in dust, hidden somewhere in the attic of her brain. Things couldn’t have worked out better… for Karlin.