My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose

Chapter Two

"So what's this place gonna be called anyway?" Lauren asked as she stood atop a chair, carefully hanging a painting on the wall.

Camila was sitting on the floor, trying to sort out her inks by rainbow colour, but looked up at Lauren to answer. She couldn't help but notice the beautiful dark hair cascading down Lauren's back (mostly because she was facing the wall and therefore Camila couldn't look at her face.)

"Uh, 'Colour Me Cute?'"

"Okay, you're cute." Lauren stepped off the chair much more gracefully than Camila could ever manage, and sat down next to her, folding her legs underneath her.

"No, that's the name of the store!" Camila laughed, but it didn't stop her heart skipping a beat. Lauren called her cute.

Wait, was that a compliment? Was cute a good thing amongst people who wore leather pants  and rode motorcycles? Or was it like 'oh that's nice you look like twelve and I don't have to listen to you because you're cute'?

Did Lauren even ride a motorcycle?

"That doesn't stop it being true. Although I'll admit, this isn't exactly what I pictured a tattoo place to look like."

Camila quickly scanned her eyes around the room. Three of the four walls were painted and they'd placed a large bookshelf on one end, with the cash register sitting on a small counter in front of the door to the back room, where the actual tattoos would be done. "What do you mean?"

"Well cutie, in my experience, tat places have heavy metal posters not, uh, decorative foliage," Lauren smirked as she nodded towards a large house plant by the door. "Not that I'm not loving the Chinese evergreen, by the way."

"Just because you're some kind of punk who's probably got like a zillion tattoos!"

Lauren looked over to Camila, and raised her arms in response. "Do you see any tattoos?"

"Just because they're not visible does't mean there... aren't...any..." Camila trailed off as she realised what she was implying, and felt herself blush in what could only be sheer humiliation.

Thankfully, Lauren just threw her head back and laughed. "Yeah, no. Completely blank."

"I could give you one if you want? You know, friend's discount or whatever?"

"I'm not going to trust you anywhere near my skin with a needle. Even though you've proven that you can write phone numbers on arms, which was impressively smooth but also unnecessary. We live right next to each other, sweetheart."

Camila hugged her legs and fidgeted with her bracelet. "Yeah I know, but I was drawing on your arm and the idea came to me. I know it's kind of lame."

Lauren shrugged, titling her head slightly. "Meh, it was cute."

"You still haven't called me. It's been two days."

"I am literally sitting right in front of you."

"But still, I don't have your number. So if I needed to get hold of you in an emergency, I'd be in trouble."

"And what kind of emergency, exactly, would cause you to require my help?" Lauren asked, looking at Camila.

"You never know. I could be held hostage and the ransom could ask for a bouquet of roses." Camila replied.

"Well they'd be awful kidnappers if they allowed to you keep your phone," Lauren never missed a beat, "Plus they'd have to be more specific on what type of roses they wanted."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah I couldn't just turn up with any old bouquet, I'd need to know the specifics!"

"Of course."

"Well it'd be like someone walking up to you and asking for 'something cool'. It's way too vague!"

Camila shrugged. "I could probably do it."

"What?"

"Something cool."

Lauren smiled wide, and Camila realised what was she was about to ask.

"Ugh, fine."

She sighed over-dramatically, and stood up to grab a pen from her bag, sitting back down in front of Lauren.

"Give me you arm," she said, putting on an exasperated voice, despite not actually minding in the slightest. It gave her the opportunity to practice her patterns, plus she got to hold Lauren's hand which was kinda nice.

Lauren smiled and held out her arm. Camila grabbed her by the wrist and began to draw. Using a pen was, of course, very very different to using a needle. In fact it probably wasn't very helpful in improving her skills at all. Still, the holding hands perk still stood.

Camila pulled Lauren's arm right up to her face, focusing on the pale skin. She could smell the perfume on Lauren's wrists, which was lovely and not one Camila could name. Not that she was overly educated on perfumes. It somehow smelled like nighttime. Camila wasn't even aware nighttime had a smell, but apparently it did and Lauren had managed to bottle it.

With a flourish, Camila stopped and released Lauren's wrist.

"Voila!"

She watched as Lauren's eyes widened and she let out a small breath, which Camila took as a good sign.

"Uh, is it accurate? That'd be embarrassing if I got something wrong." She gushed.

"No, no you got it right." Lauren murmured.

"Oh thank god! You know I don't really know all that much about flowers but I did do biology in high school... granted I fainted whenever we talked about blood or organs or anything..." she could feel herself rambling but she couldn't stop, "and I did lead the campaign against frog dissection which was very important and can you please say something it's freaking me out."

Lauren took her eyes off of the small flower on her wrist, almost as if she was surprised to see Camila sitting there. She fixed her with a wide gaze that was hard to decipher, still not saying anything.

"So anyway we eventually did manage to get rid of the frog dissection, but that still didn't stop us having to look at pictures of their hearts so I ended up getting wheeled out of class in a wheelchair because I fainted and hit my head off the desk which hurt a lot and now I have a scar on my forehead but it's really faint and I think Alex was the only person to ever notice it without me pointing it out and even then that was after we'd been dating for like two years..."

She trailed off, desperately hoping Lauren would say something, but she was just staring at the floor, wringing her hands.

"Are you okay? Lauren?" Camila started to worry. Had she said something? Did she not like the drawing? Did her word-vomit scare her off? (It had been known to happen before. Camila really had to learn when to stop talking.) Scaring Lauren was probably the worst thing that could ever happen.

"Uh, yeah I'm fine. I better get back to my own job."

Lauren stood up abruptly and all but ran out of the store.

Camila sat cross legged in the middle of the floor with absolutely no clue what had just happened.