Lauren's apartment could have been considered spacious if the room hadn't been filled with paintings, canvases, easels and paintings. It could also have been called elegant had it not had stains from all kinds of paintings on the walls.
"In case you hadn't noticed before, my apartment is also my studio" She stood out coldly as she threw her car keys aside, like they didn't matter, and began to zip down her beautiful dress, exposing second by second a little more skin from her smooth back.
Was she really going to get naked in front of Camila?
"It's a bit... messy" She observed. She didn't want to be rude, but she didn't want to be a liar.
"I know, and I'm really not sorry."
"I like that you don't" And it was true. Lauren was Lauren, and she liked Lauren. She didn't want her to be sorry.
And it was at that very moment that Lauren dropped the blue dress from her body.
<<Shit>> it was the only thing that she managed to think.
She was very amazed, because now the painter was completely naked in front of her and, to make matters worse, she hadn't a bra or panties on all night.
Suddenly it was very hot, and Camila's heart was pounding so hard against her chest that it could have gotten out of there.
She didn't know if it was the harmonious shape of her body, the way her multiple curves called her or the simple fact that she didn't seem to have any modesty, but at that moment she felt so eager to be carried away by lust that she thought some pleasure-thirsty spirit had taken over her body.
Lauren had firm breasts and good size, a skin that looked as delicate as a feather, and her long legs led her directly to her greatest desire...
"Are you hungry or just want to go to sleep?"
Camila didn't respond. She had forgotten how to think just by looking at her.
"Well, since you seem pretty entertained looking at my boobs, we'll eat something. I'm hungry."
***
The painter was still naked when they went to the kitchen.
Camila sat on one of the chairs of the modern, stained countertop, staring at the artist's ass, who moved beside her as she prepared dinner.
Lauren Jauregui was, without a doubt, a work of art capable of stealing her breath.
When the woman sat in front of her with her breasts uncovered she could not contain the growl of frustration that escaped her lips, and it was so distracting that the girl didn't realize that there was now a plate full of delicious food in front of her body until the painter pushed her jaw delicately to shut her mouth.
"Do you want me to cover?"
Of course she didn't want her to, but telling her this would have been unseemly.
"I suppose" She replied flushed after a few seconds while keeping the sight in her eyes, which was a challenge, because her look threatened to deviate "...I mean, you're beautiful and I'd love to see you all night, but I don't want to look like a pervert."
"Don't worry, Camila. We know very well who the pervert between us is.
Camila sighed.
"Lauren, please... you're lending me your apartment and I really don't want to take advantage of the situation."
"Take advantage. I don't care."
"Lauren, please. It's cold. Also, I want to be able to think while I talk to you."
The painter rolled her eyes with a smile. It was impossible not to give in to her.
"Can I borrow your coat?"
She gave it to her immediately, tired of the torture she had endured for so few minutes. Lauren covered her body slowly with that cloth, treating her as gently as a mother treated her baby.
It was as if the coat, being Camila's, was much more important to her.
"...Better?" She asked the tattoo artist with a raised eyebrow.
"Just a little" She replied with a nervous smile.
She hadn't thought that covering her body would not erase the image that had been firmly shaped in her mind.
***
Undressing in front of her didn't seem to have been enough. Now, moreover, she was provoking her.
After Lauren and Camila had finished dinner, the young lady with the green eyes had offered her a taste of the sky itself. Camila did not know what she meant by these words, but ended up accepting.
This way the Nutella came to the table.
Camila was not a great lover of its flavor, but she loved the faces of pleasure that Lauren projected every time she took a spoonful to her mouth, which she devoured slowly and sensually.
Sometimes the girl would get her fingers dirty and end up taking them to her mouth to clean them. That's how hell itself burst between her legs.
Lauren Jauregui made her feel aroused even in parts of her body that she didn't know she had.
"I told you it was like trying the sky."
But Camila was too busy reveling in the thousands of fantasies that crossed her head to add anything coherent.
"The first time I kissed a girl was in a similar situation" She said, and didn't seem to care if Camila was listening to her "... She was my best friend, and that day I stayed at her house. I don't remember why, but I kissed her and she kissed me. And we tasted like Nutella... I've been looking for a kiss like that for years, Camila, but I haven't find it."
The tattoo artist said nothing. She didn't have Nutella-flavored magic kisses to overcome.
"Maybe you want to know who the owner of that kiss was, and if you don't want to know I'll tell you the same way: It was the bitch Alexa" She said it naturally, as if calling the owner of your best kiss a bitch was typical.
"Why do you call her "bitch"?"
"Because she is."
"And why is that?"
"I was fourteen, Camila" She began to relate, and there was a melancholic touch in her words "I knew nothing of love or life. I was completely ignorant... I had money because my family had it. I had a boyfriend because my friends had it too." She sighed, and the tattoo artist noticed shame when she heard her talk about who she had been in the past. "But I felt very empty, Camila, and that's when I kissed Alexa and discovered that I had something more than that, something so valuable that only I myself was able to take away..."
"What was it?" She asked intrigued.
"I had myself."
The painter closed her eyes, probably trying to hold back a couple of tears that Camila would have been willing to clean up.
"I admit that terrified me... I was terrified to know who I was, what I really liked and what I really wanted to do. Actually, I think it was the others who terrified me. For they were not me, and they didn't know who I was, and they would judge me because I was not like them, for no one is like anyone else."
Now her eyes had opened, and the look she gave the tattoo artist was so deep that she felt it was burning her soul.
"That's why I asked Alexa to keep our kiss a secret, but she didn't. They made fun of me at school and my family stopped talking to me, but strangely I didn't care... I realized that I wasn't alone, that I still had me, and I knew that my boyfriend, my money and my popularity were nothing compared to that."
Her eyes were filled with joy, and Camila sensed that this was the phase where she had gained all self-confidence. At that stage the painter began to be herself.
"My classmates soon stopped teasing and my parents ended up tolerating what they thought was intolerable. And I accepted myself, and I stopped being afraid of myself... I swear I've never felt so good."
Camila smiled when Lauren unconsciously did so. She wondered if she would ever come to love herself in such a pure way.
"Months later I thanked the bitch Alexa. Thanks to her I am who I am now. If I hadn't kissed her, and if it hadn't been for her big mouth, I'd still be scared."
It was these last few sentences that got her a little confused.
"I don't understand... Do you think she's a bitch because she helped you not fear yourself?
The painter laughed in her face.
"Oh, no! Of course not! Actually, I discovered that she was a bitch a few days after I thanked her" She told her in whispers, although Camila didn't know who could hear them at that time "The point is that Alexa was in love with my boyfriend, So she kissed me because she had a slight feeling that I could be a lesbian. She told everyone about our kiss just to stay with him."
"Oh, I think I understand...
"He was disgusting, Camila! I would have handed it to her on a silver platter if she had just asked me!"
I might not really understand her that much.
***
"Why do you do it?" Now Lauren had given up on the Nutella and had gone on to look at her lips unabashedly, which was excitingly uncomfortable for the poor tattoo artist.
If she had known that night would be so awkward, she would have left with Marco and his new conquest from the beginning.
"Do what?"
"Provoke me."
The painter smirked and a perverse glow took hold of her gaze.
"I want to find out something."
"What?"
But Lauren didn't answer.
***
Camila and Lauren decided not to sleep that night.
Camila was too agitated.
Lauren was feeling strange.
They sat on the balcony, which had a beautiful view of the rest of the city: apartments, houses, parks, cars moving from here to there...
It was not a wonderful sight as her favorite writers described in the most romantic love stories she had read, but there, next to Lauren Jauregui, the girl thought it was even much better.
"Do you want to talk about something?" The painter asked with an unusual innocence of her.
She still wore Camilla's coat, which covered her to the middle of her thighs, leaving her pale legs and bare feet out in the open.
She looked truly beautiful, like an angel who has fallen from heaven and still retains the last glow of glory.
"Sure. What do you want to talk about?"
"With you I would talk about anything."
And that's how they got to know each other.
***
They were the same and different at the same time.
They loved music, but they didn't match any artists or bands. They loved food, but different kinds of it. They read books, but in libraries they took different directions. They created art, but they didn't share the same canvas.
Maybe that's why they got along so well. They could talk, debate, laugh... There was no way they would get bored being together.
The only thing that matched 100 percent at the time was that they had both begun to fall in love with each other.
***
The next morning Dinah went to get her, and Camila said goodbye to Lauren with a big hug and a kiss on the cheek.
She let her keep her coat. It was the least she could give her for everything she had done.
"Thank you, Lauren."
She wasn't just referring to the fact that she was allowed to stay in her apartment, but to dinner and company, and the fact that she wouldn't tell anyone about her lack of tattoos. She meant the smiles she gave her during the night. She meant the thousands of anecdotes they had shared, and of that view on her balcony that was not typical of a youth novel. She even referred to the provocation and wonderful sight of her naked body.
She meant everything.
"Call me" If she didn't know her she would almost have sworn that she was begging her"...I want to ask you something."
"I will" She said, and what seemed to be a sigh escaped through the painter's lips.
"I want to believe it." And, for the second time since she had set foot in that apartment, Camila noticed her excited.
The tattoo artist kissed her cheek again before feeling how Lauren was slowly moving away from her body, but not enough to make it stop being a close-up.
She felt her hands holding her waist, and her green eyes nailed to her own. She could feel her breath near her face, and she could hear her foot tapping nervously on the floor.
What she did not feel was the slight trembling in the painter's pale hands, nor did she hear the rapid beating of her heart, nor did she perceive her unruly thoughts.
"I have to... I have to go now" She babbled before separating herself completely from her, and since she had not felt the tremor, the heartbeat or the confusion, neither did she feel the emptiness in Lauren's heart when she no longer had her in her arms "I still have to get dressed and go to work. I don't want to be late."
And, if she hadn't been so worried about her job, Camila would have realized that Lauren wanted to kiss her.
-Lore-
Note: My stomach asks for breakfast, but my culinary abilities are still nil and my chef (Juan) is asleep. A tragedy.
How are you doing?
Have a good life.