Dance On Our Graves

Chapter 20

When Lauren wakes up, she smiles. Lauren's still tangled in Camila under the sheet fort. There's a dip starting to form a little bit in the middle. It takes Lauren a moment to remember why she has a shirt and panties on and why Camila is donning the same. She has to repress a laugh when she remembers their two a.m. ice cream run to the bodega on the corner.

Lauren closed her eyes, reveling in the moment of waking up with Camila. She wakes up with her every morning, but this time, she wakes up after hours of making love in the very bed she was so intent on avoiding.

Lauren lazily opens her eyes when she can feel Camila shift in her arms. She watches Camila's relaxed expression tense in a squint to keep the light out. Lauren chuckles and kisses her forehead as her eyes flutter open. When Camila sees her looking at her, she grins and ducks her head, burying her face in her neck.

"Good morning," Lauren chuckles and kisses her head, sweeping Camila's mussed hair away from her face.

Lauren feels her lips connected with the skin of Camila's neck. "Good morning." She pulls back and flops onto her back. Lauren watches her examine the fort and laughs, "We're awesome."

"So awesome," Lauren rest her hand on her stomach, feeling the taut muscles tense under Lauren's touch before relaxing. Lauren rubs her fingers over her shirt and keeps watching her.

Camila furrows her eyebrows. "Is that one of the chairs from the kitchen?"

Lauren follows her eyes to the head of the bed. Sure enough one of the chairs are turned upside down, the back of the chair wedged between the bed and the wall with the sheet hung over two of the legs. They both look at each other and burst out laughing.

As they're laughing, Camila rolls over on top of Lauren and, when her lips get within a breath of hers, the laughing fades. Camila smirks and leans forward, her lips pressing against Lauren's, claiming them as her own. Lauren willingly surrender. Camila can have everything Lauren has and everything Lauren is.

Camila's hands start to sneak under Lauren's shirt when Lauren hears a creaking noise. Lauren can see the chair leaning down above her. Lauren wraps her arms around Camila's waist and rolls both of them over so that Lauren is on the edge of the bed on top of Camila right before the chair falls onto the bed and the sheet rests against Lauren's back.

Camila laughs again and pulls Lauren down for a kiss. They make love under the sheet, on the edge of the bed with a chair on the bed next to them. It's not particularly normal, but it's how Lauren and Camila operate. And it works.

They're still on their date high over the next few days. The kisses and the touches are frequent. Lauren miss being able to sleep tangled up in Camila, but she plans to pay back Camila's parents for the moving expenses so Lauren has been working as much as possible to gather the money.

After she drops Camila off at work and Emily off at school, she meets Normani for lunch. She told Lauren that she has something to tell her.

When Lauren walks in, she's distracted. It's Wednesday, so she's not expecting stellar tips tonight, but hopefully enough to make up for missing some quality family time.

They meet at a bistro Normani suggests and, so far, she has been quiet most of the time. She's just sort of munching on her salad, thinking to herself much like Lauren is. The way her eyebrow creases, Lauren feels like her thoughts are much more light-hearted than Lauren's.

She makes a sort of noise, maybe she was clearing her throat, but Lauren look up. Normani takes a bite of her salad before meeting Lauren's eyes, "You still looking to get out of your job?"

Lauren shrugged, "Sorta. I mean, I'm kinda looking, but I'm not in a rush. I'm twenty-two, I'll have this body for, what? Two more years?"

She laughs at Lauren's joke and pushes her salad around. "Well, I have a job for you if you want it."