My Love Has Come Along

03

Lauren slides her phone out of her pocket, realizing she’s been gone for hours. Dinah’s responded to her text with several of her own, most of them comprised almost entirely of emojis. Lauren grins and sends a text of all jack-o-lantern emojis because she knows it’ll make Dinah laugh. She has a text from Ally asking when she was coming home twenty minutes earlier with several concerned emojis. Lauren rolls her eyes as she replies, thinking that she and her friends were entirely too obsessed with using the little characters.

She says goodbye to the tree, which hums fondly in response. Ami drapes himself across Lauren’s shoulders, obviously content to be carried the whole way home.

“Brat,” she murmurs, wincing when Ami’s claws dig in a little tighter.

She gets back to the apartment feeling oddly tired, like she hadn’t spent the past two days deeply unconscious. She bids Ally and Normani goodnight and flops onto her bed, Ami curling onto the small of her back immediately. She falls asleep thinking about lilacs and pretty voices.

The weeks drag on and the leaves begin to fall from the trees. The nightmares that had been plaguing Lauren before her vision still return once a week or so, and she’s starting to grow incredibly frustrated with them.

But the shop is always a soothing place, even when Dinah breaks a display while she’s dancing to the Beyoncé Normani often plays. The only reason Dinah gets away with it so often it because she usually gets Lauren to fix whatever she broke.

Autumn has always been Lauren’s favorite season. She likes the weather and the whole atmosphere of it. Children get excited for Halloween and Thanksgiving and everything feels warm and cozy. Ami gets a kick out of wandering around and making the more superstitious people think they’ve been struck with bad luck.

“You’re a menace,” Lauren tells him one afternoon after an older man nearly keels over upon spotting Ami. Ami is unperturbed by the comment, trotting across the street for a group of kids to pet him.

As the weeks wear on, Lauren becomes acutely aware of her vision. She’d heard the voice of a girl during the middle of fall, and she knows that time is approaching. It makes her a little edgy, and she knows Ally picks up on it even if she doesn’t say anything.

Lauren’s walking to Dinah’s place one afternoon, Ami hidden in her coat as it’s particularly windy out.

“Don’t put any holes in my sweater,” Lauren orders. “I love this one.”

As she gets closer to the tiny apartment where Dinah lives, she watches a girl exit the building and cross the street. Something about the girl halts Lauren in her tracks, and she stares after her, feeling the strangest urge to run over and approach her. Ami pops his head out of her coat, staring after the girl as well. She disappears around the corner and Lauren forces herself into motion again.

“Did you feel that?” she asks Ami.

Ami burrows back into the jacket, letting out an affirmative noise. Lauren tries to clear her head as she enters Dinah’s building, climbing the stairs and letting herself in.

“Ralph!” Dinah grins. “Perfect timing, Mila just left.”

“Mila?” Lauren tilts her head, unzipping her jacket to let Ami thump onto the floor.

Dinah looks unfazed by the sudden appearance of the cat. “Yeah, my friend from my music theory class. Camila.”

Lauren nods in recognition. Dinah’s been talking about the girl for weeks, and Ally insists that Dinah bring her by the shop sometime so they can meet her. Lauren wonders if Camila was the girl she saw exiting the building that had her entranced.