Rising Love

Everything Comes Back to You

On the night before Camila was set to leave, having found somewhere else to live, Lauren lay in bed and remembered something Zayn had told her a few months ago, not long before Sammy's Bakery and Cafe opened. She had been stressed, something had come up with the loan and they weren't sure if it was going to go through. To Lauren, it was her life's work, hanging on a string as thin as dental floss, as fragile as a blade of grass, so easy to snip apart, and all would fall away. 

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She had been silently panicking in her apartment, worrying over a bottle of root beer as she nibbled at her nails for the first time in years, still wearing a band T-shirt and jeans, even though it's one in the morning. 

Zayn walks into the living room from the kitchen, and it's clear that he had actually been catching up on some shut eye. At the light blaring from the television, his eyes squint shut, recoiling from anything indicating that he needed to be conscious again. He was wearing a beanie on his head, to hide the huge tattoo on the side of his head that he had gotten two and a half weeks ago. 

He had just come home one day with the design spanning across the left side of his head, grinning cockily as Lauren gawked at his head, second-handedly embarrassed for him. 

But now, two weeks later and barely awake, his navy blue beanie covered most of the tattoo, which probably still was a little tender. He was wearing a basic white tanktop, like the ones people get from Target, a pair of grey sweatpants from his old community college, and some French bread slippers that Lauren had bought him as a random gift for being her ride or die best friend. 

"Why the hell are you still up?" he mumbles, using his left hand to rub at one of his sleepy eyes. 

"Everything is about to collapse, why wouldn't I still be up?" Lauren fires back, leg wiggling due to nervousness. "The loan might fall out without going through, we won't get the real intent deposit back from the beginning of the sale process, and - I don't know, Z. I just feel like this was the one foundation I rested my dream on, and now it's just crumbling down."

Lauren notices Zayn's eyes open a little wider as she speaks, he's definitely more awake now than he was a few minutes ago. He scratches at his beanie before pulling it further down onto his head. 

"You're acting as if the apocalypse is coming today."

"It's not, I've just been wasting my life on a vision that's never going to come true now."

"Everything is so final to you, Lauren. Okay. This specific place may not work, that's chill. Remember when we originally tried to make our first offer? You were so insistent on getting that specific place, the one by the beach. Remember?"

Lauren nods, remembering the shack she had wanted to get, listening as Zayn went on.

"You wanted a bakery on the beach. And when the offer was rejected for something higher, you freaked the fuck out, Lo. You thought that was the end of it all...it wasn't. We went on, kept working, and we found Sammy's, which you're in love with now, because really - who wants a fucking hot bakery on the beach in summertime?"

"I did," Lauren said quietly. 

"That didn't happen." Zayn reminded her, shuffling to take his seat on the couch. "But we moved on. Such is life, we have to go forward."

"But Zayn-"

"It's okay if we don't get Sammy's. We'll keep working. We'll sell bread at the Farmers' Markets if we have to, so we can drum up supporters. We'll keep moving towards our goal, your dream."