Rising Love

You Steal the Air Out of My Lungs

"Well, I can't say I didn't suspect it." Zayn answers honestly as he loosens the embrace. Camila's forehead is sprinkled with flour. "You two have had heart eyes for each other since the beginning."

"You really think so?" Camila asks, only to be ditched as the baker sniffs the air, curses under his breath, and goes to check on the cake. 

"He knows so." Cole replies, peeking his head out from his fort that was the counter. "Rosa and I watched as Lauren and you met for the first time, and I have never seen so much gay in my life."

"Unless you haven't watched Drag Race or read fanfiction, that better be an exaggeration." Camila replies, not sure how to take in the pure amount of extra that is Cole, the current cashier. 

"You two literally had heart eyes. You looked more like emojis than people. You like her, she likes you. Go get your girl." Cole says, trying to stir Zayn's friend into action with his words. 

"I was kind of trying to do that already." Camila responds bluntly, letting her left foot tap against the cement flooring. "But she wasn't here."

"Yeah, she was at Rosa's and my apartment last night, girl was shit ass drunk. She crashed on our couch for the night, and when I left she was still there, dozing."

"You have to be kidding me," Camila says, pulling out her phone. "The one time I'm at the bakery since I've left, and it's the one time she's not here."

"Considering the fact that you two miss everything about one another, including social cues, this doesn't surprise me." Cole says, putting another macaroon in his mouth, this time making sure that it is a chocolate flavoured one. 

"I-"

"She was so obvious, and to be honest, so were you. Zayn told me he caught her looking at her abs when you first went to stay with them." 

"Was it really that easy to notice?" Camila asks, frowning a little as she hears Zayn roar in laughter from the kitchen, where he's pulling a cake out of the oven. 

Cole nodded, eating yet another macaroon. Camila opens her messenger app and writes up a quick text to Lauren. 

Camz: stopped by sammy's today, missing your face here :'(

-

"Out of all of the fucking days!" Lauren whines, trudging laps around Rosa and Cole's kitchen. Rosa's dipping some biscotti in her hot chocolate, watching from the kitchen table as Lauren meanders around, overcome with romantic melancholy. It's quite an entertaining sight to see, as Lauren is a little disheveled from sleeping on the couch the night before, and a pair of sunglasses is hanging crookedly on her face, shielding her from the light, which she is still sensitive to due to the dubious amount of whiskey that was consumed. 

"Fate has little consideration for the possibility of coincidence." Rosa tells her, tapping her fingers on the table, trying to make the rhythm match that of the song from Chicago, the Musical - a number called Cell Block Tango. The biscotti in her hot chocolate is slowly dissolving. 

"She's there - and I'm not, and even if I was there, I look like crap - but what if she doesn't come again for a long time? Or ever again? What if she walks out of that shop and gets hit by a car and dies or gets amnesia and either way any chance I would have with her would be good as squat -"

"Woah, woah there tiger." Rosa said, interrupting the tangent of worry that Lauren was having. Lauren stops in her tracks, puts her hands in the pockets of her blue denim Levi jeans, and looks at Rosa, tapping her foot and waiting for an answer. She is wearing black flip flops. "Don't you think that you're letting your thoughts be a little...overzealous?"