Like a Tattoo (Raura)

Chapter 17

Ross's POV

The bottoms of my eyelids cling onto the areas beneath my eyes. I let my limbs go as they imprint onto the blankets. Drowsiness overpowers me, up until the point when I slip into an unconscious sleep.

"Ross?" a voice calls out.

I grumble with my eyes shut and fall back asleep. After a half-minute, the feminine voice starts again, "Ross? Are you home?"

Feet first, I shimmy my body off the bed and stumble over to where the voice came from. Outside my open window, the hot summer night's still scaldingly numbing. Legitimately, it feels like my skin is melting. I blink away the friction between my eyelids and under eyes and look toward the girl who woke me up.

"Sorry to bother you, but my parents are out and my phone is dead. You wouldn't, by chance, know anything about fixing wireless mics, would you?" Laura passively asks.

I squint and place both hands on my face to wake up, then proceed to run them through my unruly lion's mane, "No, I don't, but I could give it a shot," I rub my head to try and think back to my mechanics class in high school, "Did you plug in all of the correct equipment and find a frequency channel?"

Laura furrows her brows and taps her fingers on the bottom of her window, "No... I don't have any sort of instrument that would be able to find a frequency channel," she states quizzically.

I figure I can't come to a reasonable conclusion, "Hmm, you might be missing a piece in the set. Do you mind if I come over right now to try and see what the problem is?"

"No, not at all. The sooner the better," she prompts.

I nod and close my window after telling Laura I'll be there in two minutes. With my clothes scattered throughout my room, I find the closest pair of sweatpants and sniff it. The scent is mildly acceptable, so I'd say it was worn once since its last wash. Along with the sweatpants I rush on over my boxers, I find a fresh muscle tee in a laundry basket outside my room.

I run next-door to Laura's house, not without stifling as I had taken the trek in sandals. Once I reach her door, she greets me and shows me into her room right at the beginning of the upstairs hallway.

Laura hands me the mic and the box it came in, "It didn't come with any device to change a frequency. Do you think there's a separate piece I was supposed to buy? I guess it was wrong of me to suppose it connected with a speaker through Bluetooth."

I turn the microphone over in my hands. When I move the power switch on, a faint red light ignites above the switch, so there's nothing wrong with the mic in terms of its power. I flip the mic to find an even weight distribution. There's no lint on the head that could block sound input, but when I scan my eyes over the bottom, I find my answer. Three half-inch long, metal connectors.

"Laura, this isn't a wireless mic," I reason to her, "You just didn't buy the cable it needs to work. It's a wired microphone, but without the cable, it's wireless. And useless," I chuckle a little as she stares in defeat, "I think the stores are closed by now so you won't be able to get this mic to work tonight."

Laura amusedly eyes me with incredulity, so much so I don't know how she's going to react. She laughs to herself as she paces around her room, "That's incredible," Laura remarks, "I had no idea technology hated me this much."

I reassuringly nod and tangle and untangle my hands. Laura traverses her surprisingly spacious room to an open area in which one of the walls is completely concealed by a mirror. She stops at a mini-fridge in the corner and gets out two cans of A&W root beer. After I accept the one she offers me, Laura snaps the pull-tab back and sips the soda slowly.