Finally Us

The New Face of Valentino

She hated this. She hated it being all bright and sunny and perfect outside and she was stuck inside with the nastiest of colds she ever did have. Laura wasn't sure how she got the flu-like cold, but it hit her hard and three days into it, she wasn't getting any better. Bundled up in the fluffiest of blankets, Laura cozied herself back into her big Wonderland chair and dove back into one of her favorite books she had grabbed randomly from the mini bookshelf beside it this morning. She had absolutely no shame in re-reading "The Chronicles of Narnia" by C.S. Lewis. She loved Lucy's imagination and Edmund's determination and the way the famed author wrote this world, there was just something so enchanting to her.

"'Girls aren't very good at keeping maps in their brains'," Laura read aloud in her stuffy voice. "'That's because we've got something in them.'" She giggled then, also remembering how funny the two younger Pevensies could be. Throwing some water back into her throat, Laura let it sink down as she glanced over at the clock again. Four o'clock. It wasn't that she was bored, because she did have the Kingdom of Narnia at her hands, it was more that she couldn't believe that she'd been suffering for three days with the cold from hell and wouldn't even be able to kiss Ross until she got over it.

With just a week and a half to go until they both headed off for New York for September, she wasn't risking anything. Kissing him with a cold could mean he'd get sick like her, or even sicker. She had told him to stay away for a few days while she got over it, but it was torture. How she was ever away from him for that long before was astonishing. She didn't want to become that girlfriend - you know the one that is always around their boyfriends, having to touch them, draping themselves on them, and clingy - but when your boyfriend was Ross Lynch and as addicting as sugar...well, she was becoming one of those girlfriends.

Leaning her head back on the cushioned back of the chair, Laura closed the door on Narnia for now and placed it on the seat in exchange for the remote on her other side. Maybe music would help, yea, some nice classical music to put her back to sleep and will the cold away. But first, first she needed to get through her emails and call Mona back about the plans for the rest of the week. Even with having the worst cold ever, Laura still needed to work - for the most part. She had to finalize flight plans, and get her brain working on eastern standard time, and not to mention get a new time to record bits of a song for Calum's show.

Ross had gone in earlier in the week to record a random Austin Moon song that was written many years ago, but never put out. Calum had reworked it for it to be a duet and she had been scheduled to record right with Ross...until the cold from hell came. Responding to the emails she needed to and marking the other ones as read, Laura flipped her computer closed and trudged herself to the bathroom for a few more aspirin. She didn't have a fever anymore, but she could still feel the remnants of it and wanted to make it all go away as fast as possible. Burying herself inside the blankets only a few minutes later, Laura flipped from the music to the History Channel. Falling asleep to random things about the United States sounded like a plan to her.

...and a plan it was. When Laura finally opened her eyes, she was suspiciously not in the living room anymore, but in her bed and as she stared back at the deep teal of the walls. The blankets were snug around her body and the lights had been dimmed with only a few streaks of light peeking in from crack in the door out to the living areas. Having a huge suspicion of who put her in bed and was invading her apartment right now, Laura planted her feet on the ground and had all her thoughts confirmed. She had told him to stay away; to stay put in his parent's home for at least five days. Did he? Nope. Not one bit.

She caught him behind her counter again, stirring something slowly in a pot that was making her nose twitch in delight. It smelled so good that she wanted to dive right in, but she needed to kick him out first. Getting him sick was not on her agenda. Getting him sick meant he could potentially get his band sick and it would be all her fault. Well...technically his fault since he broke his promise not to see her until she was better.