On the edge

Chapter 3: French business

When Sue opened her eyes, the sun was only about to peek through a few thick clouds at the horizon. Her head felt heavy and big, very big, easily at the size of a pumpkin, and she felt incredibly thirsty.
"I had the weirdest dream..." she mumbled to herself.
The red-haired shivered as she pulled her bedsheets aside. A chilly February breeze entered through a tilted window and cooled the room's temperature below comfortable. As soon as she had noticed both her butt cheeks breathe the freezing morning wind freely, it slowly dawned on Sue: it hadn't been a dream. Not at all; she had very much had had company in her bed yesterday night.
"Oh, Lord," she cursed quietly, wrapping her body in a fluffy, pink bathrobe that hung over an old wooden chair next to her bed.
Sue rubbed both her eyes violently. It couldn't truly have been Jim though.
"I wasn't that wasted, was I?" she asked herself and proceeded to shake her head, as she picked up a mug of coffee from the small table in the living room.
"Although..." Sue muttered in the cup.
She wasn't sure enough to bet.
"Ewww, what the hell is that?!"

The redhead looked at her mug in great discussed after, thankfully, only a small sip from it. What was supposed to be coffee, although cold, tasted like white vinegar with a disturbing bitter aftertaste. And Sue was sure that if the devil himself would invent a drink to torture lost souls with, it would definitely taste very similar to what she had just drunk from. And then she saw it, underneath the second cup on the table, a little piece of paper; a handwritten note.
"Had to head home early, didn't want to wake you," it read, and Sue immediately recognised the ornate letters.

Very little people had handwriting this pretty, and of the few that there were, she knew but one: Jim. Sue remembered how much he liked adding unnecessary loops and curls to his letters, and how much his classmates used to bully him for his apparently feminine calligraphy skills.
Sue's eyes winded further and further with every time she reread the note. Her mind was still kind of numb; the memories cloudy and rather muddy but clear enough for her brain to manage piecing together a few memories for a little flashback, and Sue remembered: they were in the living room, on the sofa at first. She had asked Jim to kiss her and after an awkward misunderstanding who was, and who was not, into who, he had done just that. And it turned out that James was very much into Sue, and she... Well, she had been drunk. Not that she didn't like him, no, it was just that it was, well, Jim. But to be perfectly honest, the red-haired had never actually spent enough thoughts on James Winter to reach a point where she'd ask herself whether or not she was attracted to him.

Scratching her head, slightly frowning, Sue remembered James staring at her, as she stood before him in nothing but flower print, ruched underwear; the way he had looked at her, nobody had ever looked at her before. He had called her a pretty lady and Sue had chuckled a little at his words. James' gaze had been gentle and warm, as if he wanted to tell her that he had never seen anything as beautiful and mesmerising as her, but he just couldn't find the right way to phrase what he felt, and so he said it with his eyes instead. He had reached out one hand; let his fingers gently dance over her shoulder, glide down the side of her upper arm slowly, and had had Sue gasping for air in surprise when he had pulled her closer and into his arms. With the same hand as before, he had gently brushed a few strands of the brightest copper hair James had ever seen out of her face, and quietly caressed the back of her neck. Sue had felt his breath tickle her left ear a little, and every single one of the small hairs on her body stood up straight; goose bumps manifested themselves all over her body.
He had then, without a warning of any kind whatsoever, picked her up, and Sue had let out a little shrieking noise but quickly after began to laugh and wrapped both her arms around James' neck. He had carried her into the bedroom down the little, dark hallway, the one that still proudly wore the huge, pink letters that spelled Sue, and carefully, as if she were made of glass, so delicate that he was afraid to break her, laid her down on the bed next to a wooden desk James recognised as one of his father's works.
It was then that he had been standing there, staring at her again the way he had just a few moments ago, and Sue had gotten up, onto her knees, gently caressing his one arm and holding his hand.
"Are you alright?" she had asked, a bit worried.
"Yes..." he had responded with a soft voice.
If he could, he would have stopped time and framed this moment so that it would last forever; hung it on a wall in his bedroom and marvelled at the sight, first thing in the morning, every morning, as he would get up. Being kept from doing so by the physical laws of time and space, reality and the inability for a human being to remain existing eternally, James had bend down to kiss Sue instead, and she had let out a little moan that almost sounded like a sigh of relief.
And no matter how much she wanted to dislike what had happened the previous night, she couldn't. Sue couldn't bring herself to regret having asked James to join her in her flat for a cup of coffee; she would do it all over again, again and again, as many times as it would take to grow tired of his many tender kisses and the unreal soft touch of his slightly rough hands. And by the time she would have had been satisfied, she would probably have flown past Dover's white cliffs, the way her father had a month and a half ago, a very, very long time ago.