On the edge

Chapter 11: Take me home

The first evening when James joined Joanna, Sue, and Nicholas for dinner was rather awkward, and nobody but the latter really knew how to behave. The black-haired considered James a part of their group right away, just the way he had made himself one, the day he had arrived in St. Margaret's Bay. Of course, two days and a few beers later, everybody had thawed a bit and by the end of that week Joanna still thought that it was weird, to be with the weird guy, but she acknowledged that James was indeed a plainly and genuinely gentle person, and accepted him at her best friend's side. Even if she still felt a bit observed every time they went somewhere, be it to the pub or the grocery shop, and people would just look at them; probably wondering where that constellation came from so suddenly. Joanna couldn't blame them, for she would have asked herself the same question; and actually, she somehow did. Sue had told her the whole story about her walking home drunk and James giving her a lift, about the Sunday afternoon they had spent together, as well as the several nights after that. And yet, it somehow just wouldn't make sense to Joanna. Unless, of course, Sue had never seen James the way she had. Maybe she had always liked him, in some way...
When Nicholas left for London by the end of the week, he felt, of course, obliged to tell James that he was still convinced that Sue was, in fact, a mermaid, and to watch out for her fishtail. He then proceeded to ask Sue, to please invite him to their wedding, unless, of course, it were to take place on the bottom of the ocean. And when the train he had boarded had finally departed and was out of sight, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
"He's like, the nicest person ever, really," Joanna said, "He'd take a bullet for a friend, but he's so..."
"Tiresome," Sue finished her sentence.
Tiresome seemed quite like the right word to Joanna, and so she nodded agreeing.

Days came and went; weeks past and turned into months. April bided its farewell for that year, and so did May. From time to time, Sue still thought about Stephen; how the fishes had probably picked all the flesh from his bones to fill their little fish-bellies with his meat, and each time it made her shudder a little. Sometimes she was still afraid to turn on the radio because she thought she'd hear the speaker say that the police had found mortal remains of human origin, somewhere in the nature reservoir in Canterbury. But nothing alike happened, and neither seemed anyone to miss the dead man. And by the end of June, Sue dared to think that maybe, just maybe, she had been very lucky, and nobody would ever know.

The temperature slowly rose; the afternoons became warmer, the days longer; feelings grew deeper, and words became sweeter. Soon, James knew that this, what he and Sue had, as much as one could define or summarise it, had not only always been all he wanted, but was, by now, also all he needed. He wanted to wake up next to an untamable head full of bright, copper red hair and lay his body to rest next to the woman with the fair skin, whose pretty face they so perfectly framed. He wanted to hold Sue's hand, walk down that road ahead of them with her, and anywhere she'd go, he'd follow without second thoughts. And so, one Saturday afternoon of the second week of July, he decided that that day, was the day. He adjusted his glasses and ran his hand through his blond curtains. James cleared his throat as he pushed the door to Sue's shop open, and walked in with slow but determined steps. He saw her stand in between the shelves that carried the many tea sets, one cheesier than the last one, looking at something on Joanna's phone. James barely even noticed the brunette. His right hand was clenched into a fist in his pocket, strongly holding onto a hand-worked, polished, and glossy little piece of Yew wood. He had been working on this one small masterpiece for weeks, and he had failed many times before eventually rising from his desk in his atelier one evening, and letting out a cry of sheer happiness. It had been done, he had succeeded. All he needed to do now was to give it to Sue and try to explain with mere words all of what he meant to say and felt; which appeared somewhat impossible. But James trusted that the right vocabulary would come to him, in time. And if she only felt but a fraction of the love that his heart endured day after day, to the point of shattering into a million fragments, she'd surely share his desire of being bound for life; and longer if possible.
"Sue, I-..." he began, "I need to ask you this."
James' voice was shaky and his hands quite sweaty. Joanna and Sue both looked his way as they heard him address the red-haired, and while the brunette immediately noticed that something was off, Sue only gently smiled at James.
"I uh..." he tried again, but his mouth was surprisingly dry; not another sound wanted to escape his throat, and his tongue seemed to dam up the flow of words he had on its tip.
And so, in his shortness of breath, inability to express himself, and great despair, James pulled the little piece of wood out of his pocket, to reveal it to be of circular shape; a ring, in fact. Sue gasped for air, while Joanna repeatedly hammered the palm of her hand against her forehead and cursed, "Oh, Lord! Oh, dear Lord!"
The ring he held in front of the red-haired's face was made from light coloured wood, and although processed and furbished, one could still see all of the tree's characteristics and its prior texture. In the middle, a single, seemingly unimpressive, dark-blue gemstone laid embedded. It was neither very sparkly nor strikingly beautiful. It wasn't a diamond, or for the blue colour's sake a sapphire at least, and James knew that. But he also knew that no money in the world could have bought Sue the effort and love he had put into forging this ring.