A/N: This is a companion story for Explosive. It's not critical whether you read this before or after that one, but this does contain a mild spoiler, so you'd might want to wait until you've reached chapter 7 or 8, not sure yet.
Thanks to cpneb for the beta.
Renee
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Anne Kelly let out a sigh turned yawn. Her eyelids drooped from the building ennui as she nursed her drink, leaning on the wall. The pre-med mixer she'd been dragged into held little interest for her. Despite her chosen career, she was still a vivacious young woman, now thrown in the middle of people who had their entire lives already planned out and took themselves way too seriously.
Anne was just about to call it quits and ditch the stiffs - when she saw her. What it was that drew her attention, Anne didn't know. Yet, she couldn't take her eyes of the woman moving about the crowd with an air of confidence. Confidence not from a bloated ego or imagined intellectual superiority.
She was different.
She was magnificent.
She noticed Anne, too. From all the way across the room, they locked eyes. Dropping her current conversation without so much as a word of apology, she crossed the room to Anne.
Her name was Renee. Everything about her fascinated Anne; the blueness of her eyes, her long, black hair that seemed to flutter in slow motion when she walked, her plain, straightforward manner of speaking, the way she made her feel with every look, word, and gesture.
Anne asked Renee to come up to her dorm room. To this day, Anne didn't understand why she did it. She had no hidden agenda, all she knew was that she wanted to continue the conversation, and the evening, desperately, in fact, with the mystery woman.
In the safety and privacy of Anne's dorm room, she and Renee talked about it all: life - past, present, future. Anne also learned that Renee didn't go to school there - she had been crashing their party.
It must have been fate.
The evening went on, neither of them wanting it to end.
Then, it happened:
It started with a kiss.
Just a small kiss.
A small, innocent kiss that was followed by giggles on both their parts. It was all so natural, the way everything had built up this moment, and beyond, to the night of passion. It was inevitable. Neither of them would ever forget that night of ecstacy, full of laughter and moans of pleasure. It was an exploration in not only the other person, but themselves.
The morning came all too soon. As they parted, they did so without saying goodbyes. Neither dared to utter the words.
They came to spent many more nights together. Sometimes a day would go by, sometimes a week or month, or more, between Renee's visits. And she would always appear unannounced, forcing Anne to drop everything at a moment's notice. Which she always did without a word of protest.
It was about two years after their first encounter, when Renee stopped coming. No explanation, no nothing. Anne was worried, but afraid to ruin what they had, even a little that she'd wake up from a dream she was having, so she never sought after her. It was in her darkest hour that she met and fell head over heels for James, who later proposed to her.
Even to this day, as a wife and mother of three, Anne would sometimes stare out the kitchen window on a quiet moment, and wonder what became of the mysterious woman who entered and left her life like a summer shadow, whispering her name just to feel it on her lips again:
"Renee."