Thanks a lot for all the reviews of the last chapter, and in particular MapofTime's and the couple of anonymous reviews. (And devonianmuser and museismymuse ^^) Every single review means a lot to me, you should know that.
By the way, did somebody say 'cliffhanger'?
KRYPTONITE (2) Beneath the milky twilight
*MATT'S P.O.V.*
After I'd pushed open the fire exit door, I took some time to admire the view I had, up there, on the building's roof, empty but for my presence.
The sun was setting and was only reduced to a fire crescent sinking into the skyline. It was giving the sky a distinctive ambient light which colours and intensity were gorgeous and soothing. The upper part of the sky had taken on a purple undertone whereas the lower part, nearer to the sun, was displaying the most beautiful gradation of warm colours, striped with patches of liquid gold, vermilion, crimson, pink, orange...
I'd always likened sunsets with the quieting down of a symphony. I could almost hear it in my mind, a final high violin solo creating a soft crescendo until it hit a long...E, as the sun disappeared. I felt a deep calm and peace filling me and I sighed. Perhaps one day I'd compose something like that.
With an effort, I abstracted myself from this cosmic show. I turned to my left and walked over the gravel, along one of the four walls which separate the wide, flat surface of the roof from the closed staircase.
Since the gravel wasn't extremely comfortable, we'd disposed some large cushions- that had once been parts and parcels of an old sofa- on the ground and against the wall and we used them as a makeshift floor seating whenever we came up on the roof. That was one of the things that'd used to make me regret having chosen to live in the other flat: the large, quiet rooftop. We didn't have that on our building.
I'd just sat down on one of the cushion when I heard the staircase door open again, off to my right. I smiled to myself but didn't look in her direction and instead took a gulp of Champagne; I'd discretely nabbed a bottle before leaving the apartment. I listened to her footsteps on the gravel and soon two pretty legs strutted up into my field of vision and a shadow fell across my face. I glanced up at her face as her frame shielded mine from the bright light. She'd taken off her mask and it was now dangling from her fingertips.
She gestured at the cushion next to mine. "May I?"
I smiled again and looked down. "Why do you even ask?"
"Well, I wouldn't want to pop your personal bubble or something," she said as she kneeled on the cushion.
I didn't answer but cast a sidelong look at her while she settled down at my left and squinted into the horizon. The sun had set but the crepuscular light was still strong enough to bathe her in an amber halo. She looked as if she was on fire from within. The sun lived on in the lining of her skin and between the strands of her hair. That golden haze matched with her green eyes and her ruby lips to the point of perfection. The harmony of the colours on her face was flawless; she was a vision. Mind-blowing. Breathtaking.
"What a sight..." she commented, gazing in front of her.
"I couldn't agree more," I murmured in return, bewitched.
She turned to look at me and I smiled nervously. I could feel heat creeping into my cheeks. For once I was the one blushing, but there was no way she could notice that in that light. Or at least...I hoped so.
"Hum, do you- do you want some?" I stuttered, holding out the Champagne bottle.
She shot it a dubious look. "Do you have a glass?"
"No. Is that a problem?"
She raised an eyebrow at me. "Drinking Champagne directly from the bottle? Seriously?"
I shrugged. "It's not illegal, is it?"
"No... But it's not really glamorous either."
I rolled my eyes. "You could have just said 'no, thank you' you know," I retorted as I started to pull the bottle away.
But she snatched it before it was out of her reach. "Fine," she said, half-smiling. She took a swig from the bottle but she'd tilted it too quickly. The Champagne began to foam and bubble and she coughed. She grimaced and managed to swallow down the most part but she brought her hand to her mouth and coughed again.
I giggled and took the bottle back when she blindly handed it to me. "If you were trying to prove me that it's not glamorous, it worked," I remarked.
If it had been Dom, I would have been given the finger. But Jade confined herself to glare at me. I smirked and took a swig myself without encountering any problem.
"Show off," she grumbled.
I almost spat out my mouthful of Champagne when I heard that, but I succeeded in controlling my laughter. I still smiled and cleared my throat afterwards.
She was looking ahead again and she shifted on the cushion, trying to get as comfortable as she could. I unintentionally glanced at her legs, noticing how the hem of her dress had slid up her thighs slightly now that she was sitting. My eyes trailed down her legs towards her feet. The black-and-red style had been pushed to its limits since she was wearing black patten leather sandals, and red nail polish on her toes as well. Was she just getting sexier by the minute? She surely was a perfectionist. Or, more accurately, Charlenne was a perfectionist. And as efficient as a whole array of makeup artists, hairdressers and designers united.
I eventually tore my eyes away from her legs and instead looked down at my fingers picking at the golden aluminium foil wrapped around the Champagne bottle's neck. I could feel my heart beating hard in my chest. Why couldn't I just sit next to her without having my whole nervous system going haywire...
"So, Chris and Kathy?" she suddenly said beside me.
I looked up again. "Yeah, tell me about it. Chris and Kathy... I think I still haven't entirely digested it. Chris becoming a dad... I'm gonna need some time to fully get my head around that."
"Yet, you didn't hesitate to step in front of everyone and blare out the news."
I frowned slightly. "Do I hear reproach?"
She shrugged but didn't look at me in the eye. "Well apparently they didn't mind you sounding the bugle in their stead... If I'd been in Kathy's shoes, I'm not sure I would have reacted so cooly though."
"For your information, Chris told me he didn't dare announce it tonight only because it's my birthday party and he didn't want to steal the spotlight," I replied. "So, as a matter of fact, I did them a favour."
"Oh," she stated, suddely sounding embarrassed for having accused me. "Hum, in that case, I suppose it's okay..."
"And besides, it enabled us to have some quiet time alone here..." I cautiously added, on the lookout for her reaction.
"Yeaaaah, hum," she drawled as if she was uneasy. "Actually, I came here because there's something I must give you..."
I observed her curiously as she battled for more words, but when she couldn't find any way to finish her sentence she just held her left hand out in a ball in front of me. Puzzled, I stared at it without understanding what she was expecting of me. I didn't move and after a few seconds she grabbed my left wrist with her other hand and brought it under her fist. Then she dropped something into my hand.
"It's, hum, from Charlenne, Alex, Lise, Emily and myself," she informed me while I brought the object closer to my eyes so that I could examine it. It was a silver chain necklace; a succession of small and solid lined up cylinders, heavy, smooth, and glistening in the reddish light.
I looked at her.
She was gazing at the necklace in my hands and twirling a strand of her hair around her right index finger nervously. "Er, Charlenne and I chose it together but uh... I mean, it's- well, I- I hope you like it..."
I put an end to her restless jabbering. "I love it."
She let out a relieved sigh. "Good..." she said, chuckling.
"Why in hell did you think I wouldn't like it?"
"Oh, no, no, I thought you'd like it. I wouldn't have chosen this one otherwise- I mean, we wouldn't have chosen this one. But, you know, we couldn't be one hundred percent sure..."
"Well, I love it," I repeated, cliping the necklace around my neck. Then I rolled it between my thumb and forefinger, knowing it was going to become a habbit.
She was smiling while she admired it. "It looks a lot better on you than on me!" she commented.
"You tried it on?" I asked, sounding rather pleased.
She nodded. "Yes, you know, to check if it wasn't too heavy or something."
I smiled, feeling incredibly happy about that information. The fact that she'd worn it around her neck, as briefly as it might have been, had suddenly brought the necklace's value to a whole new dimension. I shifted closer to her, so much so that our sides were touching. I pecked her cheek and her hair tickled my forehead while I did so. Now we were even.
"Thank you," I softly said, keeping my face close to hers.
She smelt so good. I hadn't had enough time to really breathe in her perfume but I suddenly saw myself standing on the beach again, near Chris' house in Camburg, with her in my arms. The smells...they take you right back in time, don't they?
Her eyes widened but she didn't make any attempt to move away just yet. "It- it's nothing. You're welcome," she stuttered as an answer, looking down and pushing a tendril of hair that hung over her eyes back, tucking it around her ear.
I kept on gazing at her face, feeling the heat of her bare arm warming up my own skin through the fabric of my top. I was fighting off the urge to lean closer and kiss her again when she called my attention to something else.
"Oh, look!" she said, still staring down.
My eyes followed her gaze to the back of her right hand where a little oval spot was moving.
Wait, moving?
I frowned and looked more closely, now discerning several tiny black disks on a shiny red shell.
"A ladybird!" I exclaimed. "That's good luck," I stated, repeating the sentence that gran had told me a hundred times.
"You think?" she asked, turning a happy smile on me.
"Mmm-hmm," I hummed affirmatively, smiling back.
She uttered a small surprised sound when the ladybird- as if disturbed by the sound of our voices- flew off from the back of her hand only to land on her cleavage.
...
'That awkward moment when you want to be a bug.'
"Hey, where're you going?" Jade asked the ladybird with a giggle. She put her forefinger against her skin, directly on the path of the little red beetle and it compliantly climbed onto her figertip. "Here, give me your hand," she said.
I laid down the Champagne bottle on the gravel beside me and turned my right hand palm up without question. She lightly pressed her finger into the center of my palm until the ladybird continued its course on my skin. Then she pulled her hand away.
"It looks so tiny in your hand..." she absently remarked. "What the heck is it doing here by the way?" she wondered.
I shrugged lightly, trying not to scare the bug away, in case I could suck any luck out of it. What? You never know... "We have parks in London," I answered.
"Yes, but what is it doing here, on our rooftop?"
I turned to her and smirked. "Can't you guess? It saw you, dressed like that, and thought you were a fellow companion..."
"Pfff! Bullshit!" she replied, pushing me a bit with her shoulder but smiling.
"No, I'm sure it's true," I insisted, relishing the feel of her pressing into me. "In fact, it's probably a male ladybird and this is its courtship display towards you!"
She laughed. "Gee, Matt... Where do you always get these kinds of things from?"
Right on cue, the ladybird left my hand and settled down on hers again.
"You see!" I giggled. "It definitely's got a thing for you."
'Even, ladybirds can't resist her... Do you see little bug? Do you see what I have to put up with, every single day? It's not my fault I can't shake her out of my heart...'
Jade brought her hand at the level of her eyes. "Well, sorry little ladybird, but you've got some serious competition up here..."
My heart jumped in my chest when I realised she was talking about me. She could have told the bug 'sorry, but I'm taken' but it wasn't what she'd said...
The tiny beetle took off once again but this time it disappeared in the air. Jade seemed slighlty saddened.
"I think I've hurt its feelings," she pondered out loud, as she peered into the sky, looking for it.
"It'll get over it," I assured her, gazing at her profile.
Twilight had segued into dusk and now the surface of the Earth was neither completely lit nor completely dark. The light had turned more bluish and it softly illuminated the beautiful lines of her face.
"You know, I can't remember any of the constellations' names you taught me," she said out of the blue after a few minutes of comfortable silence.
I looked up at the sky myself. High above gleamed a few wandering stars, furtive night-time jewels in the blue mantle of the heavens.
"We can't really see them clearly here," I sighed. "It's not like it was in our gardens in Camburg-"
"Do you really think there are aliens somewhere up there?" she interrupted me.
"I know there are aliens somewhere up there," I answered earnestly.
She turned to look at me and I did the same. Her lips looked purple now. But, strangely, her eyes had remained the same colour. As if they were lit up by their own internal light.
"But how can you be sure?" she asked.
"Well think about it, Jade," I said, glancing up again. "Think of the diversity of life on our planet. Our planet is just a tiny blue gem of life orbitting a middle-aged red dwarf. Our sun is one single speck of light in a galaxy filled with billions of stars, most with planets." I knew I was racing through each word now, but I was just to caught up in the subject, I was pouring the restless swirling of my mind into my words. "Our galaxy is one of trillions in the known universe. We rate the possible existence of life on what we observe, but life elsewhere could be so different from what we think is normal. We are not alone. We have never been alone."
She blinked a few times and then cast a look into the universe. "Woah... Said like that...it does sound evident," she breathed, looking awed and a bit worried.
But her words didn't really reach my brain. For right now, I was having sort of an epiphany.
"What is it?" she inquired after a minute, when she realised I'd been staring at her.
I tried to express myself as best as I could.
"Do you realise... Do you grasp the extent of our tininess? We're nothing compared to the immensity of the universe. It's so huge and vast that it is impossible to imagine. And our lives are as flitting as a heartbeat if you place them on the scale of geological times."
She was drinking my every word. "What are you trying to say, Matt?"
I swallowed, mustered some courage, and nudged my left hand next to her right wrist. She darted a glance at it before looking back at me again. I slipped my hand into her palm and she didn't pull away as I stroked her fingers with mine.
"I'm saying that every second counts," I softly answered. "In less than an hour, we'll be gone from this place and what we'll have left of this moment will be a memory. And it'll be carved in time and space; it'll be immutable. But for now, it's not written yet. We can change it. We can shape it. We can decide what memory it'll left."
She kept her gaze fixed on my face and took some time to answer. "And what kind of memory do you want to shape?" she finally whispered, her breath fanning against my face.
"I..." The rest died in my mouth, choked off by the lump in my throat. My heart was pounding madly in my chest again, a familiar warmth rushed through me, and my skin tingled all over.
All of this felt so surreal, so perfect. I'd dreamt of an opportunity like this one for months. I could almost feel the air stir between us. She was so beautiful, so sensual, so close... I realised I would never have a chance like this again. Not ever. I knew it, deep in my core. It was now or never.
"Oh, fuck it," I breathed.
I reached for her left shoulder with my left hand and wrapped my other hand around her right elbow. Then I pulled her towards me, twirled her around and leaned her backwards so that she lay cradled in my arms, facing up. I had bent my legs up at the same time and it resulted in her being ensconced between my knees and my chest. She hadn't offered any resistance to the movement but even so, before she could utter a single word of prostest- nor any other word for that matter- I dipped down, and claimed her mouth with mine.
title: 'Kryptonite' - 3 Doors Down + 'Kiss Me' - Sixpence None The Richer
"I know there's something that you're dying to tell me"
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