23. Six Inch Blowout
Effy
My ears were filled with the sound of screaming. It was my own screaming. Not the kind you get from a physical horror or a terrifying nightmare. Le genre de cris qui te prennent à la gorge quand tu te fais baiser ardemment contre le mur de ta chambre d'hôtel. The screams of a wild, carnal, primal release. I couldn't help these noises that erupted from me as Katie slammed me up against the wall of a non-descript hotel room on the Watford ring road. I felt sorry for our neighbours, but then again they might have been pervs and been thoroughly enjoying it. Either way I wasn't about to stop. It was post-show sex, my favourite kind of sex, and Katie had been just as eager as me, hunting me down for kisses as soon as the last shell had gone up. I was just starting to pack the firing system up when she dragged me round the corner and stuck her hands inside my suit. My helmet fell from my hands where I dropped it to wrap my fingers into her hair. Her kisses were deep and passionate, and her hands had already found their way under my T shirt and onto my breasts. If it wasn't for Freddie's approaching voice calling out for me, I think she would have taken me then and there. Reluctantly she pulled away and her dark brown eyes locked onto mine. I was glad she had backed me up against the wall, cause I don't think I would have been capable of standing up on my own.
"That was intense," she said calmly, and I knew she wasn't talking about the kiss.
"Are you ok?" I asked her.
"I want you so much my fucking pussy's on fire, but apart from that I'm fine," she smiled dirtily, and I fell in love with her all over again.
Intense was not the word. Encore une fois, le destin avait décidé de nous rappeler combien la frontière entre l'exaltation de nos prises de risques contrôlés et le danger réel était précaire. The show was a closing finale for an arts festival called Imagine Watford. Watford is a commuter town just outside London where, as popular tales would have it, all Londoners' conception of the North begins and ends, and beyond which civilisation fades into obscurity. Whereas in reality many cities in the north of England have undergone regeneration and are vibrant, cultured places, Watford itself has been left to rot. Its High St was a mixture of pound shops, pubs and empty units and the seventies multi storey car park whose roof we were firing from was a hulking reminder of its former glories. But due to the passion and inspiration of a few, it had become home to a fantastic summer-long festival of street theatre which belied the paucity of its surroundings and drew acts of international quality, which were greeted with great enthusiasm by its audiences. It was this optimism in the face of adversity and the harsh times that surrounded us that attracted me to the British arts scene and helped to fuel my decision to come back here to make my name amongst it.
The show itself was not that challenging. They simply wanted to go out with a bang, so it was mostly just a blaster, firing colour to fill the sky with a fair amount of larger calibre material. The set up had been fairly easy, and the weather had been kind to us, and we'd spent a pretty chilled out day setting out on the hardstanding of the roof. They had closed the surrounding roads so I had no concerns about the fallout zones, and I'd been able to concentrate on the wow factor, building layers of intensity and colour to the shit hot soundtrack the clients had easily approved of. Katie had come with us again and I could spare quite a bit of time for perving on my gorgeous girlfriend as she worked. Call me a nerd, but I had serious hots for the way she rigged. She was just so calm, focussed and efficient. I would never have guessed that the forceful hothead I had met in Paris would have such a flair for the practical, and I never got tired of watching her.
Thomas caught me doing so at one point, but his only response was to flash me one of his gorgeous warm smiles.
"C'est bon de te voir heureuse, Effy," he told me.
"Je vais devoir faire attention," I replied. "Ca devient presque une habitude."
"This is one habit you should keep," he answered. "I think she's good for you."
"I think she's good for me too," I admitted.
She was good for me. 'Les ténèbres' no longer shadowed my brain. I suddenly realised that it had been quite some time since I had felt them pressing on my consciousness. Considering all the drama it had taken for us to get here, I was amazed at how simple things had turned out to be for me and Katie. Not being with her had been a heart-wrenching trauma, but being with her had proved to be the simplest thing in the world. Her presence excited me and comforted me at the same time. The sex was sensational, and getting better all the time the more deeply we explored each other, but I loved to just watch her cook, to listen to the sound of her voice, or feel her presence next to me as I designed. Though I thought about her every day, even when we weren't together, her personality didn't smother me like Freddie's had. I felt no need to rebel, as she set no restrictions on my behaviour. Every interaction with her was a choice and not and obligation. And if I felt the need to get a little wild she'd be right there with me, always in some obscenely hot outfit so I soon forgot about doing drugs and concentrated on doing her instead.
I snapped out of my reverie to find Thomas still grinning at me.
"I never thought I'd see the day," he said. "But love looks good on you. I wish I could find someone to make me smile like that."
"She's out there somewhere, Thomas," I assured him. "Let's face it, if it can happen to me, it can happen to fucking anyone."
"I hope you're right," he said, pulling me into a big, friendly hug.
"Didn't you get the company memo?" I whispered in his ear. "I'm always right."
The rest of the day passed in companionship and easy banter. We even finished rigging early and got to have quite a break before firing. Whilst the lads went off to get chips and burgers, Katie forced me to eat some of the healthy salad she had brought from home. I never normally eat on show days, but in keeping with my new, relaxed persona I allowed myself the luxury of food.
"You're scrawny enough as it is," Katie was mumbling in the background. "I don't want you wasting away on me."
"Yes Mum," I smirked at her.
"Don't give me that," she countered. "You let your Mum feed you, so you're just going to have to do the same for me."
"I love you," I blurted out on the spur of the moment.
I watched the frown melt away from her face, before she caught herself.
"Don't think you can get round me like that, Effy Stonem," she huffed. "There'll be no snogging till you've had your dinner."
"T'en es bien sûre?" I teased her.
"Absolutely," she said with conviction, but her eyes were flaring with desire.
"I'd like to test that theory," I said, putting my Tupperware down and crawling towards her on my hands and knees.
"Oh fuck," said Katie, already setting her bowl aside.
Her lips were parted when I met her, and as I kissed her I pushed her backwards until she was lying on her back on the tarmac. I tasted her glorious lips for a few more moments before I pulled away. She craned her neck to try to reach me.
"So what was that about no snogging, babes?" I said.
"Effy, shut the fuck up and kiss me," she commanded.
I had intended to drag it out a little bit, but there is nothing quite as sexy as a dominant Katie, and I capitulated immediately, lowering my head until we could engage in glorious love-splattered kissage to our hearts' content.
Or maybe not.
"The fuck?" said Katie grumpily as we both registered the sound of voices coming up the stairs. It didn't sound like any of the boys, but the security downstairs wouldn't have let any randoms up, so it had to be someone from the clients.
"Talk about spoiling the moment," scowled Katie, as she rearranged herself to look presentable.
"I'll make it up to you later," I said, giving her a peck on the nose before turning to await the arrival of our visitors.
It turned out to be the health and safety dude from the council. We'd filled in all the risk assessments and paperwork weeks ago, but those guys just love poking their noses into stuff. I guess seeing actual dangerous stuff gives them a vicarious thrill. Though I usually deflected them onto Freddie, I knew all the right things to say, and no one could fault my knowledge of pyro. However it seemed like this idiot was going to have a damn good try.
"Oh," he said, his face falling when he found himself confronted by two pretty girls. "I need to speak to the guy in charge."
"Well you'll have a fucking long wait, mate," I heard Katie mutter behind me. The build up of her protective rage was almost tangible, and I knew I had to take control before she exploded on my behalf. After working in an industry where women held powerful positions, she wasn't quite used to one that was still steeped in the sexist assumptions of the past.
"I'm the guy in charge," I said sweetly. "Though obviously not actually a guy."
I could see the yellowcoat struggling to believe me.
"I've been dealing with a Frederick McClair," he frowned.
"Yes, Freddie deals with our administrative inquiries," I said cheekily. "On site there's only one boss, and that's me."
"Oh, right…" floundered H and S man, trying to readjust from his faux pas.
"Effy Stonem, Artistic Director," I said holding out my hand for him to shake.
I proceeded to dazzle and baffle him with a mountain of technical information as I showed him round the site, explaining our rigging and firing procedures, and by the end of it he was as meek as a kitten, despite the way that Katie's eyes were boring hostile holes into his back.
"Dickhead," Katie spat, once he had barely gone back through the doors.
"Agreed," I smiled at her. "But I defeated him with the mighty power of my brain."
"You fucking did, babes," she said proudly. "I just hate it when knobbers like that just assume you don't know shit just because you're a girl. But you were so fucking cool with him, really showed his attitude up."
"Well, I had to do something before the flying fists of Katie Ford came into play," I grinned.
"You are the better woman," said Katie, curtseying to me graciously. "Now, where were we?"
"I believe there was some nonsense about me loving you," I said.
"That's not nonsense," she grinned. "That's just sound decision-making. And seeing as your brain is so mighty, you've obviously made the right choice."
"Ça c'est la vérité," I replied, and pulled her into my arms once more.
Things were just starting to get heated again when we were interrupted by the unmistakable sound of Cook's booming voice.
"Fuck's sake," muttered Katie. "I might have to discover my inner radical dyke if these men keep interrupting my Effy time."
"You have an inner radical dyke?" I smirked at her.
"Yeah, well you know what I mean," she grinned back at me.
"Room for a little one in that sandwich?" said Cook as he arrived back onto the roof.
"Never though I'd hear you admit that it's only a little one," countered Katie.
"Oh how she wounds me. You know I have nothing but a massive admiration for you Katiekins," laughed Cook, pointing at his crotch.
"The only massive thing about you is your opinion of yourself," put in Thomas, cuffing him playfully around the back of the head.
Cook rounded on him and they began to playfight.
"Don't think this display of machismo is going to impress the ladies," added Freddie, with just a hint of resignation in his voice. "They've got their own thing going on. Besides, we all know Katie could take you both in a fight."
I knew it still wasn't easy for him seeing me and Katie, and because of this I dropped out of our embrace. We didn't need to rub his face in it in the workplace. But it didn't do much to dissipate the sexual tension that fizzed between us for the rest of the night. Our desire still crackled like static electricity when we came within a couple of metres of each other, and we began a coded dialogue of furtive glances and hidden touches, which only made it all the more exciting. By the time it came to firing I was horny as fuck and for the first time ever, I found myself distracted at the point where I was normally totally in the zone.
"You ok, babes?" Katie asked me, when she noticed me frowning.
I looked up, and the sight of her sent a tingling sensation sparking down my arms. I swear I felt so bursting with electricity I could have set off the pyro without the aid of the firing system just by walking past them.
"Tu es une femme dangereuse," I said.
"Mais tu aimes le danger," replied Katie, with a self-satisfied smile, and I knew that the next time we had sex it would be stratospheric.
But first there was the small matter of the show to get through. I breathed a sigh of relief when we got the five minute standby through on the radio, and I was finally able to clear my head for the task ahead. I wasn't expecting trouble, the rig had been painless, and everything had tested out perfectly. I had wooed the health and safety man with the thoroughness of my systems and I had a crew that I could trust with my life.
Mais l'univers a le sens de l'humour tordu. It loves to fuck with us, and that's just what it did. We had a six inch tube blow out on us. It's not something that happens very often, but it's something we all know about. I had it drilled into me in France, and I made sure I passed on my knowledge to the boys when I was training them. Truth is I've only ever seen it once, and until now it had never happened at Le Coeur. A blow out is when the bottom of the mortar tube fails and the shell does not lift but explodes out of the tube on ground level. There's a couple of explanations, the first being a faulty lift charge, when the shell has no propulsion, and detonates its load of stars where it sits in the tube. The second is a weakness in the tube itself, where it cannot take the compression of the blast and gives way before the propulsion can send the shell skywards. The consequences are not as dire as they used to be in the old days when everything was hand-fired, and there was a need to be much closer to the high calibre shells, but it's still pretty scary. A massive firework that should be shooting six hundred feet in the air and detonating well out of harm's way, is suddenly doing its business on the ground around you. It's why we have such massive safety zones to prevent it ever reaching the audience. The worst thing is if you're mid way through a firing sequence, and it manages to take out another set of shells before you can shut anything down. It's why I always make sure my large tubes are adequately spaced out on sturdy racks, to minimise the risk of such an eventuality.
The only time I had seen it, I had been with Thierry at a festival in Rouen, but we had been in a massive park. With a damaged lift charge, the shell had exploded in the tube, and the stars had erupted from its base, scattering along the ground towards us in an angry dance of sparks. We were far enough away that most of the energy had dissipated from the blast by the time the sparks reached our feet, but during that second, every instinct in my body had told me to run. Que tout autour de moi éclatait quelque-chose que je ne pouvais pas contrôler et il était temps de concéder que cette force explosive était bien plus puissante que nous pauvres fous qui essayions de la dominer. I lost my famous cool. I screamed like a girl and tried to outrun it, but it was as useless as trying to dodge the incoming tide when an unexpected wave is destined to soak your feet no matter how fast you try to scramble backwards away from it. I was ok. Of course I was. I had my boots and my protective suit, and I got a ribbing from some of the older lads for being such as wuss. But there's a big difference between knowing something intellectually, and understanding it physically. I've taken far worse pastings since without batting an eyelid. But I'll never forget the fear that gripped me that night.
Tonight the first indication that something was wrong was an unfamiliar flash of light. When the shells rip upwards out of the tubes they are followed by a monstrous roar and a column of flame a couple of metres high, but this light spread out sideways and was way too bright. And then the sound. Just like a master carpenter can detect the flow of the grain and the faults in a piece of wood just by looking at it, my highly tuned ears can distinguish between the differing sounds of an explosion. In an open ground site I wouldn't have been near enough to detect these subtle changes, but in the restricted space of the car park roof my firing point was a lot closer to the action. There was barely time to react before the mayhem let loose. The firework smashed it's way out of the tube with its lift charge firing on full, and for the next six seconds a mighty chaos unleashed itself upon us. The shell began to richochet around us bouncing off the walls and the other racks before the delay ran its course and the burst charge fired, showering the site with stars.
Everybody freaked, and there was shouting and swearing and diving for cover as gut instincts took over and self-preservation became the boys' most urgent motivating force. I say the boys, because there were two notable exceptions amongst the crew. I stood motionless behind the firing desk, as time appeared to slow down before my eyes. Somewhere in the midst of the maelstrom my brain was telling me that I had to be responsible for shutting down the show if things got out of hand, and that I needed to retain some focus. Mais cette distorsion du temps me permit d'apercevoir l'évènement le plus spectaculaire. My Katie, standing tall amidst the pandemonium, cool as a fucking emperor penguin on egg duty. Her sharp brown eyes were focussed and intent. She was watching the racks, checking on the next tubes in the sequence, making sure that the damage could be localised. Like a sprinter on the blocks she was totally in the zone, knowing that the next few seconds were the only ones that mattered. And when a piece of debris came whizzing perilously close to her, like she was in the fucking Matrix or something, she simply stepped backwards to let it pass. And as the stars started to dance around her, she just tucked her visor down tighter and watched them with an enchanted smile on her face. When they began to die down, she cast a final careful eye across the site, before turning and giving me the thumbs up.
My ears were still being assaulted by the sounds of the explosions and by the colourful curses of the boys, but my eyes remained riveted to Katie. There were two and a half minutes left to run on the clock, but I barely needed to watch the pyro. I knew she had my back. Si je ne l'aimais pas déjà, je me serais effondrée en face de son sang froid cette nuit là. I had never met someone with such a natural instinct for pyro. So much of it is logical and can be taught to anyone with common sense and a practical nature, but Katie seemed like she was born to it. Like it was in her blood. I felt a sense of kinship with her that I had never felt with anyone else, not even my beloved boys. And I knew, not in an intellectual way, but in some deep animal feeling in my gut, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this woman.
It was a shock that hit me in the sudden silence after the cacophony of the finale. It wasn't something I had ever expected to feel, but all it took was her smiling at me in that brief moment of calm, for me to cast away my anxieties and just accept it as the truth. My inner calm remained when the all too brief silence was shattered moments later.
"What the fuck was that, Effy?" yelled Freddie, accompanied by more swearing from Thomas and Cook.
"That, gentlemen," I said, turning to face them. "Was a six inch blowout."
"Man, that was fucking MENTAL!" bellowed Cook, dancing about excitedly.
"I may have had a little word with God," admitted Thomas.
"I was fucking bricking it," said Freddie.
"Yeah, it was well scary," said Katie sauntering up to join us, but I knew she was lying to save the boys' pride. For her it was a thrill.
The truth came out when she had me backed against the wall with her hands inside my suit.
"That was intense," she had said, but it was nothing on this.
The sexual tension that had been building between us all day, became searing hot during the de-rig. We had practically fallen through the door of our hotel room, and were ripping each other's clothes off before we had even shut it behind us. And now I was plunging headlong into an orgasm I wasn't entirely sure I would survive.
"Fils de pute, putain de saloperie de sa mère!" I yelled as my pussy began to tighten around her and my body shuddered violently way beyond any sense of control.
"I fucking love you, I fucking love you," hissed Katie repeatedly as she hammered me towards my release.
And suddenly I lost all sense of space and time. A detonation even more spectacular and colourful than the six inch blowout overtook every part of my consciousness. It is said that we are all made of stars, and I felt like one just then. A star in supernova. The building blocks that make the heavens, are the same as the ones that make me, are the same as the ones that make my fireworks. Mine was only one of many billions of explosions in the universe that night, but its power would stay with me always.
"I fucking love you," repeated Katie as she rested her sweaty forehead against mine.
"I fucking love you too," I replied.
"Putain, que je t'adore," she smiled.
"Putain, que je t'adore aussi," I laughed.
I was a silly lovers' game to try and ground ourselves again after our rage of lust, but I think we both knew we were fooling ourselves. This had been no trivial exchange. Though I did not yet know how it would manifest itself, somehow I felt that the very fabric of our universe had changed.
.
.
.
Three days later Katie and I were dragging ourselves out of bed at the barn. We had gone back there the day after the gig, and she hadn't made it home yet.
"Don't go," I pouted at her, as she opened the bedroom door.
She rolled her eyes at me, but there was no malice in her gaze. Nevertheless she turned and headed out of the room. I had been putting off the inevitable all morning, but I moved like lightning as I threw on some clothes and chased her down the stairs.
"J'veux pas que tu partes." I repeated as I caught her up in the kitchen.
"Seriously, babes, I'm running out of underwear," she replied.
"You can borrow some of mine," I replied.
I was greeted with a snort of derision.
"No offence honey, but Primark isn't one of my regular labels," she said scathingly.
"My pants are not Primark," I huffed. "They might be Tesco's…"
"Honestly," teased Katie. "I thought the French were supposed to be stylish."
"I blame it on my Dad," I shrugged. "If only Anthea hadn't suffered temporary insanity and fallen for an Englishman."
"Effy, my love," said Katie, her face softening into a gentle smile. "You're beautiful. You can throw on a pair of old overalls and still look astounding. Some of us have to work a little harder at it."
"You could always work a little harder at it here," I suggested.
A sudden look of seriousness swept across her features.
"Effy, are you…?" she asked me hesitantly.
"Yeah, I think I am," I said, realising the implications of my words.
"Are you sure?" she asked me.
"I want to be with you," I said. "I want to wake up with you every day. I want to watch you getting dressed. I want to have breakfast with you. I don't want to have to arrange to see you. I just want it to be part of our day. I want to tumble into bed with you after a hard day's work and not be concerned whether it's for snuggles or groundshakingly momentous sex. Sometimes my passion for you overwhelms me, but other times I just really fucking like being round you."
"We've only been seeing each other a few months," she said, trying to bring a rational argument to the table, but I was having none of it.
"I know, but we've been in love with each other a lot longer than that. You've already set up camp in here," I replied, putting my hand over my heart. "Move in with me Katie. I'm inviting you to move in with me."
"Oh God," she said, putting her head in her hands and taking deep breaths.
"It's ok," I reassured her. "I'll still love you, whatever you decide."
When she looked at me again, she seemed on the verge of tears.
"Oh Jesus," she said. "I love you. I love you so fucking much. But there's something…. I need to…. Fuck. I can't do this until…."
I could sense she was really struggling, and I knew that she needed to release that part of her she kept so guarded before she could accept my offer.
"It's ok," I told her, taking her hands in mine. "Whatever it is, it's ok."
Her hands gripped tightly onto mine, and she stared deeply into my eyes as if searching them for the answer to a question she didn't dare to ask. I struggled to stop myself smirking at the ridiculous irony. Out there in the hardcore environment of the pyro site, she was a braveheart in the face of danger, but here in this minefield of emotions, she was afraid. But of what? Je savais qu'Anna lui avait brisé le coeur. Avait-elle peur que j'en fasse autant? I opened my mouth to declare the depth of my devotion, but her glance shot sideways at the sound of thunderous footsteps hurtling down the stairs.
"Fucking YES!" shouted Freddie as he burst through the kitchen door, oblivious to the moment he had just destroyed. Katie leapt away from me, and uncharacteristically grabbed a cigarette from my pack on the table.
"What?" I spat unkindly at Freds, trying to calm the murderous thoughts that stalked the passageways of my brain.
"We got it!" he declared happily.
"What did we get?" I huffed in irritation.
"Just got the email," he answered in delight. "We're on the list for Plymouth."
"Oh," I replied. That fucking stopped me in my tracks.
The idea of Plymouth might not set most hearts a racing, but for us it was a massive fucking deal. Every year they held a pyrotechnics competition, with different sites around the harbour. Everyone had to work to the same budget to produce a ten minute show. Only six companies were chosen, with three companies firing each night over a weekend, and the event was incredibly prestigious with the winner almost guaranteed to gain more work. Freddie had entered us just to put our names on the map, but there was no way any of us had ever expected to get selected in our first year of serious trading. My anger evaporated in an instant.
"You're fucking shitting me," I said.
"I kid you not," he replied smugly. "Le Coeur Explosif are in the fucking mix, and we're going to fucking smash it."
"Freddie that's fucking amazing," I said, my tender moment with Katie drowned out by the surge of my ego bursting out from my chest.
"I know!" he said grabbing me into a bear hug.
"Who are we up against?" I asked.
"Specialized FX, Union One, Skyflower, Fitchtastic Fireworks and Northern Lights."
I mentally ran through the list in my mind.
"There's a couple of good companies in there," I said. "But fuck it, I don't think there's anyone that could really blow us out of the water. I think we could be in with a chance."
"I know you can do it, honey," said Freds, squeezing me hard and kissing the top of my head. "You're the best."
I was so wrapped up in the moment, I barely noticed Katie until she was halfway out the door.
"Well done babes," she said almost insincerely. "I'm sure you'll be brilliant."
"Wait, where are you going?" I called after her. "We need to celebrate."
"I've got stuff to do," she said irritatedly. "I'll catch you later, yeah?"
And with that she bolted through the door before I had the chance to stop her. What the fuck?
"Putain," I hissed in frustration. I wanted my woman with me in my moment of triumph, and I couldn't figure out what had triggered her speedy escape. Unless it was the easy physical affection Freddie and I had thrown ourselves into at the news. Parfois, dans ma petite bulle d'amour, j'oubliais que les rapports étaient encore fragiles entre eux. I turned round to find him shaking his head in disapproval.
"What?" I frowned at him.
"I don't trust her," he said sagely, as if he was delivering some new secret of the universe.
"She stole your girlfriend, Freds," I sighed. "Of course you don't fucking trust her."
"No it's more than that," he said. "You've just had the most amazing news, and she's out the door with barely a word. There's something off about her. I can feel it."
"What?" I said cuttingly. "Is your woman's intuition telling you?"
"Maybe if I was a woman you'd like me more," he fumed back at me.
"Stop it," I demanded wearily. "Just stop it. I don't want to fucking fight with you, Freddie. This should be a happy day. We've just achieved something amazing. We should go find Cook and Thomas and go get hammered."
"You're right," said Freddie. "I'm sorry. Today should be about the team. Our team. Our band of brothers. Our beating heart."
"Sure," I said. "Those two motherfuckers are going to go fucking mental."
I could have told him about my heart. J'aurais pu lui dire que sans Katie mon cœur ne battait pas. But as my fingers were already typing out the words 'Pub. Now.' in a text to Cook, I decided to let it lie.
.
.
.
Our French for today…
1. Le genre de cris qui te prennent à la gorge quand tu te fais baiser ardemment contre le mur de ta chambre d'hôtel.
The kind you get when you're having the fuck of your life up against the wall of your hotel room.
2. Encore une fois, le destin avait décidé de nous rappeler combien la frontière entre l'exaltation de nos prises de risques contrôlés et le danger réel était précaire.
Once again fate had seen fit to give us a little reminder of the thin line we trod between excitement and danger.
3. "C'est bon de te voir heureuse, Effy," - "It's good to see you happy, Effy,"
4. "Je vais devoir faire attention," I replied. "Ca devient presque une habitude."
"I'll have to be careful," I replied. "It's getting to be quite a habit."
5. Les ténèbres – the darkness
6. "T'en es bien sûre?"- "Are you sure about that?"
7. "Ça c'est la vérité," – That's the truth
7. "Tu es une femme dangereuse," - "You are a dangerous woman,"
"Mais tu aimes le danger," - "You love danger,"
8. Mais l'univers a le sens de l'humour tordu.
But the universe has a twisted sense of humour.
9. Que tout autour de moi éclatait quelque-chose que je ne pouvais pas contrôler et il était temps de concéder que cette force explosive était bien plus puissante que nous pauvres fous qui essayions de la dominer.
That this was something that I could not control, and it was time to respect that its explosive force was greater than we fools who had tried to harness it.
10. Mais cette distorsion du temps me permit d'apercevoir l'évènement le plus spectaculaire.
But that warping of time allowed me to witness the most extraordinary event.
11. Si je ne l'aimais pas déjà, je me serais effondrée en face de son sang froid cette nuit là.
If I hadn't already been in love with her, I would have crumpled in the face of her that night.
12. "Fils de pute, putain de saloperie de sa mère!" – once again this is Froggie responding to my request to 'insert some violently colourful French Swearing here'
13. "J'veux pas que tu partes." - "I don't want you to go,"
14. Je savais qu'Anna lui avait brisé le coeur. Avait-elle peur que j'en fasse autant?
I know Anna had broken her heart. Was she afraid that I would do the same?
15. Parfois, dans ma petite bulle d'amour, j'oubliais que les rapports étaient encore fragiles entre eux.
Sometimes in my little bubble of love I forgot how raw everything still was between them.
16. J'aurais pu lui dire que sans Katie mon cœur ne battait pas.
I could have told him that without Katie, my heart didn't beat at all.