After therapy, Ciara found herself in Michelle's kitchen. They had a plan for an evening hang out in front of the tv with various snacks whilst watching rom coms. She sat within the silence and drank a cup of tea, waiting for Michelle to return home from wherever she had gotten to. Chelle wasn't as reliable and punctual as her cousin but she didn't mind the wait - in fact it gave her time to decompress and get a hold of her thoughts.
"Jesus!" James' abrupt exclamation bought her out of her thoughts suddenly, her head snapped towards where he stood with a hand over his heart. "I didn't hear you come in."
"Chelle left the back door open cause it's raining and I didn't want to wait for her to get in," she laughed softly, giving him an apologetic look as he drifted towards the kettle. She watched as he put more water into it and turnt it on, not bothering to get a mug from the cupboard. Instead he turnt and leant on the counter, sighing softly. "Everything okay?" she wondered aloud. Ciara found it rather easy to read him now and she could tell something was going on, she could see it in the way he held his shoulders.
He nodded then forked a hand through his absolutely ruined curls, "Yeah, I just had one of those dreams that like, change your entire view of a situation."
"Oh?"
She watched as he hesitated, fighting an internal battle within himself, "It wasn't something I hadn't already known for a long time but I mean..." he sighed deeply as he trailed off, taking a moment to clear his throat. "Just shed some light."
"What was it about?" she asked with a soft laugh, walking across the kitchen to dispose of her now cold tea in the sink next to where he stood.
He sighed, this time softer than before, and divulged, "Me..." he paused, brief anger at himself flooding through his eyes before he stammered. "You, shit! I- You."
The kettle, near ready to be poured, started to spew steam and the sound filled the silence that enveloped them both. He watched, intense nerves flipping his stomach like a washing machine does clothes, as she set the now empty mug in the sink. She turned, brow greatly furrowed as she whispered, "Me? I don't understand..."
He stammered and took a deep steadying breath, wanting to get this as right as he possibly could. "Look I don't expect you to say anything or do anything and this is not how I wanted to do this. I wanted to do it in a better way, like for dinner or something but then I thought that would make you uncomfortable and I didn't want to do that...But well maybe, on the day that I was going to leave I thought that there was something for a moment and... I just want you to know that I think you're beautiful. And not just in the conventionally attractive way, like you have a beautiful soul kind...of...way..."
Words could not describe the way she felt. Such an incredible compliment, one of pure fiction, had been given to her by someone who was very much real and stood directly in front of her. "J I-"
He cut her mutterings off, unable to find the purely overwhelming desire to indulge the thoughts he had about kissing her. The thoughts that stemmed from every part of his brain and set the surface of his skin on fire. She, stunned, pulled back for just a second. She looked him up and down, momentarily searching his eyes for the usual tellings of emotion. She smiled softly upon figuring out how he felt and this time closed the gap herself, in a much more gentle way than he initially had.
A first kiss can be a funny thing when with the wrong person: it feels awkward, your noses clash together, things just feel clumsy. But this, this was something different entirely. There was no clash of noses, no awkward feeling. That awkward feeling was replaced by one of pure passion and the two felt it in their stomachs as they moved their lips together in perfect synchrony. Her fingertips trailed his jaw as he pulled her even closer by her waist, it was almost urgent and both knew they would crave that feeling over and over even after the sun went down. A kiss with such a feeling would never be forgotten. It felt as if it could last forever and neither would get sick of it for a moment.
"What the actual fuck?" Michelle's voice broke through Chip's haze nad the two instantly broke apart, jumping to pretty much opposite sides of the kitchen as they both stared at Michelle with just as much horror written on their faces. "Oh you sick sick bastards. This, this is incest!"
"No it's not?"
"Yes it is James!"
"We're not related," James responded, attempting to keep himself somewhat calm against Michelle's clear rage towards the situation. Ciara however had quietened and stilled, almost like she had recoiled into herself.
Chelle scoffed, "Oh and that makes it okay I suppose?"
"Well it makes it not incest," James countered, gaze flicking to Chip. Worry instantly licked up his spine and he fought every urge to smoothly move over to her.
"Right okay. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt because well, you're probably high or drunk or something," Michelle rambled as hse pointed to Chip, who had finally looked up from the kitchen floor.
"I've not touched anything in like three weeks," she replied softly, her hands shaking as she retracted them into the arms of her jumper. Chip, as her gaze finally fell onto Michelle, saw nothing but betrayal within her eyes. She was instantly overcome with intense guilt, feeling so awful about her decision that she took no mind into how the action had caused her such relief and pure joy.
"This is none of your business Michelle."
"Oh but it is my business," she ranted, fury this time directed towards James - which had been his intention in the first place. Chip silently moved out of the room, then adopted a run once she had gotten through the back door of the house. They both only noticed her disappearance when the wind her sudden sprint had mustered caused the door to bang closed. James did not waste a second and ran after her, not before locking the back door behind him so Michelle could not get another word in. She didn't care for the thick cold droplets of water that soaked through every layer of clothing she had and gave her a chill, she just desperately needed to be out of that situation. She had never seen such a look in Michelle's eyes, it made her feel sick.
"Chip!" James called after her, having pretty much jumped over a fence to catch up to her quicker.
Ciara, who had wrapped her arms around herself to keep somewhat warm, just kept walking. She was fully determined to just get into her house and hide away from everything. She did not do well with confrontation and there had been far too much of it in a short amount of time. She was so incredibly overwhelmed that sll she ended up with were her headphones, a good book and her comforting throw blanket that lay safely in the downstairs cupboard.
"Don't walk away from me, please!" he yelled in pure desperation. After all that occurred, he couldn't stand to see the sight of her walking away from him again. He had been so close to getting everything he wanted, the girl he had needed to hold close and be more than friends with for so long. So now watching her walk away was the worst thing imaginable. He had been so close, so close he could physically taste it but everything had been interrupted. He wouldn't stop for anything this time though, he needed her and she needed him. They both knew it, deep down.
She finally stopped and turned to him, face so covered in droplets of water that he could only tell that some of them were tears from the redness in her eyes. "Don't you understand that I have to?"
He paused, taking the time to read her expression in its entirety so he could figure out what was truly going on underneath the surface of her mind. "What do you have to be so afraid of?"
"Everything and anything James," she sighed deeply before turning to walk away again. The inability to focus on the conversation was starting to creep up on her again, she just needed an escape route. This conversation wasn't one she was ready to have, yet how could anyone ever be ready for something like that?
He, without even thinking about it twice, reached out and gently took her arm and guided her back to him. His eyes softened even further once their eyes met again. "Look at me, talk to me... please..."
She took a deep breath, letting her mind focus on the rain droplets cascading around them and the sound they caused as a momentary soothing mechanism. He waited patiently, not appearing aggravated by her pause in the slightest. He just waited for her to calm herself and get her thoughts right, just knowing that she needed the quiet moment before anything else could occur. "I think I... This scares the shit out of me... I don't know if I'm ready for this. I really really really like you James, like more than anything in the world. And I don't know if I could even do that to you because I'm not the most stable person in the world," she paused, trailing off as he wiped a blackened droplet of rain water from her makeup-covered cheek. Her voice came as a whisper now, emotion raw and unhidden within it. "How can I be the person that you so deserve when I can't even treat myself properly?"
His smile at her profession of feelings faltered upon her last comment. "My heart is yours Ciara and it will never go to anyone else."
The corners of her eyes softened, lips curling in a delicate frown as she breathed, "James..."
"We can go as slow as you need to. I've waited for a long time and I'm not against waiting for longer as long as you give us some sort of chance."
She sniffled, blinking away some of the tears mixed with rainwater as she sighed, "I want to J, you have no idea how much I want to."
"There's no pressure with me Chip, nothing that you're not comfortable with," he promised with a soft yet reassuring smile, knowing deep down that this was going to end in the way that he so needed it to.
"I'm never not comfortable with you James," she professed slowly and softly, looking dreamily into his eyes yet again.She found herself transfixed by them, all the emotion hidden behind them and the person he was. She was completely and utterly enamoured by him.
"Can I kiss you?" he murmured, they were so close together now that she could hear every word - no matter how unclear. Neither one knew they had gotten to be so close that their faces were almost touching, just figured that they had sort of just drifted closer together.
"I don't know... What about Michelle? She's my best friend James and no matter what I...feel for you I don't want to hurt her."
"You feel for me?" he repeated, as a discrete grin pulled at his lips in such a way that her stomach flipped entirely.
"Of course that's the part you focus on," she chuckled softly. And that was it, the brief joke and shared laugh between them was enough for the both of them to just know that this was right. The same wave as before passed through them in the silence and this time, Chip acted on it
It was like looking both ways before you crossed the road but still running across when cars were coming in either direction. That jolt of adrenaline, of feeling something other than the thoughts in your head. The shortness of breath but the raging inferno that lit your body on fire. And she just knew, that this.. Him... was all she wanted.