Chapter One

Remy is inexplicably smitten with a girl who happens into the shop where he works.

Her voice was low and smooth, like the steady waters of an untouched lake, pronouncing every letter of each word in a gentle flow of absolute perfection.

Long, scarlet hair cascaded down freckle dusted shoulders, spilling out over a soft, porcelain chest, just barely hidden behind a light, flower-print dress.

As she moved her lips to speak, I could see that the corners of her mouth seemed to be naturally turned up in a vague smile, giving her the appearance of someone who was always incredibly kind to everyone she met.

Her intense green eyes pierced me from across the counter, as she tilted her head, letting that deep crimson hair slide down across her neck.

“Did you get that?” she asked, allowing the smallest smile to wash over her face.

I blinked, realizing that my mouth was hanging open, my ears completely void of whatever she had just said.

“I’m sorry,” murmured, in an attempt to keep the embarrassment from showing in my voice. “What was it you wanted?”

She giggled pleasantly, that warm, smooth voice filling me up with sunshine.

“A small soy latte,” she said. “No whipped cream, please.”

Nodding, I punched the order into the screen of the computer.

“Will that be all?” I asked.

“Yes, I do believe so.”

“Then your total will be $3.49, please. I’ll have your order ready at the other end of the counter.”

Feeling the heat of the blood focused into my face, I was glad to turn my back and busy myself in the making of the coffee, though I was sure that she was still standing there watching me, laughing inside.

When the coffee was finished, I wrapped it in napkins and brought it over to the counter, where she stood, beaming at me.

“One soy latte, sans whipped cream,” I said.

“Thanks so much. Oh, and by the way… You never took my money. Here.”

Stretching out a long, elegant arm, she reached over the counter and placed a heap of paper in my hand.

“Keep the change,” she said with a smile, before turning her back and stepping gracefully from the shop.

Mouth hanging open, I hurried back to the register, ready to put the money inside.

As I looked down into my hands, however, I noticed that not all the paper was actual money. There was enough cash to cover two lattes, and in the midst of bills was a small slip of yellow paper with something small and curvy scribbled across it.

Bending down close, I found that it was the neat, elegant handwriting of a woman.

“Don’t drool,” it read. “Just call me later. "Sunny”

Below were seven, neatly written digits.

 

And that was how it happened that I, Remy Clover, first met that girl, Sunny Skye.

Looking back, I can’t really remember what it was that made me leave work early that day, just so that I could get home and call her. She was a girl, just like any other, and I was just a guy, broken hearted from a past relationship which never seemed to heal.

Still, in the strange way that things sometimes work, I was out of there as soon as I could, claiming that my stomach was feeling sick, which was only half true.

Yes, I felt ill, stomach churning and burning like an internal combustion engine, but unlike my manager, I was aware that the queasy feeling was entirely unrelated to any actual illness, and rather, related to my own excitement and an unnatural desire to contact that beautiful girl and learn more about her.

This was early September, that horrible gap between where summer ends and fall begins, leaving you with beautiful weather, but too many mosquitoes to actually enjoy it.

Where the days become shorter and shorter, stealing away your few free hours of daylight after work until one day, you leave in the evening and it’s already gone dark.

On the day that I left work early, however, it was only about four o’clock, and the sun was still hanging fairly high in the sky, shining down on every reflective surface in existence, bathing me in an unnatural and extremely hot light that I wanted to hide from as quickly as possible.

Even the inside of my car was a furnace on the drive home, despite the air conditioning pushing itself to the limit in an attempt to provide cool air for me. I cursed every person with one of those flat windshields that seemed to reflect the sun so much worse than your average convex sheets of window glass.

To make matters worse, it seemed clear that a red-light curse was heavy upon me, unrelenting, no matter how many traffic lights I had to pass just to get from the café back to my one-bedroom apartment.

Not a single light had the decency to be green, or even yellow for me, and by the time I finally reached the parking lot of my low budget apartment complex, my uniform, hair, and even my undergarments were fully drenched in sweat, and I felt like someone who had just hiked through a desert without a map.

Using the last few drops of my energy, I managed to cart myself inside and dump my clothes in a heap on my bedroom floor, before stumbling into the bathroom and submerging myself into an ice cold shower.

At the very least, my stomach had calmed down sufficiently, and as the cold water spilled onto my skin, I could feel my stamina slowly returning.

Once my invisible energy gauge was back to full, I stepped from the shower and rubbed myself down with a towel that I kept forgetting to wash for weeks, despite the time that I accidentally spilled Chinese food on it. With every stroke of the towel, I was rubbing old sweet and sour pork into my skin, and barely caring about it.

I would wash the towel that day, I told myself. I would.

Of course, I never really did end up keeping that promise, but this fact is irrelevant in comparison with everything else that took place on the day that this story begins.

What eventually happened was I threw on some clothes, one of the last few outfits I had clean, and trudged out to my living room where I sat down beside the phone.

In the midst of my internal battle between whether to call immediately or wait, I realized that I didn’t even have the paper on my person.

Getting back up, I went to find my work pants, hoping that my buckets of sweat hadn’t completely drenched the delicate slip of paper with those beautiful seven numbers on it.

I reached into the pocket of those black pants and found, to my dismay, that the paper was damp. As I unfolded it, however, it became clear that the written note was still perfectly legible, so I brought it back out to the living room and took my place once again in my chair beside the phone.

To this day, I don’t remember exactly how long I sat there, fighting with myself.

I wanted so badly to call her and hear that dark, sultry voice again, but at the same time, I was afraid that she would answer and I would be unable to speak, making an a*s of myself.

By the time I finally put my foot down and seized the phone, forcing myself to grow some balls and make the call, the sun was already down past the horizon, hanging on by only a small fragment of teal blue light.

Looking at the paper, I was careful to punch in one digit at a time, avoiding a misdial.

And the phone rang

It rang and it rang, and it continued to ring until at last, it stopped and was replaced with a low, familiar voice.

“Sunny Skies don’t come out at night,” it said. “Better luck tomorrow.”

There was a pause, and then a beep, and then I was confronted with a somehow terrifying silence, for which I was unprepared.

My voice wouldn’t work without a cue from my brain, which was being particularly stubborn, and so without leaving any sort of message other than a short, uncomfortable silence, I hung up the phone, sitting back in my chair.

Real smart, Remy. Way to not leave a message. Now how will she know to call back? Smooth move, moron.

For the rest of the night, I kicked myself around my pathetic apartment, regretting my own stupidity.

I didn’t want to call back again that night, in case she was in bed, but I didn’t really want to wait until the next day, either.

The excitement and longing had put me into a state of extreme impatience that seemed like boredom, as I had trouble finding something enjoyable to do.

In the end, I wound up just lying in my single bed, staring at the ceiling and making pictures out of the texture, while thinking about Sunny, until at long last, I drifted off into a hopeless sleep, filled with images of the beautiful miss in the flower print dress.

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

As usual, the writing gets better the further in you get. That's just how I am.