Chapter Four

Remy brings Sunny back to his apartment where they have steamy, hot tea.

“How can you be such an anime nerd and not know that origami is Japanese?” Sunny asked, picking through my manga collection. “Don’t most anime dweebs learn everything they can about Japan?”

I shrugged, following her gaze to my untranslated copy of “My Youth in Arcadia.”

“I dunno,” I said. “I know a fair bit. I guess the origami thing just sort of slipped my mind in the excitement.”

“Can you actually read this?” she asked, flipping through the pages.

“Uh… yes and no,” I confessed. “I can read it, but hell if I know what they’re saying, exactly. I taught myself how to read hiragana and katakana, and I know a few basic words and phrases, but the grammatical structure is lost on me.”

“You should take a class,” Sunny suggested. “They teach it over at the Community College, you know? It’d be a fun thing to learn, don’t you think? An unusual skill to have in your arsenal…”

“Yeah. I’d have to have money first.”

“Look into financial aid,” she said, replacing the book on the shelf. “You can get help with things like that, especially if you’re not raking in much.”

“I’ll think about it,” I told her.

“Well, let me know if you decide to do it. Maybe I’ll sign up, too, and we can go to class together and stuff.”

I nodded, picking up a random manga, hoping to draw attention away from the silly figurine girls on the top shelf.

“What’s this?” she asked, picking up something small from the inside of a box shaped like a daruma. I peered over her shoulder and into her hands, my eyes resting on a delicate silver necklace with a cube-shaped crystal pendant wrapped in a spiral of wire.

“There you are,” I said, taking the necklace from her hands and rushing it back to its place in my room. Sunny followed close behind.

“Have you been looking for it?” she asked. “It seemed right at home there in the box.”

“Oh, this thing…” I said, opening the small, metal box on my dresser and setting the necklace gingerly inside. “I swear this thing wanders. It has a mind of its own. I always leave it here in this box, and I don’t think I ever take it out, but it always goes missing and ends up in stupid places. Maybe I sleepwalk… I don’t know.”

“What do you have it for, anyway?” Sunny asked. “It doesn’t look entirely masculine, does it?”

I sighed, closing the box and sitting down on my bed.

“It was my grandmother’s,” I told her. “She gave it to me on her death bed, saying it was something really powerful and that I should keep it safe for her while she’s gone… ‘While she’s gone.’ Implying that she’s eventually coming back.” I frowned at the carpet. “Is it stupid that I’m subconsciously waiting for her to come marching through my door?” I asked.

Sunny sat down next to me, resting her hand on my shoulder.

“It’s not stupid,” she said softly. “Stranger things have happened. They say Jesus came back from the dead.”

“Yeah, but he was, like, the son of God and stuff… My grandma was just a regular woman.”

Sunny shrugged.

“Well, I believe that anything is possible,” she said. “So… the necklace just disappears and reappears in weird places?”

I nodded.

“Well, see? That in and of itself is unusual. Some would even say it’s impossible! And yet it happens. Do you have any history of sleepwalking?”

“No. To my knowledge, I’ve never done it before. But I can’t really think of any other reason why it would just get up and walk away like that.”

Sunny smiled, her green eyes piercing me.

“Some things can’t be explained,” she said. “Mystery keeps life interesting.”

I nodded, watching as Sunny’s gaze shifted toward my small television in the corner.

“Why don’t we watch one of those anime you have out there?” she asked. “We can watch some Evangelion and I can try to ignore the art style.”

I smiled, getting up and leading her back out to the main room.

“Get it off the shelf,” I told her. “I’ll make us some tea, if you want. Sound good?”

“Tea is great,” said Sunny, gazing at my anime collection. “Do you have green tea?”

I opened the kitchen cupboard with all my boxes of tea.

“At least,” I said. “I’ve got more tea than Cappuchina’s.”

Sunny laughed, joining me in the kitchen.

“I find that hard to believe,” she said, peering into my cupboard. “But seeing is believing, so I’ll take your word for it.”

We stood together in my puny kitchen area as I boiled some water, placing green tea bags into two, mismatched mugs.

As the kettle began to grumble, I felt Sunny’s warm hand creep up my back and around to my cheek, startling me. With that hand, she turned my head to face her, her lips curled into a gentle, yet devious smile.

The next thing I knew, her lips were connecting with mine, her velvety tongue tracing their shape.

I stumbled backwards, knocking one of the mugs onto the floor, where it shattered. Even as this happened, Sunny held my face in place, refusing to allow me to look away. Pinning me against the refrigerator, her tongue slipped between my lips, and magnets rained onto the floor.

The tea kettle cried out as steam burst through the tiny opening at the front of the spout, letting us know that the water was ready.

Sunny’s hands worked themselves through my hair, her fingertips massaging my scalp as she broke away from my lips, kissing up the side of my face. She stopped when she reached my ear, sucking the lobe into her mouth and biting gently.

I suddenly found it difficult to breathe.

“You’re shaking,” she whispered into my ear, barely audibly.

With one hand, she reached over and turned off the stove, never once breaking her lips away from the place where they rested.

“Let’s get you off your feet before you fall down.”

Without tearing herself away from me, she slowly and gently began dancing me in the direction of my bedroom, the red glow of the setting sun illuminating her hair like a blazing inferno.

My heart was racing, my mind working slowly, having trouble processing what was happening. But thinking grew to be too much work, and so I just gave up trying and let Sunny push me down into my saggy, squeaky bed as she climbed on top of me, her breath hot against my ear, smothering me in her long, red hair.

“Are you okay?” she whispered, her fingers tracing around the hem of my pants.

I must have nodded, because Sunny kissed me deeply before uttering a gentle “Good.”

I didn’t try to stop her as she nimbly unfastened the buttons on my shirt one-handedly, spreading it open to reveal my pale, hairless chest. For a moment, I was embarrassed, afraid she might comment on how unmasculine my body seemed to be. But instead she gazed over it hungrily before lowering her head and caressing my skin with her lips.

My eyes rolled back into my head before I could stop them.

She started at my neck, sucking and biting gently as she moved downward toward my belly button. I struggled to keep my breathing steady as my mind drowned in thoughts and questions, wondering if I should reciprocate her actions in any way, or just lie back and leave her in control.

For a moment, Sunny’s lips disconnected from my skin.

I was barely aware of a tinkling sound before something moderately heavy collided with my chest, causing me to snap my eyes open. But before I could see what had hit me, Sunny was lifting a necklace over her head and hiding it somewhere in the folds of her dress which I suddenly noticed was on the floor.

Sitting on top of me, she smiled gently, those beautiful copper locks contrasting impressively with the white of her skin and the black of her silky bra.

“It’s alright to touch me,” she said in a playful sort of tone.

I froze, unsure of what to do. I had never gone so far with Abby, and thinking about it, I barely even knew Sunny. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I began to wonder if what I was doing was right.

But Sunny didn’t seem to care one way or another as she took my hands and guided them up her body and onto her silk covered breasts.

A jolt of electricity seemed to shoot through me as I made contact, my heart racing faster and faster. My hands just rested there, petrified, unable to do anything else.

Sunny smiled down at me.

“Are you in shock?” she asked, softly. “It’s okay. Look…”

She replaced her hands on top of mine and squeezed gently, forcing my fingers to clamp down.

Soft… she was so soft, I noticed, once I found feeling in my hands again. Tentatively, I squeezed once more, this time of my own accord.

“See, that’s not so bad, is it?” asked Sunny as she let her hands slip down off of mine. She sounded so far away, despite being right there on top of me.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” she said, her fingers toying with the button and zipper of my pants. “I’m in this for good. You can’t do anything wrong by me.”

I found myself slightly confused by what she had said, though in a way I seemed to understand perfectly.

Every cell in my brain seemed to be going in opposite directions, and while I couldn’t make sense of anything, everything seemed to be so clear.

It was all too strange.

I replayed the last thing she had said in my head a few times before deciding to try something new.

As Sunny worked at my impossible zipper, I let my hands slide up under that scrap of black silk, caressing the most delicately soft bit of human skin I had ever felt.

“That’s right,” Sunny whispered, letting her head fall back. Setting my zipper aside for a moment, her hands disappeared behind her back and then the bra was gone.

“Well, now we’re uneven,” she said, looking down at me with such an intense gaze that I was sure she could hear my every thought.

“W"what?”

“We’re uneven,” she said. “It’s unfair. I’m down to one last piece of clothing, and you’re still almost fully dressed.”

I felt my jaw hang open again, but found I couldn’t stop it this time. Sunny laughed.

“If I had a dime for every time your jaw hit the floor, I’d be rich beyond my dreams.”

She lifted one leg, scooting over so the was sitting off to the side of me, and then slowly and gently began toying with my zipper again, this time using both hands.

In no time at all, she had it figured out, and then I blinked and my pants were gone.

“Now hand over the shirt,” she said, holding out a hand.

Nervously, I finished removing my shirt, taking my arms out of the sleeves and handing it to her. She cast it onto the pile and lay down next to me, her skin so warm against mine.

“Now we’re even,” she whispered into my ear. “There’s just this one small matter left to attend to…”

Sunny snapped the elastic of my underwear, stinging my skin.

“How should we take care of this problem?” she asked.

I tried to open my mouth to speak, but found that it was already open, my jaw just hanging there limply. I couldn’t find my voice, and for that matter, I could barely breathe.

“I guess I’ll take care of it,” said Sunny, sliding off the bed and standing up next to me.

“But I’m going to make it really hard on you.”

Reaching down, she slipped her thumbs into the waistband of her black, silky panties, pulling them down just enough to reveal the sharp bones of her hips. She did not remove them.

Instead, she let her hips sway from side to side in a subtly seductive dance.

My mind started to fade out again, threatening to pass out. But I held on tight, as tightly as I could, not taking my eyes off of Sunny as she danced ever closer to me.

“Good grief,” I heard her say. “I didn’t know it would be that hard on you. Are you okay in there? You look frozen.”

I blinked and I blinked, and then I blinked again.

Sunny’s panties had left her skin at some point, and she was standing over me in her beautiful birthday suit.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked, kneeling down on the bed beside me.

This time I for sure nodded, my voice apparently on vacation.

“You’re sure?” she said. “Because if you don’t want this, now is your chance to say so. I don’t want to force myself on you if you"“

My arm swung up, as if by magic, and wrapped itself around Sunny’s neck, pulling her in for a kiss.

Had I decided to do that? Was my body working of its own accord? I couldn’t be sure, but within a matter of minutes, as my underwear joined the pile on the floor, and Sunny climbed back on top of me, I realized that I didn’t even care what force had made me do it.

Focusing on anything other than the absolute completion I felt seemed to just take away from it, and I didn’t want that.

Even the horrible squeaking sound of my bed didn’t bother me.

Even the neighbors pounding on their ceiling and screaming for us to shut up didn’t seem to bother me.

The only thing I cared about was Sunny and me… The way we seemed to be one united soul just floating out in space, lost in each other’s eyes. Floating, floating higher and higher, until heaven was only a moment away, and we could see it, so close… So close we could just reach out at touch it…

And then we were there, in heaven for a matter of seconds, astounded by its beauty… by its overwhelming feeling of peace and completion. Stunned and shocked by the warmth and joy that seemed to come with it…

And then before we knew it, we were falling fast, down from heaven, back through space and landing back in my saggy bed, panting and sighing.

Sunny threw herself down beside me, wrapping her arms around me and kissing my cheek.

I smiled, drawing in a huge breath through the nose.

I felt I should say something… anything. But so many words and phrases were scrambling through my mind, I couldn’t focus and the next thing I knew, something was pouring out of my mouth at random.

“Better than buttered toast,” I slurred.

Sunny picked her head up a bit and peered at me.

“What was that?” she asked.

I smiled, closing my eyes.

“That,” I said. “It was better than buttered toast.”

Sunny laughed, kissing my lips over and over again in quick succession.

“I take it you really like buttered toast,” she said.

I sighed, smiling up at the ceiling.

“It’s just a thing,” I said. “I’d never… you know… Done that before, and so in my mind, I thought buttered toast was the ultimate. Better than sex kinda deal… But you proved me wrong on that one.”

Again, Sunny laughed, resting her head on my chest.

“Your heart’s beating so fast,” she said. “Does buttered toast do that to you?”

I shook my head.

“Only you,” I told her.

She leaned in for yet another kiss.

“So… about that tea,” she said.