Building connections between characters

"To the library, come on!" James was already on the curb, scanning the traffic for an opportunity to cross.

"What about the check?" she asked, hurrying after him.

"They're gonna put it on my tab."

"You got a tab?"

James looked over his shoulders just when the clicking of her heels got behind him and grabbed her hand out of the air, the soft, warm skin now melting, morphing with his. Samantha yelped in surprise. Her first instinct was to pull away but felt her fingers lace with his, making her mind race in desperation for a way to hide her burning, bright red cheeks.

She never found an answer as James leaped onto the street with little care for the oncoming cars, intoxicated with a surge of adrenaline from her response. Unlike him, Samantha was still holding on a thread of sanity, fear and panic making her heart jump out of her chest when her feet hit the asphalt.

Her first instinct was to shout at him, to tell him to go back, but her thoughts were drown into a furry of honks and tyres screeches. She could hear cries of awe from the passer-bys alongside the chosen words and angry shouts of the drivers, so she closed her eyes and let her head down, not wanting to see any of them and just hurrying forward on instinct, her outstretched arm following James' grip.

It was like an interminable walk of shame, Samantha wanted more than anything in her life to get out of there, she wanted her shoes to hit the curb and to step on that crosswalk, seemingly many miles away now. Only for her to then open her eyes and realize every head on this street was turned towards her? To feel their scorching gazes burning through her clothes and marking her skin? To feel the whipping of their venomous whispers?

No. She changed her mind, she'd rather just disappear. She wished for a big hole to magically stretch in the middle of the street and swallow her into its black depths. Instead of a bottomless pit, James stopped in front of her, her cheek getting buried into the back of his suit as she bumped into him. Samantha only heard a thud and James' short grunt and opened her eyes just in time to see his head bounce off the roof of a car.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" she said, covering her mouth with her free hand.

"It's ok" he turned to her, rubbing his brow with the tips of his fingers and batting his eyelids toget rid of the fog from his eyes.

"Let me see" she said, getting closer to him and squinting while rising on her tiptoes to see better.

There was a moment, a split of a second when the world froze around them, her serious look scanning his face, his confused, dazed expression trying to process what just happened, the soft tips of her fingers gently carressing his reddened brow, her hand still resting in his, their bodies, encapsulated in time in the middle of the road.

James took in the worried look in her eyes while feeling his skin laugh under her delicate touch, and something flew underneath his suit and wrapped itself against his naked body, a warm, sweet scented breeze taking over him and pinching his mouth and eyes into an uncontrollable smile.

"What?" Sam asked, a big grin slowly spreading on her face.

James waved his free hand, turning his head to the side, in an effort to hide his blushing, beaming face.

"What happened?" she asked again, a giggle making its way into her tone.

He finally looked her in the eyes and gathered all his will and strength to stop laughter boiling in his throat from exploding.

"You're beautiful" he said in the moment of a breath.

Samantha gripped his hand tighter and swung it around as she watched his red, shining face in amusement, two dimples carving their way into her cheeks.

"You're beautiful too" she said, no trace of shyness or anxiety in her voice, only a crystal giggle.

They got lost in the moment, in each other's eyes eyes, trying to find one another in those simple words lingering and warming up the air between them.

A sharp horn broke their bubble, but not their trance. They both looked at the taxi and the angry man inside and started laughing at the realization that everything happened in the middle of the street, between cars and people, not some far away universe. They ran away, together this time, still holding hands, trying to escape the extending grasp of reality, choosing to remain in the dream of the moment.

The busy avenue became a foggy painting in their teary eyes, a background picture of an artist who cared so little about the world and so much about the feelings, while the mix of honks and city sounds buzzed inoffensively around their heads, blocked by the sound of their laughter. The dangerous attempt from earlier turned into a childish adventure, the fear of getting ran over into the thrill of running one next to the other and the insults and exclamations of drivers and pedestrians alike into mere whispers in the wind only urging them forward.