It’s cold outside and she’s shivering. I hold her in my arms to try and shield her against the wind, and I know I should probably get her home. It’s at times like this I hate having a job to go to, and explain this to her, keeping an eye on any drunks stumbling around behind her which fancy their chances in the early hours of the morning. I hail a taxi, writing my number on her arm in the closest thing I have to a pen – eyeliner – and asking her to call me.
I really wasn’t expecting to meet her at a café that very Thursday at twelve, but then sometimes life smiles upon girls like me.

I sit on a bench opposite the café, hiding behind a backdated copy of Hello! She arrives and sits at a table for two; she hasn’t seen me yet. She’s early, I’m earlier...
...what? No-one saw, no-one knows, no-one can judge me. Besides, I want to see what she’s really like. It’s not sly, it’s ‘research’; and she’ll never know.
I look at her sitting there, hair glinting a soft golden colour in the midday Sun, and I’m still nervous. Why? I suppose it’s because I don’t know what she wants of me.
She wants – she asked for – a coffee. What is coffee, anyway? Coffee and a chat, coffee and a walk, coffee and an invite back to- No. Take it slow.

I pull back my sleeve and check my watch. 12:02pm; Oops, I’m late.

It’s a nice little café, one you’d expect to find in one of the more respectable areas of Paris. It’s decently priced, though that’s not much of an issue.
The tables outside are adorned with red and white tablecloths – the kind which are tissue paper and thrown out, not the ones which are cleaned – as well as a small menu (which she’s succumbed to the sin of flicking through in order to avoid picking at her nail-varnish) and a salt-and-paper shaker.
There aren’t many people around. A businessman reading a broadsheet full of numbers, two teenagers stuffing a straw full of tissues and an elderly couple putting the world to rights while giving the teenagers the evil eye. Inside there are more people, but I don’t bother to look. It’s quiet enough to chat, loud enough to talk.

“I take it this isn’t taken?” She jumps, looking up at me with wide eyes. I smile, pull back the chair and sit down. Immediately she puts the menu flat on the table, an expression like a young boy caught looking at something he shouldn’t have been, hiding it under her palm. I look at it, look at her, and smile again, reaching for my purse. “Can I get you anything?” I ask. “That coffee, maybe?”
She nods, “Coffee, please.” And for a second I fear she’s intimidated by me. The counter is just inside the café, so I tell her I’ll ‘be right back’ and go for the drinks. I buy her a muffin too, a sign of good will and all that. (Maybe she just brings out the nice girl in me...)
I can see why. Leaning against the counter a little, waiting for ‘latte and a muffin times two’, I couldn’t help watch her. The way she moves, so gentle through the air like her skin is made of delicate rose petals; the way her eyes scan everything for a hunt of danger, she reminds me of a fawn – I pay for coffee – and I wonder if she sees me as a wolf...

“Here you go,” I smile kindly, handing her the coffee-and-muffin. She thankfully takes them from me, and I place the tray on an empty table before returning to my seat.
“So,” I smile, taking the coffee in both hands. “You okay?”
She nods, “Thank you. And your life? I mean, how’re things?” She flushed a little pink – adorable – I knew she wasn’t trying to pry.
“Things are fine, the usual.” I smile and take a sip of my coffee, but she doesn’t reply. Out of the club things seem so much more formal between us, but then this table isn’t only a psychological barrier... “You know, nine-‘til-five, Jeremy Kyle and meals-for-one type-arrangement?”
She grins and sips her coffee, picking at the muffin. After a moment she tells me resignedly, “You know, there really isn’t a dignified way to eat these things.”
“Hmm?” I ask. “How d’you mean?”
“Well, you can either get your lips around it and go for it, or use your fingers.”
I find myself fighting to regain composure. Either she doesn’t realise the innuendo she’s just made, or is too innocent to understand it. Either way, I can’t help finding it extremely cute. I keep my cool, just. “That sounds like an interesting proposition y’got with that muffin, Deb,” I wink at her.
“Hmm?” She looks up at me innocently for a second, then I see a wash of pink comprehension fill her cheeks. “Oh God...” She lets her head fall into her hands. I giggle, and when she looks up I can see her giggling too, and I feel warmer than the Sun’s heat is making me. “I can’t believe I just said that.” She groans a little.
“I can,” I reply perkily, sinking my teeth into my muffin with considerable delight of her misfortune with words. “It might just have to go down in history.”
She groans again, only this time I know she’s playing along. “I haven’t been here five minutes...”
“Exactly,” I sit grinning, watching her eyes twinkle as she stares into mine.

After a moment, she asks me, “Kay?”
“Yes?”
“Why Kay?”
“What?”
“Is that your... First name? Your Christian name?” She shuffles a little, as if she feels she’s stumbled upon a touchy subject for me.
“No,” I smile to reassure her a little. “My real name is Saskia, but I quickly learned that having your very unique name yelled down a corridor full of fellow thirteen year olds isn’t cool. Especially when half of them are arrogant tossers, and the other half are boys.” I sip my coffee. “So Kay it became.”
She nodded. “It’s really exotic-sounding.” She muses for a brief moment. “I’ve never met anyone called Saskia before, it’s really pretty.”
I lower my voice a little, “Like you.” And I know she heard after her eyes shot up in surprise, looking at me with a slight expression of awe and disbelief.
After a few seconds, we feel the moment pass and begin to talk about other things – like friends do over coffee – until we have to leave each other once more. I ignore my frantic mind cursing decorum to the pits of Hell and back, and say I’ll see her again on Friday night, kissing her goodbye on the cheek.
When I pull away, her cheek is pinker than ever.
So cute.