I gazed out of the window behind him, the rain poured, as it did anytime we met up. It always had a sense of foreboding about it, but the feeling didn’t link up with the person sitting in front of me. He wasn’t torrential rain, he was far from it. There was a gentleness about him, but I knew he hadn’t fully let me in yet. How do you fight through two separate walls to meet in the middle? How do you explain an unspoken spark between two strangers standing an umbrella? Both hiding separate stories behind cafe chatter, he told me about his friends as I sipped on my herbal tea.
We stepped outside of the cafe doors, contemplating our next move under flickering fairy lights. The rain continued to pour as we ran through vulnerability together, handbag over my head – There was something quietly exhilarating about us. He planted a type of peace within me that I hadn’t felt for quite some time. Everything was calm and slow-paced on the inside, but as my boot landed in another puddle, I just knew there was always something looking in at us, waiting to shake things up.
Months later, I stared at my bedroom ceiling and wondered if our inner storms had been enveloping us the whole time. Perhaps everything around us had been too wild, too busy, too noisy to hear the truths. The exit was the same as the person – Gentle, but left me with so many questions, so much curiosity. It had been weeks since the shake up, and I don’t know if it was because we were never meant to be or because we parted in the Spring, but I hadn’t seen rain like it since, and I still wonder if he noticed that too.
