Writing Prompt: A reflection on an unrequited love on a rainy day
Most of the houses in the city where I live have both attics and basements, which is a pretty alien concept for someone from a rural-ish area where most of the houses were built in a ranch style. I lived with a couple of old friends who had, after a sudden windfall, taken advantage of the fact that our city is desperate for taxpayers to set down root and willing to help you with the down payment on a home.
The room I picked for myself was the attic. It had been refurbished into something that was mostly home-y, and even though the walls were about as plain as a prison cell and it was insufferably hot in the summer, and freeze-your-tits-off cold in winter, I loved it to bits.
In the state I'm from, rain is a special little treat you're allowed to have, upon occasion, during what passes for the pittifully short spring, and brutally long summer. I know some people are afraid of thunder -- and I can see why hearing the sky throw a tantrum would be terrifying -- but I have always taken comfort in the sound of rain. There's just something about the calming pattern of countless little pitters and splatters that syncs up with the perpetual static of my cluttered mind, and cancels out the noise.
It rains a lot where I live, so one of my favorite past times is getting stoned and listening to the sound of it fall on the roof above my bed. One of my favorite memories of this was with a close friend I met when I first moved up. We had gone for a walk in the rain and ended up soaked to the fucking bone, and we got home from our adventure just in time to sprint back up the stairs and catch the end of the storm.
I am not a small woman, so you must understand that the women I meet are often much smaller than me, and this was one of the first girls I ever remember spending a ton of time with who was roughly my size. We peeled out of our wet clothes, left them hanging over the banister to dry, and then she raided my drawer for something to wear. She had bad circulation, which is something I've come to understand is common in the type of woman who takes the medications that we take, and her feet got cold easily. So she ended up wearing one of my cutest pairs of underwear, an oversized t-shirt from a concert I'd seen as a boy who was ashamed of being a boy, and some athletic-style thigh-high socks -- solid black with a trio of white stripes across the tops -- that I'd bought back when my aesthetic was a more "beautiful doll" and a little bit less "character from Street Fighter."
Each piece of her outfit reminded me of a different phase in my life, and of a different woman I had been. All-in-all it was a pretty potent look, and I was fucking smitten. She packed a bowl while I got dressed, and we exhaled our smoke into a homemade filter -- a paper towel roll stuffed with dryer sheets -- so the smoke didn't hurt the sensitive lungs of my roommate's pet chinchillas.
By the time the creeping haze of time dilation set in, the storm had kicked up, and it was coming down in fat, heavy drops. We lay side-by-side on my bed, and soft sounds of contentment dripped from her lips like rain as I brushed my pinky along her thigh. With a laugh she took my hand, placed it onto her stomach, and asked to be pet like a dog. I laughed, too, and obliged. Who am I to deny the whims of a beautiful woman, no matter how fanciful they might be. I'm no monster.
I was so focused on the sounds of her breathing after a point, that I couldn't even hear the rain. I remember getting tired. My eyes grew heavy, and my hand slowed its gentle revolution, until eventually it could not keep up its sacred charge. So I left it there to rest atop the well-loved altar to a beautiful goddess, closed my eyes, and slept.
We woke up the next morning, redressed, and went our separate ways. I had to work -- I was doing ten hour shifts at that point -- and by the time I got home from the shop, she'd sent me a text message that made my heart sink. She and her wife had been together since before she came out, and even though things were troubled there, they were committed to making it work out. She told me, regrettably, that last night made her feel more seen than she'd maybe ever felt in her life, and I wanted, with every bone in my body, to make the kind of grand and insane gesture that only ever works in movies.
Unfortunately I don't live in a movie. I live in a city where most of the houses have both basements, and attics. Instead I told her that, even though I wished we could have many more nights like that one, I understood, and then I wished her the best of luck.
It was storming again that evening so I laid down to nurse my wounded heart. I tried not to think about how much the pillow smelled like her conditioner, and I hoped that I wouldn't think about either of these two nights next time I laid down to listen to the rain.
---
That was a few years back. We tried to stay friends and to keep in touch for a while. It worked for a couple of years, but eventually we drifted apart. The summer was particularly rainy that year, and regrettably, I was wrong. I thought about her a lot.
Oddly enough, it's raining tonight, and I thought about her again for the first time in a whole long while.
I should reach out.
