Waiting On the Rain

by Caudia Connor

“Okay. I’m watching.”

  He cringed at using the word watch but she was smiling, concentrating as she picked her way, with his help, down to the water. He took both her hands and walked backward slowly, leading her.

  “Step down. Again. And one more.”

  “I hear water. Is it a creek?”

  “Yeah, just barely.”

  “Nice. I like the sound.”

  “You like the sound, you like to stand in the rain. I’m beginning to think you’re obsessed with water.”

  “Not obsessed,” she said, still smiling. “I just like it. Can we sit?”

  “Sure.”

  They sat on the bank, just feet from the shallow creek. It was no babbling brook, but she looked so happy to be there he strained his ears, trying to hear what was making her so happy.

  They sat that way a long time. Side by side, shoulder to shoulder just listening to the sounds of nature.

  “This is nice.” She ran her hand over the mossy ground like she was in her own world and he wasn’t the most important thing. He wanted to be in it too. Wanted to be wherever she was.

  She dug her fingers into the earth beneath the moss. “I’d like to have a garden but there’s not really room inside my apartment. Even if there was, it’s not the same as digging in dirt, smelling it, feeling sun.”

  “Or the rain.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’ve been in the city so long I forgot what this sounded like. I mean there are parks, but there’s always the noise in the background. And it smells different.”

  “I hated it at first, all the quiet.”

  “I’m sure it’s very different from where you were. Or not. I don’t know where you were.”

  “Middle East mostly. And it’s about as different as two places can be.” She wasn’t asking, wasn’t digging for details. Just talking, and he felt like talking back.

  “Isn’t it hard for you? Living in the city? And I hope that doesn’t offend you, or sound like your family,” he added quickly. “I don’t doubt you can do it, I’m just trying to imagine how.”

  “No, it’s not hard. It’s easier in the city.”

  “Okay,” he said and stared at her profile. “That you’re going to have to explain because I’ve been once, and it was like trying to maneuver through a drunk circus.”

  She smiled. Her hair skimmed over his shoulder, his cheek. He was sorry when she brushed it back.

  “You get used to it. But for me, public transportation is number one.”

  “You ride the subway?”

  “A lot of times. But most places I can walk.”

  He shook his head in awe of her. He seemed to do that a lot.

  “The subway’s not hard after you learn the system. I know the stops. I know every corner on the streets I walk. I can tell where I am by the scents, the sounds.”

  “What about taxis? I damn near got killed and I could see them coming.”

  “Well, you can’t just step out into the street,” she said with a laugh. “There are talking crosswalks in the city, something you don’t find in small towns. They countdown, tell you when it’s safe to cross, but usually I just feel the tide of the crowd moving and I move.”

  “Keep in the center. Let the ones on the outside take the hit from a crazy cabbie. Good strategy.”

  “There are no parking lots to walk across. The entire city has sidewalks. I know I come out of my apartment building, turn right and take thirty–eight steps to the grocery store. I go left fifty-nine steps to the bank. There are delis, and coffee shops, everything I need right on street level. Seventy–three steps past the grocery store is my favorite coffee shop.”

  “And a grocery store? How does that work? Because again, I can see and it still takes me an hour to find everything I came in for.”

  “Believe it or not, there’s an app for that. It actually reads objects in view of my phone, tells me how far away they are. It can even read prices.”

  “Amazing.”

  “It really is. I’m actually dying for a chocolate croissant. Major withdrawal going on here. The major thing is I can do everything myself. Get anywhere I want to go by myself. The city is like freedom. I miss that almost as much as I miss my friends. My job. I can’t just go out and get a cannoli when the mood strikes.”

  “Does it strike often?”

  She smiled. “Too often. Oh! And bagels and lox. You just can’t get a real bagel here.”

  She’d closed her eyes as she’d spoken, rubbed her lips together in a way that made him jealous of a bagel.

  “Sounds like you only live in New York for the food.”

  “That’s definitely a benefit. But it was liberating, moving to New York. Sure, it was scary at first, but growing up I always had to rely on someone to take me where I wanted to go. First my parents, then my brother. Then finally my best friend, which was way better than my brother, but still. I couldn’t just decide to go out for a snack. Couldn’t run out for shampoo or tampons.”

  “Okay… not touching that last one.”

  “Such a guy,” she said and smiled. “They want me to stay, my parents,” she said after a long moment. “I know they do. But more than not being able to go out and get my coffee and croissant, I don’t want to become dependent on them again.”

  “Are you afraid you would?”

  “They’d want me to be, and… I don’t know. Maybe I would.”

  “I don’t think you would.”

  “Thanks.” She sat up, picked another blade of grass, ran it through her fingers. “I do like it here, the peacefulness of it, but I’d never make it out here. Too isolated. No sidewalks.”

  “Mmm.” Made sense. But for some reason it bothered him to hear her say it.

  “So the cowboy life suits you?”

  “I’m not quite a cowboy. But yeah, I think this suits me. Still…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know,” he said after a moment. He sighed, and just let it out. His truth. “I’m still not sure I made the right decision, leaving the Rangers.”

  “I don’t know much about the Rangers. It seems all the movies and books have Navy SEALs.”

  He’d seen some of the movies. Some of them were a joke. Some of them were actually pretty accurate. “It’s similar. Except for the water.” He wondered again if it was easier to talk to her because she couldn’t see him. Or because she was a woman. Or maybe it was because she was leaving soon and that took the pressure off.

  “I loved it and it was good for me. It’s what I needed at the time. The rules and the rituals. The danger, the action, jumping out of planes, running obstacle courses. There was the challenge in strategizing, the adrenaline rush. And the toys,” he added with a small smile. “The constancy of nothing being constant. Being with men I considered my brothers.” And he felt guilty about that, because for years he’d been closer to them than his own brothers.

  “If you loved it so much why are you here?”

  “Well, that’s a question isn’t it,” he said staring at the creek. “The best answer I have is, it was time.” He shrugged. “It just seemed like it was time. Time to reconnect with the family I’ve mostly avoided. And there’s one reason for the black sheep.”

  “Baaa,” she said, making him smile when he would have thought it impossible a second earlier. “Avoiding the family will definitely put you on the naughty list. I should know.”

  And just that easily, she took the heaviness away. Luke glanced at her, saw her eyes were focused on a spot just across the creek, but not seeing. No one had asked the question quite like that, so directly. Or maybe they had and it was just her asking that didn’t bother him. Maybe because it seemed like everyone else who asked was on the inside. Except Ava.

  “Did you stop loving it?”

  “No. But… Something about it changed or I changed. Or both. It seemed more and more I was looking at the guys just coming in and thinking, You’re too young to be here. Go home. And God, that makes me sound old.” He breath
ed out a short laugh.

  Ava was quiet for a long minute. “I guess even if it was time, it can still be uncomfortable.”

  He nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see. “True. I was a kid when I left. I felt like a man. I wasn’t, obviously, but at seventeen I was trying to be. According to Nick I was doing a piss poor job of it. I wanted to be a man like my dad. I just… I was so damn mad. It felt like I should have been able to do something. Should have been able to stop it.”

  “Your parents’ car accident,” Ava said softly. “Hannah told me. I’m sorry.”

  He felt the rage inside him build and squeezed his hands into fists until they ached. “I wanted to kill someone. I think that’s part of why I joined up. Not just to get away from home, but maybe to outrun the rage. And the pain, though I wouldn’t have admitted it then.

  “I wasn’t there when the sheriff came to say our parents had been hit head on by a drunk driver. I was out. Breaking rules, breaking curfews, not caring that it made my parents worry. Then it was too late. Maybe that’s another reason I came back now. I didn’t want to be too late. Again.”

  Quietly, in Ava’s way, she reached over, laid her cool hand over his clenched fist. Her hand was so small next to his, her skin so much lighter than his sun baked and work roughened ones. Cool and soft. At first he didn’t move, just breathed. Then slowly, little by little, the tension eased until his hand relaxed. He turned his hand over and linked his fingers with hers.

  “Where would you go if you didn’t stay here?”

  “I don’t know. When I decided it was time to leave, I didn’t think about going anywhere else. Hell, maybe that’s why I left. I was thinking about family, or thinking I was glad I had no ties. And then it hit me that was bullshit. I had the family. But the ties, those were something I’d have to make myself.”

  “And here you are,” Ava said. “The way Hannah talks about you, I’d say you’re well on your way with those ties.”

  “Yeah,” he said, thinking it was exactly the right thing to say. He couldn’t stop the smile creeping across his face.

  “Is it okay for you? Being back?”

  “It’s okay. Different. Strange. It’s getting easier lately. The work on the cabin helps. Keeping busy. And that’s enough about me.” Luke was ready to hop off that topic. “Tell me, how does someone go about becoming fluent in seven languages?”

  “Hmm…How did I learn so many languages… Mostly it was just a lot of time on my hands. Something I started doing as a kid. It seemed to come easily.” She shrugged. “It was kind of a game, how many and how good I could be. Maddie, my friend, her grandmother lived with them for a while and she spoke German. She tried to teach Maddie and me. Maddie would get bored and go watch TV or play Xbox. I stayed.

  “As many hours as the other kids could play video games, I could listen to her, learn from her. Then at night, or riding in the car with my mom, I’d listen to language podcasts. It was a hobby, when you boil it down. I was good at listening.”

  “And you turned listening into a career.”

  “Yeah. I guess I did.”

  It was already cooler with the cloud cover, but getting cooler still as the day slipped into evening. The wind rustled the new leaves above them. There was something about sitting here with Ava in the quiet that he didn’t usually feel in the absence of sound. A peace, he realized and a quiet mind.

  “What does it look like here?”

  “Hmm… Well, there’s trees, a lot of them.”

  “Tall?”

  “Yeah. Some pine, those are the tallest. And some others. We’re sitting under a River Birch right now. There’s more of those here along the water. One of my favorites.”

  “Why?”

  “Why is it my favorite? Well, their leaves come out early so it’s like a sign of spring. I guess that’s one reason. And they make a really cool sound in the wind.” He looked up at the tree then at Ava. She listened to every word he said, cocked her head in a way that made him think she was cataloging every detail.

  “It’s more like hundreds or thousands of little leaves shaking… No. Fluttering. The branches get really skinny as you move to the ends of each one so they sway in the slightest breeze. Then later, as it gets closer to autumn, the leaves turn yellow just before they fall. They also have this weird peeling bark.” He reached out to his left, stripped off a piece, and handed it to her.

  She rubbed it between her fingers. “It feels like paper. You’re good at this. At describing.”

  “You think?” He’d been talking not even realizing what he was saying. He just wanted her to see. To know. To smile. “There’s a Dogwood here and there. Not blooming yet. I guess they don’t get enough light in here.”

  “So it’s dark?”

  “No, not dark. Not like night. Just shaded. There’s sunlight, but it’s blocked. Of course now it’s cloudy so it’s kind of… gray I guess.” He looked over at her, taking in their surroundings solely by what she felt and what he said. “Is it always dark for you?”

  “I’m not sure my perception of dark is the same as yours, but whenever I had tests and the doctor would say she was shining a light in my eyes. Nothing changed so, I guess that means I don’t see light. Which means I see darkness?” She shrugged. “I don’t know."

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for me.”

  “I don’t. But can I just be sorry?”

  “You can. But it’s all I’ve ever known so…. So if you feel sorry for me—”

  “I said I didn’t. You don’t need me to. I knew guys—know guys—who lost their sight, an eye or a leg, an arm, and I know that pity is the worst. They don’t want it, they don’t need it. You don’t need it. I got that within about five minutes of meeting you.”

  She smiled. “Thank you.”

  “I guess that means you were never scared of the dark,” he said, going for lightening the mood.

  “I wasn’t scared at night, I guess like some children are, because that’s when it’s dark, but…”

  “But what?”

  “It’s not the dark that’s scary exactly. It’s more the unknown.”

  He reached out, took her hand, linking their fingers. “Does everything feel unknown?”

  “No. And I’m not feeling scared right now.” She grinned over at him and damn it, there was that clutch in his belly again, a hitch in his heart beat.

  “That’s good. And that’s not why I’m holding your hand.”

  14

  Ava felt something whisper between she and Luke, then more than whisper. It sparked and she felt her heart quiver. She’d felt this spark with him before, when she’d danced with him. When she’d thought he was going to kiss her. There was a fluttering in her stomach thinking about what he’d said. You weren’t wrong.

  She hadn’t wanted a man to touch her, hadn’t even thought about it in so long. It was that far out of her scope of possibilities. She’d slammed that door and slammed it hard. Locked it. It bothered her that she’d consider opening it even a crack. But maybe raising the window. Maybe? Just a little? A bit of fresh air? That didn’t sound so dangerous.

  “Tell me something else,” he said.

  “Like what?”

  “Anything. How did you know I was staring at you the other day?”

  “I didn’t. I never know, not for sure. You could have been staring at the horse or your phone, then wouldn’t I have felt dumb?” She laughed softly. “When I’m on the train I don’t know if people are looking at me, making eye contact and wondering why I’m looking right through them. I don’t know if they’re watching me, looking at their phone, reading a book. Did an old man smile and I didn’t respond and made him sad? My cane’s not always visible in a crowd. I can’t wear a sign. Or I guess could,” she added with a short laugh.

  “Sounds lonely.”

  “It can be. There’s no shared eye roll between strangers when someone’s rude in line. There’s no, Damn, it’s cold, when I pass someone on the st
reet. Or if there is, I’m not sure they’re talking to me. If they’re not touching me, if they don’t speak my name and address me, it’s like they’re not there.”

  Luke pulled her hand over farther to hold it in both of his. “I’m touching you now.”

  “I noticed.” A light breeze kissed her skin and the leaves high above her swayed with it. Her fingers itched to touch Luke’s face, to feel his cheeks against her palms. Did he shave every day or was there some scruff?

  “But I’m still thinking about it,” he said. “About wanting to kiss you.”

  He was looking at her now. She knew it, felt his breath on her face.

  Then Luke took her face in his hands, pulled her in until his lips hovered just over hers. “Scratch that. I need to kiss you.” He cupped her cheek, whispered her name like a question.

  “Okay.” She’d barely whispered the word before his lips touched hers. Her heart did that fluttery thing again and her mouth opened under his. The air was cool, Luke’s lips were warm, smooth, and firm. There was nothing hesitant about it. It was hot and hard. She gripped his shoulders and held on, not thinking of past hurts. Letting herself take this pleasure that was kissing Luke Walker.

  As the kiss went from a blasting take off to leisurely cruising, she slid her fingers around his neck, up and into soft, thick hair that just reached his collar.

  She felt a lovely liquid feeling flowing through her, a flying and flipping in her stomach. She heard the low groan of pleasure in his throat. Her fingers curled into the shirt over his chest as she desperately needed something to hold onto.

  She must be crazy, crazy, to be here doing this, but she didn’t want to stop. She wanted more. Her heart scrambled with the sudden intensity and she couldn’t think with his hand gripping her hair in his fist. With their mouths fused, his other hand made a slow slide up her side, until his thumb brushed just under her breast.

  The longer he kissed her, the longer she wanted him to. Her fingers tensed on his thigh and she let him lead her. He laid her back on the ground, followed her over to her side. He took her mouth again as his hand skimmed slowly up her thigh, slipping under the edge of her shirt.