'HIM' Short story - part one

   All day the rain beat relentlessly against the wall of windows at the front of the house. By late afternoon the powder grey sky had descended over the entire island, and the pounding rain eased, as though a giant atomizer was disbursing a heavy misting over the gardens and the winding lanes, leaving everything chilled, but crisp and fresh as well.


I thought about him in the morning as I sipped my coffee, scalding from the pot and sweet with heavy cream and sugar. Leaning against the French doors, watching the rain, I ached to be out in it, to let the steady droplets wash the memory of him from my being, from my soul.

I busied myself with home chores ~ laundry and beds to be made, supper shopping to plan, and still he filled my thoughts, intruding like the heady aroma of a cloying perfume, musky and insistent, sliding around my ‘busy work’ and searching me out. I am not sure he will ever leave me completely.

Habit is a plastic friend, unrecyclable, more brittle over time, and dull with use. All day, my fingers checked my phone expectantly, waiting for contact, any contact. Our habit of constantly checking in with each other had shattered when he left, but I couldn’t reconcile myself to this truth. His messages never came. They would never come again.

I feel feverish today, most days. There is no cure for this hot, intense aching, no pill that will cool my head and numb my heart. No elixir to still my racing thoughts, no tincture for my soul, to anesthetize it and leave me capable of moving on. Two years are like two hours to me.

Morning eased away, and the early afternoon found me with my feverish forehead pressed against the rain-tattooed glass. My fingers splayed around a hot cup of sweet tea, as I peered down the drive all the way to the curve where it winds out of sight, willing him to appear, willing his tall lanky form to stride purposefully around the very curve where I first saw him. He’d be hatless in this downpour, heedless of the rain with another casual comment tossed to me like, “What’s a little rain on a day?” and one of his reserved smiles that hid so much about who he really is.

By most late afternoons, I am fairly despondent, unless I plan some sort of mini-date with my friends. Then the knowledge that I will have to perpetuate the charade for my friends that I am healing, that it is getting easier to live without him, that I am nearly ready to move on, stops me from sinking completely into despair.

Tonite is such a night. I am meeting my friends for before-dinner drinks at a small bar in town. I have to keep it together.

So after a long scented bath and a careful run through my closet to choose just the right dress, not too morose, hopeful perhaps, if clothing can convey hope, I slide rebelliously into my favorite slicker, his slicker, and head out to meet my friends.

I have no way of knowing how my life is about to change.





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