Dandelions

Nobody stands in the rain on purpose. Nobody stands outside on the wettest night of the year in no raincoat, the pelting drops making their glasses unusable, the damp growing and spreading. You have to be really ucked-up to ignore the sternly delivered weather report, to forgo the battered, second-hand raincoat hanging by the door or even the umbrella left by a friend, to go outside and stand in the storm for no reason at all.

Raymond was that ucked-up.

He had been through the mill, the gist, the this and the that. He had lost the things and the feelings and the path. He’d been in bed when the storm had begun, and his first thoughts had been: pillow over my head, heat on, burrow.

But then he had remembered the previous night, the fight, the way Shelly had looked at him, the way he’d left. He couldn’t even clearly recall how the argument had started. How do any arguments start? A misunderstanding. A desire to be right. He hadn’t listened to her, hadn’t felt anything but the overwhelming urge to prove his point.

Pillow over head. Heat on. Burrow.

Hadn’t he been burrowing under the covers, head under the pillow, in one form or another his whole life? Hadn’t he taken the safe path, the clean route, the well-lit boulevard, and it had landed him exactly where? In a small studio by the railroad tracks. A studio that smelled of paint and whiskey.

She had wanted him to make a, god forbid, don’t say it, what a scary word, commitment. That’s how it had started. She had asked if he might want to take things to a new level, a different level, a place he’d never been before. And fear had swallowed him whole, and he’d lashed out about how… what? How what? How had he shadowboxed the fact that she loved him?

Pillow. Over. Head.

Things felt different now in the wee hours of the morning. Now that he’d thought about her, and him, and how they’d met, and how they’d grown together, and how what she was asking wasn’t too much, but he had never been asked before. And how the two of them together could be more than their individual parts, and why was that so terrifying to him?

Heat on.

Because he was going from the known to the unknown. What if it didn’t work? That’s what he’d said. What if they didn’t work? Could he handle going back to a one-room studio, where he couldn’t help but hear his neighbors through the walls. Where he could tell you the time based on which train was going by. What if he failed at this and had to slink home, tail betwixt his legs?

Now, looking around his—okay it was a—dump, he wondered what on earth had possessed him. Why wouldn’t he want to move in with her? He’d never lived with anyone before. Why wouldn’t he want to try, at least try? Give it a go. See where it went?

He’d simply left. Mid-what? Mid-stream. He’d said he needed to think. And he’d thought. Uck.

So three hours later, he’d put on his jeans and a t-shirt and a sweater, put on his glasses and his sneakers and taken his house key and left. He was walking the four miles. He was thinking of what he’d say when he got there. If she didn’t let him in, then fluck it, he’d done his best. If she refused to open the door at 3 a.m. to a sad looking boyfriend who had just not brought his A game or his Z game to the relationship, he understood.

He walked sodden through puddles. He let the rain wash his face without bothering to wipe his cheeks or the tears. He didn’t look up until he reached her street. There was a light on in her room, golden rod, glowing. He could tell from half a block away.

When he reached her door, he wondered what he’d say if she answered. Even though he’d been walking for forty-five minutes, he hadn’t worked out the right words. Not in his head anyway. But enough hiding.

He would say he loved her. He would say he was sorry. He would say she was right.

Maybe she would say some things, too. Maybe she would say she would be patient with him. That she understood. That he showed his love with actions, the way he had fixed her fridge door without her asking or even pointing out that it was broken. He knew by the way that you had to hip check it to make sure that it ever fully closed. And he’d replaced the bobble in her toilet tank so that there wasn’t a rushing sound anymore. And one sunny evening, he’d edged her lawn, and when she’d come home from work, there’d been dandelions in a jam jar on her front stoop.

He didn’t know how to do everything, and that scared him, but maybe he didn’t have to.

He rang the bell. Then he knocked.

After a few minutes, felt like hours, she opened the door a crack. She looked at him and he looked at her, and all the words left his mind. Left his mouth. He looked at her, and he put out his hand, and she looked back and took a breath.

Dandelions on the stoop.

He wasn’t like other guys.

She loved him because he didn’t realize that. She loved him because she understood his hesitation wasn’t fear of commitment, it was fear of ucking up. Maybe she hadn’t told him that. Maybe she hadn’t told him that every small thing to him that he did without thinking, without expecting anything in response, was why she loved him. Because oh, she loved him.

She walked out of her hallway wearing one of his white t-shirts as a nightgown. It crested the tops of her thighs. He stripped down to his boxers with a smile on his face. They stood under the magnolia tree as the rain pelted down on them, and they held hands and gave each other the first of many second chances.