A Summer Rain

The cafe was on the west side of the park. It formed a triangle between the otherwise quiet, tree-lined streets that would disappear when its rolling glass doors opened in the morning. Coffee beans and humidity wafted through the busy, tightly placed bistro tables and all the way down the block, just like it did in Paris or New York, but this was only a rust belt city.

Her petite silhouette contrasted against the bright blues of the tiles of the bar. A casual black sundress exposed her tanned back, gleaming in a hazy sunlight from the yoga session next door. Her dirty blonde hair, which normally came down just beyond her shoulders, was pulled up off her dewy neck in a messy sort of bun, and her bangs stuck slightly to her forehead.

Her dog, Zuzu, an unusual mix of collie or aussie and golden, lay contently at her sandaled feet, unhooked from a green leather leash that hung loosely over the side of a tote bag marked ‘AD’.

Thunderclouds ahead tempted sunrays painting a pink morning sky, but a good summer rain was her favorite. 

It was Saturday at just 9:03 in the morning. 

She set aside her neatly filled notebook, unconsciously twisting the diamond-banded ring on her right hand, the way she always did. She looked over at her empty plate of eggs and then down into the cup of her usual dark roast; its perfectly formed heart, now beginning to dissolve. She paused, but only for a moment. As she closed her eyes to take another sip, a familiar scent washed over her– something of amber or peppermint, as the delicate breeze carried it through the salted air and the wispy strands of her golden hair grazed across her cheek. She thought it to be only a memory, her writing still lingering in her mind, when no sooner, a cool hand pressed gently upon her shoulder. 

Breathing in, she turned, with an uncertain smile, toward the well of the bistro, and found herself looking up into a pair of piercing blue eyes, set on the familiar face of a boy in the body of a man she used to love. 

She felt the blood drain from her, as he casually said, 

“Milly? I thought it was you. How long has it been, 15 years?” 

The sky rumbled softly above them. Time seemed to freeze.

Her mind raced backwards like an old tape; 

Twenty years to the day they met and every moment thereafter– rapidly recounting all the times he made her cry, and how he once apologized, and how she once forgave him; Remembering his words and how they, ‘just never connected.’

She surprised herself by thinking this way, and no later how– this couldn't possibly be in her story anymore, not after everything, not after all this time.

Deep in her heart, this moment had been something she had once imagined, sure; Something at one time she thought she wanted, but something that had also broken her up for years. 

She didn’t know herself then, she reasoned.

She didn't know what would happen and how much life would change, or all of the things she would have to go through, and how she didn’t expect anyone, let alone him, to accept any of it, or her, at all. 

Her nerves resisted as her body, in present time, attempted to remind herself of all of the sun salutations she did a mere hour ago.

Why was she so nervous? 

Hadn’t she settled these feelings? Hadn’t she made sense of it all?

Years of uncertainty had answered her, certainly. 

But this? Now?

She thought she had grown and changed.

‘Why does this matter anymore?,’ she asked herself impatiently.

‘Remember who you are,’ she wrestled back.

But at that exact second, she didn't know anything anymore and all of the positive mantras that had been written on her mirror for years were seemingly falling down the drain; Everything she used to remember and remind herself of, she couldn’t. 

Her brain was as scrambled as the eggs she just ate, as her ears gradually began to take hold of the cafe-clatter surrounding them and the upbeat notes of jazz moving through the speakers, though still playing, as it seemed to her, in slow motion. 

In that point in time, all she could manage to muster and grasp ahold of was the feeling of sheer surprise, as the room around her, the cup, and his face, emerged again.

But not a beat later, Zuzu, as if feeling the twinge in her owner’s heart, leapt up from the concrete and tore out from under the barstool.

“I’m sorry!,” she blurted to him–The only words that broke her years-long silence as she jumped up after her dog. 

The moment, once more, had gone. 

The leaves on the trees rustled amidst the subtle commotion while cafe dwellers carried on with their flaky pastries and Italian espressos, immersed in the morning chatter of their breakfast rituals, completely oblivious to the scene that had unfolded beside them. 

‘The timing was never right,’ she assured herself when clipping the leash back onto a now panting Zuzu, who had been lured by a familiar florist’s pocketful of biscuits while passing by to open up shop. 

But this feeling she had, she knew, was something she couldn’t ‘just erase’– not immediately anyway. 

In her daze, she found herself standing in the middle of the sidewalk, picturing his face, grown from her last memory but somehow still the same, and she allowed herself to wonder, only for a moment, who he might have become. 

The air grew thicker and the morning sky dimmed, succumbing to hues of grey. 

A loud crack in the distance gave way to a patter, motioning across nearby rooftops and hot pavement.

With Zuzu by her side, she turned to walk back down the emptied block toward home, when at the end of the street, breathless and almost defeated, there he was, and then— the rain.