Rain Girl

Sometimes, during these quiet days that hesitate between spring and summer, I still think of him, and wonder what would have happened if I’d stayed.

Our first meeting was like something out of a movie; one of those improbable flickers of magic that remind us why life is worth living. It happened at that hour when the street lights have come to life, but the reflected sunset means it can’t properly be called dark. We were standing at a bus stop when the sky burst open in one of those sudden showers that come without warning in the autumn. Something about its very unexpectedness filled me with a strange delight, and I raised my hands to greet it, twirling with the kind of joyous abandon I associate with early childhood. Our eyes met, and I remember being startled by the expression on his face. It was almost adoration.

Then my bus arrived. My eyes found his again through the fogged window, and I found myself wishing he would follow me onto the bus; that he would sit next to me and tell me what he saw in me that made his eyes shine. But even as I wished, I knew it was better this way. Better to let him keep whatever dream he had, and to let me keep the magic untarnished. 

When we did meet again, in that little coffee shop where I used to study when my roommate’s gum-snapping habit couldn’t be shut out even by the barrier of my headphones, part of me was angry. Reality has a way of ruining magic moments, and I could already sense it trying to intrude itself on whatever we had shared that evening. 

I’m not proud of how I acted that day. I don’t remember much of what we said, but I do remember the way his face wavered between hope and confusion as I alternated between flirtation and rebuffs. There were alarm bells clamoring in my mind, warning me against the light of idealism in his eyes. But louder in the end was the excitement of new possibilities and the warm glow of being wanted. 

It was nice to have someone to talk to. Someone who had never known me as the scruffy, angry adolescent whose reputation had trailed after me throughout the small mid-west town I grew up in. That was why I’d picked a West Coast college in the first place: so I could be whoever I wanted to be; not just the “poor thing” who never got over it when her father left. But I hadn’t bargained on the loneliness of it. I found myself wanting to be known, even as I clung stubbornly to my determination to remain a mystery. 

Maybe that’s why I was drawn to him, really. We used to wander the city together. I would talk and talk about anything and nothing, and he would listen. He had a kind, eager face, and only interrupted often enough to let me know he was still following what I had to say. And yet I always had a sense that I was obscured from him. The bright vision of the person he built up from our first encounter was always hovering in the air between us like a shimmering cloud. He called me “Rain Girl.”

Sometimes I would find myself wishing I could be more like the girl he saw when he looked at me. The kind of girl who would always dance in the rain without a care; who never worried about who was watching or what they might think. The kind of girl who made her own magic. I used to think that maybe, if I just spent enough time with him, I could become that girl. Or someone more like her, at least. 

We were together for nine months. Long enough to give birth to new hopes and beliefs, yet so short when looked back upon from the distance of half a lifetime. I’m not sure what my intentions were when I summoned him to the public rose garden that Sunday. I only know that the phone call from my sister the afternoon before had stirred up a seething mess of tangled emotions, and I wanted some kind of clarity, although I couldn’t have expressed what exactly I was hoping for. 

The flowers were in full bloom, each cloying scent overtaking the last, only to be replaced by the next one as we wandered along the paths, my arm looped through his. Neither of us said much. I think he knew something was different that day. My own feelings, far from being brought into focus by his presence, grew too snarled for coherence. The crunching of the gravel beneath my heavy oxford shoes rattled my thoughts like Scrabble tiles in a cardboard box. 

“You ought to be wearing white lace,” he said to me eventually. “With a wreath of wildflowers in your hair.”

I shook my head, and we turned off the path toward the little pond at the far edge of the park. 

We stood together on the bank, listening to the fountain in the middle. I knew I had to say something, but I didn’t know how best to convey it all without sounding abrupt or unintentionally cruel. 

“My sister wants me to spend the summer with her,” I told him at last. I kept my voice neutral, but he dropped my arm and shifted around so he could scan my face. I knew he could finally see me. I also knew that if I left him then, I wouldn’t seek him out again.

“Are you going?” he asked.

I studied the ground. “Back to Wisconsin. I don’t know. It’s been a couple of years. And she could use an extra pair of hands, with the baby and everything. Maybe I will.”

He kissed me then, trying desperately to reach me somehow when he had no more command over his words than I did. He needed me to stay. He needed me to help him keep his fantasy alive; to tell him that people were always who we believed them to be, and that the ones we loved always stayed.

But I was sick of playing. Suddenly, I knew that I needed the hard edges of reality to define me, no matter what it cost. I pulled away from him.

“I never wanted you to take me seriously.”

“But I did. I do.”

“Well you shouldn’t have.” In spite of myself, I could feel all the old anger flaring up. All I wanted was to make him stop; to make him drop his silly illusions and see the world sharp and cold like I did, even if it hurt him. Especially if it hurt him.

A low rumble signaled the approach of a large vehicle, and I turned toward the bus stop.

“I’m tired of wandering around.” It was not an invitation for him to follow. 

I climbed onto the bus, not caring where it was headed. Away was all I wanted. 

By now, all my anger has been blunted; its edges ground down by experience. Who can say, in the end, what might have become of us if I had chosen differently? All we can do is make our choices and then walk the paths they create for us. Maybe with more time we could have found a way to meld our worldviews; his optimism tempering my hostility even as I blew away the mists of his romanticism. More likely, however, we would have reached the same conclusion. Drawing it out would only have left us both jagged, with more pieces of ourselves broken off in the other like splinters in an open wound. We were both so young.