I like it when it rains

She raises one hand to push her hair out of her face while keeping the other on the steering. Her eyes on the road, eyebrows creating a frown at the rain pouring down making it harder for her to drive. She’s not a bad driver.

But who am I to judge? I can’t drive at all.

She’s very beautiful. Sometimes I look at her doing mundane things and I’m mesmerized. Why? Why? What is so beautiful about her hair pulled back like that? What is so beautiful about that permanent expression etched on her face? I can’t really tell. Yet I can’t help but look at her.

It’s raining hard down the road yet the car’s steady. I think she’s a good driver. 

“You’re a good driver.” I say out loud. She turns for a moment and looks back at me and I can’t help but smile.

“I just got my license,” She says as she turns back to look at the road, “say that when we reach home.”

We’re both twenty two. She and I. 

“If I drove we’d both be dead.”

She snorts. 

“Do you want to be buried or cremated when you die?” She inquires out of the blue.

“Buried?” I answer slowly, “Both sound horrible, honestly.”

“They do but imagine this,” Her right hand taps my arm, “what if-what if you die but then you don’t actually die. I mean, what if you die but then a miracle happens and I don’t know maybe the angels or something bless you and you come back to life. But then you realize you’ve been buried in a coffin, six feet under.”

She looks at me with big eyes and continues, “I’m claustrophobic, you know that right? I would be so terrified. That’s why I wanted to be cremated.”

“That’s not really a blessing then,” I point out, catching her untied strands and pushing them back for her this time, “You sure these were angels?”

“But think about it!”

“In that case I’d like to be cremated too.”

“Exactly.” She licks her lips and focuses back on the road.

I look out the window, arms crossed at my chest. 

I love it when it rains hard. Even though the car windows are completely rolled up I can smell the mud. There is a single road running through the trees. I don’t know the names of these trees. Is that oak? Is it beech? I can’t tell. 

But they’re a deep beautiful green, darker and wet with rain. The road is darker too, darker than the grey sky above us. One might think it’s late in the evening but it’s only four in the afternoon. It doesn’t feel like noon. It’s cold and dark. The car heater is broken, worsening my perpetually cold self. The sound of the rain falling is the only consolation as if it wasn’t the cause of my trembling body. But I don’t blame the rain. The rain always brings amazing presents with it. The fragrance of the soil, the nostalgia with the memories of the school classroom where we all fought over whether it was cold enough to switch off the fans or not, my mother’s delicious traditional fritters with a hot cup of tea and of course, her, the best gift of all.

I wonder why I love her. I’ve really given it a thought and I still don’t really know what exactly makes me love her. She’s a patisserie. A really good one too. She loves making me batches of pastries or cakes every other day. She’s the reason I’ve developed a sweet tooth. She’s the reason I’m now addicted to blueberry muffins. 

I wonder if it’s because she’s addicted to crime stories and explains to me the newest gruesome crime documentary she came across with great detail and in depth explanations to make me cover my ears and scream at her to stop while she laughs and continues in a louder voice. 

Is it because of her laugh? It makes me giddy and giggly.

“Your mother called me this morning,” I say, fixing my dress below my knees, pulling up my legs to cover them, “She tried your phone a couple of times but you didn’t answer-”

“Oh hell! I totally forgot.” She slaps her forehead, “She’s going to be so angry. You should’ve reminded me!”

“I just remembered too.” I bare my lower teeth at her, cheekily. The car slows down, there’s no one around us and the rain takes it as a signal to get thinner. She sticks her right hand at the back seat, eyes still on the road.

“Call ma.” She says as her hand magically produces a yellow cardigan and drops it on me. I quickly wrap it around my shoulders, pull out my phone, connect it to the car Bluetooth and call her mother.

The rain starts falling hard again earning a groan from her and a pleased lip bite from me. What do I know of the driver’s pain?

The call rings a few times and her mother picks up the call.

“Ma, you called.” 

“In the morning!” Her mother’s voice is deep and breathy, just like her’s.

They both enter into a banter and I, the sole audience, couldn’t be more pleased or entertained. The car starts to pick up after a while and my attention withdraws from the mother daughter wisecracks and draws back to the rain outside.

I met her during one of those rainy days, about a year ago. It had been sunny all morning and suddenly the clouds seemed to block out the sun and the rain crashed down on us, drenching me from head to toe. I ran to safety under the awning of a yellow café building. As I squeezed the water out of my shirt, I saw, through the large window of the café, a girl looking directly at me, her smile growing wide as her eyes met mine. 

She ran up to the entrance and hauled the door open.

“Come in.” She had asked with a huge grin on her face.

“I’m soaked.”

“Come in.” 

That day she had insisted on me having tea and blueberry muffins while we talked endlessly, even after the rain had stopped and the sky had cleared. It wasn’t until the sky had grown from grey to blue to red that I realized I needed to head back. 

I came to visit the café every few days after that with the excuse of blueberry muffins and tea. Every few days turned into every day. Before that exhilarating monsoon turned into the calm autumn, we were together. 

I talked a lot. She listened a lot. Sometimes she’d get random ideas up her head and then she would chatter excitedly and I’d listen. Is it too early to say we fit each other? 

A sharp turn to the right brought me back to the present and into a little town whose name on the little green board a few seconds back I missed completely.

“I take back what I said,” I declare, “You’re a terrible driver.”

“This really shouldn’t be coming from you.”

I pucker my lips and create whistling kissy noises which earns an eye roll and a mock sigh from her. My attention is drawn by the thinning rain. The odour of the mud is slightly tainted by some foreign smell that was probably from one of the houses that passed by as our car picked up pace. I rolled down the window, inviting small droplets to smack my face and slightly dampen the cardigan around me. 

I look back at her, my elbow on the windowsill and my head resting on my hand. She’s completely focused on the road now. Her eyebrows furrowed and her hands on the steering trying her best to control the car. I watch her every movement. The way her eyes go unblinking for a while every now and then when she’s focused, small sniffles caused by her rhinitis and the cracking of her neck every once in a while.

These days she’s trying to fix her posture, sitting up straight only to slowly contort and then sit up straight again once the realization hits her. Making a mental note to make tea the first thing when we reach home to cure her sniffles, I pull out a tissue from my purse and put it on her nose. She blows as I wipe and put it in a plastic bag, tie it and throw it under my seat once the entire ordeal has passed. 

Wrapping my legs under the dress once again, my head in my hand, I look out the window and I go back to wondering about her. She’s right next to me yet she lingers on my mind. The pure fragrance of mud fills me again and we leave the town behind.