She nods, understanding. “Well, if you change your mind…”
My lips curl in a small smile. “Thanks, Bethany.”
She pushes off the other vending machine. “I better get back before Gita realizes I slipped away when it’s not my turn for a break.”
I watch her disappear out of the break room and back to work before I make my way to the uncomfortable couch in the corner. One of the overhead lights has burned out, leaving this corner in shadow. I lower myself into it and peel open the wrapper of my candy bar before taking a bite. The benefit of working a busy shift in the ED is that you don’t have down time to realize how tired and sore you are until you take a break. Now, the exhaustion is starting to settle in. Normally after a long, busy shift like this, there’s nothing I want more than to go home alone and watch something that requires no brain cells on TV until I pass out on the couch. But for some reason, that doesn’t hold as much allure as it used to. Instead of hoping for solitude, I’m pulling out my phone and scrolling through the camera roll, looking for the photo I snapped of the dry erase calendar Stevie and I put on the fridge. A breath of relief sighs out of me when I see that she isn’t working this evening, that there’s nothing else written in her tiny, neat handwriting on her schedule for today. She will be there when I get home.
The next four hours don’t go by nearly as quickly.
It’sdarkwhenJack’sheadlights slice over where I’m seated on the front porch, rain pelting the tin roof above me, lightning zagging through the sky, turning the blackness purple. I watch as he shuts off the engine and kicks open his door before running through the rain to the porch. He’s drenched by the time he closes the short distance, his sneakers pounding up the wooden steps. Rain clings to his eyelashes and the ends of his hair.
“Hey,” he says, sounding more breathless than the short run from his car calls for. “You’re home.”
I nod and gesture at the storm raging beyond us. “Yeah, and my hike was canceled for tomorrow. Storm’s supposed to last all night and day.”
“I’m off tomorrow, too.”
I know from looking at the calendar, but I don’t tell him that.
“You got plans tonight?” he asks, running a hand through his damp hair. It slicks back and looks almost black under the muted glow from the dirty porch light.
I shake my head. “No, just sitting out here, watching the storm. Reading.” I lift the worn paperback in my lap. I picked it up from the library earlier today. It’s the book club pick for the month, and my goal is to be able to actually make it to the meeting.
“Want company?”
“Sure,” I say with a shrug, like I hadn’t been watching the clock on my phone waiting for him to be home, tired of the way the silence has started to feel too loud now, how solitude doesn’t feel as comforting as it used to.
“I’ll go change and be right back.”
Thunder cracks as he slips into the house, and I let my attention return to it. Rain is falling in heavy sheets, soaking the dirt and gravel road. It will be a mudslide tomorrow if the raincontinues like they’re predicting. I’d bet we will end up stuck up here until the storms let up.
Jack returns a few minutes later, letting the screen door slap closed behind him, the sound echoing through the mountains like its own peal of thunder. I’m seated on the porch swing, letting it gently move back and forth with the wind. There’s a rocking chair beside it, but he lowers himself onto the empty space beside me instead, pushing us with a kick of his feet. The springs groan with the movement.
“How was work?” I ask.
Jack’s eyes land on mine in the dim light. “Long. I shouldn’t have gone out last night. I was exhausted.”
I hum beneath my breath, looking out at the flashes of lightning brightening the sky like fireworks.
He’s quiet for a moment, and I can feel the weight of his stare on the side of my face. “I saw you out at Matty’s.”
I turn back to face him. “I saw you, too, but you looked busy, so I didn’t come say hi.”
His gaze holds on mine, eyes dark. “I wasn’t too busy.”
My throat feels tight under the intensity of his gaze. “Well, next time I’ll say hi.”
“Good,” he says, finally turning his attention from me and out to the storm raging around us.
I breathe in a lungful of the damp, mountain air and pull my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. The blanket I brought out is a warm flannel, soft beneath my fingertips, and I twirl a piece of the fringe between my thumb and pointer finger.
“I’ve always loved storms,” I say.
I can feel Jack’s surprise, considering the circumstances.
“I used to always sit outside the Airstream and watch them. Probably not the smartest to sit beside a giant metal box during a thunderstorm, but I always did anyway.”
“You were inside when the tree fell though, right?”
