Page 68 of The False Flat

“What’s he doing out there?” Deanna asked.

William hunched his shoulders against a gust of wind. “Being Grant. He does this kind of thing all the time.” He turned back in the direction of the pavilion. “Come on, ladies. He’ll meet up with us when he comes to his senses.”

Deanna followed. Elaine hesitated. I turned back toward the path.

“You aren’t seriously thinking of staying out here with him,” William half asked.

“I’m beginning to question whether we need to start building an ark here; someone needs to get him.”

“Maybe I should come with you,” Elaine offered, staring down at her hands.

Elaine was the last person I wanted with me.

“Oh my goodness, your hands are white!” Deanna shouted, gesturing to Elaine’s hands now too.

“I have Raynaud’s.” Responding to our blank looks, she went on, “My fingers turn white or blue when I get too cold. Blood vessel problem.” The August heat had significantly cooled in the rain.

Deanna steered Elaine toward the shelter. “Come on. Pen can try to talk some sense into Grant and join us if she can’t.”

“Once he’s set, he’s set,” William said, but I leaned my bicycle against the thick trunk of a maple tree and moved toward Grant before anyone said anything else and silently praised whatever that Raynaud’s thing was.

“You’re as absurd as he is!” William shouted.

“More so!” I returned, sloshing my way back to the main path. They didn’t know what this was going to do to my hair.

The rain beat down like percussion. Grant was barely visible through the curtain of water, but I moved forward anyway. Even though the day had been approaching hot, the lack of sun and the stream of water cooled my skin. This was a mistake. William was right. I knew that. Why was I still outside?

When Grant saw me, his mouth curled. He unstraddled his bike and met me just as my foot hit the pavement. “I thought you were taking cover.”

“I was until I saw you out here like a madman.”

“Aren’t you just as mad if you’re out here with me?”

“That’s what William said.” I linked my arm in his, tried pulling him forward. Heat spread from the spot where our slick skin connected and spiraled throughout the rest of my body until I nearly forgot it was raining. “Come on.” My voice was charred by the increasing heat of his contact, so the words came out husky and too sensual.

“You know what I think?”

That we should stop touching?

“Apparently I have no idea because we’re actively drowning, and you don’t seem to care.”

“Again, you’re right here beside me.”

“I came after you!”

“Look around, Penelope. What do you see?”

“Rain. Lots of it.” My arm was still in his, so I tried pulling him forward again. I shouldn’t have been out there alone with him. It was dangerous. I might do something I’d regret, because this heat actively building inside me was scrambling my brain cells.

He spun me around, held my shoulders so I faced away from him. He whispered in my ear, “Stop thinking of this as the thing that ruined the ride. Stop looking at the water as something you need to escape. It’s a dance. Each and every cold drop on your skin is refreshing, like the best spa you could ever visit, and the smell . . . oh, the smell. That smell is summer. An entire season summed up in one downpour. And everyone else is missing it.”

His breath swirled against my ear, eliciting more heat, like a flare in steadily burning fire. For several seconds, time was suspended in the drops falling all around us.

“So,” he went on, “I’m thinking you didn’t follow the others, because you wanted this. Right here, where you don’t know what to expect next, but you don’t care because you’re free.”

What was he saying?

I watched the red, orange, yellow, and green powder that covered us both cascade down our bodies like a discarded sunset.