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Pushing open the bathroom door I walk through the bar, slipping between the crowd and find myself on the street. A gust of wind travels down the long strip mall. Everything is dark, all the other stores closed for the night. Closing my eyes, I inhale deeply and smell the rain.
It’s coming.
The city hibernates all year waiting for the rain to penetrate the hard-shelled soil, breaking it open, and once it does, everything comes to life.
A lightning bolt stretches across the sky just as the wind picks up, blowing the hair from my neck and cooling it. I start to walk down the block on the way back to my car, passing a darkened record store when I hear a voice call out behind me. “Hey!”
Without even turning around, I know it’s him, the singer with the velvet voice and the kissable lips. The wind continues to blow like a freight train down the block, picking up the edges of my shirt and blowing my hair across my face. Turning around, I see he’s standing on the sidewalk, looking every bit as delicious as he did on stage. I wait for him to look around me, to the person whose attention he was really trying to get, but he just stares at me the same way he did in the bar, like he’s trying to unearth my secrets.
Caught in the spider’s web of his soulful eyes, I’m unable to move.
The silence is broken when the sky opens and dumps heavy sheets of rain, plastering my hair to my face and my shirt against my body in less than a minute. Moving towards me, each step closing the distance between us, the bashful smile on his face causes my pulse to quicken, and the blood rushing in my ears becomes the only sound I can hear. When he reaches me, I can see the pulse in his neck as his hand grips my waist, guiding me into the alcove of the darkened record store, taking us out of the rain. With his hand still on my waist, the heat from it makes me shiver.
His close proximity takes the breath out of me, and I watch as the water drips from his hair onto his full lips, leaving a trail down his chin. In the dim light of the alcove with only the streetlamp to illuminate his face, I see the green flecks in his brown eyes as he searches mine. They pull me in like a magnet; intense and beautiful. My palms press against his chest slowly gathering his shirt between my fingers, all while my heart pounds in my chest, because this stranger drew me in the minute I laid eyes on him in the bar. It’s as if he is a tiny piece of my past buried long ago now being unearthed.
Maybe it’s the wind, the way it wraps itself around us, pushing us together rather than pulling us apart, but I feel as though this is a chance I need to take. How many times in the last eighteen years had I truly taken something just for myself? And how many more times in my lifetime will I get a chance to choose something for myself?
In the small space between us, a question lingers in the air.
Can I kiss you?
Wanting it and doing it are two different things, because once I cross that line, will I be taking a step backwards? Looking at his beautiful rain-soaked face, I know the answer.
The reach is slow and tantalizing as his lips move dangerously close to mine. Hesitant and seductive, heady, and dangerous, I brush my nose along his, feeling his breath against my lips before taking a taste. His kiss is like a shot of bourbon, sweet and smooth with hints of caramel and vanilla, with no burn, and no regret. My back hits the wall of the record store as he steps forward, deepening the kiss, a moan escaping between us. This kiss causes my body to come alive like the desert reacting to the rain.
His hands slip underneath my shirt, skimming along my stomach before drawing my leg around his waist. Pressing his hips further into me causes an ache deep in my belly that spreads between my thighs. It’s the kind of ache that draws out all reason, collapses any hesitation, and makes you feral for more.
I don’t know this man.
I’ve never seen him before in my life.
But there’s a long dormant beast inside of me that stretches and unfurls, awakened by his kiss.
It’s wild and reckless like the monsoon happening around us, but I can’t seem to stop myself.
If I feel this way with just a kiss…
I can only imagine what it would be like to take this further.
The problem is, I don’t want to just imagine it.
In this little dark corner of Mill Avenue, hidden in the alcove of the record store safe from the rain, I feel more alive than I have in a very long time.
4
LET IT BURN
In the Air Tonight by In This Moment
“Where do you live?” I ask breathlessly, holding him back with just a press of my palm to his chest.
His hands grip my hair as he whispers, “Just a couple of blocks over.”
Swallowing hard, I bite my lip as I nod. Feeling as if I’m holding onto a lightning bolt, I’m equally afraid to let go as I am of being burned.
Looking out towards the street, the pavement glistens with rain, cars splash puddles of water as they drive by, and I can hear the nearby chatter of people running down the sidewalk. The rain has woken up the city and it’s teeming with life.
“It’s still raining,” he says, turning back to me, and I notice the dimples on his cheeks as he smiles.
