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Electric blue flickers against the hard black of the night while the echoing rumble of thunder speaks only of discontent and distance. Rain lassoes against the windows and the wind wheezes in the solid frames like the breath of ghosts. The bad weather has been on and off all day, just like the ebb and flow of emotion that has been drifting between them over the last few hours.
Eyes closed against the onslaught of the wild outdoors, sleep evades him as he wonders when all the tension will break. Everything in their relationship of late is so elastic: close and impenetrable one moment and cracked apart the next. Short of spelling it out with a quick takes a murderer to know one, sweetheart (which is probably what he’d been aiming for earlier anyway), he’s not sure what else he can do to spell out the glaring, horrid truth. Patience has never been his strong point, yet somehow he knows it will just be another storm to weather. And he’d had quite enough of those, to be honest.
The soft brush of her lashes against his bicep speaks of silent forgiveness until she finds a couple of sleep-soaked words. “You awake?”
“Hard not to be with all the racket,” he replies, thumb delicate at her forehead and sweeping at the silken strands of her hair.
“Nothin’ compared to Miami,” she muses, and feels a magnetic cut shift between their gazes, even in the blanketing dark. He catches the intent behind her eyes, the memory she’s conjuring between them like emotional magic, and feels a sudden heat flood his veins.
*****
Their reunion hadn’t been an easy one. It had taken him a while to gather the necessary funds for a transatlantic flight, and when he arrived in the US it had taken them time to repair all the pain from Christmas. She’d felt betrayed not only by his silence and the wrongful assumption that he’d been the one to tell Zoe about her infertility, and he was leaden with the weight of all the sickening charades he’d borne witness to. They were both a quiet team hurting from defeat as well as a powder keg waiting for a lit match.
On one quiet evening in early March, Sharon had lost her appetite and was staring at the colourful array of tacos in the middle of the table in Michelle’s kitchen. While Vicki crunched her way through her food and made notes for her upcoming college application, Sharon just sipped at her water and pressed her fingertips to her temples, trying to chase away a headache.
“What’s the matter, Sharon? Thought everything was back on with Dennis?” Michelle could always tell when her best friend was being affected by a man and cut straight to the chase.
“It is, yeah… it’s just…” Sharon was not used to being hesitant but was very aware that her younger sister was in earshot. Picking up on this unease, Michelle cleared her throat and addressed her daughter.
“Vicki, could you give us a minute, please?”
“Wish we were a normal family so I don’t have to miss out on all the gossip,” Vicki huffed in mock exasperation, adding a few more tacos to her own plate before getting up.
“Normal went out of the window the moment your Dad knocked me up.”
“Oh, please don’t, you’re just making it worse,” Vicki replied, face screwed up in displeasure as she reached the door and closed it behind her.
When their twin laughter at Vicki’s unease faded away, Michelle joined Sharon at the table, taking in the tiredness etched on her face even if she was tanned by the Florida sun.
“Well? Thought he was stayin’ with you now?”
“He is, yeah.” Sharon mapped imaginary lines on the tablecloth with her fingers, once again taking her time with her confession, stroking her hair behind her shoulder before she continued. “He’s also sleeping on my sofa.”
“Oh. And you weren’t the one insisting on that?”
Her gaze narrowed and she let out a wry chuckle. “You have seen Dennis, haven’t you, ‘Chelle?”
“Never as simple as that when you love someone though, is it?” Both women were old enough to know that lust by itself was not a foundation for a long-term relationship.
“It’s never been easy between us, what with Dad always trying to come between us and all that, but if there’s one thing we’ve never had an issue with, it’s sex.” Even when guilt had played a part in his feelings when they had been having an affair, it hadn’t deterred either of them from giving in.
“You should get married, we all know how it puts a stop to all that.”
“I’m tryin’ to be serious here, you’re not helpin’,” Sharon pleaded, even if she allowed herself a slight smile at Michelle’s candour.
“I know. This Zoe… she lied to him about bein’ pregnant, right?”
“Yeah. With a lot of encouragement from Dad.” It still seemed incredulous to Sharon that it had happened, that her father had been so keen to exploit her greatest pain.
“Well, then, it stands to reason that he associates sex with betrayal at the moment. She loved him, right? Yet still fed him a load of bullshit. I know we like to tell ourselves that testosterone overrules everything for men, but the hurt is probably the overriding factor at the moment.”
“It wasn’t me doin’ the hurtin’, though, ‘Chelle. I wouldn’t ever lie to him like that.” She knew Michelle was right, but it didn’t lessen the hurt.
“And he knows that, Shal, it’s just gonna take some time. Might just have to wait him out on this one.”
Sharon let out a sigh and watched as Michelle rumbled open one of the kitchen drawers, fishing around for something inside.
“In the meantime, I’ll leave you with these,” she explained, moving the plates around before settling a packet of batteries on the table.
*****
Mid-March was still a long way from hurricane season, and while it was warm and not yet oppressively humid, Dennis could not say that he was enjoying the weather. The warning for storms that trickled out from the TV almost felt like a relief, even if he knew it would do little to break the chokehold of heat. He watched the shift in the sky with interest, the way the traffic lights danced on their strings like a tightrope and the lush green of the palms began to rustle in the wind. Cerulean above soon merged into grey and the atmosphere became as oppressive as cling film.
He stepped over the threshold of Sharon’s apartment with the same mixture of emotions that he felt of late: hope, happiness, fear, love, uncertainty. A tangled web that he wasn’t sure how to break open. Relief, however, prevailed when he was greeted with the unambiguous welcome of her smile and the patient press of her kiss. Nothing demanding or questioning, just everything as it was.
“You okay?” The slow drag of her thumb at his jaw was as inquiring as her soft tone.
“Yeah. Think I just got back before the rain.”
She nodded, torn between the knowledge that they were safe together inside and yet wanting to see him embrace that edge of danger that he’d always been familiar with.
The clean white of the modern walls soon shimmered blue as the first streak of lighting tore through thick cloud. Rain pulsed in hard bursts and began to jump up from the surface of the swimming pool outside in the spacious shared area. Thunder roared above the hum of the air conditioning as the mid-afternoon grey turned darker as the storm rushed inland from the Atlantic.
He moved his eyes from the calm of her gaze and watched the natural chaos unfurl outside and felt a strange shift in his feelings. A knowing that he needed to regain something lost, something corroded away by all the hurt and the lies. Stepping out of his shoes, he was across the floor in seconds, hand barely hesitating at the glazed door before he was out in the open.
Warm rain and the sharp tang of chlorine blended in the heat-drenched air as the water soaked his shirt in seconds, darkening the denim of his shorts. His pulse thrummed with the steady squalls as they crashed into everything around him and another whip of hard blue light lit the dark in intermittent strobes.
She’s gonna think I’ve lost the fucking plot.
However, it wasn’t about losing anything. It was about getting back everything that had been taken away. Trust. Even feeling itself.
Droplets at the back of his neck made him shiver in spite of the cloying air and every zigzag that chased up his spine seemed to begin to purge away the layers of hurt and bring renewed energy.
Contrasts were all that prevailed once he stepped back inside. The cool rush of the aircon against his storm-heated body, him pale and drenched beside her, bronzed and warm. She searched for words and found none, overwrought with need to just be closer to him. Silent understanding passed with every heartbeat before they were pressed together in the centre of the room. Sweat, salt and ozone slid off him in waves as they held each other’s gaze for a long moment, before the questions ended and instinct overtook.
He mapped the edges of her sun-kissed skin with silent care, touch carrying the weight of the words that also escaped him, only the sharp intake of breath and the timpani-like boom of the thunder reverberating in the room. Relief flooded her senses when she felt the desirous insistence of his kiss that had been so painfully absent and responded in kind, hands roaming his saturated shirt with near-feverish intent.
The thick slap of his wet clothes hitting the hardwood floor permeated the air before she tasted the clean scent of rain at the centre of his chest and felt the life-affirming gallop of his heart beneath her hands. Dark was cut with intermittent shards of violet-blue as he laid her on the sofa with unending caution, shadowed curves heated under the press of his palms and the slick of his tongue.
Fresh water still dripped from his darkened hair and made her shudder as passion poured off him in endless waves, everything locked away now raw and open as he made love to her with an intensity that they both knew neither of them had forgotten.
Hours later, with the tail end of the storm still whispering through the trees and the blanket of night as secure as the soft bedsheets, he shifted onto an elbow to meet her desire-edged features, which were evident in the comforting softness of the bedside light.
“None of all this was ever about me not wanting you.” The low sincerity in his tone reached straight for her heart.
“I know. It’s OK for you to be hurt and to tell me as much,” she agreed, voice as soft as his had been.
“One hell of a storm,” he confessed, halfway between contented sigh and sensuous reminiscence before she pulled him in for a searing kiss, moving to smile against his jaw before whispering into the dark.
“Better make sure we’re still here for hurricane season, then, eh?”
******
In spite of the quick rush of remembering the reunion, sleep soon claims them both after a heavy day of accusations and recrimination. It’s not long, however, before he wakes to the curve of her hand at his shoulder and the sharp crack of splitting wood.
Instinct tells him it’s not the weather making the noise, and when he hears the unmistakable signs of chaos from downstairs, something low in his gut tells him he’s walking into the eye of the storm again.
Yet he knows they’ll weather this one out, too. He’s certain of it.