Come In Out Of The Rain
By Clare London
“What’s he doing now?”
I peered over Ellie’s blonde, curl-tousled head. We were both staring out of her living room window, watching her front path. The rain was falling more heavily now, blurring the horizon, a curtain of disorientation, falling in folds and swathes onto the lawn like untethered stage curtains. With no audience, except us.
“He’s just standing there.” Her trembling words misted up the inside of the window. “What’s he waiting for, Paddy?”
“I don’t know, sweetie.” Matt was sort of a mystery to me, even after all these years. Ellie’s big brother, my next-door neighbour. Best friends at school, then a teenaged partner in crime. We’d both stayed local, got jobs, played sports, drank ourselves silly at parties… oh, and came out to our respective families the same week.
And now? Everything to me.
I should tell him so, some time.
Ellie gave a half-hidden sob. “You think it’s to do with…?”
She didn’t need to finish that sentence.
“I’m sure it is,” I said gently. “You just have to give him time.” I wasn’t judging, I wasn’t measuring. Hell, we all had our coping strategies, and Matt’s was precious to him.
“But we all miss her,” she said, rather tartly. Her little mouth made an O shape in the window mist.
“Sure.” The pain twisted in my chest too. “Matt just needs to do it his way.”
“He should come in now. He’ll catch his death.” It was such a perfect echo of her gran’s phrase that the tears pricked my eyes. “You must go out and talk to him, Paddy!”
“I… me? What?” Well, it wouldn’t be because of my advanced verbal skills, apparently. “You’re his sister. He’ll listen to you.”
“No way,” she said. More than a bit frightening how forceful a nine-year-old could be, and I was a good ten years older. “He’s in love with you. That’s what he needs.”
“I…? Huh?” Wow, the articulation genie had really passed me by.
“Go on.” She pushed me toward the door, her little hands surprisingly fierce on my shoulders, even reaching up on tiptoes. “Borrow his coat. Go on!”
“He’s in love with me?” I blurted out at last.
And then I was out on the front porch, the door slammed shut behind me, only one arm shoved into Matt’s raincoat. Which was always going to be too small for me, by the way.
The cold hit me at once. My breath huffed out little pillows of warm air. The wind blew the rain against me, and my jeans and shoes were quickly sodden. I glanced at Matt. He was still in his slippers.
“Matt? It’s Paddy.” Well, duh. The rain spattered the bushes in a muted tap dance, and I tugged the raincoat closed as far as it’d reach. “Come inside, man. You’re not dressed for this.”
I was sure he heard me, but he didn’t reply. Instead, he flung out his arms and dropped back his head. The rain must have hammered on his face like little needles, but he didn’t retreat.
Okay. Plan B. I hopped down and squelched across the grass to join him. I took a while to study the patterns the rain was making on the path, then I asked, “Does it help?”
Still silent, he nodded.
“What works best—the sound? The cold? The wet?”
It was another minute before he spoke. “The helplessness.”
Oh. “Talk to me, buddy. I want to be here for you.”
“You are.”
Then… nothing more. I watched as the rain kept falling, Matt’s face turned to the skies. He was saturated from head to foot by now.
“She loved you, Matt. She loved us all. And we loved her. I’m missing her like shit.”
He huffed. “She was, like, your grandma too, right?”
I huffed too. We were like bookends. Was that Ellie tapping impatiently on the window behind us? “She always welcomed me, your orphaned mate. I kind of adopted your family.”
Matt gave the softest laugh. “I liked sharing families. Still do.”
“Gran would’ve wanted things to go on like that.”
“Without her.”
“Yeah. But it happens. She was in so much bloody pain, for so long. Seemed she was glad to let go of that.” Maybe I’d had more practice at coping with loss. Maybe I wasn’t as sensitive.
Tell that to the tears now running down my cheeks.
Matt dragged in a big, shuddering breath. He clamped his arms around his body, as if only now realising how cold and wet he was. “You’re right, Paddy. You always know the right bloody things to say.”
I wasn’t going to argue right now, with a small river running down between my shoulder blades, but I wasn’t so sure. I just wanted him back into the warm. Back where I could hold him.
I put a hand on his shoulder. “You think you’ll be coming in soon?”
“Yes,” he said. His voice sounded different. Calmer. More ordinary.
Thank God.
“Has it, like, worked?” I asked. “Whatever the helplessness did for you?”
“It helps me let go, Paddy. Like you say Gran did.”
At last, he turned to face me, big eyes framed by damp lashes, water running off the end of his nose, plump lips white and chapped with cold. A face more familiar than my own—I’ve never spent much time in front of the mirror—and definitely more treasured.
“Oh, Matt. You’re so…”
He shook his head. “’S okay. I’ll be fine. I needed to think, to let it pass through me. I know I can’t stop death—but out here, I don’t have to worry why, or what I should do instead, or how I should behave, or what I should say to everyone feeling sorry for my loss, or whether I should have loved her more, cherished her more, done all the things I never did, that’ve all been churning away in my bloody head, y’know—?”
That was enough for me. I was bawling like a baby by now, though you’d never have spotted which were rain drops and which were tears. I grabbed him and pulled him to me. I may have been a bit rough. He may not have cared. When I kissed his cold lips, he grabbed hold of my hair and kissed me back. There was no shock, no resistance. Just something that should have happened long before. Rainwater ran between my teeth.
Like I cared.
“Don’t leave me, Paddy.”
“Never will, buddy. I love you, Matt. Always have.”
I kissed him again, my hair plastered over my eyes, his shirt sticking to his ribs like a second skin. A testament to the resilience of youth that I could feel us both getting excited, despite our impression of drowned rats. He was smiling, grinning, gripping me tight. Life was warm inside us, despite everything else.
That was definitely Ellie hammering on the window now, and I could hear her laughter. The door opened behind us, and her voice piped up.
“I’ve got towels. And Paddy can make hot chocolate. For us all, please?”
And we ran together to the door, hands clasped, in perfect step.
Biography
Clare London is an author who took her pen name from the city where she lives and loves. She writes mainly contemporary romance and drama, often with a healthy serving of British wit, and juggles her left/right brain impulses with her day job as an accountant. Her published novels are in the male/male romance genre, but she’s also very fond of reading and writing novellas and short stories, because she’s always admired fellow authors who can tell a full story in limited words. She’s been independently publishing since 2014.
website: www.clarelondon.com
facebook: www.facebook.com/clarelondon
booklist: books2read.com/clarelondon
Wrekin Writers 