Rainy Days

Yesterday I deleted my writing prompts blog Search Engine Stories. I felt sad about it in some ways because I enjoy writing to prompts and loved reading the stories of the other writers, but it had just become too time-consuming for me.

Anyhoo, deleting the blog has left me with over 200 prompts that still need to be turned into stories. So I thought I’d write a story every Friday based on one of the prompts. These prompts are real search terms used to get to this blog.

The prompt I am using today is PHOTOS OF YOU AND ME IN THE RAIN.

Here is my story…..

[Image by kovalvs at DeviantART]

I know now why it didn’t work between Eric and me. It was the rain. Every photo we have from that time was taken in the rain; even the one that guy took in the park as we were walking away.

It rained a lot when we were together. Unprecedented wet weather, it said on the radio. The skies were grey for months. I don’t remember seeing Eric under a blue sky once.

Even though it rained a lot we never seemed to have an umbrella. We walked a lot through dark, wet nights, sitting shivering in restaurants or huddling in doorways waiting for the worst of it to pass.

Eric wore jeans that dragged on the ground. They left muddy stains on the living room rug. I scrubbed them clean but it took them days to dry. I couldn’t open a window due to the heaviness of the rain. I smelled the dampness of the rug for days, cursing Eric’s scruffy style.

We needed a life raft after all that rain. Dazed on endless roiling skies. We needed a photograph taken on a sunny day where the yellow light fell soft as summer, making our skin glow, reminding us that one day the rain would end and the sunshine would return.

When photographs are looked at years later they hold stories – maybe secrets – that weren’t immediately apparent. The image captured on that day, frozen for good, reveals so much with the passage of time.

The rain, the rain. It fell around us like a second skin. Confining us to closeness. Making us exchange secrets we should have left unspoken.

There were no sunny day scenes. Eating ice creams on the beach. Playing frisbee in the park. Posing with silly straw hats by the river. It was just us, stripped bare while the rain fell.

We sat in cafes, in bars, discussing the minutiae of our lives. There was no hiding from the truth in the rain that beat on the roofs like the steps of a little chicken.

When the sun finally came out we were unprepared. Our skin was pale in the bright light. The distractions were overwhelming – birdsong, children running in the street, flowers opening their faces to the sun. We found there was nothing else to say.

The last photo I have of Eric shows him walking away, doused in sunshine. He is smiling. There is no rain. It is my favourite.