Rain

Thunder crashed in the distance as I walked home through the rain. My jacket was soaked through, and I could tell I was going to wake up in the morning with a cold. My phone was dead in my pocket, and I found it somewhat unlikely that it would be turning on again. Without it, I had no watch, and I never had a particularly good sense for time passing, so I had long since lost track of how long I had been walking. My legs were tired. It had been a long day.

It wouldn't be too much longer, however. I could see my house starting to appear in the distance. I fished around in my jacket pockets and managed to pull out my house keys, but they near immediately slipped between my fingers and fell to the ground. I sighed, but kneeled down and carefully picked them back up, curling my fingers around them into a fist to make sure I wouldn't drop them again. As I stood back up, a car drove by and a huge splash of water soaked through me, like a wave crashing into the shore. I wiped my face and kept walking.

The moon hung high in the sky as I approached my door. I'd had to start walking when my car battery died miles back. I'd called a tow company, but they told me they were extremely backed up today and that while they could take my car, the tow yard was in the opposite direction of my home and they couldn't give me a ride. At the time it hadn't been raining, so I wasn't too worried about it. It wasn't supposed to rain that day. But it happened, and I just had to deal with it. No one who had passed me was willing to stop and help me out. But that's just what kind of world we live in.

The lock stuck as I tried to open my door. It was a typical problem, and it didn't bother me, even in the rain. I was far passed being bothered by such a small difficulty at that point. It took about four tries before I managed to get the door open, and I was finally out of the rain. I closed the door and stripped out of my soaking clothes, discarding them haphazardly in a pile by the door. I sat on the couch in the living room and put my legs up, letting them rest after who knows how many hours.

Only a few minutes had passed before I heard steps coming down the stairs. I looked up to see Sarah standing on the bottom stair just staring at me. I pointed at the pile of clothes, and she looked at them and nodded. Without a word she came over to me, sat on the couch, and leaned down to kiss me. I kissed her back and put an arm around her, and she laid down with me and slowly ran her hands across my skin to help warm me up. We fell asleep like that, leaving our troubles to be dealt with in the morning.