Short Story by Lexie Sloane
The storm woke him. Electric white flashing through metal blinds, casting stark stripes across white walls. But the crack and answering rumble didn’t bother him half as much as the emptiness that hung in the room.
Sawyer sat up, rubbing a hand over his stubbly face, and stared at the imprint on the mattress next to him. Replays flickered like solicitous movie trailers, matching time with the echoes of thunder. Soft lips, smooth skin, giggles. Goosebumps, gasps, and groans. Where the hell had she even come from?
Nothing about the previous night fell into his realm of predictability––not the beautiful stranger plopping herself at his table, nor his ease when she reached across the wood surface to snag a sweet potato fry from his plate.
“Just pretend we’re a thing. Just for a minute, okay?” She blinked long dark lashes at him and her teeth cut the fry in half as if it were his boundaries.
A scan of the crowded restaurant offered little clarification. Whoever the show was for must’ve stayed, because so did she. And what surprised him most? He’d liked it––fascinated by the burst of color across from him, mahogany hair falling over a low-cut pink dress, her greenish-amberish eyes drifting over his white button up.
“What are you listening to?” she asked.
He’d paused the audio playback on his phone and removed his earbuds.
Should he have told her?
Sawyer kicked off the white sheets and set bare feet on the rental-tan carpet, his head falling into propped hands.
Idiot.
He dug his fingers into his scalp like that would shove those feelings out of sight and mind. Everything seemed so bland now that she’d been there, the space hollow, the quiet agonizing. He’d never cared what shade the sheets were, or the pattern of his bedspread. Blankets were just blankets. Functional. Necessary.
Who cared if breakfast was always oatmeal, and lunch a turkey sandwich? The closet full of white shirts served their purpose. After the slow ooze from one day into the next of coding and meetings pressed between long drives, it was better if he didn’t think about it. Wake up and start again. Don’t want more. If he didn’t think about it, then it didn’t bother him.
Shit. Now it bothered him.
Disappointment… like death and taxes.
White flashes highlighted his discontentment across the wall, punctuated by the low rumble of a moody sky.
Why leave now? She’d stayed when he presented an OxiClean pen for the ketchup stain on her dress, when their clothes hit the floor, stain remover forgotten. She’d stayed as he kissed her all the way to his bedroom, filling the space with her own prismatic spectrum, as they’d found their rhythm and made their own heat. For some incomprehensible reason, she’d chosen him.
She’d stayed when they caught their breaths, enjoying the languid aftermath, as he’d traced her naked curves with the tips of his fingers. Then she’d pressed herself against him like a familiar lover, painting possibilities in his mind, rekindling old dreams of a naïve boy before the merciless realities of life had consumed them.
The room felt cold now.
He shouldn’t have let her stay through dinner. She’d talked nonstop.
Sawyer pivoted to witness the first drop of rain hit his window. With luck, the inevitable downpour would soak into the parched California soil and fuel some little strain of life, because he sure as hell didn’t have one.
He shoved off the bed and dragged a hand over his head, back to front, not caring how his hair stuck straight out.
A blue shirt? he thought, finding white suddenly boring and predictable. The room seemed to sizzle with an invisible charge, lifting the fine hairs on his arms.
He fished gym pants from a drawer and shoved his legs in them, tying the drawstring as he passed through the doorway into the rest of his apartment. Weekend or not, he was up now––might as well pay homage to his one reliable roommate––laundry.
A thick static bolt lit the room, highlighting every detail, both familiar and not, and his step faltered. The crumpled white work shirt was not on the floor where he’d left it.
She sat, crossed-legged on the carpet by the large picture window, her forehead pressed into the pane, her breath fogging the glass. Dark tangles tumbled down her back and over his wrinkled button up.
Sawyer smothered the impulse to hope. Her presence was not a promise. Promises meant nothing to people these days, anyway.
But as he watched her watch the storm, her thirst and wonder crept over the shadowed crevices of his couch, long imbued with dismal pessimism, reaching for him. The pull drew him in, natural and disturbing as the turbulence outside his window.
He stepped back.
Then she turned, her eyes landing on his face, that utterly kissable mouth spreading into a wide smile. In that singular moment, every color, every feeling rushed at him, shocking him out of complacency.
Bright white truth sizzled, grounding him to his spot as he looked on at the woman he’d only just met. She’d appeared like the storm, unexpected. And like the storm, she’d trickled into his withered existence overnight, arousing ambition, bringing color back to his world. Only now, he realized how thirsty he’d been.
She’d stayed, and he’d buy colorful shirts and make eggs for breakfast to keep it that way. Sawyer surveyed the room, wrapped in a thought, crouching at their pile of discarded clothes. He dug his phone from the back pocket of his pants, cueing the podcast from the night before as he came to the window.
“This will go well with the storm,” he told her, folding his legs under him and joining her on the floor.
He hit play, and together, they watched the rain.
And she stayed.
LEXIE SLOANE 