Rain

            “How’s it going?”

            I took my headphones off and looked over at Lily, standing by the bed.

            “It’s okay,” I said.

            “You’ve just been like, staring,” Lily laughed. “Tired?”

            I shook my head. “Just looking at the rain,” I said.

            We looked at each other for a moment in our dimly lit bedroom.

            “Are you okay?” Theo asked.

            “Yeah,” I replied.

            “Are you sure?” Lily asked.

            I shrugged.

            The two of them exchanged a glance. It felt like their dynamic was different than before, like there was less tension between them.

            “You can tell me,” Lily said, reaching out and touching my hand. “Whatever you’re holding in, just let it out.”

            Theo placed his hand on ours, and I felt it connect the three of us, somehow.

            “I just feel a little… hopeless,” I admitted, “about the future.”

            “How come?” Lily asked.

            “I’m scared,” I told her, “I feel like everytime it feels like maybe things are okay, everything comes crumbling apart. I can already feel myself unraveling, a little bit, and I… I don’t want to lose you guys.”

            Lily frowned, but she didn’t reassure me. She just held her hand on mine and nodded slowly.

            “I’m scared, too,” she said quietly.

            The ambiguity of her words made me uncomfortable. Was she scared about me unraveling? About me pushing her away? Or… something else?

            “Is there anything we can do to make it better?” Theo asked.

            I shrugged. “Maybe temporarily, but—”

            “I’ll settle for temporary,” Lily said. “Something is better than nothing.”

            Theo nodded.

            I laughed.

            “You guys worry too much, it’s not worth the effort,” I told them.

            “We’ll decide what’s worth the effort,” Lily said.

            I shook my head. “What is there to even do?” I asked.

              “Anything,” Lily replied, “everything. I don’t care. I’ll keep trying until one of us dies.”

            I looked at her and our eyes met for only a moment before I looked away. My gaze returned to the window, to the rain outside.

            “Want to go outside?” Theo suggested.

            “Into the rain?” I asked.

            He nodded.

            “Why not?” he asked.

            I looked back at Lily, and she shrugged.

            “Why not?” she repeated.

            And so, without getting dressed, Lily and I made our way down the much-too-narrow stairs of the apartment in our t-shirts and shorts. I had slipped on a pair of flip flops, while Lily was fully barefoot, tiptoeing carefully as we made our way to the base of the stairs. We cracked the door open, and the dull pitter patter of the rain against the side of the building was accompanied by the howling of the wind, the sharper acoustics of rain pattering onto cars, pavement, trash cans, and the distant slosh of car tires spitting up rainwater as they drove across the wet streets.

            I took a breath of the fresh rain air, wet and cold as it entered my lungs. I inhaled it hungrily before pushing gently past Lily.

            I walked out, eyes closed, as the cold water began to cascade down upon my head. It was freezing cold, and the wind only made things worse. It felt like needles descending from the sky. I could feel my clothes become drenched in seconds, the wind cutting straight through my shirt and freezing me to my core.

            “Elise!” Lily shouted.

            I turned around, not realizing I had walked straight into the middle of the street. Lily pointed at her neck, then at me.

            “Your headphones!” she called out.

            I touched my neck and realized that the headphones were drenched in the freezing cold rain. I pulled them off, studying them in my hands.

            I could see the freezing pellets of water splattering and crawling into the cracks and seams. I unplugged the headphones and held them out in front of me for a moment before letting go, allowing them to fall to the ground.

            They sounded so cheap, so plastic, as they clattered against the street.

            I found myself laughing for some reason as Theo came to join me in the rain. He stared up at the sky, his arms crossed, wincing as the water soaked through his clothes as well.

            “Holy f-fucking shit!” Lily yelled over the sound of the storm, arms held close to her chest, taking tentative steps out into the rain. “It’s fucking f-freezing out here!”

            “Yeah!” I yelled back, surprised by the enthusiasm in my voice.

            Theo turned to look toward me, and our eyes locked for a moment. He looked happy. Genuinely happy.

            Lily had run out to us, now laughing, and pointed to my hip.

            “What about your phone?” she asked.

            I pulled it out and looked at it. It had been with me since middle school. A gift from my mom, so they knew I was safe.

            I shrugged and tossed it out onto the street next to the headphones. It made an even sadder sound than the headphones, a cheap crunch, barely audible over the percussive orchestra of rain.

            Lily came up close to me, and I could feel the faint warmth from her body as she shook from the cold. I loved the way her hair looked, wet and matted, as she looked at me with a goofy grin on her face.

            “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice wavering as she shivered.

            “Holding a funeral,” I said, my voice surprisingly clear, surprisingly stable. “To the past.”

            She reached up to her face and after some struggling, pulled her black earrings out, and tossed them into a pile with my phone and headphones.

            “To the past,” Lily said, laughing.

            Once we had gotten inside, showered, and changed clothes, Sera emerged from her bedroom and gave us a weird look.

            “Did you guys go outside?” she asked.

            “Yeah,” I said. “Just stood in the rain for a little while.”

            Sera’s eyes narrowed. “Dude, isn’t it fucking freezing outside?”

            “It is,” Lily answered for me, still toweling her hair.

            Sera looked between the two us like we were crazy, because we were crazy.

            “By the way, did one you guys eat my mushrooms?”

            We both burst into laughter. Sera looked at us like a concerned parent.

            “Elise—” Lily said, buckling over. “Elis—”

            “Elise made dinner last night,” Theo finished.

            Sera’s eyes narrowed as she looked at me.

            “You didn’t.”

            “I did.”

            Lily fell onto the floor laughing.

            “E—”

            “What were you up to?” I asked, interrupting her. “Homework?”

            “Gaming,” she replied.

            “With Matty?” Lily asked, still on the floor.

            She nodded, looking at me hesitantly. Lily looked at me too.

            “Do you guys wanna do something?” I asked.

            Sera glanced over at the clock.

            “Isn’t it like, bedtime?” Sera asked.

            “What do you want to do?” Lily asked, sitting up.

            I thought about it for a moment. “I kind of want a burger.”

            Lily looked at Sera expectantly.

            “You two are literally going to kill me,” she said, laughing. A moment later, she sighed. “YEAH, FINE, let’s go get some damn burgers.”

            And so we drove in the freezing rain to one of the only places that was still open past midnight, and we ordered burgers. We sat in the car, eating our burgers in the parking lot as the rain pounded on the roof above us, with Sera and Lily hotboxing the car with enough smoke that I thought it might set off a nearby fire alarm.

            Exhausted and content, Lily drove us home in silence. I stared out the window during the short car ride, watching as the rain spattered and streaked down the glass, refracting the neon street signs. I loved the feeling of the cold glass against my skin, loved how warm and comfortable it felt in the car with my friends, loved everything I felt in that moment.

            It was late when we got home, the kind of late where you don’t bother checking the clock because you’re better off not knowing what time it is. And after getting ready for bed, brushing my teeth with energy I didn’t know I had left in my body, I settled down into bed with Lily.

            “Have fun?” she asked.

            “Yeah,” I replied. “Thanks.”

            I looked over at the desk. I could see the pale moonlight illuminating my glistening cell phone and headphones, both of which had surely been destroyed by the rain.

            I wondered if moving on from the past was really so simple.

            I wanted to believe for a moment that it was.

            “Goodbye,” I whispered to my dad.

            “Thank you,” I added before I drifted off to sleep.