23
“WHERE’S JODI?” I ask Margaret as she’s walking me back through her house to the front door at the end of our session.
“Taking some much-needed time off.” She gives me a dry look.
“Apparently, I’m something of a pill.”
“Hard to swallow, but ultimately good for your health?” I ask.
She laughs, grabs my arm affectionately as we reach the door, and she pulls it open. “Now, you’re prepared for the storm, aren’t you?”
“The storm?” I step out under yet another late-afternoon scorcher of a Georgia day, but note that while we were inside, the cirrus clouds that were hanging along the horizon have been replaced by great dark masses, the wind ripping through the front garden, making everything shiver.
“News is tracking it,” she says. “Should get to us tomorrow, and it’s not a hurricane yet, but…you know how these things are.”
“June through November,” I agree, scanning the sky one more time.
“I guess you forgot what it’s like when it rains, out in Hollywood,” she
teases me.
I smile. “I did, actually.”
“Well, you’re welcome to come hunker down here, if you want,” she says. “We’ve got a guy coming to cover the windows and everything tomorrow. You’d better make sure there’s a plan at your place.”
“I’ll check with the rental management company,” I promise, and then she sends me on my way.
I haven’t heard from Hayden since we got back into town, and as I park at the grocery store and head inside, I debate texting him.
The winds have already amped up further since I left Margaret’s, the rain finally starting to hit. The grocery store is not only packed but thoroughly picked over. I grab a jug of water, some candles and batteries, and the kinds of snacks that won’t require a refrigerator or a microwave, just in case.
When I get back to the house, someone from the rental company—a middle-aged man with a chest-length brown beard—is there, in an anorak, swinging his toolbox into the bed of his pickup. “Tried to call you,” he shouts over the pouring rain as I run with my grocery bags toward him.
“Sorry,” I shout back.
“Got you all situated.” He jerks his chin toward the plywood he’s fixed
over the bungalow’s windows.
“Thank you so much!” I shout back.
“You should be good here,” he says. “Not supposed to turn into a hurricane, just a big storm.”
“Got it.” I nod, shivering in the cold as the rain pounds against my skin, plastering my clothes to me.
“I’ll let you get inside,” he says, and I thank him again as he gets in his truck, then run the rest of the way to the front door and let myself in.
The house is dark with all its windows blacked out, and for the first time since I got here, I’m cold. I peel off my shirt and throw on the first sweatshirt I come across, then run around the house flicking on lamps, stopping by the bathroom to wring my hair out over the tub.
Afterward, I change into dry sweatpants and clean, dry socks and unload the groceries.
I find the emergency lanterns in the linen closet and check the batteries, replacing the ones that are dead, and I arrange the pillar candles in the bathroom, living room, and kitchen, just in case, with lighters or matches by each of them.
It’s been years since I’ve been caught in a storm like this, and I’m trying to run through the checklist I used to know by heart, as a kid.
I double-check that the fire extinguisher is under the kitchen sink, and I find a first aid kit in the bathroom, then gather my passport and driver’s license and put them by the door—all things that seemed overkill to me when I was a teenager, given how many storms we’d weathered without any real danger or damage.
But that was back then, when I had parents to watch out for me, and a house that was an hour from the coast. This is different.
My stomach growls miserably, and I decide to make myself a veggie burger while I’ve still got electricity. After I’ve eaten, I debate taking a shower before deciding the thunder has already moved too close. I settle instead for the world’s fastest face washing, then smooth some retinol and moisturizer over my cheeks and forehead before going back to the living room.
I flop down on the couch and turn on the TV, then realize I must’ve left my phone in the other room when I changed. I pad back to the bedroom and grab it off the foot of the bed, only to find the screen dark and unresponsive.
Shit. No wonder the maintenance guy couldn’t get a hold of me.
I yank my charger from the wall and take it back into the living room with me, plugging my phone in right beside the couch.
On TV, The Real Housewives of Miami is playing, the volume nearly all the way down. The house rumbles as a pocket of thunder draws nearer, and the wind howls against the plywood-covered windows.
My phone finally has enough power to turn on, and messages start buzzing in, one after another, along with a couple of voicemails. When I see a text from Margaret, I tap it open immediately.
At that precise second, there’s a loud cheep sound from the kitchen, and the power goes out, plunging me into dark.
I only manage to read You’re still welcome to come here, if you’d feel safe before my phone shuts off.
I’m abruptly reminded of what I missed from the storm-prep checklist: Charge your devices while you still can.
I fumble through the dark to the nearest lantern and click it on, bathing the room in pale light, then using it to make my way around the space,
lighting the pillar candles. Without the low drone of the TV, the wind’s shriek seems louder, more intimidating.
I need to be judicious with my computer battery since my phone’s dead, but I figure now might not be the worst time to double-check that the storm hasn’t been upgraded to a hurricane. I dig my laptop out of the bag by the front door, then fling myself onto the couch, only to realize my mistake.
Another mistake.
Without electricity, there’s no internet.
You’re worrying for nothing, I tell myself. It’s just a storm. I’ve been through hundreds. I just need something to distract myself with.
Work usually does the trick. I can read through my notes by candlelight, brainstorm a little bit.
I pad back to grab my notebook from my bag, and right as I’m nearing the door, something slams into it from the outside, making me jump and yelp. Two more swift thumps follow the first, and then two more.
Almost like…
Is someone knocking?
I run over to it and push my eye against the peephole to find a tall, darkly dressed figure hunched against the sideways sheet of rain, his fist thwacking at the door.
I swing it open, and the wind and precipitation gust inside, pushing Hayden forward.
“What are you doing?” I yell over the onslaught.
His eyes are wild, his drenched hair tucked behind his ears, and his clothes absolutely sopping.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and in this context, I’m so confused that all I can
do is shout back, “What?”
“I’m sorry!” he yells.
I shake my head and explain what I really meant when I said what: “What the fuck were you thinking coming out in this?” I grab his jacket as I step back into the house, pulling him with me. It takes both of us to get the door shut and latched, and then I round on him again.
“You could’ve been killed!” I rage.
“You weren’t answering your phone!” he says. “Margaret couldn’t get a hold of you either. What was I supposed to do?”
I stare at him for a second, his face torqued, rivulets racing down the sharp planes of his face, joining the absolute pool at our feet. A couple of weeks ago, I would’ve mistaken the furrow in his brow for cold irritation, but now it couldn’t be more obvious to me.
He was scared. He was worried for me. The same way that, on Sunday night in the car, he’d been worried for me. Not just annoyed, not judging me for how I handle things with my mom, but worried.
And I don’t know what to say to any of it, so I just pitch myself at him.
I fling my arms around him, pressing up onto my tiptoes, and within a second or two, his arms come around me too, and we just hold on to each other, the rainwater from his clothes and skin seeping through my second change of clothes of the day.
I don’t care. He’s shivering in my arms, his left hand wrapped around his right wrist at the small of my back. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs again, against my temple.
“Me too.” I shake my head as I tear myself away from him. The flicker of the nearest candles catches the edge of his jaw, but otherwise, his face is caught in the dark. “You were right.”
“No, you were,” he says. “There’s stuff I should explain.”
“Let me find you dry clothes first,” I say, pulling him deeper into the house. He waits in the living room while I duck into the bedroom with the lantern. I find my biggest T-shirt and pair of sweatpants, along with a pair of socks I think Theo must’ve left at my apartment ages ago, because they’re definitely not a women’s size 9. They are, however, the most comfortable socks I’ve ever worn.
“There are towels in the bathroom,” I tell him when I emerge. I tuck the stack of clothes into his elbow and hand him the lantern, but he doesn’t move right away.
Instead he stares at me, the bottom halves of our faces monstrously lit by the lantern, and his somehow just as beautiful as ever.
Then he takes the back of my neck in his free hand and kisses me, deeply, slowly, hungrily, and it’s been too long since his mouth was last against mine, but even then, it wasn’t like this.
It was feverish and desperate, like we were both trying to get as far as we could before reality set in and we had to stop.
Now it’s thorough, a deep stroke of his tongue into my mouth, a purposeful slide of it over mine. Not an accidental release of pent-up lust but an intentional exploration, of each other’s topography, of what feels good, of the sound he makes when I bite his lip, and the way my spine curves inward when he traces mine with the tip of his tongue.
My bones seem to melt, every muscle softening into him, his hair slick between my fingertips and the chill of his skin waking up every nerve from my collarbone to my thighs.
And then it’s over, with one last sweet brush of his lips on mine and a quick tightening of his hand before he releases it and walks into the bathroom.
I stand there not only thrumming but also trying and failing to wipe the ridiculous smile from my face.
