Driving In the Rain

They were in the car, it was her favorite place to be. Movement, to her, was everything. The speed with which the tires drifted along the slick cement roads, the golden droplets dotting the edges of the windshield, magical like fairy dust. She wanted it to be magical, so it was.

And so was he. She turned her head left to look at him. There was something about that day. This day that has happened so many times. It’s always a different car, a different him. A different her, even. Nonetheless, it was the same day, and it happened so many times. It was her favorite kind of day.

The rain always has something to do with it. There is more world when it rains. There’s more emotion and vigor and realness, like when he laughed and moved his hand over to the dial to turn up the volume as they slid to a slippery halt, a pool of bright maroon flooding that delicate little fairy dust. No thoughts about the future, no feelings about the past. What is now is now, and it’s coming down in cold rivulets from a dark, strange sky.

Most times, he had black hair. Sometimes, it was brown. Once, it was long and blond. I think he had glasses one of the times, sunglasses (even though it was raining). He was always driving. Sometimes, a BMW. A Toyota, a Volkswagen. A beat-up Honda Civic. And the music. Standing In The Rain. Constellations. August. Cherry Wine. Sparks. Favorite Crime. The artist, didn’t matter. The song, didn’t mean much. On any given day, those words and those tones could be good, could be bad, could hit, slap, cause tears to flow or be an instant skip. But in this car, in this moment, with him and the rain and the cold, slick roads lined with reds and greens, these were the best songs in the world. She could feel them in her gut, deep, deep down at home, a place that was there with him in that car, a place unparallelled, a place where she longed for in the depths in her soul which came out every time she found herself in the passagner seat, in a car, with a him at the wheel, with soft, soothing, comforting music, warm with not a care in the world, with a lightness in her heart and pure happiness running through her veins.

She would get home later that day and lay out on her bed and put on her headphones and elevate, back into that car next to him. It didn’t matter who he was, or what they meant; just that the time they shared together in that little cockpit with the flowing water and the smooth vibrations was one of the best feelings in the world. Nothing before or after mattered, nothing but now. There was no thinking about the past and feeling about the future. She closed her eyes and