Memories of Rain ❀ Calum Hood

third; the basics

The two of them sat in silence for a while. It wasn't awkward, but it wasn't comfortable either. It was just plain, gray silence. Bailey liked it. She felt safe, not having to say anything, or listen to anything. She was free to study Calum's face. He was really handsome, she noted. Too much to be with someone like her, she wasn't ugly, but she definitely wasn't on Calum's level.

"Can you tell me my favorite color," she asked him. She hadn't planned on it, but the words just flew out of her mouth the second she had thought it. He looked up at her, and smiled. "White," he told her.

She smiled then, and said, "I knew it." He laughed at this. "It's not even a color," he said, a smile on his face. She frowned.

"Of course it is."

The smile on his face grew bigger, until he couldn't keep it down anymore. He looked adorable. He looked precious. Bailey wanted him to smile like that always, she didn't want those tears from before to ever come back. He was so beautiful when he smiled. He reminded her of the sunlight. "Tell me about my favorite things," she said, a gentle smile on her lips. "Tell me the basics."

It obviously made him happy to tell her about the things she liked. She wanted him to be happy. She wanted for him to be happy so much that it almost hurt. He nodded, still smiling. Calum interlaced his fingers with hers and she let him, although it made her a bit uncomfortable. "The basics," he echoed.

"Your name is Bailey Wilson. You're eighteen years old, you turn nineteen in a few days, on June 28th.
I bought you a ton of books for your birthday because you love reading, and you're an amazing writer yoruself. You write the msot beautiful poems ever, and you know so much by heart that it's absolutely incredible," he told her.

She nodded. He handed her a piece of paper. It read 'get me new copies of my favorites' followed by a list of names, probably books, ending with 'anything by Edgar Allan Poe.' She smiled and so did Calum.

"Your favorite book of all time is Wuthering Heights, and you've probably read it more than thirty times. A Tale of Two Cities is catching up to it though, twenty-eight times, I think," Calum said, and for a second she wanted to laugh. She did, but came out all wrong and weird. It was still laughter, though.

Calum looked at her as if he had been hanging from a cliff, and she had reached her hand out towards him. It was adorable, and it only made her laugh even more. He quickly started talking again, probably to keep up her good mood.

"You love punk rock music. I forced you to listen to Green Day and The Ramones for a whole day once, and after that you didn't listen to anything else for weeks.
You work at a café with your best friend, Hannah. You're a great cook, which is a good thing because I never cook for you," he shrugged.
"You like photography too, although you're not that good at it. You only take shaky pictures of me at my concerts."

She didn't remember this boy at all, and he was already bringing out what must've been her real personality; not even her best friend had been able to do that. She smiled at him.

"Your hair has that color, by the way, because you failed at buying the right hairdye. You wanted it to be blonde, and borrowed some from Mikey, but it worked differently on your hair, and it turned out all white-ish. You liked it though, so you've been redying it ever since."
"I'm scared that you might lose your hair," he giggled.

She laughed again, and he looked at her. There was so much love in his eyes now, replacing the sadness and pain that was there before.

"You also love rain a lot," he said. "We've probably danced in the rain more than I can count on both hands and feet."

She nodded quickly, feeling excited now. "I know that," she said. "Or, well, I guessed it." She smiled at him. He looked at her with his eyebrows raised. "How?"

She told him about the dream, or rather the memory, that she had seen when she was still in a coma, and it made him smile. His eyes filled up with water, and he rolled his eyes. He said, "Manly tears," in a silly, deep voice, and pulled a lock of her hair.

"That was me," he told her. She looked at him. Had it been him? Now that she thought about it, he did have hair like the boy in the dream. "So you do remember me after all."

She nodded.

***

After Calum left, Bailey had no idea what to do. She leaned back against the pillows, and after half an hour, she guessed that there would be no more visitors.

Good, she thought. She was tired, and just wanted to sleep, but something had popped into her head, and she had to do soemthing about it. But what?

She wanted to write it down, but she didn't have anything to write with. It was frustrating. She was probably the kind of person to always carry around a pen and an empty journal, just to be safe. Calum had given her that impression. She was apparently quite the writer. He had recited a poem for her, and she had recognized it immedietly, but not who wrote it. She knew it by heart now. It was by Edgar Allan Poe, and it was called A Dream.

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed-
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?

She went through it multiple times in her head, trying to remember when she had read it, where she had read it. She couldn't do it; she couldn't force the memory to appear. She sighed deeply, and let herself fall back against the pillows.

A female nurse and a male doctor came in through the door just then. They announced that they would be doing a few tests. Bailey nodded. Why not, she thought. It's not like she had anything to do.

The first thing they did was to take her blood. She didn't like it, and she felt dizzy afterwards. She had stolen a glance at the red fluid seeping out of her, but then she had almost thrown up, and from there on, she had kept her eyes closed until they were done. The nurse gave her an apple, and removed something from her face.

She suddenly had to breathe herself, and it felt amazing. The nurse held a tube in her hands, and she tried to remember what it was called.

"Nasal cannulas," the nurse told her, as she caught onto Bailey's stare. She nodded. They ran a few more tests, and then when they were about to leave, Bailey told them to wait.

"Uhm," she began. The nurse nodded, urging her to go on. "Could you get me a pen and something to write on, please?" she asked, sending them a shy smile. "Of course," the doctor told her. He handed her a tiny white book, and a pen that wrote with blue ink. She thanked him, and watched as they left.

She opened the little white book, and quickly scribbled something down inside it. It had popped up into her head after Calum had left, and she figured that it was one of her poems.

if the moon
doesn't rise,
will the sun
sink?

and if
the sun doesn't
shine,
will the moon
cry?