A False Spring and Winter

The pattering of rain dribbled on my hair and cheeks, dabbling off my shoulders and cooling my heated body. My hands laid limp at my sides, gently brushing the soft material of my jeans. I stared out across the melting ice of the lake, illuminated by the moonlight. The shaded clouds above my head absorbed with rainwater blocked out any direct tunnels of the moon's silver glow to the dusty ice, leaving the rounded lake at my feet to lap dormant at the shore in a murky lighting. The reeds sprouting at the edge of the water all around the muddy beach sparkled with the leftovers of frost, the dulled-needle-like droplets of rain bouncing off the green stems delicately. Winter had declined that night, allowing me to finally listen to the soft rainfall that I'd been separated from for a matter of months. I gulped down the thawing scent of a false spring.

His car hadn't been very large, in fact quite tiny, and yet had felt like an open patch of field bristling with lush prairie grass and dotted with wild violets. Nothing was anxiously cramped with him. When it had started to rain I felt the sudden need to go and touch the air, the need so strong I would soon break away from his embrace to do so.

The second I was released into the open air I made for the water's edge, the familiar crop of lake I had strolled around a million times completely frozen over with a sheet of ice and frost, despite the mildly damp air. It seemed nature had caused a shift in the winter weather, allowing spring a small moment to exhale over the earth. I had never really enjoyed these little breaks in the seasons, for I much preferred winter over any instance of spring, but tonight, as ice and rain waltzed as one, I felt as if my mind were at peace.

As I soon grew comfortable in the night air, beginning to shake as the biting temperature settled into my skin protected by a thin shirt worn through by years of usage, I began to hear his footsteps following mine, lining up with mine, echoing mine. I smiled, fighting the urge to turn and glance at him. I loved his stride, as if he were never comfortable in his body, as if he were trying his hardest to not trip. Some might have found it strange, but I could've watched him move for hours on end. It was part of his charm, part of him that I wouldn't have changed to save my own life.

He was beside me in moments, staring out at the water with me. I smiled as far as my lips would go without showing teeth, stretching my cheeks upward.

There was silence, only the rain on the ice, as quiet as a pin dropping.

"I love the rain," I heard myself mutter, separate from my own thoughts. I never spoke my thoughts. They were too odd and off-putting to do anything but spoil any sort of meaning. He was always better at saying the right words.

Maybe he never spoke truthfully either, but I really hoped he did. If he didn't, then that meant he never told me what it was he truly wanted to say, that he didn't feel comfortable telling me. I would've rather been dipped in a vat of acid than ever have that be true, no matter how contradictory. 

"It's cold," he muttered distantly, as if to himself. Sometimes it seems like he forgets I'm ever with him. Sometimes he says the strangest things, does the strangest things, like when he sharply exhales air into my mouth when we kiss, or when he tells me my tongue is always freezing cold, to the point where it's unsettling. I never really liked it when he said that, but I knew he meant no harm. How was I supposed to control the temperature of my tongue?

I smiled and chuckled, almost too quietly to be heard. I wondered a lot if it ever bothered him, when I'd laugh at almost anything that ever escaped his mouth. Even when he said "I love you." I guess I took it like a joke every now and then.

"Pussy," I said, a grin lacing my words. He didn't smile back. He stared forward, glued to the horizon disrupted by trees and brightly lit houses in the distance.

I started to walk along the shore, my shoes pressing firmly into the dampened, crumbling sand-dirt, my hands fumbling at my legs as I struggled to regain my conscious mind again. Everything seemed to fall away whenever I was with him, like my feet were slowly lifting off the earth, but not towards the sky. Never towards the sky.

I bent down and picked up a rock, so light it didn't even feel solid in my fingers. I chucked it out over the icy lake, listening for a crack and a splash, but received no such satisfaction. Perhaps the moonlight had chilled the water more than I had thought, and the ice was still thick enough to be unbreakable. Or my rock was just too weightless.

I suddenly wanted to walk on the ice.

"Seriously, it's cold out." He had followed me the few feet I'd trekked, his hands stuffed in his pockets. I envied the guarded jacket he'd acquired a while back—before I knew him. "Let's go back to the car."

I shivered, not from his sudden touch on my shoulder, but from the cold. His touch only comforted me now. I sometimes missed the days when I'd freeze my bodily functions—when my blood would whiz in my ears and coagulate in my veins—anytime his skin made contact with mine, but I couldn't say I disliked the settling of my blood whenever his fingers laid themselves across my shoulder, or the small of my back now.

"No," I argued, a playful edge to my voice I never put in any effort to hide. "I like the rain." I ripped my face to the cloudy sky, closing my eyes, and pretending there were stars above me. The rain had stopped, or thinned out too much to be tangible.

He sighed and nudged me back toward the car a bit, up a slight hill paved with a rocky pathway. "C'mon." He sounded like a parent monotonously coaxing their child away from the window of a candy store, far from irritated, but climbing up to that bar.

I groaned under my breath, my gait drooping a bit, spinning around to face him, to look at him, to finally look into his eyes, guarded by the glint of moonlight, his expression clouded, like always.

When I refused to comply to him, he smirked, his hands bending me off my stance at the backs of my knees, balancing me into his arms with a secure placement of his palm at my back, pressing me to his chest.

I slumped in his arms, my head falling backward, as he carried me up the hill. "Dick. I like the rain," I whined, sucking in frigid air as my shock from being tossed upward started to set in.

"I know," he reassured. That was all he said. His voice was so smooth when he wanted it to be, even though I could hear him already tiring with my weight holding him down.

He set me down when we reached the car, his scent gently tickling my nose.

The water glued in ice called out to me like it wanted me to know something, but I silenced anything but his breathing in my ears.

I can't remember what happened after that, I can't even remember if what we'd said together that night was accurate, verbatim. I can't even remember what he smelled like, what he sounded like, what the water wanted me to know. It's all buried under recent sensory memories I want nothing more than to shovel through until I reach the bottom where it all lies, where he lies. 

And maybe I'm selfish for wanting it all back. 

I just . . . wish he knew. I wish he knew what it all meant to me.