It Pours Read online

  “Is this the first Thanksgiving?” Jazlyn’s voice held a tenderness.

  “Yes.”

  “And it was this time of year?”

  “Yes.”

  I heard Jazlyn’s deep intake of air. “Aw, my friend. It’ll be tough on everyone.”

  “Not Charlie Grace. That woman is made of stone.”

  “But she lost her mother.”

  “You didn’t see her at the funeral.” My voice cracked.

  “I’m here whatever you need. If you want to cry, I’m here. If you would rather not right now…then we can make that happen too.”

  “I could use for a change of subject.”

  “Well, alright then. Let’s do this.” I could hear that smile of hers behind her words. The one that was so wide and open I swear I could see her molars. It brightened her whole face when she smiled. It brightened mine. She was truly a best friend. “So…they have a new dish at the Thai place and it’s freaking unbelievable.”

  I laughed. “I thought I heard your chewing when I first called.”

  “Sorry, dude. I was trying to hide it.” She was not, however, trying to hide it now as I could tell she was talking around a mouth full. “It’s just so freaking good and I’m a starvin’ Marvin over here. The club is crazy tonight. Damn lesbians are trying to dance their asses off before the big turkey day.”

  “Hey, you gotta do something to make room for that extra piece of sweet potato pie.”

  “Yuck. You can keep your little potatoes of the sweet. I’ll take this chicken with coconut and tarragon.”

  I heard her take a sip of liquid. “What are you drinking?”

  She laughed. “Damn, you’re on your investigative skills tonight.”

  “That I am.”

  “We thought a new meal deserved a new wine choice.”

  “We? Violent home tonight.”

  “Nah. She’s on call. This is her holiday. Mo’s here.”

  Mo’s there? The thumping of the heartbeat in my ears drowned out my rocking chair’s creak.

  “She came in to spend the turkey day with me. We are grabbing a bite in between her sets.”

  My mouth was too dry to speak. My throat was tight with visions of Mo’s eyes as she watched my lips. The eyes that watched me as her body lay on top of me. Her face obscured by the hair which fell as she rested above me. The smile that crept across her face as she tucked the loose strands behind her ear.

  “Hey? Did I lose you?”

  I swallowed.

  “Damn cell phones.”

  “No, I’m here. Sorry. So, Mo’s there?” Geez was that as pathetic as I heard in my own head?

  “Yeah, she’s here. Just walking in from her set.” Jazlyn’s voice became muffled and I wondered if she had moved the phone away from her mouth. It didn’t keep me from hearing her words. “Damn, girl. Do I need to put a fan up there with you? You’re drenched.”

  When I heard Mo’s laughter and voice, my stomach flipped like an ocean wave had crossed my belly.

  “Talking to Rayne. Want me to tell her anything for you?”

  “Aw…,” I could hear Mo say. “Sure. Tell her I said hi.”

  “Mo says hi.”

  The wave suddenly turned to nausea. “I heard. Thanks. Tell her I said hi back.” I started the chair rocking again to take my mind off of the feeling in my stomach. “I’ll let you two go enjoy your new fab dinner.” I hoped my voice sounded chipper. I hoped it sounded anything other than the disappointment I felt knowing Mo was back in town and hadn’t contacted me.

  “Are you sure? We can keep talking if you want? Mo can entertain herself. You know that.”

  “Ha. Yeah. She’s a woman of many talents.” I forced a laugh. I was sure Jazlyn would hear it, but maybe she would think it for reasons besides the pain of realizing I was a one night stand. “But, yeah. I’m good. Getting ready for bed actually. Ya’ll have fun tonight.”

  ***

  The sound of a trickling rain beat lightly across the roof of the balcony outside my bedroom. The pattering of its drops was comforting and just loud enough to attempt to deafen my thoughts. I massaged my forehead to try to rub away the aching throb between my eyebrows.

  What was it about life these days? Could nothing be simple anymore? I had gone from a life of worrying of nothing more than when I would go fishing with Memaw again to why a woman I had shared the most intimate parts of my body with had never called me afterward. In between those thoughts were the facts: I was engaged to a man I knew I could never marry, I had a mother who seemed to be slipping into a depression, which was so unlike anything I had seen of her before, I had fallen in love and loss with a woman I believed was truly the love of my life and I was filled with the eternal blackness left the night Memaw passed in my arms. How? How did it all go so wrong in such a short amount of time?

  I looked up, startled at the vibrating phone on the small wooden nightstand. I managed to catch it before it vibrated off the table.

  “Hello.”

  “Hey, you.”

  Mo.

  “Hi.”

  “Did I wake you?” Mo’s voice was hoarse. It got that way after a night’s show.

  “No. I’m in bed but not sleeping.”

  “Oh.”

  I became acutely aware of the high-pitched drip of water as it fell through the guttering. I counted the drops as they hit against the metal.

  Mo took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I wish I were there with you.”

  “Where?”

  “In your bed. Lying next to you.”

  I bit into my bottom lip.

  “Rayne?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish I were there with you now. Or you here with me. Or anywhere for the matter. Anywhere that found your body against mine again.”

  “You didn’t call.”

  “Neither did you.”

  “I’m not the one that sleeps with random women.”

  “Is that what you are? Is that what it was?”

  “You tell me.” I didn’t want to argue. I didn’t. All I wanted to do was fall into her voice. All I wanted to do was envision her as she had described…laying behind me with her arms wrapped around me and listening to the rain. Yet I feared the pain of letting my thoughts go there. She hadn’t called. In the days since I kissed her goodbye at Jazlyn’s loft, I had thought of her. I wondered if she had moved on to another woman lying underneath her touch. A distant roll of thunder shook me from that train of thought.

  “Is that thunder?”

  “Yes. It’s still far off but yeah.”

  “I love thunderstorms.”

  “I remember.”

  “Rayne?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you want to talk about who didn’t call who, we can do that. Or if given my choice we can accept that either one of us could’ve called the other but for whatever reason we didn’t and let it go right there.” She let out another deep sigh. “I want to be there with you,” she whispered. A whisper that set my body on fire. “Lying behind you. Holding you in my arms. Listening to the rain.”

  Just like that with the sound of her whisper in my ear, I was there again. Listening to the rain on the roof top of Jazlyn’s loft. I felt the warmth of her body. The touch of her fingertips. The yearning ache in the pit of my stomach. “I don’t want.”

  “Hmmmmm…okay then.”

  “No. I mean I don’t want to discuss who didn’t call who.” I followed her whisper, hoping for the same affect. “I want you here or me there. I want that so badly.”

  “That’s better.” Her words were drawn out.

  The thunder was closer this time and vibrated the glass balcony door.

  “Sounds like it’s getting closer?”

  “Yeah, I think it is.”

  “Wish you could see the moon tonight. I’m up on the rooftop and it’s a gorgeous night here.”

  “I remember that rooftop.”

  “As do I.” I heard rustling. “I remember how your
body felt under these sheets.”

  “Oooh. You’re on the bed.” Another butterfly.

  “I am.”

  My throat closed again to the words I wanted to say.

  “I’ve thought of you. Hell, thought about nothing but you. You’ve sort of captivated me, Rayne Storm. Fitting we are talking while one is happening.”

  She thought of me. I tucked the pillows in behind my back to sit up against the headboard.

  “I was waiting for you to call. A part of me was afraid you may have been freaked out after our weekend. It’s not like you’re completely available. You’re engaged and your heart belongs to someone else. I also feared you weren’t overly comfortable with the time we shared. Was it an experience to get out of your system or were you thinking it may in fact be a part of you? Every time I picked up my phone to call you I had those thoughts run through my head. So I waited.”

  “And I never called.”

  “You didn’t but it’s okay. I only said it to tell you where I am with all of this.”

  “It’s more than a part.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. It’s more than a part of me. It is me.”

  She paused for several seconds. “Because you feel that way or because of something I said and you think it’s the way you should respond.”

  “Because I feel it. Because I know it.” I straightened the covers across my lap. “Because I accept it now. I’m a lesbian. Have always been.”

  “You know you don’t have to tell me that. It doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

  “I know, but it’s the truth.”

  I could hear her breaths over the storm outside. They were steady and I was beginning to wonder if she had fallen asleep.

  “I’m really into you,” she said. “More than I thought I would be. Can’t stop thinking about you actually.”

  I let her words sink in like a slideshow played in my head. It was a collection of all of the thoughts I had been having of her. I had hidden pretty well until then. Hidden the fact I too thought of her endlessly. Hadn’t I awoken several times to reach for her across an empty bed? I let the feeling of all of it in. Let it truly in and let out a releasing breath.

  Listen to the voices.

  “I’ve not stopped thinking of you. Don’t want to stop thinking of you,” I said.

  “So…think we might try to see what happens here? Talk a little more? Call? Maybe make plans to see each other the next time I’m in town?”

  I let my head fall back against the wooden frame. I smiled for the first time since I returned back home. “Yeah. I think we could do that.”

  “Excellent. Until then I suppose.” I heard the smile behind her voice too. “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  I nestled into the bed, suddenly feeling the calmness of a night’s sleep calling me.

  Chapter 20

  “Lawd, chil’, if you ain’t a sight for sore eyes.”

  I hardly rubbed the fatigue from my eyes or expressed a good yawn before Flossie had me in her arms.

  Brown sugar and honey. Wait! Brown sugar and honey?

  I pulled back quickly from her. The look of surprise on her face matched the surprise I felt.

  “What you got that look for, sis?”

  “Flossie…you…you smell just like Meems.” The heaviness of the black hole opened across my heart. Its weight changed the beat, and caused a flutter in my chest.

  She dropped her head slightly and tugged at the dishrag she held in her hands before throwing it over her shoulder. “Yeah. Dat heifer gave me her damn recipe for the soap she’d been using all the time. I found’t it a piece back.” She shrugged and turned her back to me as she walked to the coffee pot. “Sorry, sis. I done forgot I was using the stuff. You want some coffee?”

  I took her arm and pulled her tightly against me, breathing in all of the scent that reminded me of the last time a hug felt like being held. “No apologies. It’s nice. I didn’t think I would ever smell this again.” I held her hand in mine and gave it a gentle squeeze. “It’s a nice reminder, Flossie.”

  “So is laying eyes on you. If’n you ain’t the spitting image of her, I don’t know what is.”

  “Eeeeek.” The ear-splitting squeal was followed by clapping hands. “Rayne Amber Storm you done slipped in on us ol’ gals.”

  I turned toward Cora’s voice and stared shocked at the stiff-styled coif upon her head. It was of the same style but this time the usual blue-to-gray color was dyed a coal black. I recoiled as I looked back at Flossie for support. She merely rolled her eyes, shook her head, and turned away from me.

  Cora ran, well…waddled over to me. She swooped me up in an embrace that squeezed every bit of the wind out of me with her well-endowed chest. She rocked me back and forth in her arms. “I wasn’t thinkin’ you ever gonna get her. We been waitin’ pert near an eternity for you to come home.” She pushed me away from her with nearly the same force as she had pulled me into her. She looked me sternly in my eyes. “Yo’ Momma been needin’ you, baby girl. She been needin’ you something fierce I tell ya’.”

  “I hardly doubt that Cora. Charlie Grace needs no one but Charlie Grace.”

  Cora slapped my arm harder. “You hush that talk around me, young lady. I’ll not have it.” She stomped her chubby foot against the tile floor and brushed my shoulder as she walked past me. The force of her hip knocked me into the kitchen island. “Now you sit and I’ll gets us some coffee.”

  Flossie was already pouring the cups. She turned around to hand two to Cora before sitting at the bar.

  I took a sip. “Now this is coffee.” I took another long sip. “I can’t get good hot strong coffee like this in Birmingham.” Not that I had been out for coffee much lately. “And you definitely can’t get it anywhere in the hospital which is where I spend most of my time. I sure miss it. Doesn’t taste near this good there.”

  Flossie smiled over her cup. “Ain’t nothin’ as good as it is back home.” Her voice was flat.

  Cora spooned the fourth teaspoon of sugar into her cup. “And you best be listening to her on that one, Missy. It’s time you be gettin’ that fanny of yours back home. How much more you got up there in that big fancy school?”

  “About two years.”

  “Lawd Jesus in Heaven.” Cora threw her arms up and brought them forward as if praying. “She ain’t gonna make it that long.” She looked at Flossie who sat there quietly drinking her coffee.

  Wait. Flossie is sitting drinking coffee?

  I looked around the kitchen. There were no pots on the stove. No iron skillets on the counter. No anything. “Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t it like a quarter pass time for you both to be in frantic cooking crazy mode?”

  They looked at each other with eyes that told the sadness between them both. Cora shook her head and sipped her coffee. She patted her hand over her chest above the cleavage lines. She looked back at Flossie as if asking her to speak for the both of them.

  “Flossie?” I put my cup on the counter to focus on her.

  “We ain’t cooking this year.”

  “What?”

  Cora’s thump against her chest became stronger and more rapid. “She’s catering the whole thang. That chef from N’awlins is cooking our Thanksgiving dinner. Can you believe that?” She put her cup in the sink. “The menu’s so uppity I can’t near pronounce half of it. It ain’t right I tell you. It ain’t right.” She pulled a tissue from her cleavage and wiped at her nose. “If’n it weren’t for yo’ wedding to plan, I think that women would done dried up to nothin’.”

  The wedding. I failed to catch the sigh before it escaped my lips.

  “It seems I’m quite the topic of conversation since you’ve come home, Rayne Amber.”

  We turned to the door, startled. Charlie Grace walked by us, barely acknowledging we were between her and the coffee pot.

  She filled her cup, blew a breath out onto the coffee and took a sip. “Oh, please don’t let me interrupt. I mean
it sounds like a thrilling conversation.” She walked out without another word.

  Flossie and Cora caught each other’s eyes again before they looked at me as if to say, “See?”

  Cora slung her large bag imitating a purse over her shoulder. “Guess I’ll be goin’ too.”

  In the quiet of a kitchen, which would have normally been filled with clanking spoons against metal pans, the chop of a knife against a wooden cutting block, the whirl of spinning mixers, and the shouts of needed ingredients…there was nothing but silence. There were no smells of cornbread browning in the oven nor onions and peppers sautéing on the stove. There was only the smell of burning coffee as the practically empty pot still sat on a heating plate.

  “What the hell is going on around here?”

  Flossie drained the last of her cup. “Baby girl…so much. Wanna come help me out at the turkey fryer in a few hours?”

  “You’re still frying a turkey?”

  Flossie winked. “Come on out den.”

  ***

  A few hours later I found her sitting alone next to a large metal pot that rested over an unlit gas burner. She sat perfectly still while she stared out into the woods. Leaves and pine cones were scattered about the clearing. I couldn’t tell if they had been present there for some time or if they had been scattered about from last night’s storm.

  The crunch of them under my feet startled Flossie. She turned her head to me. “Well hey, sis. I didn’t hear ya come up.”

  “Ummm…yeah. You were studying those trees over there pretty hard.”

  She laughed…sort of laughed.

  “You know that grease isn’t going to get too hot without that flame lit.” I pointed to the gas burner as I sat down in the chair next to her.

  She laughed. She stood, raised the metal lid off of the pot, and reached into the depths of it. Instead of a hand dripping with oil, she pulled out a beer. “I didn’t say I was frying a turkey. I said I was at the turkey fryer.”

  I peeped into the pot. The tops of several bottles of beer stuck out of the crushed ice and almost reached the lid. “Well, now that’s my kind of turkey.”