Rain or Shine

A short story which describes an ambiguous relationship between a starry-eyed girl and a pragmatic boy.

Falling in love was a pain in the a*s; it’s as if she had forgotten to dive head in (as how falling for someone is normally described) and landed on her buttocks on the ground. Hard.  She couldn’t remember the last time when he had made her feel valued.

The familiar frontal rain of November has begun. Abigail wore a pink dress that accentuated her thin waist, her thick brown hair was pulled straight leaving a gentle curl at the end. They were tucked behind her ears to reveal the face which so many had found similarity with the local beauty pageant winner. Under the sun the pavement radiated with heat. It was only mediated by a soft autumn breeze that came every now and then. She looked at the umbrella that she was holding. A plastic, red, ring was used to cover the place where you would press to close it. It was a distinctive design---and she remembered clearly why she had bought this particular umbrella. On her way to church, the only thing that she could think of was salvation, but not of the holy kind. There was only one person who can save her from pain.  

It was the same umbrella as his. 

He had held his umbrella for her for four times.

1

The first time it happened was on a rainy day. She had attended one of the weekly gatherings with her friends that day, without checking the weather. A mutual friend had noticed that she didn’t have an umbrella, and told her subsequently that she should share the umbrella with him: Henry Frost. 

She recognized the same awkwardness with would have made the audience laughed present between him and her as she stepped under his umbrella if they were in a romantic comedy. Expressionless, he led her to one of the main traffic junctions that they need to cross in order to have lunch with their mutual friends. Trying to distract herself from the silence, she began to take in everything about him: the slightly stocky build, his Nike shoes and the black and red watch that complemented her own white watch. 

“Be careful and step back,” he said suddenly. His bushy, bold eyebrows slightly raised as if to emphasize his point. 

She did as he told her. By then, a large bus came over and crossed the puddle that had accumulated by the sidewalk. A huge splash of water overcame their legs, seeping through their jeans and into their shoes. The sensation was thoroughly unpleasant, but she laughed. She could almost feel that it is this pivotal moment for them, as it is in the movies, where they could fall in love and be together forever.

All the while, he never laughed once. With a vaguely interested expression, he led her to the restaurant. 

2

It was a different umbrella than she had remembered. The green military camouflage cast a strange light over his face as they stepped out of her school. 

“Stand under my umbrella, I have a huge one,” he had said after he had finished visiting her school.

Perhaps her parents had suspected something by then: this strange young man coming to visit their daughter’s school’s opening day and insisted that he would walk her to their car even if he needed to go in the opposite direction.

“Why did you come?” she asked him.

“My cousin was thinking of enrolling here and I just wanted to see the environment.” 

She wanted to question whether it was necessary for him to come to a fair just to examine a potential school for his relative. To her, this seems like it was his excuse for coming to see her. Perhaps, if she was braver, she can break down this wall between them...

“Hey, do you maybe want to watch a movie this weekend?” she asked.

He looked at her and then replied in a rapid-fire manner, the way she noticed that he does whenever he was nervous.

“I am really busy lately. I’ve got a lot of work to do and so I don’t think I’ll be free... or that I can’t be sure if I’m really going to be free. I want to see that movie, but I think I will see it online.”

There is no appropriate retort when one kept their true intentions hidden. Suddenly, she found she was unable to feign the happiness in her eyes for the first time. She smiled, but she felt hollow---she was hollow---inside. 

“It’s alright,” she said. 

“Abigail, you can share my umbrella so he can go home,” Mr. Blaise interrupted and held out his own umbrella.

For some reason, she didn’t say yes to her father. Deep inside, she had hoped to savor this moment, this recognizable significance of the umbrella. Her father seemed to understand her rejection, and merely walked towards the car without another word.

She has always wondered why Henry hadn’t said anything either to her father after he had seen her enter the car and walked away. 

3

The next one had been an antique, she reckoned. 

“The branches here are rather unusual,” she said to him.

It was a saturday night. Their choir group had just finished their volunteering for a special event. Five years had passed since he first held his umbrella for her. He had asked her to stay alone with him to wander around in the streets. 

The long wait has numbed her. He had done nothing else besides the occasional flirty line of “hey there beautiful” or that one time when he spontaneously chose to stay overnight at her place with their friends to watch a ruby game. Perhaps, none of this had mattered to him at all, and she had mistaken his cowardice for sincerity. 

“Yeah well, the umbrella is pretty big anyway so I figured we’d fit,” he said when he offered her his umbrella. She had tried to restrain her laughter as she thought of how Freud would have interpreted his words. 

She had searched his face for any trace of fondness, yet it was intelligible. He had the most beautiful set of eyes hid behind a pair of glasses. Here, beside him, she couldn’t look into them and instead she focused herself on his arms that were holding the umbrella. His arms had a certain amount of blemishes and scars on them. Spending a long period of time inside a lab might have meant that some of the scars were chemical burns; she remembered how he despised long sleeved clothes and lab coats. Unlike most of her suitors, he was neither tall, well-built or lean. The only thing indicating that he cared about his appearance was a tuff of black hair styled into spikes. On his wrist was the same red and black watch that she saw three years ago.

“You have the same watch,” she pointed out.

“Yes. I’m thinking of changing it though. This one is too childish. I need a good new one to go to work now I’m officially a working adult,” he explained. 

“You have been talking about this for a long time.”

He nodded. 

“Couldn’t decide which one to buy.”

Before she could say anything, he changed the topic.

“I want to ask for your opinion. So there’s this girl that I met, June, we kind of a had a thing and then there was this other guy...” he continued, explaining the whole ordeal.

She averted her gaze whenever he looked at her to stop him from discovering what emotions she was hiding from him. He went on to explain that he and June had met for half a year and how she seemed like a fickle girl that toyed around with other boys behind his back. 

“...I never thought she was that kind of girl.” 

Everything was at once apparent and stupid: the plot took a nasty turn and the music was gone. She wanted nothing more at that moment than to run into the rain by herself. Her childish, romantic dream had fooled her. She was not the princess that he was finding, she was the white horse that Prince Charming used to find his true love. 

“Well,” she began, masking her voice with casualty. “The thing is, we often don’t realize how little we know about a person before we decide to fall for them.”

4

There was only once when he had held his umbrella for her on a sunny day when they and their mutual friends were going to walk to their restaurant. It was during those trips that Abigail has claimed that the sun was too hot, and hid under the shades cast by the trees above. This day was one of those days.

“Need an umbrella?” 

Turning around, she saw him extending an umbrella to her. She had her own umbrella, sure, but she wasn’t sure of his intentions. 

How dare him. How dare he’s doing this after all we’ve been through! 

A tentative smile was tugging at the corner of his lips. It was the same smile that she had memorized, made familiar throughout the one year that they have grown closer together. She could feel herself responding to it almost immediately with a smile of her own. The pleasant surprise of his soft tone and bright smile has overcame the dull sense of bitterness that she always had, accumulated over the span of five year. But anyhow, she told herself, it was no occasion to embarrass him.

“Sure. Well I have one but ah, it’s broken.”

It wasn’t a complete lie: her own umbrella has been malfunctioning for months. 

His face lit up as he opened yet another new umbrella in front of her. With a gentle swing, he brought the umbrella to shield them both from the sun. As they walked, she had trouble finding things to say to distract herself from how close they were to each other. Just when she was going to open her mouth and talk about his studies, he talked about something else entirely.

“I want to see this new movie that’s in town.”

His words yanked old memories back into her attention and a painful sense of deja-vu. 

“But you don’t have the time to see it. And it’s not available online yet anyway.”

There was a slight pause before Henry said no, he does not have the time to see it. 

She bought the umbrella that is very similar to his as a token to remember. After November, there was decreasing need to use the umbrella, but she had kept it near her. It began to weigh her bag down, but she decided to keep carrying it around since she doesn’t know when she will need it. Autumn came and left winter behind. Before she knew it, it was Christmas Eve. 

Henry and Abigail had joined their friends with their annual Christmas Eve practice of grabbing a late night snack. She had walked along the same street with him once, on that saturday night when he had held his umbrella for her. Somehow, the topic of the conversation had switched to her love life. He was standing next to her, laughing as their friends teased Abigail how she had remained single. She laughed along, pretending as if the fact that the person she has ever liked the most was sitting next to her was not affecting her one bit. He turned to her.

“These questions about your love life just doesn’t seem to faze you anymore,” he said.

“I have given up discussing about love,” she said, “and I have also given up looking for it.”

She could never be completely honest with him. How could she, when he was making all these queries about her disillusionment when he was the cause? She couldn't let him find out about her feelings, even if it meant that she could never become his best friend by sharing everything. She tried to lighten the mood by flashing him a smile. The neon lights behind him twinkled as the first few rain droplets began to fall in the changing climate of this year.

“Well, don’t,” he said softly. 

Once again, she found herself afraid of her eyes betraying her. Abigail turned away and kept silent. 

It was at this moment that she tried to envision the last time he held his umbrella for her, and the last time before that, and the time even before that. His watch, glasses, hair, smile, shoes, voice and even the pattern of the dotted scars on his arms... everything that she had come to memorize and love. This, added with the memory of every place that they’ve gone together, lines that were exchanged, unsaid things on her part, every tear that she had shed over a broken dream, was too much. She could still remember the first time she ever saw him when he was lip-syncing to a song on his earphones. It engulfed her, consumed her. She could imagine that his line was a subtle hint and that they would somehow ditch their friends behind and share a kiss. But she has learnt that such hopes must wither and die, hidden from Henry and herself. Despite this realization, her pretense was getting feebler with his every attempt to ask about her view on relationships. Silence became her only defense. 

“Come on, choose what you want to eat,” she said.

He doesn’t seem to be disappointed at all by her change of topic. As he was looking at the menu, she instinctively tried to find her umbrella to shield herself from the light drizzle. When she took the umbrella out of her bag, Henry turned to her and his face expressed recognition. She felt exposed, vulnerable. Without a word, she shoved the umbrella back into her bag. 

After a swift glance, the moment passed as so many of those that they’ve shared did. These moments, captured by Abigail, shall remain to shape herself and her relationship with Henry. They led her away from the image of the white horse and a prince, away from her own version of Cinderella and most of all, away from a past version of herself.

Author's Note

This is still a work in progress, so there are still grammatical errors to be fixed. Also, ambiguity here is deliberate since I really want to explore the pre-dating stage (though for my characters, they might not end up dating). Just want to see if the structure and the motifs come across well. Thanks for reading!