On Rain and Romance

On Rain and Romance

         She stares at a blank computer screen. The cursor blinks on the word processor with anticipation. Her fingers stay static on the home row of the keyboard, wondering if they should move up or down to form a word, a sentence, a story. For now, the page remains empty. The whiteness reflects off her glasses. She presses the little red X at the top right corner of the screen and turns off the computer. Swiveling her chair around, she takes her glasses off, rubs her eyes, and stands up. Another day goes by as the deadline approaches. How can she possibly write when she has no inspiration? Art knows no schedule. Creativity doesn’t have a datebook. She will never get used to the hustle and bustle of a newspaper column writer.
         With her jacket and boots on, she grabs the umbrella from the rack and walks out the door. Rain falls hard and passersby on the street run with vigilance, shielding their heads with anything that would momentarily block them from the water pellets. She walks at a leisure pace because she loved walking in the rain and the sound it made when it hit her umbrella. There is no particular reason why she began her trek. She needs to clear her head and what better way to do that than be washed by the water of Mother Nature?
         She walks into the used bookstore just down the block from her apartment. There’s usually good catches that are randomly donated from people converting to audio books. She might never understand why those people think that is considered reading in the first place. As she browses through authors like Chaucer, Beckett, and Hemingway, she stumbles upon a book all about Valentine’s Day. Although the day was just around the corner, it slipped her mind because she was never a fan of it to begin with. The real St. Valentine, at least the ones that are assumed to be related to the holiday, had nothing to do with romance. Celebrators of the holiday didn’t associate it with romantic love until Chaucer wrote about it in the fourteenth century. It was all very commercial, really. So commercial to the point that cell phone companies are taking advantage of it. In Japan, there’s even a gift of “obligatory” chocolates, proving that the holiday is all for show. She always wondered how many people take the day seriously and treated it as it is meant to be treated.
         She picks up the Valentine’s Day book, regardless, because it is what she is to write about in her column. Perhaps that is why she has a severe case of writer’s block because it is a topic she doesn’t care for, but somehow her supervisor wants to cater to the readers of the newspaper and they all wanted something to read about with February fourteenth as the topic.
         Taking the book to the small table in the corner, she makes herself comfortable as she begins to peruse the chapters. Pictures of Cupid, hearts, and men wooing women littered the pages. After about half an hour, she decides the book would be adequate for her article, and brings it to the cashier. They make small chat, seeing as how she is a regular, and she walks back outside.  The fresh smell of fallen rain wafted past her nose. She continues to read her new book. She loves new reading material, regardless of the topic. As she walks down the sidewalk, a rain drop falls on the page. Mother Nature isn’t quite finished yet. A second later, another one falls. Then another. She realizes she left her umbrella in the bookstore.  Just before turning around, the raindrops suddenly stop. She looks above her to find a red umbrella shielding her from the precipitation.  She takes a second look and discovers it is her own umbrella with a man holding it above her. He smiles when they make eye contact.
         “I thought you might need this,” he says. 
         She politely thanks him, takes the handle from his grasp, and turns back towards her apartment building.
         “Valentines’ Day, huh?” he calls to her.
         She stops and turns around. After she realizes that he is referring to the book in her hands, she nods. He comes closer.
         “Interesting, isn’t it?” he says.
         She tilts her head, wanting more of an explanation.
         “That people are only willing, mostly obligated, to show their love one day a year, when you have three hundred and sixty-four other days to do the same thing. Three hundred sixty six on leap years.”
         She squints her eyes in thought. Then, she realizes the time. She thanks him again for bringing her umbrella, and lets him know she has a deadline to meet.
         “Alrighty. I’ll see you later, then,” he responds.
         She smiles and waves. They go their separate ways.
         When she returns to her apartment, she tosses her keys on the table, and sits at her computer. This time instead of staring at a blank screen, she looks on as her fingers form words on the page. She wonders what brought on this sudden burst of inspiration, but she didn’t want to question it while she was writing. Who knows when she would write again?
         The next day, she takes another walk to the bookstore. The clouds still loomed over the city with a warning of rainfall. Again, there is no particular reason why she goes to the bookstore, but she isn’t one to pass up a good read. She walks in, grabs a coffee from the small café in the corner, and pulls a book off the shelf. With her reading selection, she sits at her usual table in the corner and dives into the novel. When she finishes reading the first chapter, the chair across from her pulls out. She looks up to find that it is the same man from the day before, smiling as he had when they first met.
         “Is this seat taken?” he asks.
         She tells him it’s free and invites him to sit.
         “Thanks. So what are we reading today?” He looks at the title of the book. “Nice choice,” he comments.
         They have a short conversation about the novel, but, after remembering their talk from yesterday, she finds that she is more interested in his views on Valentine’s Day. That fascination led to an almost finished article, but there is still more she has to talk about before it is complete.
         “Valentine’s Day. Well, I think people make it too complicated. There’s a simple formula that they can follow to make the day what it’s meant to be.”
         She nods in agreement, and asks him to proceed.
         “I think it’s the fault of these huge companies. Cell phone providers, furniture stores, car salesmen…they’re digging their noses into a place it doesn’t belong. That’s the main fault, but then there are these people that freak out wondering what they should get, whether the person they want to be their Valentine will like them back or not, whether they’ll even have a Valentine on that day. It’s just problem piled on top of another problem. The best thing to do is keep it simple. Romance isn’t dead, it’s just lost amongst all the B.S.”
         She asks what he thinks would suffice for a perfect Valentine’s Day.
         “Nice dinners at home, stroll in the park walking hand-in-hand. Maybe hang out at an arcade. That last one might seem a little juvenile, but sometimes we have to return to the child within us. Truly let loose and go back to a time when we had no stresses of deadlines or bills and the only thing we had to worry about was if the girl or boy you liked checked the “Yes” box in the letter you gave them asking if they liked you or not. That’s what I think this day is about. Letting go and just being with the one you love.”
         After a few hours of conversation, they decide to call it a day. They exit the bookstore and see that the clouds are still hovering with an ominous presence. They are only a few steps out the door before the rain begins to come down. The man reaches into his messenger bag and pulls out an umbrella, shielding both of them.
         “You don’t leave your house prepared, do you?” he asks, a smile on his face.
         She laughs and shrugs her shoulders. Sometimes she is just aloof when it comes to being prepared for the weather. They go their separate ways again when they reach her apartment building, this time a lot less awkward than the first.  It is the first of many “conversations” to come. Soon, she feels comfortable enough to ask him about his own love life. After hearing so many views on the most romantic day of the year, she wants to know what drives him to think this way.
         “Me?” he asks, “Well, I speak from experience, but I’ve never had that one girl. The one that made me stop and ask myself how I came to be so lucky to have her. I’ve never said ‘I love you’ and meant it.”
         She wonders why, but he before she even asks, he begins to speak again.
         “I’m not the kind of guy that looks for love. I honestly don’t think I even understand love. Actually, when it comes to women, I’m not the kind of guy that has an ideal type. That’s overrated. I’m more of a ‘love-at-first-sight’ kind of guy.”
         She isn’t usually the girl that lets things get to her, but his last statement moves something inside. “Love-at-first-sight?” She always believed this was a myth. Something people say when they don’t know what they want, but this man is different. He is level-headed, so she doesn’t believe that he can believe in something so fairytaleesque.
         When she goes home that night, her head is floating with feelings and notions that she has never heard of before. What the man said earlier resonates within her thoughts. For the past few weeks, she was always excited at the prospect of speaking with him. For a long time, there wasn’t anything that made the butterflies in her stomach stir to the point that she found herself ecstatic to wake up in the morning. Her article had been long published, so there is no reason why she has to keep meeting with him, but she finds the things he says to be so interesting that she wants to hear them.
         The following day, she is so swamped with projects and deadlines that she is unable to go to the bookstore. All day, her head is clouded with emotions that she wonders if she might feel something more for this man than her original intentions allotted for.  By the end of the day, she is exhausted from fighting with these thoughts. She isn’t the type to let something, or someone, bother her so much. She isn’t the type to let the door open to any new prospects of love or happiness. He even mentioned before he was a “love-at-first-sight kind of guy,” and he’s seen her plenty of times without declaring even any kind of romantic feeling, therefore, she shouldn’t be thinking anymore on the subject. She ultimately decides that she is simply fatigued from her work and completely brushes the subject to the back of her mind.          
That Saturday night, Valentine’s Day to be exact, she walks down the sidewalk toward the bookstore, yet again. The owner closed the shop for the day because he wants to spend time with his wife. She goes into a café down the street and orders a latte. While sipping on her coffee and reading her column in the newspaper, she hears a tap on the window beside her. She looks up to find the man that had been accompanying her for so many lunch breaks over the past two weeks. He waves and quickly enters the café. They exchange their greetings and she invites him to take a seat. She asks what his plans were for the night.
         “Nothing for me. I was just heading down to take a walk along the boardwalk. It’s such a nice night, so I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity.”
         She smiles and takes another sip of her latte.
         “Would you care to join me?” He asks.
         She almost chokes on the hot coffee.
         “Are you alright?” He asks, genuinely concerned.  She nods. After collecting herself, she stands up, accepting his invitation.
         “Great, let’s go,” he says, holding open the door.
         When they reach the ocean, they take a seat on a bench and watch as the waves crash against the creaking wood of the boardwalk. The smell of seawater is in the air around them.
         “The waves are a lot more aggressive than they usually are,” he comments, “Must be due to the unpredictable weather we’ve been having.”
         She responds in agreement.
         “I guess you can say that this holiday mimics the weather. Love is about as unpredictable as rainfall in a desert or snow in Australia.”
         She nods and walks towards the railing of the boardwalk. He follows.
         “I like to think I’m much like the weather. That’s how I know I have to always be prepared for whatever it brings.”
         He pulls his umbrella out of his bag just as the first drop of rain hit.
         “Prepared for rain, and prepared for love.”
         He looks into her eyes. She feels her heart beating fast.
         “You know how I said I’m a love-at-first-sight kind of guy?”
         She nods as she feels her cheeks flush.
         “I fell in love when I first saw you.”
         She smiles and they share their first kiss as the echo of rainfall resonates through the umbrella above them.
Love, of all things, imitates the weather just as a mirror reflects the person looking into it. It’s the spontaneity and unpredictability of love and romance that makes people want to grasp onto and hold it forever.