“Shit,” she mutters to herself as drops of water go spilling over the edge and onto her t-shirt and the hardwood floor. The glass of water shaking in her hands at another clap of loud thunder. She steps back as if her bare feet would forget and step into the water anyway. She holds the glass out in front of her and tries to steady her hand to keep more water from being sent over the edge.
The power went out two hours ago and she’s standing in her bedroom just outside of her bathroom door with the florescent moonlight coming in through her two windows. Flashes of lightning providing other needed illumination. The thunder rattles through the window frames and the floorboards and her bones and she wants to cry.
Because she’d forgotten candles or even a flashlight when she moved. Because when she opened the kitchen drawer, there were five matchbooks, but not a single candle. Because she hit her head on the corner of one of her cupboards as she walked out of the kitchen and back into the living room, blindly reaching out her hands to find her way. Because she had to knock on her neighbor’s door and ask for candles and they were a young couple and the man answered the door with his t-shirt on backwards and she could hear giggling in the background and they only had a scented candle that smelled like candy canes. Because she’d taken it anyway and the smell was so oddly displaced in the middle of July.
Because she’d just spilled water all over herself. Because her hands won’t stop shaking. Because it took her five minutes to work up the courage to get out of her bed for the water that her desperately dry throat needed. Because she’s always been afraid of storms, but it had never been a problem; she’d never been alone.
She says, “Shit,” again under her breath before she’s just repeating it over and over and crying a little bit as she bends down to wipe up the little puddle with the hem of her long t-shirt. There’s another roll of thunder and she jumps at the sound, knocking her elbow on the wall behind her and even more water sloshes out of her glass. She closes her eyes and watches the accompanying lightning against her eyelids, setting her glass down next to her and drawing her knees to her chest.
There’s a series of crashes and rumbles then that doesn’t stop for a few minutes and she has her face buried between her chest and her knees and she’s trying to breathe slowly in and out and remember what it was that Roy used to do to calm her down. His hand on her back, a steady up and down as he pulled her against him and sort of laughed at her saying, “Pammy, this should’ve stopped being scary when you were, like, ten.”
The thing is, she still feels like a child sometimes. Of course, she didn’t say that then. Just let him rock her a little bit until her eyelids started gaining weight and then dropped completely and when she woke, there was sunshine and a few gentle kisses before he rolled out of bed.
She lifts her head when things go quiet for a minute. She looks around, out through the window at the big green leaves of the oak tree, flailing around in the wind. The rain slaps against the window and she can hear the wind going screaming past the building. She’s hesitant to stand, waiting to see if another clap of thunder is just seconds away. But she slowly pushes herself up the wall until she’s leaning against it with her feet out in front of her.
With her palms flat against the wall, she waits.
Ten minutes pass and there have been three bouts of thunder and lightning that forced her eyes closed. She waits another two minutes before her feet are finally able to move just enough to carry her that short distance to her bed.
She wants to crawl under the covers, hide there until the storm passes. Bury herself deep in cotton and try to remember what it felt like to not be alone. But the air is dense and hot with the air conditioning out and the layer of sweat on her skin is already thick. So climbs into bed, lying on her back and turning her head to look at the clock on her nightstand.
It’s almost two in the morning and she knows she won’t be able to fall asleep.
“Shit,” she hisses to herself yet again when she realizes she’s left her glass of water all the way across the room. But she isn’t getting up again, she tells herself. She’s here now and she’s going to close her eyes and force herself into sleep.
She twists and turns on top of the sheets, feeling restless and suffocated in her t-shirt and the heat. She tries every position she can think of and nothing feels right, nothing is comfortable. She lifts her t-shirt halfway up, just enough to expose her stomach, and for a second there’s cool air against her skin before it turns hot again.
She looks back at the clock to see that only three minutes have passed and she groans in frustration, balling the sheets in her fists. Her cell phone’s sitting next to the clock and for the seventeenth time (she’s been keeping track) since the rain started, she thinks about calling him.
Before she can let her mind think about it too much, she’s biting her lip and reaching over to pick it up off of the nightstand. The numbers come easily from memory and as she looks at them glowing there on the screen, she thinks she shouldn’t. She thinks she should be strong and independent and not need others to get her through things like this. She thinks she definitely shouldn’t need him right now, that he doesn’t want her to need him anyway. She thinks Roy was right and she’s being childish and that an adult would put the phone down and go to sleep.
But then there’s a loud roll of thunder and her startled jump causes her thumb to push the call button. She hears it ring from down where she’s holding it on her stomach and slowly brings it to her ear, knowing that by now her number’s on his caller ID and-
“Hello.” His voice is sleepy and thick and she almost hangs up, but then he says, “Pam?”
She tries three times before his name comes out, “Jim. Uh, hi.”
“It’s late. Why are you-”
She turns on her side towards the window and watches the rain sliding down the glass and the trees waving their arms wildly and she says, “I just- Um. There’s a thunderstorm and- Sorry, I shouldn’t have-”
She hears him smile, “I forgot you were afraid of thunderstorms. It’s fine. I can talk for a little bit.”
Something warm surges inside of her, “Are you sure? I mean, I know after everything we-”
“I’m sure. Just- How bad is it?”
She closes her eyes tight and turns her face into the pillow, thinking about things besides storms when he asks the question. She says, “Bad. Worse than I expected- I mean, worse than the weather people thought it would be…The power went out.”
“Must be some storm,” he says and she hears him turn over in his bed, the creaking of a mattress and the rustling of bed sheets. He doesn’t say anything and she doesn’t say anything and for a second, it’s just breathing and the comfort of having a friend on the other end of a phone line.
“Are you tired? I can let you go,” she says after a few minutes and a few yawns.
“I miss you,” is what he says in response to this and there’s a quiet roll of thunder as the storm starts to move farther away.
She stops breathing then and it takes her a minute to finally get out, “Um, yeah, I, uh, I miss you, too.”
And then he asks, so she tells him.
What the last couple of months have been like. How it felt when he left and how it felt when she left Roy. How she couldn’t sleep that first night in her new apartment. How she’s only recently been able to sleep through an entire night. How she’s lonely and she’s never really felt it like this before. How she’s sorry and wants him to know that however she hurt him was unintentional and if she could-
“Pam,” he says, stopping her just when her voice was starting to wobble and shake with the threat of tears.
“I just wish so many things were different,” she says quietly.
He says, “Me, too,” and then sounds like he’s going to say something else when the call is cut off.
“Shit,” she says as she brings the phone away from her ear and looks at the display to see that her battery’s died completely. She presses her head back into the pillow and lets herself cry even though she can’t tell if it’s from relief or frustration or something else entirely.
But the rain’s stopped now and when she looks out the window, things are still and quiet again. There’s just the echo of his voice, low and close despite the miles, rattling through her.
Author's Chapter Notes:
I've had this sitting around on my computer since April and finally finished it off. Still not entirely sure that I like it that much, but. Title is from How My Heart Behaves by Feist.
Also, I own nothing obviously.
unfold is the author of 102 other stories.
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