rain.

"Please don't marry him."

He'd always been a dreamer. Most people who knew him would agree that he'd spend more time in that head of his than in the real world. He couldn't help it. In his mind, anything was possible. He'd dreamt about everything; from being a magician to being a drug lord. But the one thing he'd only dare to dream about when he felt incredibly brave or slightly drunk, was being with her.

He remembered the first time the thought occurred to him. They were fourteen and had just smoked a joint of weed which was really just one part tobacco and two parts oregano which he bought from a senior kid for ten bucks and a half eaten cheese sandwich that had gone bad. They both knew that they weren't really high but had a really great time watching romantic comedies, ironically, of course. He remembers the exact moment he looked at her watching two people on screen kiss in the rain and he finally understood it. All his life, the simplicity of love was a complexity he simply could not comprehend. Her hair was a little greasy and there was orange Dorito dust on her chin and for some reason, in that dimly lit basement with really bad air circulation, he finally understood it. He looked back at the screen and for the briefest second, he imagined that when they'd kiss, there'd be rain.

It became their ritual. Every Friday, they'd go down to her basement and watch rom-coms, rather, she'd watch the movies and he'd just watch her. After that, it was like his life was on hold until the moment she'd kiss him and the real world would finally beat the one he'd had in his head. Until then, he just sat back and waited for the rain to fall. But there's only so long a plant can go on without water. Eventually, it would simply wither and die.

He learnt that the hard way, because, eventually, he found himself sitting in a parked car with her in the passenger seat looking so beautiful it made his heart swell, but she had an engagement ring on her finger that seemed to be glaring him down. She was getting married the next day. It finally sank in. He waited too long. For so many years, he'd thought they were like a firecracker that was bound to burst but as the seconds passed, it seemed like they were just a dud. Twelve years, that's how long he'd known he'd loved her and in less than twelve hours, she was going to be exchanging vows with some guy who wasn't him. It finally sank in. He didn't really know what made him do it, what made him say those words he'd been holding back since the minute she'd gotten engaged.

"Please don't marry him," he said. His voice sounded pathetically desperate, he thought, not that he cared.

She didn't look surprised, it was almost like what he'd said had been lingering in the air for much longer. She turned to look at him, but she wasn't really looking at him, not really. She was looking at the scrawny boy she met in sixth grade and she was looking at the man he grew into. She saw the same boy who helped her get over her ridiculous fear of crustaceans and the same boy who would sneak cats into her house for her to pet simply because her parents wouldn't let her get one. It was almost as though he could see it too, every memory that flashed through her teary eyes. She didn't say a word. Neither did he.

"Why?" she finally asked. It took him a while to reply. It was one of those moments where an I love you just didn't seem enough. He really wished it was. He thought that maybe if he said it in just the right way, she'd hear him. But he just didn't know how, even after so many years, he didn't know how. Instead, he said, "We're not over yet."

"We're not over yet?" She repeated cynically and he felt like he was seventeen again and she was shouting at him for smoking on campus. "We're not over because we never started. You had so many years to tell me how you felt, to see how I felt. I was so stupid. I practically threw myself at you to the point where it's embarrassing now. Don't you dare tell me you didn't know how I felt." She paused momentarily as she seemed angrier than he'd ever seen her. "How can you be so incredibly selfish? I'm getting married tomorrow, to someone who makes me happy-"

He cut her off, "Do you love him?"

She scoffed in disbelief, "Of course I do. You know what, he actually loves me too, and he had the guts to tell me, to show me, to give me a stupid ring." There was just something about the way she said it. It was something that made him feel so terrible about every choice he had made. They just sat there for a while and looked at the cars passing by and it felt like they were seventeen again, cutting class to do nothing but stare at cars and listen to music that made sense at that time. This time there was no music, only the sound of her sniffling and the occasional passing car. He thought it was really fucking tragic.

"I love you." He finally said it. It's all he said, but it meant so much more, 'I'm sorry, I wish we could have worked out, I wish it was me tomorrow.'

"I know," she said in a way that told him she heard every single thing he'd tried to say. They realised in that moment of silence, they'd shared more than they ever had. Then it happened. The one thing that filled every one of his teenage fantasies. She kissed him. There were no sparks when he felt her lips, only the salty taste of her tears with an after taste of sickening familiarity . They weren't in sync, it was a sloppy kiss that felt like they were trying to make up for the years they could've had. It was filled with the all the curiosity of a first kiss, and the sorrow of a last. Time didn't seem to move any faster or any slower, like they say in the movies. As they kissed, his stomach wasn't filled with butterflies, just gut wrenching regret. She pulled away eventually and left the car. He sat by himself in his car that smelled like Chinese takeout and her perfume for hours before he looked out the window and it finally hit him.

There was no rain.

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