***
A light drizzle has begun. The sky is weeping.
I keep stealing glances at him as we make our way through the park, heading to the exit. My lips tingle from his kiss—hard and hot and all too brief. He says he’s fine, but the tears drying on his face and the pain in his voice when he told me why tell another story.
What a disaster.
Stop it, I tell myself. Okay, so I can’t quite tell if my idea of coming to the zoo was a fiasco or not. Can’t tell if his tears were only sad, or also happy. But in any case, I broke through some barrier he’d erected around him. Learned more about him in a couple of hours than I had in the past weeks.
Not that he likes snakes, or that he wanted to be a herpetologist. Not only that. He feels and keeps the emotions trapped inside. He has dreams, but he’s buried them deep. I don’t think he’s the kind of person to bare himself to others. He hides. Tries to be strong, but he’s cracked inside.
What the wound was… I can guess from the things he told me: his junkie mother and her abusive boyfriends. Stealing to survive when he was little. Having a brief stint at happiness with his cousin’s family, and then losing that, too. Thinking his mother was dead, when in fact she’d abandoned him.
That’s enough to break even the strongest.
His childhood was so different to mine, maybe I should be running the other way. How could he understand me, and how could I understand him when our backgrounds have no middle ground?
And yet… I’ve never felt as comfortable in my skin as I have with him. So happy.
The thought sends a shiver through me.
It’s the cold, I tell myself, because meanwhile the drizzle has turned into rain. Somewhere above, thunder booms and the wind picks up.
The clouds burst open, pouring a sea of ice-cold water down on us.
“Shit,” Seth mutters and grabs my hand. Half-limping, half-running, he leads me out of the zoo, past the parked cars, searching for mine. “Where the fuck are we parked?”
People are overtaking us, running, unprepared for the sudden storm. The spatter of the rain drowns out other sounds, so they seem like ghosts, fleeing past.
“There!” I point out my blue Kia Rio through the downpour, and we hurry that way. Cold water is running through my collar down my back and front, soaking my dress. “Quick.”
I press the electronic key to unlock the doors, and we scramble inside. Jeez, it’s cold! The temperature must have suddenly dropped ten degrees.
The rain closes around the car, a solid wall, trapping us inside. I turn on the ignition and start the heater. Rubbing my hands together, I look over at Seth. He’s struggling to get rid of his drenched jacket. He manages after a moment, and throws it at his feet with a low curse.
I forget myself staring. With his dark hair plastered to his temples, long lashes wet, the T-shirt stuck to his body, he should look like a drowned rat.
Except he looks good. Crap, he doesn’t just look good, he looks frigging hot. My lower lip catches between my teeth as I observe a shiny droplet trickle down his neck, disappearing into his white T-shirt. A T-shirt that’s gone transparent, molding to every hard ridge and plane of his chest and shoulders, outlining his firm pecs, his taut abs.
Then he grabs the hem and pulls that one off as well, and my brain self-combusts.
Mayday. Hot, shirtless guy in my car.
Takes me a while to realize he’s staring right back at me.
“You should take off that coat,” he says, his voice flowing over my skin like rough velvet. “Need help?”
Snapping out of my daze, I manage to twist in my seat until I can shrug the coat off. I throw it on the back seat, and I can feel his eyes on me, a line of heat.
I turn toward him, start to ask if he’s okay, to say again I’m sorry, but the words stick in my mouth.
He’s undoing his pants. The top button on his jeans pops open, and he unzips his fly slowly. Click, click, click.
“What…?” I have to stop and swallow, my mouth dry. “What are you doing?”
“It’s wet. Taking it off. You should do the same.”
/> “Taking… We’re in the middle of a parking lot. Outside the zoo.”