RAIN

She had always liked the rain.

How drops slid along her skin like gentle caresses, sometimes cool and sometimes icy. The smell that rose from the ground. The shades it echoed against the buildings.

The world used to go to a different pace when it started raining. People would hurry up and the streets would empty. Life slowed down. A unique quietness would wrap the city.

Nobody really understood why all these lonely, endless walks in the rain but then nobody really understood her in the first place. To the eyes of many, Maura Isles was strange. And thus captivating.

She had tried to look a bit more like them in the past. She had tried to fit in. It hadn't worked out so she had simply accepted the fact that perhaps she was supposed to be unique. It was neither a blessing nor a curse.

It was just how life was supposed to be.

Do you even know where you're going to?

No. She had absolutely no idea. Sometimes she would reach the river, sometimes she would end up in Chinatown. The destination didn't matter. It was walking that she liked, walking in the rain. Walking alone.

And thinking about Jane.

Jane had showed up in her life without any warning. Her presence had been sudden, almost violent. Loud. A storm of feelings and of new perspectives.

The only thing that had remained untouched was Maura's love for the rain.

She wished Jane understood. She wished Jane read her silences. Her smiles and her tears. Her loneliness. It would make things easier and words wouldn't be needed. Then they would acknowledge a thousand things.

And they would be happy together. So happy.

...

It would happen in the rain because everything looked better in the rain. Better and romantic like in the movies.

Jane would run after her or they would come across each other on the street because it was meant to be. She believed in fate, not in coincidences. Jane would grab her wrist. She would pin her against a wall of brick and they would share their first kiss.

Or if she happened to be daring like in Maura's wildest dreams then she would kiss her there, right in the middle of street.

In the rain.

She had an endless list of scenarios in head. An endless list of possibilities, of hopeful what-if. Of course none of them would ever come true but she didn't care as long as she managed to lose herself in them.

Escaping reality for a land made of fantasies had its perks because nothing hurt once there. Nothing at all. Not even her loneliness.

"You're dying for a walk, aren't you?"

Jane's question made her smile because they both knew how rhetorical her question was. It had been raining non-stop for two hours now and Maura couldn't stop staring at the ballet of drops sliding down the windows. It soothed her soul.

"Where would you go to if you weren't stuck at work?"

Wherever you would be able to catch me back.

Maura shrugged. She crossed her arms against her chest then leaned against the wall to be as close to the rain drops as possible. She could almost feel their coolness against the windows. She followed one of them with the tip of her index finger. Absent-mindedly. Then she remembered where she was and she walked out of Jane's office without saying a word.

Jane didn't mind her silences. She may not understand them all the time but she never made any remark. She accepted them just as she accepted Maura's uniqueness.

"Maura?"

She looked up at the call of her name. Jane was standing in the hallway with several reports in hand. She was turning her back at the rain. Thus she couldn't see the drops that slid against the windows nor the shade that echoed against the building opposite the street. She was missing out what Maura lived for. What nobody could see.

A singular beauty.

"How about a drink, tonight?"

The doors of the elevator closed. They swallowed the smile that had lit up Maura's eyes. She had nodded just on time though. Just before Jane to vanish from her sight.

It would have stopped raining by the time they would leave the BPD later in the evening. The asphalt would still be wet but the sky would be clear of any cloud.

It would even be sunny.

And one more time, Maura would have missed her chances. Jane wouldn't catch her back in order to kiss her on the street. In the rain like in the movies.

She closed her eyes as her smile turned bitter and a lonely tear ran down her cheek.

Perhaps it was the reason why she loved the rain so much in the end. Perhaps. Because at least when she went out on her lonely walks then nobody could tell whether she was crying from a broken heart or if it was just rain drops that kept on coming to die at the corner of her mouth.

Perhaps.