Zane doesn't think too much of the quiet, blue-eyed pixie who moves in across the street a week a month after he turns thirteen, because he's still young enough not to pay much mind to those who do not actively draw attention to themselves. It is about two weeks after she's actually moved in that they speak for the first time.

It is his custom to stay after school with his friends and play baseball in the park for a few hours. The rainstorm came out of nowhere, though, and even though he runs the whole two blocks back home, he's soaked through and freezing by the time he finally gets home. And then, to his great dismay, he realizes that he left his house key at school in his locker, and there is no one home to let him in.

Just as his teeth start to chatter as he stands shivering on the porch, the door across the street opens, and he watches through the gray-blue sheets of rain as a delicately built girl emerges, opens an umbrella on the stoop, and beckons him over from the end of the driveway. Pride wars with discomfort, and he jogs across the road. She has wide eyes the colour of his mother's sapphire earrings, fringed by ink-dark lashes, and she doesn't smile or ask questions.

"You must be cold," she says, holding up the umbrella to shield him from the rain. He's got a few inches on her and has to stoop to fit his head under it. "You can come in and warm up until it lets up."

"Thanks," he mutters. There is no deprecation in her voice. "Your folks won't mind?"

"They're both working," she answers, letting him through the door and into a classily decorated foyer. He remains on the welcome mat as he eyes the glossily polished random-width oak floors and his muddy shoes. She leaves him there for a moment, disappears upstairs, and then comes back down with two fluffy blue towels and a blanket.

There's something soothing about her, even though he's sure that she let him in not out of trust, but out of compassion, and she seems so much older than her twelve years. She makes two cups of instant hot cocoa and does not say anything about sissy boy bands. He keeps the conversation about baseball and she listens, absorbing information on RBIs and triple plays.

It is only when the rain starts letting up and he notices that his mother's car is back in his driveway that he remembers to ask her her name. "Amy," she tells him. He awkwardly shakes her hand, thanks her, and takes his leave. She lets him borrow her umbrella, and when he goes over to return it a few days later, she addresses him like a friend and it's very easy.

***

They gradually learn of each other. He finds out that she's mad smart when he complains about his math homework and she explains geometric proofs in a way that makes far more sense than his teacher. She finds out that he knows about a dozen magic card tricks and insists on trying to figure out how he does them. More than half the time, she guesses the secret, and yet she's impressed anyway. Both of them appear to have latent artistic ability, as she can do decently accurate sketches of faces and objects, with good shading and perspective. He's better with his hands, though, and for her Christmas present that year, he makes her a set of book-ends with clay and chunks of sea glass. One end is the smooth head and shoulders of a woman, and the other is the iridescent tail of a fish, and together it forms a mermaid. He isn't sure why he makes something so girly for her, but when she opens the box, the smile that lights up her eyes and curves across her face is so sudden and stunning he feels two feet taller. On occasion, he finds himself paying undue amounts of attention to the softness of her skin, the graceful way she moves. But it's easy to ignore or repress, at least at first.

Everything changes when she turns sixteen.

***

He picks her up from school because he's a senior and the novelty of having a parking pass has yet to wear off, and that day she's ominously quiet, the sea-blue eyes too dark and wide. Her hands shake in her lap as they clench and unclench around the strap of her bookbag, and the sky darkens around them as though in turmoil with her. He asks her what's wrong, but she simply shakes her head as though dazed, and taking control, he leads her to his house, upstairs to his room, where they've had hours and hours of conversations and study sessions and board games (he usually won at Monopoly, but she invariably kicked his ass in chess). She sits down heavily on his bed, dwarfed in his varsity jacket and shivering as thunder starts to rumble outside, and covers her face with her delicate hands. The skies open up the same time as her shoulders start to shake.

"My dad left last week," she tells him through her sobs. "They're getting divorced. I thought he'd come back for my birthday... I thought he'd change his mind. But he didn't even call. We're moving away tomorrow."

His heart stutters for a moment, and his breath catches in his throat, and all of the sudden he can't stand it. Can't stand the way her always-soothing voice is cracked and raspy from crying and how fragile she looks there, wearing her favourite jeans and his too-big jacket. Can't stand the way her tears and sobs rip at his heart and soul, and he tells himself that he's just holding her for comfort and warmth. His room gets a bit drafty when the weather is bad, and she definitely needs a hug. But when she looks up and he can't look away from her blue eyes and long wet eyelashes, he can't lie to either of them, and pulls her into his lap as his mouth homes in on hers.

It's not awkward at all, and she winds her fingers in his hair as though it was meant to be, and then the meaning of her words hit him-- she's leaving forever-- and he crushes her to his chest. His name leaves her lips in a breathy whisper that's just as wrenching as her tears, and all he knows is that they have only a matter of hours.

He doesn't quite mean to push her down on her back or skim his hands under her shirt to touch her skin, but she just wraps her legs around him smoothly, and when she pulls the tails of his shirt out of his khakis, he's lost. The rain patters musically against his windowpane, and in the dim light of his room, her naked skin is pale and smooth and almost luminous. He keeps his eyes on her face when he carefully pushes into her, and kisses away the single tear that escapes. She reaches up to twine her fingers in his hair, and in a few moments, forgets about everything but him.

Later, he holds her close and listens to her breathing slow down and even out in sleepy exhaustion, and wishes that he had the liberty of a crying jag as well. Outside, the rain stops and night falls silently.

***

In the morning, she's gone before he wakes, and he curses softly and viciously as he takes a long, cold shower to wash away the vestiges of arousal and memory. Outside, the skies are improbably sunny and there's a U-haul truck in the driveway across the street which he steadfastly ignores.

He looks so wan and woebegone that his mother is alarmed and calls him in sick from school, and he spends his day in his room, facing away from the window. It is mid-afternoon and a few hours after the U-haul is gone that he finally finds the will to leave the house for some fresh air.

He stops dead when he reaches his driveway. Sometime during the day, while he was inside and unaware, she'd covered the entire asphalt surface with chalk drawings of their past, of chess matches and baseball games and SAT study sessions, like pastel photographs surrounding a picture of his face. In blue twenty shades paler than her eyes, in her neat cursive, she'd written "I love you" at the very end of the driveway, the point closest to the house where she used to live.

He stands there staring at the artwork, haunted and heartsick, and refuses to let his dad clear off the spectacle with the garden hose.

When it rains a few days later and the chalk washes away in colourful tear-like rivulets, he stares across the street at the empty house and whispers "I love you, too."

***

Life goes on, of course. He's the captain of the school's varsity baseball team and graduates high school with honours. He takes a perfectly nice girl in his grade to prom for a pleasantly relaxed evening of completely platonic dancing and conversation. He gets a partial scholarship to his father's alma mater and goes in for pre-law.

When his academic adviser tells him that he needs an art credit, he balks and opts to take a music appreciation class. He doesn't know if he can stomach the idea of letting someone else sketch his face, and he doesn't want to make anything for anyone, not even for a grade.

Two terms in, his dorm-mate James invites him to a frat party and he downs a fifth of Absolut. He ends up fucking a petite sorority girl who wears her dark hair in a pixie crop, and groans the name Amy when he comes. She's almost too drunk to notice, but doesn't say anything.

When he wakes the next morning, he has the headache from hell and no recollection of what happened. When she opens her eyes, he tries not to grimace. They're brown, not blue, and her name is Kay. He apologizes, offers to walk her back to her house and call her tomorrow, and she shakes her head understandingly, pityingly. He kisses her cheek before he leaves out the door.

He's halfway back to his dorm when it starts to rain.

***

He throws himself into his studies and the years pass in a blur of books and blue-eyed dreams. He finishes valedictorian of his class at one of the nation's top law schools and finds himself inundated with numerous very lucrative offers from big firms, but decides instead to work for the district attorney. He dates on occasion with a studied casualness, and develops a brotherly relationship with the warm-hearted blonde who works as the office's secretary. Mina Aino-Macauley is perceptive, friendly, and fairly easy on the eyes, and never pushes him to tell her the details. He gets the idea that she would know, anyway, as she always seems to.

It is Mina who corners him one day when he comes back from court. After a day of cross-examining a remorseless, meth-addicted gang leader, his defenses are down, and her voice is light and nonchalant.

"My daughter's pediatrician says that lots of drug and convenience stores now have limits on the sale of cold medicines because of the number of private meth labs springing up. Crazy, isn't it?"

He nods in distracted agreement as he writes notes in the margins of a copy of a brief. Mina continues in the same bland tone.

"She's a smart lady, is Amy. Sure looked funny when I got to talking about work while she was filling out Gracie's prescription for her ear infection, though. I mentioned you, and she dropped her pen."

Zane stares at Mina and drops his own pen. It is several moments before his heart starts beating again. "Amy?"

"Yes," Mina smiles sweetly as she hands him his pen. "Doctor Amy Anderson. She has a clinic on the corner of State and Main."

He rushes out of the office, sandy hair blowing in the wind. Mina watches in amusement from the window and says a quick little prayer.

***

He does not even notice the weather as he drives up one street and down the other, his speed just this side of reckless. When fat raindrops start beating on his windshield, he flicks on the wipers distractedly, but he only has one target, and his heart is too full for anything else.

The parking lot of the little clinic at the corner of State and Main is empty but for a sensible blue sedan, and he pulls in, runs towards the door. It's locked, the hours of operation show that the clinic was closed half an hour ago, but he knocks loudly, insistently.

The door opens a crack after a few minutes, and a woman's voice, cool and oh-so-soothing despite an underlying hint of weariness, hits his ears. "I'm sorry, we're closed... Zane?" The last is squeaked out, and he stares down at her. All kinds of memories rush back, and she still looks almost the same. Her face is narrower now, her curves slightly more pronounced. She's wearing pale blue scrubs and white sneakers and no makeup or jewelry, and he watches, mesmerized, as those sea-blue eyes brim over with tears.

"Hey," he whispers, reaching out and taking her hand with both of his, feeling her fingers tremble. "Let me in out of the rain?"

***

She opens the door wider and he glances around. It's neat as a pin, but cozy. There are children's toys in the corner and a comfortable set of couches in lieu of the usual waiting-room chairs. Behind a window he can see her office, done in shades of blue and green, a familiar set of book-ends on a pristine desk. All intentions of talking to her first, of catching up, fly out the window. Love and longing unfulfilled for the past ten years rise up like the tides, and he yanks her into his arms. She stands on tiptoe and meets him halfway and nothing has changed.

"It's always been you," he manages to say after he catches his breath. "Every time it rains, I'd think of you. Ten years!"

She doesn't answer, but in her eyes and her smile he gets the response he's looking for, and in tandem, they sit down on one of the couches. Ten years is compressed into the space of a few hours, conversation and reminiscing and sex melding together as the rain continues to fall outside. When the rain stops and the moon rises, they finally leave, going together to his place in unspoken agreement.

The next morning dawns misty and glorious and she's still there next to him when he wakes. He smiles, and then he opens the window and looks out.

The air still smells like rain, fresh and clean, and the sun shines through the faint drizzle. He hears her get up, feels her rest her hands on his shoulders as her breasts press against his back, and both of them watch as a rainbow curves across the sky. He has never experienced a more beautiful sunrise.

***

It is raining outside, but it is summertime and warm. From inside a house, through a bow window festooned with white lace curtains, two people watch the rain.

Zane has his arms wrapped around Amy's waist from behind, hands joined over her still-flat stomach where their second child grows. She leans back against him, cocooned in his warmth and the steadfastness of his love, and knows that he's smiling even though she can't see it.

"She looks so happy out there," his voice breaks the lulling silence, and it's slightly wistful. Both of them are watching a tiny pixie of a girl, curls of blue-black hair floating out from underneath the hood of a bright green rain slicker. Their daughter is dancing in the rain, splashing happily in puddles. "She grows so fast."

Little Evangeline Weston is all of four years old, sharp as a tack, with an irresistible set of dimples in her rosy cheeks and her father's leaf-green eyes. Her favourite activity, aside from story time with Mommy and T-ball with Daddy, is dancing in the rain. There is a collection of illustrated fairy tales in her room in between mermaid book-ends. She turns around, and her face is lit with a wide smile, and over her head, there's a rainbow in the sky. Amy places her own hands over those of her husband and squeezes. "I love you."

"I love you, too," he murmurs, his breath warm against her neck. "All of you."

The rain starts to let up then, and both of them watch their daughter dart back towards the house. The door opens, letting in small feet in muddy galoshes and the scent of clean air.

Love starts with the tempestuousness of a storm and endures with the soothing steadfastness of rainfall.