Chapter 7: Rain

It started to rain as we left Joan's driveway.

Trevor had forecast it for Sunday on Channel 6, in his soft voice, with a little cloud graphic.

Cillian pulled the truck over under a streetlight three blocks away and turned off the engine.

"You were holding that table so hard I thought it would crack," he said.

"I wanted to throw the gravy at him."

"I know. I could feel it."

He had said it plainly.

I thought about where his hand had been, and my thigh stayed warm.

My own hands were freezing.

I had pulled Trevor's old grey hoodie off the hook by Joan's door when we left.

I'd come without a coat, and it was the nearest thing.

It was too big. It smelled like his laundry soap.

I held my hands in the sleeves and shivered anyway.

"Give me those," Cillian said.

I held them out.

He took both of them in his.

He rubbed his thumbs slowly across my knuckles.

It hurt a little, the blood coming back.

Then it didn't hurt.

The rain ran down the windshield. The streetlight made the cab gold and dim.

I looked at his hands, scarred across the backs, with a healed cut over one knuckle, and the nails clean and square.

"You're good at this," I said.

"At what?"

"Being a boyfriend."

"It's not hard," he said. "You pay attention."

He didn't let go.

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