Rain Storms Ch. 04

The real reason that I couldn't commit to Eric was that I knew I hadn't changed. I was in the same place I was when we first started to fall apart. I was intolerant of his inability to communicate, and without Ryan's calming influence, I was losing whatever patience I had started to develop with Eric's mood swings.

"Rain?"

I looked up from picking at my dinner at the sound of my name and found myself staring into a set of warm, cinnamon brown eyes. I smiled, "Dylan."

He returned the smile and his eyes twinkled. "How have you been?"

"Good," I lied. I was so far from good that I didn't even have a passing familiarity with it anymore. Due to some major business deals that he was trying to resolve, I hadn't spoken to Ryan all week. We kept missing each other's phone calls. It had turned into one huge, annoying game of phone tag. Eric and I had gotten into such an enormous fight the night before that I had thrown him out of my apartment. Sharon and Cujo spent most of their free time with Jason. Thankfully, at his place so I wasn't subjected to the sounds of their happiness. I was thrilled for them both but I didn't want to listen to it. Although, I suspected that the reason had more to do with the fact that Sharon had no furniture than for my benefit. Either way, the result of all that left me desperately lonely. Hence the reason I was eating dinner in a crowded restaurant just to feel less alone. It wasn't working. But he didn't need to know any of that. "How have you been?"

His eyes scanned over me and the table, taking in the setting for one. "Are you alone?"

"Yes," I replied. "Would you care to join me?"

He glanced back toward the waiting area for a moment. Then he pulled out the only other chair at the small table and sat across from me. "It's been a while."

"Yes," I grinned. "How are things at the firm?"

"Good." He smirked and added, "It's been far less exciting since you left."

I chuckled, "I imagine."

"How are things with you and..."

"Eric?" I supplied.

He grimaced. "I was going to say Ryan."

I nodded but didn't believe him. "Ryan is very busy. I'm afraid that we don't get to talk as much as I'd like."

"You're not seeing him anymore?" he asked.

"I was never dating him, Dylan," I reminded him. "We no longer have sex, if that's what you're wanting to know. We're still friends, he's just very busy."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Are you?" I asked.

"Yes," he grinned. "I liked him. He was very pretty. Not my type but still... He seemed to care a lot about you."

I smiled sadly. "I care about him too."

His brow furrowed and he fidgeted in his seat. He spoke so quietly that I had to strain to hear him over the din of the noisy restaurant. "I honestly thought you'd be back with Eric by now."

"I know you did," I replied. "I'm sorry that I could never convince you-"

"Dylan?" We both turned to see a ruggedly handsome, dark-haired man strolling toward the table.

"Keith." Dylan stood. "I'm sorry. I ran into a work associate. Rain Dutton, Keith Clegg. Rain installed our network in the office."

Keith offered me his hand and I shook it. I didn't stand. "Nice to meet you."

"Keith is the foreman on one of our sites," Dylan explained. I took that to mean that he was also Dylan's unacknowledged boyfriend.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Keith," I responded. "It was good seeing you again, Dylan."

Dylan nodded. "You too. Enjoy your dinner."

I watched them walk off, wondering if Keith was going to handle having a closeted lover any better than I did.

"You left," he accused softly.

"Of course I did," I smirked. "The waitress would have been spitting nails if I had camped out at her table."

"You didn't even eat your dinner," Dylan argued. "You left because of me."

"Not entirely," I told him. "Your boyfriend is a beautiful man."

"He's not my boyfriend," he denied.

"Does he know that?" I asked. His silence was enough of an answer. "Why are you calling, Dylan?"

"Have dinner with me, Rain."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because you have a boyfriend and I'm tired of being hurt."

"I'm not going to hurt you," he insisted.

"Yes, you will," I countered. "We both know that you will. I'm not dating anymore closeted or emotionally unavailable men. I have to stop setting myself up for heartbreak. I need to be with a man who can show me AND tell me how he feels. Maybe I'm asking too much but I don't think so. There has to be one out there somewhere."

I was awake most of that night, tossing and turning. As much as I liked, and lusted after, Dylan, I wasn't in love with him. I was in love with Eric. I spent most of the night lamenting over the fact that I just couldn't make it work with Eric. It wasn't all Eric's fault. He was non-communicative but I didn't make it easier on him. He was moody and bitchy and morose and controlling but I was combative and demanding and needy. We were both at fault but at least I hadn't cheated on him.

When I finally fell asleep, I had nightmares. It wasn't my normal one of being shredded by wild animals. It was the kind where you can never reach the top of the stairs or make it to the end of a long hallway. I woke up, still in the haze of the dreams, feeling frustrated and anxious. I opened my eyes to see the hope chest and had a sudden epiphany: It wasn't anyone's fault.

All this time, I had been focused on who was to blame. As the dream fog cleared, I realized that there was no blame. Those things that I had been faulting were parts of our personalities. It was part of us. We either loved each other as whole people or we didn't. And we did. That's what Eric had been trying to tell me all this time.

Eric communicated through his art. When we had first gotten together, I had known that, but I had never used the knowledge effectively. I had only used it to judge his mood. I had never really listened to what he was saying. I crawled out of bed and over to the chest. Skipping my fingertips over the rough surface of the carvings, I sat on the floor and really looked at it. How many times had I stared at this and had never truly seen it? There was love there. Now that I was looking for it, it was impossible to not see. The expressions on our faces, the way he held me, the positioning of our bodies, it was clear as day. All I had ever seen was the eroticism. The tenderness and affection was so obvious that I couldn't believe that I had never noticed before. I was ashamed that Sharon had seen in a few seconds what I had been missing for years.

Everything changed in my head in an instant. I admit to being stubborn. I get an idea stuck in my mind and I'm determined to see it through. But, now that my eyes were open, I couldn't close them again. Things were suddenly different for me. I needed to be with him. I glanced over at the clock and knew that there was no way Eric would be awake for hours. I couldn't just show up at his place either. I had no idea if he even wanted to see me. I didn't even remember what our fight had been about. I went ballistic and threw him out over something so trivial that I couldn't even remember it two days later. It was such a common occurrence that nothing about it even stood out in my mind as relevant. Stupid.

I made myself some coffee and sat on the couch trying to sort through my thoughts. My new way of seeing things wasn't going to fix all of our problems. All relationships were work. We still needed to be able to communicate better but that didn't mean that it had to be my way of communication. Instead of me trying to force him into a mold that he didn't fit maybe, just maybe, Eric could teach me to understand his way. Sharon understood it. Surely I could learn it too.

I piddled around for as long as I could stand it before I called him. He answered on the third ring. By which I knew that he'd either been sleeping on the couch, nearly impossible for someone of his height, or he'd carried the phone upstairs. The only other option, that he hadn't been sleeping, was eliminated instantly by the gravelly sound of his voice.

"Rain?" he grumbled. "Are you ok?"

I loved his growly, scratchy, morning voice. It was even sexier than his normal voice, which was pretty damn sexy to start with. "Did I wake you?" I asked.

"Baby?"

"I want to come over."

"Why? Are you going to yell at me again?" he asked. "Because you can do that over the phone."

"Do you not want me to come to your place?" I responded. "Or do you just not want to see me at all?"

"Of course I want to see you, Baby. I always want to see you. I just don't want to fight."

"I'm not planning to start a fight," I told him. "I want to see you. I miss you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Okay then," he replied. "Come over."

When I pulled up at the gate, he was outside waiting for me, smoking a cigarette. He opened the gate for me and I pulled through and parked. He ground out his cigarette under his heel and met me at my car door. He was wearing all black, which was not unusual for him, but his hair was wet. He'd just showered.

He seemed a little trepidatious about the kind of greeting he would receive so I wrapped my arms around his neck and tugged him down for a kiss. I could feel the tension wash out of him as he moaned into my mouth, encircled me with his arms, and pulled my body flush against his larger frame.

A slightly floral scent enveloped me in the breezeless, late morning air and I suddenly remembered what our fight had been about. Absolutely nothing. He'd shown up at my apartment with the scent of a woman's perfume still clinging to him. I had no right to confront him about it as we had no commitment of fidelity between us, so I had done the most illogical thing possible. I'd picked a fight with him over nothing and threw him out. Trust is an odd and delicate thing. We give it freely, with little reservation, until it's damaged. Once that happens, it may never be whole again. I had thought I trusted him again but, clearly, I had not.

He had exactly the same scent on him. Only now, I knew what it was.

"Did you change shampoos?" I asked, wrinkling my nose in distaste.

He grimaced. "Conditioner," he explained. "They were out of the kind I normally get so I just grabbed something. I can't stand it. It smells like..." A look of panic crossed his face. "No. Baby, I didn't. I know what you're thinking."

I grinned at him. "I'm not," I assured him. "Don't freak out. I know what it is. But you smell like a bouquet."

He winced. "I'm throwing it out. Today. Now."

I smiled up at him. "I think I can stand it long enough for another kiss."

He gave me a sly, sexy, little smirk. "Just one? I was hoping for a lot more than one. And a lot more than just kissing."

"Mmm. I may be up for a little necking. And some heavy petting."

He chuckled. "Which part of you is up and would like to be heavily petted?"

"I don't know," I teased. "Maybe you should take me inside and I'll let you discover that on your own."

He glanced back, over his shoulder, and then back at me. "It's sheeted," he frowned.

I smiled at him. He'd been working. "I don't mind. I did live through that for years."

He squinted at me. "But it drove you crazy."

I laughed. "Only if I was trying to study. It was hard to work on a computer when it was covered in plastic."

When we stepped through the sliding warehouse door, he pushed aside the plastic sheeting for me. Other than the plastic, and the work in progress, the place hadn't changed since the last time I had been there. He was, evidently, in the cleanup stage. Everything was still covered in plastic but whatever dust or debris that his work had kicked up was not in evidence. And there was a covered sculpture in the middle of the open space.

"Do you remember the maze?" I asked.

"Yeah," he smiled. "If I had known that you were coming..."

Normally, when he sheeted the place, he just covered everything with the enormous sheets of translucent plastic and hung sheets of it to protect the living areas and the door. One night, early in our relationship, while I was sleeping, he'd strung a grid of rope using the I-beams in the walls, the hooks over the door, and the spindles of the loft railing and stairway bannister. Then he'd hung the sheets of plastic over the grid in a convoluted configuration creating a maze. When I finally made it to the center, he was waiting for me wearing nothing but a smile and an erection. He took me right there, on the concrete floor, reminiscent of the times before we had lived together when he couldn't wait to be inside me long enough to make it up the stairs.

"Can I see?" I asked, indicating the tarped statue.

He hesitated. He'd never had an issue with me seeing his work before, no matter what stage it was in, and the knowledge that he might not want me to see it now was painful. He made a decision and nodded. He moved toward the statue slowly and pulled the tarp off it.

My heart lodged in my throat. It was the marble statue from the mortuary. Only it wasn't. It had changed. I moved toward it in a trance. Something about this piece, in its unfinished state, had always fascinated me. But now, I was both enthralled and devastated.

At first glance, it seemed the same. The theme hadn't changed but it was completely different. I couldn't tell if it was the same piece of marble or a totally different one. It could have been the same piece. The veining was the same but the entire piece was smaller. The previous version had stood topping eight feet but this was closer to six. It was still a demon with a figure captured in his arms. Only the demon had changed; he'd become more grotesque. The captured figure had changed too. It was no longer human. It had gained the feathery wings of an angel. The wings were mangled, broken, and crushed to the body of the angel by the demon's arms and wings. Before, when it was incomplete, I couldn't tell if the demon was kissing or biting his captive. Now it was apparent. The angel was being devoured. The only thing that saved this piece from being hideously violent was the expression of divine rapture on the face of the angel. My face.

I sure as hell did not need someone to explain this piece to me. Even though the demon was not wearing Eric's face, the meaning was painfully obvious, even to me.

I may not have needed an explanation, but I wanted one. "Is this us, Eric?" I asked. "Is this how you see us?"

The guilt and agony distorting his gorgeous face was heartrending.

I tried to gentle my voice as much as possible to keep him from feeling like he was being attacked. "It's backwards, my love. You're not the destructive one in this relationship. I am."

I walked over to him and reached up to caress his cheek and thread my fingers into his wet hair. "I've been tearing you and us apart by trying to force you into being someone you're not."

He shook his head. "You just want me to talk to you. That's not asking for too much. I'm just so fucked up that I can't do the simple thing you asked for."

"Yes, Eric," I agreed. "You do need to talk to me. But I need to learn to listen. And I haven't been. You've been trying but I haven't been letting you. That's going to stop. I want us to be together again. For real. Committed to each other. No more of this half-assed playing around. If you still want that."

He took a sharp intake of breath. "I want that more than anything, Rain."

"I'm going to do my best to try to hear what you're telling me but I need you to promise to help me. Sometimes I just don't. I'll try to stop yelling at you if you will try to explain things to me a little more."

He nodded. "I can do that, Baby. But I..."

His sentence trailed off. We'd been doing so well but this was the point at which he couldn't talk to me. I was going to have to listen harder but I needed more than I had to work with. "You what, Eric?" I urged. "Give me a little hint."

"You were seeing Ryan."

That didn't help me. Eric was trying to tell me something and I wasn't getting it. I didn't understand what Ryan had to do with us. "I'm not anymore."

"I know," he sighed.

I was missing something. Something that Eric thought I was getting from Ryan that I wasn't getting from him. Then it hit me. "You think I'm unhappy with us because you don't bottom."

"Yes," he hissed.

"That's why you go so crazy when I think a girl is cute?"

He didn't answer but the anguish on his face told me that I was right. I had known from the very beginning of our relationship that Eric had deep-rooted concerns about his sexual prowess. I believed that I had done a good job of alleviating his unfounded fears. But it had never even crossed my mind that this may be the cause of them.

"Is that why you never asked me to stop seeing him? You thought he was giving me something that I needed to be happy?"

"Wasn't he?"

"Yes. But not what you think." I sighed. "I have never been unsatisfied with our sex life, Eric. Never. If you ever decide that you'd like to try it, I will be more than happy to do that with you. I truly believe that you would love it. But I don't ever want you to force yourself to bottom for me because you think that I need it. I don't."

"Then what was it?" he asked.

"Friendship," I explained. "Unconditional love. He was there for me on the nights that I was so torn up without you that I was literally losing my mind."

"But you were fucking him," he argued.

"Yes," I agreed. "But it was what he needed. I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy it. I did. And I would enjoy it even more if it were with you. But I don't NEED it. I NEED you."

"You need me, Baby?" Eric smirked.

"Yes. Always," I stood up on my tiptoes to kiss his lips, ignoring the cloying odor of decaying flowers. "This piece is beautiful, Eric, but it's not us. The toy box, that's us."

"Yeah?" he smiled at me.

"Yeah." I smiled coyly.

He slid his hands around my waist and pulled my body flush with his. Staring deeply into my eyes, his voice was thick with emotion, "I love you, Rain."

"I love you too, Eric."

He threaded the fingers of one hand through my hair and tilted his head down, resting his forehead against mine. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a minute. "I need to be sweet to you right now, Baby," he whispered. "Will you be disappointed?"

I shook my head slowly, rocking both our heads back and forth. "Take me to bed, Eric," I replied quietly. "Show me how you're feeling."

He opened his eyes and lifted his head so he could see me without being cross-eyed. "I'm scared, Rain. I'm terrified that I'm going to say or do the wrong thing and fuck all this up. That you'll leave me again."

"I'm not going to leave you again, Eric," I promised. "I can't say that we're not going to fight but I'm here. I'm in this. I'm not giving up on us again. 'Til death do us part."

He bent his head and captured my lips in a soft and gentle kiss that had my whole body tingling. Then he picked me up and carried me up the stairs. Once in bed, clothing came off slowly, piece by piece. The pace he set was slow and tender. As much as I wanted to rush things, I knew that this what was he needed. This was another form of communication for him. I hadn't always understood this. It had taken me a year to realize that he had never thought of me as a whore. Admittedly, it had taken him a while to come to terms with having feelings for another man. But as soon as he had, he'd committed himself to it, and he'd never wavered from it, shied away from it, or denied it.

For the first time in all our years together, neither one of us zeroed in on the ways we knew to wring pleasure from each other. Instead, we found new pathways. We discovered new avenues to enjoy each other. We chose to begin our new life together with the understanding that we were both different people and treated each other as such. We learned things about ourselves and each other that we hadn't known before. It wasn't the frantic mating of new lovers and it wasn't the comfortable conjoining of those with decades together. It was both novel and commonplace. We explored each other's bodies in a way we never had before. By the time we had become lovers, we'd had sex so many times that it never seemed necessary. It seemed imperative now.