The Rain Began to Fall (12 page)

Her mind rolled
around, searching for a reference.

“Oh yeah,” she
said, remembering. “What was it, last Friday night?”  Leigh nodded
affirmatively.

“You were in a
hurry, and. . .
the
last thing you said was... that
you were going to the races!” Mindy recalled, stabbing a finger into the air.

“Bingo.” Mindy
frowned and studied her sullen friend for a moment.
What’s going on here
?

“Well, it’s not
every day that Gene calls me looking for you!” she explained. “It was kind of
strange! I just told him what you said. So what’s the big deal?”

“
The big deal
is
he was supposed to be working late,” Leigh responded. “He surprised me.”

“Surprised you?”
she repeated.
You mean “caught you” don’t cha?
flashed
through her mind.  “So where were you?
The horse track?”
Which made absolutely no sense.
Leigh had never been
to the track before, as far as she knew.

“No.”

“Alright.
Where then?”

Leigh didn’t want
to say much about this. But she couldn’t just clam up and give nothing at this
point.

“Have you ever heard
of those drag races out on Summerville road?” she asked.

Mindy had briefly
dated a guy named Charlie a couple of years ago, and he would go dragging on
Summerville road almost every weekend. She had gone with him one night, and it
had been a wild, rough scene.

“What in the world
were you doing out there?” Mindy quizzed. She was now very suspicious.
Is
she seeing someone else
?
How could that be
?

“Watching the
races,” Leigh snapped. Mindy stared blankly at her for a moment.
Attitude
!

“No kidding,” she
shot back, then dipped a spoon into her egg drop soup.
Now we’re getting
down to it
, she thought. Something was definitely amiss here.  “You
know what I mean,” she continued. “That’s not exactly one of your normal
hangouts. I know; I’ve been there. That’s a rowdy crowd.”  She paused and
watched Leigh stab forcefully at her egg roll. The two guys who had been
flirting with them across the way now stepped up to their table. They had
gotten up their courage, and one of the brave souls now leaned on the table, looking
into Mindy’s face, and the other into Leigh’s.

“Hi,” one said to
Mindy, raising his eyebrows suggestively, sucking in his stomach and swelling
his chest.

“
Helloooo
,” said the other to Leigh, smiling his best.

Their poses were
just too struck, too clichéd. Leigh and Mindy looked at each other for a
second, and then burst out laughing. The guys looked at each other with
confused expressions, but Leigh and Mindy were now seized with a giggling,
laughing fit, tears forming in their eyes. The guys stood up straight and stuck
their hands in the back pockets of their jeans, looking around to see who might
be watching this potentially embarrassing scene. Leigh looked up at them
through her tears, and realized how uncomfortable their reaction had made them.
She waved a hand in front of her face.

“Guys, we’re
sorry,” she choked out. Mindy reached out and touched the arm of the one who
had approached her.

“Yeah,” she
agreed. Expressions of relief appeared on both of their faces.

“Well...we just
wondered if you would like to join us,” the one beside Leigh offered
tentatively, confidence diminished but still game.

Leigh raised her
left hand to show her engagement ring and smiled. “Sorry.”

“A lucky guy,” he
opined, bowing low.

“And you?” the
other asked Mindy.

“I’m not looking,”
she replied. “But thanks anyway, okay?”

“Are you sure?” he
pressed, not wanting to give up on this beauty, now that he had waded in.

“Yeah,” she
responded. “I’m sure.”  He sighed, and the two guys looked at each other.

“Okay,” the one
next to Leigh said. “You two have a great day.”

“Thanks,” both
Mindy and Leigh responded, sincerely. They exited stage left, in search of
greener pastures.

Silence fell
between them as they wiped the tears from their eyes, and Leigh, picking up her
chopsticks, resumed picking at her food. After calming down, Mindy stared at
her friend, wondering. She had never seen Leigh this way. She wasn’t one
normally given to big mood swings, a real steady Freddy. And going out to those
drag races so wasn’t the style of the girl she knew. The idea that she was
seeing another man, especially this close to her wedding, was absurd. But there
was no other plausible reason she would have gone to an event so out of the
ordinary, so outside of her world. There
had
to be someone else. Maybe
she could get it out of her before the day was over.

“So was it a bad
scene?”

“He wasn’t too
happy about it,” Leigh replied. “He screamed some, a little
too
much,
and then
I
got mad. I’ve told you how controlling he can be sometimes.”
Mindy nodded, but she didn’t recall Leigh ever mentioning that.

“Well, he got off
on that kick, and it upset me,” she added.

“Have you made
up?”

“Yes.” She looked
down and didn’t elaborate further.

“So everything’s
fine then!” Mindy said, slapping her hands on the table.

“Yes.”

“But
you’re
not fine,” she stated, leaning forward on her elbows. “I mean, honestly, you
didn’t act very excited earlier about picking out your dress. Up until today,
all you ever talked about was your wedding and the honeymoon. Today, you seemed
like you couldn’t care less about any of it!” She took a breath and waited,
sure there would be
some
reaction. But Leigh merely continued to stare
down at her plate, picking at her food. She decided to press on. She leaned
across the table.

“I’m sorry I got you
in trouble. You
know
I didn’t mean to,” she said sincerely. Leigh looked
up at her.

“Oh, it’s okay,”
she sighed. Mindy reached over and touched Leigh’s hand.

“Hey, you know you
can tell me anything, right?” she said.

“Yes, I know, and
thanks.”

Leigh glanced at
her watch: 4:30 pm. She began cleaning up her spot, her food gone uneaten.

“I’ve got to go,”
she announced. “I have to meet Gene.” She smiled and squeezed Mindy’s hand.
“You’re a great friend. Don’t worry about it, okay? Everything’s fine.
Really.”

“Okay,” Mindy
responded as she cleaned up her own spot.
“But one question.”

“What?” Leigh
stood and slid her pocketbook over her shoulder.

“Why did you go?
 Who invited you?”

Leigh stared at
her friend for a moment. She knew Mindy was suspicious, and she wanted so badly
to tell someone what she was going through, what she was feeling. But she felt
she could keep better control of the situation by dealing with it alone. Still,
she deserved something.

“Kyle
Tilston
,” she answered.

“Kyle
Tilston
?” Mindy repeated, looking at her with a confused
expression, her mind racing. Who
was
that? Then it came to her. She had
happened into Leigh’s office the morning he was there for orientation, and they
had both talked about how good looking he was.

“Kyle
Tilston
!” she exclaimed as Leigh walked away.
“That cute guy that just started?”

“Yeah,” Leigh
replied over her shoulder. “I’ll give you a call, okay?”

“Whoa! Wait a
minute! Leigh!”

“I
gotta
go!” she called out, and hurried off.

As she
disappeared, Mindy plopped back down in her seat with eyes wide.
Kyle
Tilston
?
Is she involved with him
? He was eye
candy, that for certain, but
she was happy with Gene, wasn’t she? And it
didn’t make sense on the face of it. She and Kyle were from different worlds.
But, knowing Leigh as she did, that wasn’t necessarily a disqualification.
Wow
,
she thought.
And her wedding’s just two months away
. And on the heels of
that thought, another:

If
it happens.

“….
Joe Hammer
lay awake at 2:20 am, staring at the ceiling, while his wife slept peacefully
beside him. He struggled now in his mind with the long held prejudices that
were so ingrained in him by his upbringing and the culture of a small, white
southern town. The words finally exchanged at the fishing hole between he and
George today were not hate filled. They were cordial and, yes, respectful. It
had surprised him. In the space of an hour, he had forgotten the skin color of
the man, and found himself engaging in fishing stories and techniques with him.
They had even shaken hands when they parted. The resulting emotions of that
experience now kept Joe awake, as the walls of a lifetime of falsely held
beliefs crumbled in his heart
.”

Leigh turned the
page face down on top of the many other pages of
The Fishing Trip
she had
read. She looked over at the clock on her dresser: 1:00 am. She yawned, and
knew she would be one tired girl in the morning if she didn’t pack it in soon.
But the story was so hard to stop reading!  She was thoroughly enjoying
it.
And Kyle wrote that
?
she
thought for the
thousandth time with amazement, as she turned out the light and flopped back on
her pillow. She was a voracious reader, and not every writer piqued her
interest. She had a handful of favorites, and now she could add Kyle to that
list.

She had been
reading the manuscript most of the evening, and as she drifted off to sleep,
her thoughts turned into visions of Kyle’s face and eyes. She let them come,
and as she slipped into unconsciousness, those visions turned into dreams,
where he held her in his arms, flesh to flesh, and she felt his lips on hers.

Spring was showing
off again on a bright and beautiful Monday afternoon. The sky was a deep blue,
the humidity of summer not yet casting its hazing blanket, and the trees on the
grounds of
Falstead
were now sporting small, new
leaves. The temperature was an idyllic seventy-three degrees.  It was
lunch hour, and Gene and Leigh sat at a table on
Falstead’s
company grounds. He would have preferred their normal hangout, Lyle’s, but this
was her idea, and whatever or wherever she chose was fine with him. Since the
tumultuous episode on Summerville road, he had somehow miraculously managed to
get away from work and take lunch with her every day. He had been toeing the
line since that night, realizing for the first time in awhile how precarious
his position could be with her. Something had come over
her
lately; he didn’t know what. And she had continued to display, in different
ways, an independent nature that he hadn’t seen in many years.

It made him
nervous. He had always feared for his position in her life back then, and he
had taken great comfort in the submissive personality she had assumed in the
subsequent years, when she had been susceptible to his influence and
control.  He had talked to his mother about it, and she informed him it
wasn’t unusual for a woman to behave the way Leigh was at this point. She
called it wedding jitters. Still, he knew her best, and he wasn’t taking any
chances. Maybe he just wasn’t spending enough time with her. He could take care
of that.

Leigh was
resplendent in a flowery dress that came just above the knee, cut to mid
shoulder in the back. As they settled in, she glanced inconspicuously around
the grounds, searching for Kyle. She had looked for him at break this morning,
to no avail. She had wanted to tell him how much she was enjoying the book,
though she knew that to actively seek out and communicate with him was going
against her self- imposed rule of avoidance. But she had been so impressed with
the story that she
had
to let him know.

A couple of nights
lately she had dreamt of him, of them, and they had been wet and wild visions.
She had awoken in a passionate fever on one occasion, tossing and turning in
her unfulfilled, fanciful desires. It was so hot to imagine, but was it
practical?
Of course not.
He was merely an
infatuation, and nothing more - and she truly believed that. But oh what a
smoking fantasy! If she were the promiscuous type - and he was almost enough to
drive her that way - she would certainly have her fun with him.

In the real world,
however, she wasn’t promiscuous, and she had a long, proven history with Gene,
a good man. He just needed straightening out from time to time. They would have
a great future together.

“Beautiful
weather, isn’t it?” Gene asked, smiling. “I’m glad my work load wasn’t so
heavy.” In truth, his work load could have filled a dump truck, but it wasn’t
enough to keep him away from her these days.

“Yes, it is,” she
responded, now attentive and returning his smile.

He opened his
sandwich.

“Dad and I talked
earlier today about the firm up north,” he said.

“Oh?” she
responded. “What did he have to say?”

“Well, he told me
it was growing, and he still wants me to move there and be involved in its
development,” Gene said. “Now, you know Leigh, our moving to New York wouldn’t
be that bad. I really think you would like it!” She had been there, and she
definitely knew she
wouldn’t
like it.

“Gene, you know
how I feel about that,” she replied.

“But its New York
City!” he countered. “This is a great opportunity!  Now, the cost of
living
is
higher, but…