10.20

I've got a pencil gripped between my teeth and a pile of papers in my arms. You can see me from the car, but we're waiting. You haven't even unlocked the door. The smell of ground-oil is omnipresent; the saturation of scent is driving us back to the first time we met. I'm looking at you through the downpour, thinking about how the rain will soon rob the air of that fresh-wet smell, and you're looking at me through the obscurity of the windscreen, thinking about holding my hand for the first time as the almost-hot August died around us, rain falling, fingers slick and feverish and cramped from their tight grip on another hand.
You're starting to cry, now, but I can't see it. I'm waiting for the clouds to close back up before I make the dash, pell-mell to the car, hoping against hope that my papers don't wrinkle and die. You've decided long ago that you want to get married, but I still haven't asked the question. At this point, you're afraid to bring it up. Maybe there's something wrong, some misgiving, some broken deal that constrains me. Maybe I'm not in love with you anymore. It's a garbage hypothesis, I'm sure you know, but you've thought it twice now since that first day, in the rain. This time, the thought is foreign, alien, like you've forgotten what it feels like to lack that security, but the thunderous sound of the water on the thin, membranous roof is taking you back to the tin shed where we stood to wait out the first, most terrified rain of our infant love. You can feel the pulse in your hands as you grip the steering wheel, staring at the indefinite me across the plaza. You could feel the pulse in my hands, count the beats with your palms, register the shattering shock of it up your arm like an insistent metronome cracking out an amorous allegro. You're now picturing it, and it has taken on shades of blue and green only, even the blackest shadows of the storm washed with ocean hues. You're smelling it, now, the strongest memory-tied scent you've ever believed in, and that only because you live it each time it rains and it shocks you back to that moment when I took your hand.
You reach over and turn off the air in the car. The tears have washed through the tissues of your face, and your nose couldn't register the smell anymore, anyway. The rain is abating, and you can see me shift, restlessly. You lean over, just out of my view, and I crane my neck to see what's happening, and I can't quite make out you opening up the glove compartment and stirring around for a napkin. In the rear-view mirror, you carefully collect the tears and fold the napkin around them. You still look put together. The rain lapses, and you catch movement as I sprint across the pavement to the car. You've reached over and opened the door before I even find the curb, and I'm in the seat by the time the door bounces lightly on its hinges.
I'm breathless. I turn to you, a laugh caught, still-born, on my face. It slides away just like the thin wash of water down the windscreen.
I see you.
"Did you smell it?"
You, of course, don't answer.
"I smelled it."
You look away, through the other window, but every muscle in your arms and legs look electrified, uncomfortable, motionless and limp and entirely on edge.
"I smelled our Alabama August." I shift, and it's the only sound in the car because the rain has stepped back and is watching, holding its breath. I've only just put my hand next to yours, and, as if by instinct, as if by feeling the heat radiating from my skin, you've felt my presence. Simultaneously, we reach for each other's hands, and I can feel my bones stretch with how tightly you hold to me. The papers are still in my lap, and the center console is digging into my hip, and the seatbelt is holding you back, but we're close. As close as humans can be. There's no physicality to this, but only truth. I can't see your face, but I know it. You feel the awful regularity of the thunderous heartbeat once more, and the wash of it travels up your arm and you reverberate.