It was raining.
Marc: Hey.
Fabia: He-
She had already recognized Marc's voice, but once she looked up towards him, shielding her eyes from the rain with one hand on her forehead, she lost her words.
Fabia: -eeeey. Looking sharp today, are we?
Marc laughed a bit and smiled, from under his pitch-black umbrella, wearing a dark blue tuxedo and a polished pair of brown shoes, standing beside the double-sided door of the fancy hotel building she always passed by on her way home from track practice.
Marc: You're gonna catch a cold, you know.
Fabia: It's not even raining all that much, I'll be fine. I'm already heading home, anyways.
Marc: I don't really know how the hell do you enjoy running so much.
Fabia: Coming from a guy dressed in such an amazing tux, I can understand why you don't understand.
Giving him a large smile, she leaned against the concrete wall of the building beyond the door. He stared at her from the corner of his eye and then at the rain that tainted the asphalt on the crowded street before them.
Marc: I'm offended — he said with a smile.
He looked back at her while she drank a bit of water from the bottle she was carrying on a bag wrapped around her waist like a holster.
Marc: But, really now, why did you go to track practice in the rain?
Fabia: I always go, rain or no rain. But when it's raining, it's... like, extra cool.
Marc raised an eyebrow.
Fabia: No pun intended.
Marc: Do explain yourself.
Fabia: I don't know...
She looked up at the rainy clouds, taking a deep breath. Marc suddenly felt like he was looking at her too much, and the thought of it being because of her track outfit came to his mind and made him blush — or at least feel like he was blushing — for a fraction of a second, making him decide to look away slowly, only looking back at her when she started talking again.
Fabia: It's just... When I'm running I feel like I'm not just myself, you know? It's weird to try to explain the feeling... But it's like I'm part of it all. Like I'm one with the wind. I know that sounds very "Disney-princessy", but, yeah. I don't really do it for the competitions, for the medals, for those things. I just like it, a lot. It's a part of me as much as I'm a part of... it. When it rains that whole feeling hits me even harder, I guess. I really like the rain, it feels sort of cleansing, natural, light. And now I'm rambling. Am I making any sense?
Turning to look at him, she saw something in his eyes that could be either him thinking she was an even weirder person or him being heavily fascinated by what she just said. That brief thought of the possibility of it being the latter made her blush for a fraction of a second, as she decided to smile awkwardly, but at the same time quite honestly.
Marc: Umm, yeah. Perfect sense.
He sounded as if he was at a loss for words, and a brief moment of silence followed. Both of them found the silence to be remarkably comfortable, which made Fabia feel like she would start to blush again. Discreetly cleaning her throat, she decided to change the subject.
Fabia: What you doing today?
Marc: My uncle's receiving an award of some kind.
Fabia: The lawyer uncle?
Marc: Yeah. There's gonna be an awkward family dinner afterwards.
Fabia: So you dressed awkward for the occasion.
Marc: Precisely.
They both laughed lightly, and a strange feeling of how much all the details of that conversation fit together made Fabia feel like time had stopped. Marc reached into his pocket to answer his phone, a black fancy car arrived, he briefly said goodbye, she told him to have a good time, the black car drove away. All those moments passed by as if in automatic pilot, and even though she was very convinced that the whole situation would make her feel awkward, it didn't. It was as if she, standing where she stood, having that conversation she had just had, was following the natural course of things. It didn't feel special, or something that she should be very careful with, and at the same time she thought she might be overthinking it all or making it a bigger deal than it really was, she felt like she was allowed to do that. It made her feel very, very... light.
And then it stopped raining.
