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Rain moved her head so she could fully see Mark, and at that moment the moonlight reflected off her eyes making them seem to glow and giving her a mysterious and entrancing appearance...that, coupled with how the wind was blowing her hair around her face, was overwhelming Mark's senses. He moved his hand from her cheek to her lips, tracing the outline of them with his fingertips, just barely touching her. Rain covered his hand with hers, pressing his fingers against her lips and softly kissing each one, her eyes never leaving his. Mark wanted to, no NEEDED, to kiss Rain...the urge to do so was so strong, but he knew how fast they took that part of their relationship was solely up to Rain.
"Rain, may...may I...kiss you?"
"Yes...please." she barely whispered.
Mark moved closer until his and Rain's lips were mere inches apart and lightly brushed his over hers several times before pressing them in a kiss against Rain's...nothing to deep or heated but no less intimate or romantic. Mark pulled away slightly from Rain, checking for any signs of discomfort on her face, but all he saw was a glazed over look in her eyes and a slight smile...and nothing telling him to stop, which was all he needed to see. He began to kiss her again, this time with a little more passion and intensity, every bit of which Rain returned. The world could have collapsed around them, people could have been walking by them and they wouldn't have known nor would they have cared...all Rain knew of at that moment was Mark and all Mark knew of was Rain.
Rain wrapped her arms around Mark's neck, almost in a choke hold, trying to pull him closer, not wanting even air to stand between them. Mark and Rain's lips parted only long enough for them to catch their breath, but their lips instantly locked again as those few seconds were enough for both to miss each other. Rain was finally able to break the kiss, reluctant but able, and felt almost drunk from it. ~ So that's how it feels to be kissed...really kissed by someone who holds nothing back from you, someone who shows you just how much a kiss can mean and how much it can say. It was never like this with...~ Rain stopped herself and scolded. ~How dare you compare that man to Mark! Mark actually CARES for you~.
Mark placed his head on Rain's shoulder, stopping her personal tirade and focusing her attention back on him. She kept one arm around his shoulder and ran the fingers of her other hand through his hair, reversing the roles they were usually in, as Mark rocked them back and forth in the swing. They did this for about an hour until they HAD to leave because it was so late.
Mark and Rain quietly entered the house, trying their best not to make any noise and wake up his parents. Stopping in front of her room, Rain slipped her arms around Mark's waist not wanting to go into her room without him...not after the moment they had just share, an important one to her, but she knew she had to be respectful of the fact she was in his parent's house which meant being alone for that night.
"I'm thinking the same thing." Mark said. "I wish I could spend what's left of this night with you by me."
"Just promise me one thing."
"What's that?"
"I won't have to do this tomorrow night."
Mark grinned, a twinkle in his eye. "If I have anything to say about it you won't."
Rain and Mark shared one last kiss before retiring to their seperate rooms, each wondering how much sleep they would end up getting that night.
No longer able to sit still without shaking his legs, to drumming his fingers, to the point they were becoming numb, Mark jumped out of the chair and began pacing the floor, becoming angrier with every step.~Where the hell is she?~ Mark asked himself as he looked around her house. A month or two ago, Rain had given him a key to use if he needed to get in while she wasn't there or if he left early in the morning and had to lock the door.
"Did she happen to tell any of you guys where she was going?" Mark directed the question towards, Gus, Sasha, and Ginger. Of course they offered him nothing except for slight wag of the tail and a meow from Gus.
Mark stopped his pacing and picked up Gus, scratching behind his ears and then running his fingers lazily through the cats soft fur. Gus purred his approval,eyes half closed as he rubbed his face against Mark's several times before resting his head in the area between Mark's neck and his shoulder.
"I never would have figured myself to be a cat person, especially with two other dogs in the house, but you sort of gave me no choice...once a cat picks you, I guess you're theirs for life, huh?" Mark replied as continued to stroke Gus' fur. " The only thing that would make you the perfect cat is if you could tell me what's going on with your owner." Mark plopped himself down in the same chair he had just gotten up from, letting Gus find a comfortable spot on his lap. ~ Where is she~?
Everything had seemed okay after they had returned from Texas, but then things took a turn for the worse starting that Monday. She became distant again, going from talking to him all the time to not talking to him at all and asking that he not come over for the rest of the week. But he came over Wednesday night anyways and found the house empty. He waited for her that night, but she never showed up, and so far she hadn't shown up this night either, the clock reading 11:00.
Rain pulled into her driveway, the last thing she wanted to see was before her... lights on in her house and Mark's truck beside her car. ~He would show up tonight... of all nights~ Rain thought as she gathered her bag and coat and closed the car door. Making the five second walk to the front door last about two minutes, Rain tried to gather the strength she needed to face Mark who would no doubt be extremely upset, and probably hurt, with her because she basically skipped out of town and without telling him where she was going. ~ Maybe he'll just let me go to bed and sleep and save the lecture for tomorrow.. yeah, right. He won't give me a moment's peace until I tell him where I've been and why I didn't tell him~.
She walked into the house to the livingroom where she saw Mark sitting in a chair with Gus on his lap...a look on his face that made her seriously consider turning around and going to a hotel room for the night. Mark placed Gus on the floor and walked to where she was standing.
"Where the HELL have you been?" he boomed.
~And so it begins~." I had...I had to go somewhere." She timidly answered.
"Ah...another one of your evasive answers." Mark replied "Do you have any idea how worried I've been?"
"Look, I'm sorry..."
"You're sorry, huh?" Mark threw his hands up in the air. "I thought we were past this, past all of your guessing games. You don't have to tell me everything about yourself, but I thought you trusted me enough to at least tell me the small things, like where you are, when you're coming back...SOMETHING so I know nothing has happened to you. I don't deserve to know where you are? Or if you are okay?"
"THAT'S NOT FAIR!" she yelled back. " Besides, Micheal knew where I was."
"And you actually thought he would tell me?" Mark asked. "Micheal wouldn't tell me anything unless you told him so."
"Stop yelling at me!" Rain exclaimed, throwing her bag down and walking past him. "I didn't tell you one thing...ONE THING, Mark, and all of a sudden you think I don't care about or trust you? Aren't you being just a little unreasonable?"
"I don't know...I never know with you. Can't you just tell me where you were?"
"I don't want to talk about it." She answered, turning away from him.
"Why not?" Mark thought he had himself under control, but that answer set him off again.
"Because I don't want to!" Rain exclaimed. "Would you please just let this go."
Seeing how upset she was getting finally broke through to Mark. All the anger left him and he walked over to her, wrapping his arms around her and pressing her back against him. She didn't want him to touch her, but gave up, too drained to actually fight, and just kept him from seeing her face.
"I'm sorry... I guess worrying about you and not knowing where you were pushed all the wrong buttons."
Rain said nothing but eventually turned around to look at Mark. "I should have said something. It's just very hard for me to talk about this because of how exhausting it is, emotionally and physically, but it's time I told you...everything."
"Okay." Mark said as they sat down on the couch. Ginger quickly joined them, her head resting on Rains's legs.
"I always take two days off from work this time of year unless the date happens to fall on a week-end I'm off, so I can fly to Colorado."
"Fly to Colorado...for what?" Mark asked, puzzled.
"To visit the graves of my friends. Fourteen years ago today, a drunk driver killed three of my friends, including my best friend, and left me looking like this." Rain answered, continuing to look only at Ginger and not at Mark. "It was just another loss I had to endure...but I guess I should start before the accident, so you'll understand more about me and how the past shaped the person I am today."
"Thank you." Rain said as Mark handed her a glass of wine. At first he wasn't going to give it to her, but she only asked for one glass and no more, just needing a little something to make it through the next few hours it would take to basically tell her life story. "Well...where to start." Rain mumbled, playing with her glass. "I guess I should start 'from the beginning' so to speak." Rain took a deep breath and looked at Mark. "Okay." "My mother was only fifteen when she became pregnant with me, so needless to say, I wasn't exactly...planned. The boy who got her pregnant denied I was his and refused to help her, and my mother's parents were ashamed of her...calling her loose and a slut because only girls like that got themselves pregnant at fifteen...so they kicked her out of the house and told her not to return or call them ever, washing their hands of her. So here was my mother, homeless and pregnant with nowhere to go. Fortunately, a friend of my mother and her parents offered her a place to live so she could stay in school and get her diploma and even offered to take care of me once I was born, which they did when I was born between my mother's sophomore and junior year.
She didn't skip a beat after I came into the world, going back to school and working on the weekends and whenever else she could, trying to save money for us so she could move away from that town to somewhere that wasn't quite so painful. Every step along the way, my mother had people in her life who helped her with me, looked after me so she could have an evening to herself or weekends to herself, and offered a shoulder when things began to overwhelm her and she worried about what would happen to us. Somehow my mother made it through those two years and graduated from high school. She stayed one more summer in the place she grew up before moving to Denver with the friend she had been living with, who was going to be attending college, and they rented an apartment together. While her friend was going to school, my mother worked as a secretary at a business which belonged to someone who knew her friend's mother. When her friend graduated and found a job, we all moved into a house. I was six or seven at the time and everything was great, considering how things began for us...my mother had even landed a better paying job and was planning on going to evening classes. It wasn't like we were struggling for money, my mom just wanted to be more than somebody's secretary.
Well, a couple of months later, my mom DID go back to school. She was striving to become an accountant, always loved numbers so she figured it was right up her alley. That's when...that's when things slowly started to go downhill. My mother began to feel tired about a year after she started classes but gave it no thought at first. I mean, she was working a full time job, raising an eight year old daughter, and was going to school...who wouldn't be tired after all of that? I'm surprised she kept her sanity, I probably wouldn't have. It soon went from being tired to not being able to do anything with me because she had to take that time to catch up on her sleep so she could go to work and school. My mom's friend was finally able to convince her to go to a doctor after she had missed a few days of classes and eventually had to drop out all together. Two days later, after she saw the doctor, my mom called me into her room...I'll never forget that day because I was suppose to have my ninth birthday party that night. She told me she wasn't going to be able to have the party that night and of course I got upset, wondering why in the world she was doing this to me. She said she wasn't trying to 'ruin my life'...she had just found out some news, which was devastating to her and she needed to be alone with me and couldn't deal with any company. And that's when she told me she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, one of the worst kinds of cancer a woman could get.
Well I started crying and she started crying and we spent the night just holding each other, the party long forgotten. I knew I had to spend as much time with her as possible because we knew that even after she had surgery, there was still a big chance of her dying. So a routine started, I would go to school, come home, help my mother, take her out so we could do stuff together...just spend time with each other. She did okay at first, but we learned the cancer had already spread though her body and the routine changed to me visiting her in the hospital.
And then the day came...I was visiting her like I always did, she needed help breathing now and she was very weak but still in good spirits. We were talking about many things, including the fact she wanted her friend to raise me if she didn't make it, which I told her I had no problem with...she was a second mother to me anyways. I was telling her what happened that day in school when I noticed how she kept closing her eyes for minutes at a time and then opening them again. I figured she had reached her limit, and it was time for me to let her rest again, so I told her I loved her and for her to go to sleep. She also said she loved me, told me to always be true to myself and to take care of myself, and then she closed her eyes. I was holding her hand when...when he heart finally gave out and...and she finally felt no pain and found some...peace. She was only 25 when she died."
Rain started crying, remembering all the pain she felt that day her mother passed away. Mark held her as the past brought tears once again, whispering words of comfort. As Mark did this, Rain looked at the pictures on the mantle...focusing on two pictures in particular. She left Mark's arms and retrieved those pictures before returning once more to the safety and comfort Mark always gave her. Holding one picture for Mark, Rain turned to him and began talking again. "I'm sure this particular picture perked your interest the night we were snowed in...this woman is my mother. Cynthia was my mother's friend."
Mark looked at the picture...the one which had been in the middle of the mantle. "I was wondering who this woman was when I first saw this picture. You look exactly like her." "Yeah, I do...even down to those amazing gray eyes. I give thanks every day that I do look like her. That way I never forget her, I only have to look in the mirror to be reminded of my mother...though her face wasn't scarred."
Rain glanced at the picture again. "Not a day goes by when I don't miss her or wonder what she would be doing now...would she have gotten her degree, would we have stayed in Denver, would we still have been close? Don't get me wrong, Cynthia has been a wonderful mother to me and I'm grateful to have been raised by her, but there were times I wanted my real mother there because she was my only 'true family'. Did you know that nobody from my mother's family even bothered to show up at her funeral? The guy who got her pregnant, who I refuse to call my father, didn't show up either, didn't call to see how I was doing or come by to see me. That's how cruel and uncaring those people were, but despite all that a part of me was hurt because they thought I was nothing but a waste of their time and not worth the effort. I shouldn't have cared, but I did."
"We all want our families to care about us and we expect them to be there for us. Even if they haven't always been there, we still think that something will click and they will realize how important family is."
"Well it meant jack to them evidently...makes you wonder if they even cared or loved her at all...but enough about them, I've wasted enough time on those people." Rain finished off what little wine remained in her glass and picked up the story where she left off. "I withdrew into myself after my mother's death, talking to nobody, not even Cynthia. I just locked myself in my bedroom and usually cried myself to sleep. Sometimes, if I felt up to it, I would pass the time drawing pictures...it was a hobby of mine and one my mother was always saying I was very talented at. One day, I guess about a month after her death, I was sitting on the front steps of my house, taking a break from sketching by looking at a ring Cynthia had given me, which belonged to my mother...this one." Rain held up her right hand showing Mark an opal ring which was on her ring finger. "I was off in my own little world again when a wet, little black nose that belonged to a German shepherd puppy appeared underneath my hand, followed closely by a girl who was chasing the dog. After she was able to catch her breath, she lectured the dog and then apologized to me for the dog running up on our lawn. I told her it was no problem and invited her to sit down because I recognized her from school, though we hardly spoke to each other and weren't friends. Everybody knew of Cassandra, which was her name, because she was the child of an inter-racial couple, a source of gossip throughout the school and teasing for her. She had a hard time finding friends because neither side, black or white, accepted her, so she was kind of an outcast. Cassandra had her father's dark brown skin and her mother's ice blue eyes which made her stick out in a crowd. Even at ten you could tell how pretty she would become.
Well we started talking and the conversation stretched only into the afternoon. She called her mom to tell her where she was, and that we watched TV, and shared a couple of root beer floats. And that's how I found my best friend. She's the one I credit with bringing me out of my depression and sorta returning me to the land of the living, and she was also the person with whom I spoke openly about my mother's death. She was basically a true, best friend in every sense of the word...and it's funny to think our friendship formed because a stubborn little dog wouldn't listen to her owner when she yelled stop. I can't even begin to tell you the trouble we found ourselves in while we were in school...we were quite a pair. We always had to stay after school for talking during class or passing notes during class, and this continued through high school. If you saw one of us, chances were the other wasn't that far behind...we were that close.
We even talked about opening our own vet clinic. See, we both loved animals...she really loved horses and I loved cats and dogs, so we were gonna have a small and large animal clinic. We even toyed with the idea of writing books about animals for kids since she could write and I could draw."
Rain gave a small laugh as she remembered the ideas she and Cassandra came up with. "The things we thought of doing while we were studying or hanging out at each other's houses...we had very active imaginations. When our junior year in high school came, we started thinking about all the things we would need to do to get into vet school and one of those things was you needed to have experience around animals. So we both volunteered at an animal clinic over the weekends. We made quite a few friends at that clinic, four of us in particular really became good friends through work, and our original idea of owning a clinic expanded to include two more people. During the spring semester of our junior year, one of the people we volunteered with received her acceptance letter from vet school, she was a year ahead of us, and she told us she was having a party to celebrate. So on a Saturday, after we had finished at work, the two of us piled up in Cassandra's car and headed to that girl's house. Nothing really exciting happened except for watching movies, listening to music, playing a couple of games, and munching on snacks.
Around midnight, after most of the people had left, we all got hungry again, which was typical of us, and I suggested we hop in the car and head to Waffle House for a light night dinner/early morning breakfast. Everybody agreed and the four of us from the clinic jumped into Cassandra's car. We were halfway there when...when." Rain stood up, holding the second picture close to her body, and walked over to the fireplace, staring at what remained of the previous fire. "Parts of it are still fuzzy to me...I remember we were about to cross a busy intersection, and we had the green light, when I heard a scream from the back and then I heard Cassandra scream right as a pick-up truck smashed into the driver's side of the car. I then felt the car being jerked forward because a car behind us couldn't avoid hitting us, and that's when I was thrown from the car by crashing thought the front windshield...being young and stupid, I wasn't wearing a seat belt. I was told from people who witnessed the accident that the three cars were pushed in the path of an oncoming eighteen wheeler which hit them head-on, and that everybody was killed instantly.
Somehow I was 'lucky' enough to avoid being hit. I had to undergo major surgery to repair everything that happened to me, both internally and externally...unbelievable hours of surgeries, and I tried to die several times during most of them and several times after surgery. For three months, I was in a coma and doctors didn't give me that much of a chance, and they figured if I did make it, I probably had suffered brain damage. My mother was beside herself during this time...wondering if she was doing the right thing by keeping me alive on life support or if she was just postponing the inevitable, would I want to live in a state where I had no idea what was going on and never would, and of course she felt like she had broken her promise to my real mother...a promise where she said she would always take care of me and never let anything happen to me. At least at this time she had her own mother with her and the man who would eventually become her husband and my father, so she wasn't suffering through all of this by herself.
The day did come when I finally came out of my coma and she realized she had made the right decision to keep me on life support. I woke up wondering where I was, and then when I realized I was in the hospital, I wondered what in the world I was doing there and what was down my throat. I saw my mom standing by a window when I looked around the room, but when I tried to say her name, the thing in my throat wouldn't let me, so I just waited for her to look at me and when she did, she had to grab the wall to support herself because her legs gave out on her. The first thought that went through my head was 'boy, she looks like death warmed over, wonder what happened to make her look like that'. She made it back to my bed and just grabbed my hand, crying and kissing me all over the face, saying a bunch of things to me I couldn't understand or make out. After she had buzzed the nurse to get the doctor and the doctor came to check me, she refused to leave me even after they asked several times, so the doctor had to do his exam around my mother who was still crying.
He did a quick exam on me because I was still very tired and in some pain...every time I breathed it felt like daggers were being driven into my chest. The doctor said it was due to the eight or nine ribs I had broken that were slow in healing, and it was also the reason they were keeping the tube down my throat so I could breathe easier. I was kinda disappointed because there were many questions I wanted to ask, but I knew I could ask them later, and the first thing I really wanted to do was go to sleep. My mother tried to keep me awake, I think because she thought I might slip back into a coma, but the nurse convinced her to let me get my rest, for which I was thankful.
And rest was what I did for the next several days, my mother and father alternating the 'parent watch' over me, even though there were times when I didn't even know they were there because I was asleep. If I was awake, they didn't speak to me about the accident...I still couldn't remember it and they wanted to postpone telling me, knowing it would be the hardest thing they would have to do. I slowly improved over those few days, enough to have the tube removed and to be placed on nasal oxygen. The first thing out of my mouth after they removed the endotracheal tube was to ask what had happened, and the doctor said I had been in a serious car accident and just emerged from a three month coma. All he had to say was the word 'accident' and everything came back to me...the truck hitting us, hearing Cassandra screaming, going through the windshield.
I immediately became hysterical and started yelling at my mother, yelling at anybody, and asking where was Cassandra, was she all right, could I see her, what happened to everybody else? They were trying to get me to calm down but I wouldn't until someone gave a straight answer, and I turned to my mom and pleaded with her to tell me something, anything...and that's when she whispered that Cassandra didn't make it and neither did anybody else. I completely lost it...I was screaming and crying and wouldn't let anybody near me. Once they were able to get near me and hold me down, they quickly sedated me so I wouldn't hurt myself or anybody else.
I spoke to nobody after that day, not even my parents...I was still in shock. All I was capable of doing was staring at the ceiling and acting like a zombie. I couldn't sleep because every time I closed my eyes, the only thing I would hear was Cassandra screaming...it was just one continuous scream, I couldn't eat because I had no appetite, they had to force me to eat, and that was usually only a salad or a cup of fruit. My mother tried to talk me out of my depression, just trying to get talk or scream, any kind of reaction, but I was too lost in my guilt, wondering why I had to be the only one to survive and why I wasn't allowed to die...and of course, the whole idea to go out and eat that night had been mine which made me blame myself even more. I thought I had suffered through enough...what else could possibly happen to me, but I soon found out there was one last thing I still had to learn about...and that was the damage that had been done to my face. I just happened to reach up to my face one day and felt the scars and also felt the bandage wrapped around my head, but I...I couldn't feel my hair. I asked my mom for a mirror and she refused before I could even finish the question. I asked again, she said no again, and then I just asked if she would at least describe to me what I looked like. She reluctantly agreed to that and asked a nurse to be there with her while she talked to me. The look of dread on her face should have tipped me off, but I thought maybe it wouldn't actually be that bad...hair could grow back, scars could heal...but boy, was I wrong...