The water snaked down the window, gathering into rivulets and joining a stream that wound its way to the spout off the roof, falling into the mulched beds beneath my bedroom window. I sat on the floor, the loops in the carpet standing out in sharp relief as each tear formed, large and luminous in my eye before it gathered enough weight to fall causing a wet patch by my feet.

My phone lay by my side, mute, unyielding.

The events of the past night ran in a loop in my head. The dance, the warmth of his chest against mine, the stubble of his chin against my forehead.

My body shuddered and leaked more tears.

We sat down for dinner. He had stepped away to use the restroom. The music was soft, mellow. I had been tracing the velvety smoothness of the single rose in front of me when his phone had blinked with a new message. Unthinking, I had reached for it.

“Miss you hottie xoxo”

The message had disappeared into the inky darkness of the screen even as I had been staring at it. He had returned before I had a chance to process it.

“To our 15th anniversary,” he had said as he raised his glass to mine.

The sky had burst with a brilliant flash of lightning and the rain had come coursing down. We had run from our patio table by the pool before I could raise mine.

The drive home had been somber tinged by the turmoil inside and out.

He had left early, his flight out of the country at an ungodly hour. My past washed away by the rain as I sat mulling the future. Perhaps, that was when I started collecting rain

Fiction Flash Fiction Musings Flash Fiction Prompt based writing Yeah Write