#aiaigasa

Your part of London smelled like wet pennies that evening. The air, damp and heavy rolling off with wet heat that has wafted off the earth, clung to you, weighing you down along with your waterlogged clothes.

Three sunny days in a row must've been all the warning you needed to strap yourself to an umbrella. Your roommate's warning rang in your ear, but in your defence, it was supposed to be a sunny day with 10 percent possibility for rain, and all she gave you was I could smell it in the air.

The skies split and started tipping it down an hour ago, and it looked like it didn't have the intention of stopping any time soon. Thunder crackled in the distance, a warning of more to come, leaving the taste of ozone lingering on your tongue.

A gust of icy wind rattled your bones, leaving you clutching your jacket to seal off any residual heat left, teeth chattering and failing miserably at blowing warmth into your cupped hands, numb fingers flexing desperately for a flicker of heat.

You've given up slinking back into the brick wall behind you, standing half in the rain and half in the shade of a weird jut in the building, watching raindrops form a steady trickle onto your relatively new pair of boots helplessly—a fashion choice you're now regretting.

You could go back inside and wait, but you would rather walk into the pouring rain than go back into the store and drag your mud prints all over their pristine floors. So you accepted that it's one of those days on a long list of this day suck ass.

The sound of automatic doors opening and closing momentarily overtook the pitter patter of rain against tar, a blur of bright neon yellow in the middle of the usual London greys and blacks, catching your periphery.

You knew him. Tall and athletic, broad at the shoulders, a very particular memory from a stolen glance of them deliciously stretching a grey Henley reared its head and you were quick to snuff it out when his brown eyes, black under the shade of his cap, caught yours.

It was almost poetic how his eyes sweeping over the empty parking lot, an old habit, you mused, collided with your curious ones and found each other at the same time—became aware of each other's existence at the same moment.

Kyle. Military guy. Volunteer now and then at your dog shelter when not on deployment.

Recognition smoothed out his furrowed eyebrows, and cold-nipped cheeks stretched into a toothy smile, poking out from popped-up collars and a navy blue woollen scarf.

A shiver ran through you, and you would swear it was the cold and not the way your name rolled out of his tongue. You smiled back and found it came easy for him, despite the cold.

"You work at the Paw Rangers, right?", A screen of white fog left his lips when he spoke into the cold evening as he stepped closer to you, his umbrella bright and tantalising in his hands, his finger tapping a steady rhythm on its curved handle.

He must've returned home recently; his hair was still short on the sides and back of his head, evidence of tan over his t-zone, warm brown now russet due to the cold, and the unmistakable tightness in his shoulders likely from acclimating to civilian life.

"Yeah, I- um, Kyle, right", you stumbled your way to an answer, your voice high pitched and throat drier than a dessert on a sunny day. "I've seen you around at the shelter".

He stood towering over you, rocking back and forth on his feet, his hand that wasn't holding the umbrella stuffed into his coat pocket, eyes peering down at you, corner of his lips quirked in a tentative smile.

"Forget your umbrella?" He was polite enough not to point out your fancy wet-rat boots, but was clearly amused, a tinge of mirth in his voice. You thought he sounded younger than he did a second before.

Chuckling at your unfortunate situation, you nodded, pointing in the general direction of where you had parked, "Locked mine in the car. Would've made a run for it if it weren't for the office papers in my bag".

It has gone darker now, except for the spheres of white glow from street lights in the rain spray, dotting the empty parking lot like a star-speckled sky. The rain, still unrelenting, and the cold, still biting.

"I'll walk you to your car," he offered, his voice sincere and gentle, shuffling to make room for you under his big umbrella.

"I don't want to bother you", At the risk of him leaving you in the rain, you tried to pass up his offer, once, giving him an out from walking to the other side of the parking lot, out of his way, when he might have just been trying to be polite.

"Awh, I don't mind. Come on". You stepped under the umbrella, trying hard not to cringe at the squelch of your boots, looping your arm into his, and smiling, under the cover of the night, at how perfectly you fit into the crook of his elbow.

His warmth immediately enveloped you; the scratch of the woolly fabric of his jacket—balm for your cold-nipped cheek. And God, he smelled so good.

The overhead street light filtering through the umbrella bathed him in a warm yellow glow, casting long shadows on his face and drawing your eyes immediately to his lips. You were so close to him inside that clothed yellow bubble that you could see another faint scar, right below the slightly bigger one on his left cheek, and you had to resist the urge to touch him, feel them under your fingertips. Fog filled the space between you two, air syphoned out of your lungs in staccato breaths, punched out by his proximity.

You both walked in unison, his long legs matching your pace effortlessly, chatting about dogs and deployments, side-stepping puddles, laughing when you both went in different directions, and then shuffling closer for cover—the sheets of rain falling in a circle, separating you and him from the world around you. There was an ease about him in the way he talked, held himself, and smiled very often; his tall frame never once felt intimidating.

You almost felt sad when you saw your old Ford sitting in the rain, helpless like a turned-up beetle. You offered to drive him home, but he declined, preferring to walk. I like the rain, he said, it reminds me that I'm back home. You didn't ask about the tightness of his smile or the sadness that came with it.

Here, out in the dark of the parking lot, with the way he was leaning a little bit forward to house two of you under that umbrella, the touch of warm breath on your crown raising goosebumps for all the right reasons, you couldn't help but grin like a fool when he leaned down, a little nervous, to press a kiss on your flushed cheeks. Chaste and sweet.

You watched him walk away from inside the safety of your car, bright yellow in a sea of black, blurred through the windscreen, bobbing away like a paper boat, and pulled out of the parking lot, his number typed giddily into your phone and the lingering touch of his chapped lips on your cheeks keeping you warm the whole ride home.