3. When it rains
WHEN IT RAINS
S pring left work and drove over to Julian’s house. He lived in a loft in midtown Atlanta now. Everything about the loft screamed success, and she hated how much it fit him.
She parked and got out of the car and rang the doorbell. He opened the door with the same look he’d worn over the past six months – half confusion, half unfinished sentence. “Nairobi,” he said casually.
She didn’t respond as she stepped inside, walking past him.
The loft smelled of cedar and warm leather, like he’d found peace and lit a candle to prove it.
He looked the same. Too much so. Same ginger-brown muscular frame stretching a fitted T-shirt.
The same sharp jawline, highlighting the manicured bristles of his five-o’clock shadow, and the same deep brown eyes that still carried a map to her softest places.
They needed to talk, but she hadn’t come here to talk or to be forgiven. She came because the day had cracked open something wild in her chest, and she needed to bleed somewhere familiar.
He watched her, waiting. Not for an explanation – just for permission.
He closed the door and leaned against it. Tom Ford cologne lingering in the air, and once he locked the door, it was all the permission either of them needed. There were no words to be said – after all, there was nothing left to say.
She reached for him. placing her hands on his biceps. Finally, she spoke in the only language they still understood: she kissed him.
It was clumsy at first, like muscle memory scraping against fresh grief. But as they continued, their clumsiness was replaced with desire, a language they both were all too familiar with.
His hands slid under her blouse with the ease of a man who used to know every hook and button by heart.
She bit his shoulder when he whispered her name.
He pulled her tighter, as if they could punish each other into silence.
She tugged at his sweatpants, all too eager to rub his now hardened dick, enjoying the familiar way it felt in her hand.
He didn’t stop her, too busy pulling at her water-stained blouse, forcing it to the floor.
There were no love songs in this moment, no reconciliation. In their nudity, all that remained was lust, heat, and an eroding history of love trying to convince itself it was still alive.
He lifted her onto the kitchen counter as she pulled his shirt over his head, her lips brushing the base of his throat, and slid his fully erect manhood inside of her sweet sticky moisture. She moaned as the tension from the day receded upon his entry.
As she spread her legs to take more of him inside of her now-dripping wet pussy, he looked into her eyes, both of them devoid of the memories of passion or love.
“Fuck me,” she moaned.
He said nothing as he lifted her and pressed her body against the wall and thrust inside of her the way she needed, like he’d done so many times before.
It was fast – not rushed, just… familiar.
Everything about their sessions were; the way she liked his left hand to grip her ass as he wrapped his right hand against the back of her neck.
How they kissed, if at all. She knew his moves, and he knew hers.
The way he exhaled when she scraped her nails down his back.
The way they would find a rhythm inside of each other, pulling the orgasm out of one another, was rhythmic in itself.
In this unspoken dance of lust, they both understood that just because you fall out of love with someone, doesn’t mean you still don’t want to fuck them.
“I’m close,” she whispered.
Julian, taking his cue, persisted and stroked into her harder as she slid up and down on his dick, tensing to receive the inevitable pleasure it would provide.
Sweat was forming between the chisel of his chest as he thrust his seven-inch dick inside of her.
And then he bit her neck, whispering quietly in her ear, “Nut for me, baby. Come on this dick.”
As if on cue, she obliged. Her moans intensified the harder he fucked her. “Yeah, get it, baby. That’s my spot, oh my God, keep fucking me just like that,” she squealed.
It was the final push for him to have his own. “Damn, I miss this pussy,” he growled, as he punished her with his dick. “Oh shit. I’m about to?—”
He couldn’t finish his sentence as Spring took control. Now slowly coming to the end of her orgasm, she violently thrust her pussy on the dick that was swelling as his explosive release heightened the moment, taking her into another orgasm.
His dick, at the end of its own vicious thrust, lost its vigor as his nectar filled her walls. The rush made her dig her nails deep into his back, breaking the skin. He growled as he pumped his load inside of her.
Then it was over, as if nothing had happened, his dick still throbbing inside of her. Neither of them looked away, both knowing this wasn’t home , just a fond memory they both shared from time to time, because it was all they had left of each other.
He placed her on the counter where it all began, and she took a breath.
He handed her what he could find of her clothing and began to put on his own. She sat quietly on the edge of the counter, still catching her breath, putting herself together, her shirt clinging to her skin again for a different reason this time.
“The bathroom’s that way,” Julian said, pointing down the hallway. She nodded and jumped down from the counter top to head towards the bathroom.
They had done this on more than one occasion, but not enough to have a familiarity with anything other than the kitchen, the living room and how they liked to be fucked.
Julian’s bathroom smelled like steam and soap when Spring leaned over the sink, palms pressed to the marble, catching her breath. She rinsed her hands, glanced at herself in the mirror – and froze.
The ache. The timing. The unmistakable shift. “Of course,” she muttered.
She checked again, just to be sure. Her cycle had started. The day couldn’t possibly get worse, and yet, it had found a way.
She opened the drawer beneath the sink. Nothing. Checked the cabinet, still nothing. Julian’s bathroom was pristine, curated, aggressively unprepared for real life. No tampons, no pads. Not even the decency of an emergency stash.
She closed her eyes, then remembered. Rae.
Spring turned on her heel and padded back into the living room, picking up her purse from where she’d discarded it earlier. She dug inside, heart racing, and there it was. One lone tampon, tucked where Rae always insisted it be. “God bless you,” Spring whispered.
Behind her, Julian appeared in the doorway, toweling off his hair. “You good?”
“Yeah,” she said, holding it up. “Your bathroom is… minimalist.”
He grimaced. “Ew.”
She stared at him. “That’s not what you were saying ten minutes ago, cowboy. Don’t worry, it just started.”
“Sometimes you just need a good plumbing,” he smirked with confidence.
Spring rolled her eyes and headed back toward the bathroom, tampon in hand, the absurdity of it all settling in.
As she returned from the restroom, she grabbed a couple of beers from the refrigerator and joined Julian, who was sitting on the couch channel surfing.
“You got any episodes of All American?” she asked.
He grinned, replying, “I’m on season three.”
She handed him his beer.
The show had always been a guilty pleasure of theirs. In the good times when their marriage worked, they’d play a drinking game while watching the show, based on the overuse of the phrases “community” and “on me” in any episode. Even towards the end of their relationship, it was neutral ground.
Julian pressed play and she sat next to him, positioning her feet underneath his thighs for warmth as she lay on the opposite side of the couch. The pair began watching the show they both loved, sipping the beer every time one of the rules of their game presented itself.
Spring stretched deeper into the couch to get comfortable. “Well, that was… needed.” she said, still gathering herself as she took another sip of the beer.
Julian nodded in agreement, and then turned away, looking towards the balcony of his loft.
Spring thought about how different his place was from their marital home.
There were no photos on the walls, no decorative pillows on the couch – just his multiple diplomas hanging above his makeshift office, which housed his MacBook and a few pieces of artwork from some of the local Black artists in Atlanta, his half-hearted attempt at decor, something she used to handle when they were together. Then something caught her eye.
As if out of place in the refuge of this stranger she knew so well. There was an empty vase. No flowers, but there was evidence of recently thrown out one’s lingering at the water level. That in itself wasn’t a red flag until Spring recalled how unusually clean the bathroom was.
Taking inventory, she analyzed him again. Something was definitely off.
She took a sip of her beer. “Hey, are you good?” she asked.
He said nothing, instead joining her in a sip of his own beer. After a few moments, he said. “Did you sign the divorce papers yet?”
Spring’s eyes dulled as she looked blankly at him. Something was definitely off.
She pulled her feet from underneath his thighs and sat up. “You want to talk about this now?”
“No, I wanted to talk about this six months ago, and then three months before that. But every time I bring it up, suddenly you have to go.”
He wasn’t wrong. But it was less of what he said than the way he said it that bothered her. There was more to his reasoning; there was more to his life, and for the first time, she was uncertain of where she stood with Julian.
She instinctively defended herself from his statement. “You’re exaggerating.”
“That’s what always happens, Nairobi. The last three times you came over to do this, you?—”
“Julian, I’m not going to argue with you, especially after I just gave you amazing punani. You know my job takes up a lot of my time?—”