Rainfall arrived to the city, its sense and feel of building tell speaking in air and sky through all of day: in change of the clouds, air warm then cool; shifting of winds that settled into cool and damp of still that held, unmoving, until air burst and sound of wind in announcement of the front that followed in fall of rain that poured in steady, unchanging sheet.
Through window’s view, rain obscured sight of the city streets. Lights of passing and pausing traffic shone as blur and glow through rain and rivulets upon the window as restaurants, shops, and bars emptied with the weather.
Inside, tables were mostly empty. They were two of the last, remaining at high-top table and resting in chair-backed stools that lent to long leg-fall as feet found rest on bottom stool bar still upward from the floor.
He drank a coffee, black, and she re wine from long-stemmed glass she held in balance between thumb and middle and index fingers.
From scent he imagined as dream its taste as she raised to her lips and took as draw; mark of last wine drop showing dark to line and thinness of lower lip.
He stared on the mark, imagining its taste, then hers, and the after-drunkenness effect coming from other than the glass.
With purse of lips, soft sweep of tongue, she cleaned the mark away, taste of the fruit and tannin boldness sharp, then lingering, to tongue.
On table between, she lowered the glass to rest; its placement and upright shifting of her posture drawing attentions to the wear, way, and cut of her coat blouse-top: long-sleeved and modern with sharp, clean, angled cut falling to triangled point brought and held together by focal button of five-petaled flower.
She looked to the window as her hands drew for the button, plucking faint in draw of its petal points; and he thought then back to age of a child and to words recited when plucking the petals from flowers picked from country roadsides and edge of fields.
“She loves me…She loves me not…She loves me…She loves me not…” his mind recited as countenance smiled, eyeing casual the way her hands remained drawing to the petals and wondering with less than childhood innocence what would happen were all petals drawn and button freed.
In her thoughts, gaze through opacity of window in rain’s fall, she appeared in visage of a gaiety and easy happiness—light and airy—like winter blossom that to him she then appeared.
Her fingers moved, taking hold of fabric, two petals beneath and through blouse-front’s cut; and he sought to think a different thought.
Achieving, he thought in words and story.
“Have you ever read a sequel that was better than the original?” he asked.
Hold moved, petals returned to place as she was returned into re-entry from a thought. From blouse, hands moved to low edges of her hair, curling and tracing light, curled waves straightened then recoiled when released.
“How so?” she asked pensively as she considered, mind searching too into past and history of stories.
“More polished, composed, affecting, and complete…” he answered, thinking what made the one stand out against the original from which it rose.
She listened. He spoke more.
“I’m reading one again,” he shared. “I read the sequel before the original not knowing one came from the other but read and found as they were drawn from an author’s shelf. After reading the second, which helped in greater understanding of the second, I liked the second more.
They are the same main characters, at least by name, but they are completely different people: different life stage, more life lived, different depths and weight of spirit that speak in thoughts and subject focus.
They are connected but not the same at all; and I like the second more.”
She listened to the words, describing of the books, as she relived, too, in resurrection of old stories and her histories: airiness of countenance acquiring change of borne and expressive weight; green eyes turning inward, into and upon experience and depths.
Still staring to window and rainfall opacity, red lights of braking car brightened through the blur then faded with cease of pedal’s press. Hands and eyes both moved to glass and she drank again from bold richness held in beauty of glass in balance of figure to long, fine stem. Mark of drop shone again as with draw before as wine’s warmth stirred in body’s center.
“I’ve read, and I’ve lived,” she answered. “Why shouldn’t they be different? Why shouldn’t they be free and expected to change? Do we not have chapters and past selves when we were someone different; and while who we are we grows and comes from the history, we are not them and they are not us. We’ve changed and are different—though still same in name and body.
And who’s to say we won’t change still? And why should we not favor who the one we become over the one we are today—isn’t that a point of purposeful improvement; whatever method and means life affords?
Why shouldn’t we favor our later selves above an earlier version? To love our later self is to acknowledge that we’ve lived, to acknowledge that we’ve learned, that we’ve grown and changed into a better self—more complete from life’s experience, even if completeness includes our times of weight and shadow and sadness and not forever mask of levity. All of it shapes us; and why should we not love our later selves with appreciation and value for the experience and shaping above a past we used to be?”
She looked again to window, to him, then to long-stemmed glass between.
“Youth isn’t everything,” she spoke. “There’s more to life than time and freeze into a moment. Life isn’t that way. And a sequel, if written honest, shouldn’t be either. Maybe that’s what makes it better. One of the few written honestly and not to repeat new version of a past.”
Shifting in seat, elbow fell to rest upon the table, arm high and supporting as she leant forward, neatness and order of hair crumpled as she allowed for a burden rest.
“It’s nice to be seen and loved for who you are, through our growths and change and weather and signs of life; to be loved too for who we will become and our ways of further change; so much more than for an image and history of one used to be and will never be again.”
He loved her then: for her openness in words and thought from mind, for depth and character of spirit made in living of stories and histories; for who she was, not past she’d been, and ideal of who she might become.
She drank from glass again, last-drop stain again in mark on lip.
She stared on him after, strong energy of eyes as body returned high in sit and poise, fingers returned to faint-draw pluck of button petals; a silence, but still speaking, between.
He rose, moved, kissing her in rest and chair; sharp fruit and tannin taste into mellowness of hers; spin of after-drunkenness even stronger than as thought.
They kissed again: different, even better than the first.