Page 61 of Without You

“Really?” he asks, looking at my phone. “Shit. Yeah, let’s get out of here.”

We turn off the lights and I grab a few things from my apartment, my purse, keys, laptop, and we high tail it down to his house. The door is barely shut behind us when a torrential rain hits, pelting the house.

“Holy hell! That came out of nowhere, yeah?”

We turn on a few lights and he double checks to make sure the windows are all shut and locked. “Yeah, it really did. I didn’t even know rain was in the forecast for today.”

“Me either.”

Ushering me away from the window that I’m standing next to, he says, “Let’s take a step back from the glass, though, shall we?”

I hesitate only for a second because I want to see what’s happening, but then a loud crack of lightning hits. “Ahh!” I scream and jump back. He chuckles and I roll my eyes.

“Kitchen’s coming along,” I comment, looking around a little.

“It is. I’m ready for it to be complete, you know, but at least it’s functioning while Chad works his magic. It should be finished in a couple weeks.”

“Wow. That’s exciting. No more metal cupboards.” I grin.

“Nope. Thank goodness. It looked like an episode of The Brady Bunch in here, right?”

I snort out a laugh. “It did. Though, I think even they had a little more coordination than this kitchen did.”

“Probably true.”

We move to the living room where there aren’t as many windows and he turns on the TV to a local station so we can watch the weather. It isn’t a tornado warning yet, so we cuddle down on the couch and get comfortable.

We watch for a few minutes, before he says, “Shoulda asked, you want something to drink?”

I move to get up. “I can get it. Water okay?”

“You don’t have to.”

“I don’t mind.”

He kisses me on the cheek and moves to get up as well. “Thank you. Yeah, that’s fine. I’m going to check on Sabrina while you do that.”

“Okay.”

I grab a couple glasses off the counter since the cupboards are not installed yet, fill them with ice and water, then return to the living room to see Sabrina curled up on Brody’s chest.

“Where was she?” I hand him a glass and he takes a sip before setting it on the end table next to him.

“Thanks. She was under my bed.” He sticks out his lower lip in a pout. “She’s still shaking.”

“Aww, poor thing.” I scratch behind her ear and she turns into my hand.

“Yeah.”

The storm rages outside and the lights flicker on and off. With a loud crack of thunder, I jump. Sabrina does, too, but she jumps right out of Brody’s arms and runs back to her hiding place.

We watch as the weather-woman shows the different areas that need to be taking shelter and I’m relieved to see ours isn’t one of them. Lightning flashes, lighting up the living room but creating a cozy atmosphere. I love spending time with Brody. We haven’t done much outside of the house yet, but I like the quietness. It’s nice that we can spend time together and not have it be a big presentation.

“This is going to make work even busier,” I whine.

“Your dad won’t have a peaceful end before he retires, huh?”

“Probably not. Unless we don’t get hit, which it looks like we won’t. Most of his customers are here in Benton but we have a few from neighboring towns.”

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