Clearly Now, the Rain by Eli Hastings

convertible arching against the sunset, dropping hundreds of feet down an Angeles canyon to an end that fit my inexplicable fury.
    On an April night in 1999 the Santa Ana winds are coming across the hot land like kind spirits. It is a mundane Friday evening: I find myself at a house party where we’re packed in like a suitcase of elbows. Because of events of freshman year, Samar considers the host of this party, Alicia, to be her nemesis. That night, feeling careless or perhaps destructive, I toss off my hesitation and chat with Alicia as long as I please—even after I see Samar come through the door with stupefaction which quickly turns toward murder in her eyes.
    With enough beer, and my back to the kitchen where Samar has vanished, I manage to really forget her, and to enjoy catching up with Alicia. When I enter the bathroom, I pause to check myself out in the mirror before pissing, which is damn lucky because Samar crashes through the door and lands blows on my head and chest before I wrestle her out. A good third of the party has gone awkward for what they’ve witnessed when Samar comes stomping back through.
    Somehow I feel calm—enough to piss, wash my hands, look at my eyes in the mirror again. In Samar’s wake, people give me glares or shake their heads in sympathy, depending on their allegiance. Outside, she is sitting on a rock in the garden, hands clutched over her head. She speaks before I can.
    Fuck you. It’s over, fuck you.
Tugging at her dreadlocks.
    Samar, why don’t you try to calm down.
    You asshole—fuck you, it’s over.
She will not look up; people are clearing away.
    Samar, you don’t get to take this back tomorrow
. I realize, only as it comes out, that I mean it.
    It’s over.
She almost whispers.
    It’s not violent, even a little soft. And I know it’s true, just as well as I know that she won’t want it to be in the morning. And I finish my bottle, point myself toward Serala’s dorm—some two miles north—look at down at my feet, and start walking.
    In the common room of her “suite”—as they euphemistically called them—a good-hearted drunk from Zimbabwe and my friend Marshall are drinking forty-ounce bottles of Olde English and watching
Cops
. I slump down next to them, just feet shy of her bedroom door.
    Marsh, is there still an empty bedroom at your house?
    Yup.
    Can I move in tomorrow?
    Word.
    Thanks.
    He hands me the forty and I take a swallow, knock knuckles half-heartedly, and lurch toward Serala’s door, knocking with my forehead.
    Given all the things that might have been transpiring at 3 A.M. in the Batcave, I should be glad I only interrupt wine, hash, and Portishead. But I’m not thinking that then; I’m thinking—strangely, as her eyes find me, and then in silence she puts her arms around me, and Monty kindly steps out, and I begin to weep—that I am home.
    As the door clicks behind him, we are left in the penumbra of a desk lamp with a scarf thrown over it. As that first round of tears runs out, I feel sheepish. When I lower my hand from my eyes and turn around, Serala has opened her bed, folded the covers back. Her stuffed parrot is on the pillows, waiting to comfort me, and so is she: sitting on the bared space of the futon, knees drawn up, ashing her Pall Mall onto her jeans and rubbing it away with a finger. She catches my eye with a look that is knowing and comforting, her jaw slack and still; she knows exactly what the ledger of damage reads.
    She pats the futon and I undress mechanically, then climb in and attempt to smile up at her as she tucks me in, the blanket to my chin. Fred the parrot goes beneath my arm and her hand combs through my hair over the course another cigarette. The shadows are deep around her face but in the glow of one long drag, I catch a shimmer of a tear. With her last lingering touch she says,
Rest, love,
and departs with a click of the stereo’s