This story is copyrighted to Adrienne Wolter in 2004 and onwards. It was written on Sunday, July 11th, 2004.

This story is NOT autobiographical.
The young man and woman's names are purposely never fully revealed. This could be considered the sequel to Warmth or Million Shades of Grey, but stands alone just as nicely.

Rain or Shine

A world of white spiraled around them as they walked. There seemed to be miles between them and the nearest people–though it was probably much less–but it wouldn’t have mattered. Even if there had been people yards away, they were too wrapped up in each other to care.

“A year now,” he said. A smile played on his lips as he adjusted his scarf with his right hand, his left around her. “Do you ever regret leaving?”

She was silent for a moment, considering. Leaning her head on his shoulder and looking up into his eyes, she smiled. “Sometimes I think about it, but it’s never regret. More like gratitude.” He watched a snowflake melt on her nose, hand in her hair, thinking. “Has it really been a year?” she asked him, fiddling with the tassels on the end of his scarf.

“To the day.” She stopped playing with the dangling ends to look up at him again, taking her head off his shoulders. He ran a hand through her hair to brush the snow off, keeping it there, seemingly lost in thought.

“Didn’t seem like that long ago,” she answered vaguely, though he had never required a response, and then they were both waltzing through memories, starting from the bus station a year ago, through the struggle of getting to know one another, to this day. They were both runaways–one from perfection and one from insufficiency. They’d found their solace in one another, balanced themselves out.

“Felt like longer,” he whispered, though she could hear him well enough, in an equally vague fashion. The hand he’d been keeping so lightly on her head slipped down to her shoulders, and he continued to look forward even as she studied his face.

“Do you?”

His concentration on ahead broke as he turned to glance at her. “Hmm?”

“Do you ever regret leaving?”

Touchy topics like these usually were left unsaid between them. They usually just knew–it was an odd game, almost always knowing what the other was thinking. An odd game, dancing around the things that neither was sure about bringing up and neither was sure about answering. They could trust one another with things more important than their lives, but be insecure about discussing the past.

An image of the bus ride came to the forefront of her mind as his answer was being mulled over. The many bumps in the road as they traveled south and as they learned names, ages, likes and dislikes... but the details about their lives were left sketchy. They always had been.

“I regret leaving some aspects of it behind,” he said, looking to the right, away. She was familiar with his ‘it.’ ‘It’ meant family. ‘It’ meant friends, high school. The past. “I knew people. I... did things. Learnt about a whole lot of crap from experience.” He smiled wryly, still watching the snow fall. He hadn’t noticed how his left arm had fallen away from her, but did feel the warm fingertips that brushed it. “When I compare, though, I think I prefer this to that.”

She nodded, hand finally closing over his. Her smile stayed even after he turned enough to catch it from the corner of his eye. Somewhere ahead the line of trees was slowly creeping forward to meet them. When it did, like so many other evenings, they would turn and head back, the journey home always seeming so much shorter when the things coming to meet them were streetlights and windows. Apartments. People.

To any passerby, they were just a couple. Another couple in another park in the middle of another town. But to each other, they were a couple, too. A couple in it together, a couple that walked the same route that they had walked that same day a year ago every day. Light or dark. Rain or shine.