A/N: Aside from being one of the sweetest romance stories I have ever written, this is a shameless attempt to promote my NOW COMPLETE first novella ever- Hatching. I'd adore a R&R on it, if you please. You don't even have to really read this, but do if you want to. I won't complain. -MC

It rained on her world. It just rained. Big, black drops that splashed on her face and her dress, staining everything they touched, but at least they got rid of her tears. Losing the tears that still rolled down her face in white rivers, burning through the beauty of the wet black rain like acid burns through metal. She wanted to stop crying, but she felt like she could just sob forever without end.

No, she hadn't just lost a guy.

She'd never had him to begin with, she wagered, so how could she lose him?

She tugged at the fancy dress on her body. She had been forced to order it in an extra-large size to encompass her large frame, or as she called herself, Tall & Fat. She hated it, it was blue. She wanted the black rain to wash it away, make it black like ink, and take away the little crystals that dotted it, take away the irritating little sash on her waist. She knew she could so that on her own, and she did.

She tore the sash away, watched it rip from her waist, wet with the inky black rain. The crack of the seams felt so good. She tugged the fancy comb out of her long brown hair, letting it spill damply over her shoulders. She threw the comb into the leaves under the tree next to the one she sat under. She stood up, and set a wobbly heeled shoe on the low crux of her tree, climbing up to the first branch. The higher she climbed the more of the landscape she could see.

The black rain covered everything. It was all fading into ink midnight, even the sky and the sidewalks. If there had been one speck of light or white, it would have been plain to see. The only white were her acid tears, still burning their never-ending trail of white through the black rain on her face. She collapsed into the tree, letting the rough bark cut into her face. It didn't matter to her anymore. Nothing did. He was gone, lost to her.

She'd never been a cutter before, but now she wished she had a razor blade so she could start. Her wrists were black from the rain, black like her hair and her dress, wet and black, but she knew how red looked against black. She touched her fingertips to her cheek and came away with vivid red. It looked so beautiful. It was red like his favorite shirt, red like the color his eyes supposedly turned when he got angry. She had never made him angry enough for his eyes to go red, he said, but she was sweetly aggravating.

Sweetly aggravating. Would he have loved her more if she had always let him win their arguments? If she had never beat him at anything? If she would have been docile and dumb, would he have loved her? She didn't think all of the charm in the world could have made him love her. Her luck wasn't that good.

She buried her white-acid-tearstained face in her wet, black rain arms. She cried. She cried so much that she thought her tears might have bleached away all of the black of the rain, the blood dripping from her cut cheek making the landscape red. Then she heard the voice.

"Jackie? Jackie, why are you up there?"

Suddenly, the rain stopped. The sky cleared back into black with white specks of star, the evening cool and breezy with California summer in the air. Her skin turned back to pale peach, the black no longer stained her dress even though the sash was gone. Her hair was dry, but her now transparent tears still ran down her face. She looked down, and there he was, looking very uncomfortable in his tuxedo.

"E-Everest?"

"No, it's the Wizard of Oz. Jackie, why are you up a tree in the middle of the night while there is a perfectly good dance going on about ten feet from here?" he took off his jacket and held it so casually over his shoulder.

She smiled. He was so nice, even if that little blonde bitch Alessandra got to kiss him. Rage still weighed heavy on her being when she replayed that horrible moment when Alessandra Perez, in her little red dress and heels, had marched right up to him on the dance floor and kissed him. Her Everest, at the lips of that whore. It was unjust at the very least.

"Because there's no such thing as a perfectly good dance," she said to him, as evenly as she could, from her perch on the tree.

He laughed that choppy, sweet laugh she loved so much. "So... how about Alessandra, huh?"

She flushed red and balled her hands into fists. What did he mean by that? She narrowly stopped herself from blurting out 'She's a cheap hussy and on my way out I saw her feeling up Aaron Husker outside the gym.’

"She's nuts, huh? I mean, just walking up to me like that and kissing me," he shook his head. Looking up seriously, "You know on my way out I saw her feeling up Aaron Husker outside the gym?"

She laughed, partially relieved and partly at the irony. God, it felt so good to hear him say it was all a mistake. "Come up here, Mr. Smith."

He smiled and climbed up to the branch with her. Standing on the one below her seat-branch, he looked out at the interesting view of cars, and beyond it, lights of the town. "I see why you come up here."

She nodded, drinking in his smiling gray eyes, his messed-up brown hair. She felt like telling him everything.

"Jackie, were you crying?"

She wiped her face with her hands, quickly; smearing tears with the cut on her cheek and making it burn. "No, of course not."

"You were crying. What could possibly.... Jackie, you're bleeding." he was so serious, so genuinely worried.

"It... it's nothing, Everest. I'm serious, it's nothing."

He gave her a hard look. "You're lying to me."

She looked away. Why could she never lie to him? "Yes, Everest, I'm lying to you."

"So... tell me what's up. Why are you crying, up a tree, in the middle of the night, in a ripped-up formal dress? Hey, what'd I do?" she had started crying again, and she didn't want him to see her.

She fearlessly dropped from her high branch into a crouched position on the ground. Slightly pleased with herself for making the fall in heels without breaking an ankle, she allowed herself a small smile before walking around the other tree and hiding. She sank down and let herself cry, wondering why it hurt so much, why she couldn't tell him, why every time he tried to get close, she all but shoved him away.

She felt his hand on her arm. She hadn't even heard him get down from the tree. "How in the hell do you do that?" she grumbled, "You're like frickin' Spiderman or something."

He looked insulted, even in the pale light filtering in from the parking lot. "You know I’ve got magic."

He sounded so serious she couldn't help but laugh. "Yeah, right. A wizard, you? I doubt sincerely that Hogwarts offers classes here. And if you’re a wizard, what am I? A Squib?"

"No! I was thinking more along the lines of a Hermione-like person, except not so goody-goody," he said, sitting down next to her, his tie askew.

"Thank you so much. I'd much rather be Hermione sans the rule-ness than say, Elissa or Lora, my made-ups," she remarked sarcastically.

"Oh, I forgot about them," he said apologetically.

“That’s ok. I’m still shocked you didn’t laugh in my face when I told you I had made-ups.”

"Don’t make a saint out of a sinner, I’ve done worse since. So, are you ready to tell me what all the crying was about?"

She sighed. “Why do you want to know?”

“Because,” he said simply.

“Everest, ‘Because’ is not an answer!” she laughed.

“Yes it is.”

“No, it is not! Now give me a real answer,” she said, fixing him with a serious look.

He shifted uncomfortably under her gaze, and she smiled. When you could get Everest Kristian Smith to squirm, you’d found you ultimate Look. Softening her expression, she entreated him. “Come on. Hey, here’s what I’ll do- You tell me why you want to know and I’ll tell you what you want to know, how’s that?”

He looked at her. “You promise?”

“Yes I promise.”

“Magic-promise?”

“Double Magic-promise. Under pain of Veritaserum.”

He sighed. “This is going to sound ridiculous.”

“Go on.”

“It’s because of how you left. Usually when one of us leaves anything we tell the other one. You just ran off. I’m lucky I saw you go or I’d still be searching for you in there. I was worried about you,” he said, blushing the whole time.

Her heart was just ripping in two.

“You must be kidding me,” she said, smiling even though she was pretty sure there was a hole going straight through her chest.

“No! I’m serious! I was really worried about you, like I thought some guy might have said something to you or whatever but then that didn’t make sense because you would have told me and I would have kicked his ass. Or maybe your mom had called you on your cell and told you bad news or something, but then that didn’t make sense because once again you’d tell me first, on and on like that. I’m so serious, Jackie, it’s not funny!”

She was laughing because she had run out of tears. “I know it’s not funny, Everest, I’m sorry. God, that’s so nice of you to worry about me like that.”

He grinned. “I know. So, hold up your end of that Double Magic Plus Veritaserum promise. Why were you crying?” he said, leaning forward like this was going to be the news of the century.

She froze. She had forgotten all about her end of the deal. She would just lie. Make up something, anything. No, that wouldn’t work; Everest could always tell when she was lying.

“I…” she sighed. How did she always get stuck telling the truth? “I was crying because I saw Alessandra kiss you.”

Everest paused, confused. “And…?”

“What ‘And’? You said tell you, and I did. Nowhere in that Double Magic promise did I say I had to elaborate.”

“You leave me hanging like that and I’ll be forced to work it out on my own,” he said.

She went wide-eyed. “Don’t you threaten me.”

“That’s not a threat, it’s a promise.”

She sighed, buried her face in her hands and quickly mumbled “WhywhyWHYdoIalwayshavetodothis?”

Regaining her composure, she warned him, “This is going to be painful.”

His expectant face told her to continue.

“When Alessandra Perez marched across that dance floor in those god-awful red cha-cha heels and locked lips with you, I felt like I wasn’t going to survive the night. I thought that… the thing is that…. There’s no easy way to put this, but…” she faltered, then paused.

“Everest, I love you.”

The moment in itself was not entirely special. They weren’t in Paris or Rome, or even on the top of a building. It wasn’t Christmas or Valentine’s Day. They weren’t long-lost sweethearts, at least by definition, nor were they great and powerful people. They were just two high school kids, sitting outside the last dance of their sophomore year, under trees no less.

But what made the moment more special than a million Eiffel Tower propositions, more special than a second before midnight on New Year’s Eve, more special than all the great and powerful people in the world, were three words. Just three. Three words, which to Jackie made every difference in the world.

“I knew it.”

He kissed her.

And suddenly, the rain was silver like the stars, each and every drop one wish made by Jackie or Everest for the other to love them. It might have rained forever, but everyone knows a wish disappears once the wisher finally realizes its come true. So the first time they broke away and looked into each other’s eyes, the rain stopped.

All except for the tears of pure joy from the eyes of both.