There is rain, and they talk and are uncertain of many things.
That they enjoy each others company, this is certain, however there is always the caution of giving away too much, too soon. They share irrelevant secrets. Free time is spent together - entirely, for her time is her own and she can do as she pleases. She schedules life's obligations around time spent with him. She is fluid, receptive.
His time is not so much his own. The bills for him keep coming in. He takes on work. Acting, the pay, not so good, but work is work. It pays the bills. His resume grows; the titular "Godot", Protopopov in Chekhov's "Three Sisters", toe tag #32 & cadaver #14 in a popular syndicated TV crime show. Masked attacker #2 in a Crimestoppers recreation. He gets work with a local Shakespearean company, playing Valentine in "Romeo and Juliet", Fauconbridge in "Henry the IV", Beaumont in "Henry the V", Mercer in "Timons of Athens".
She sees many of his plays and is admiring and encouraging. It is praised wasted on a talent he doesn't value, for he knows he should less be the player and more the author.
Slowly they grow together, intertwined. Green buds, the smell of lilacs in the rain-fresh air, great knots of dark cumulus clouds with silver linings, great steel anvils that grow throughout the afternoon promising the greatest spring thundershowers, gathering and poised in the sky, flickers of lightening, peals of thunder, afterwards, bright birds chirping against the bluest sky you've ever seen. They escape the city, drive through fields of lavender, wheat, canola, great swathes of prairie. Drive through gently rolling foothills filled with vineyards promising fresh inebriations, through staggering mountain vistas and passes swathed in snow, alongside emerald lakes and cedar chalets. Drive together when you can find the time, explore, find further flung antique shops, thrift shops, flea markets, odd museums, curious roadside attractions, past dilapidated farm houses, abandoned churches, shrunken villages, break uncharted territory, shun no detour, explore and discover...
Evenings there is the theatre, the cool walk home, she will be waiting for him, he has cut her a key, they will drink wine and fall into bed. His bed, her bed, the mattress pitches them together in the center and he begins, biting lightly upon her neck, shoulders, hands wrapped around her hips until she arches into him. Now he kisses down her body, he works his way to the front, kisses her nipples, flicks with his tongue, kiss her lips, then down her body until she wraps her thighs about his head, clenches it, he grips her ass as if he were trying to devour her, until it is too much and she pulls him again up the bed...
Afterwards, trace the constellations on her back, blemish to mole, the nebulae of birthmarks, lightly, whisper close into her ear until it tickles and her toes curl, press your chin into her shoulder, feel her hips and pull her in close, her head upon your arm, your free hand reaching around to caress rosebud nipples...
Wake her in the middle of the night. Take her outside. Look at the stars. The shimmer of the Aurora, a fiery blue and green curtain being shaken out over the sky. Colors change, the luminous dance of brightens and then fades itself out of existence.
Meteors, wait, head to head in the grass, they unfocus their eyes and watch the sky and report the flickering trails - excited when they both capture one overhead, the fleet blazing, twinkle, the glowing trace that lingers upon the retina.
Discover, fireflies, far outside their range, come upon them in a hollow hidden in a field, flitting in and out, blinking, since when have they lived here? Since never. But, nevertheless, here they are. They have come for them.
Mornings, Music, Coffee on, a new day of fresh adventures and inspiration, a wide blue sky beckoning, where will they go and what will they do?
Love is the gift of a second youth. He knows it, but doesn't speak it. Perhaps she knows it as well? Or...
It doesn't bear discussion. If he feels it, then surely she must too.
***
She has a secret. A grimoire in her own hand, he has found it, secreted behind a book. A journal or diary. In it the conjuration of their lives. Her handwriting, childish, there are symbols, she has written her intents, and he has been summoned.
For him, she was less summoned than unfolded. Picked up like a rare book and discovered to be worth the reading.
But what are we to each other? And in this - well, he was summoned, she discovered, there is a divine plan. That they should meet, each on their own terms. And that he has found her swathed in poetry and read to her melancholy verse, after the cast of her heart, this, because now in their lives there is no melancholy or sadness, these feelings must be lived vicariously, through words or upon the screen.
***
She pores over his writing. Notes left strewn upon the desk, she knows she is forbidden, but - who wouldn't? There will be no secrets between them. And the writing, to be fair, is mediocre, there is nothing now that he has found her to chafe or rail against. She is his muse, and he dares not put into writing what might break the spell...