At least the beer stayed cold, as long as I drank it fast enough. The ice I stole from the cooler, pressed against my neck and temple, only served to give me a headache. I gave it a toss and watched it bounce down the steps that led up to my big front porch. If the sun hadn’t been ominously hidden all day by low, thick clouds, the cube would have melted even quicker.

I’m a sauna kind of girl, which was a good thing since we couldn’t afford to replace our air conditioner, but I’m not a swamp kind of girl. Years ago, my uncle used to tell my cousins and me that women don’t sweat; they glisten. The air was far too steamy for me to just glisten.

Silent heat lightning in the distance heralded the threatening thunderstorm that was supposed to have struck hours ago. I caught my only glimpse of the sun as it dipped between the clouds and the horizon. Maybe things would cool down after it set, I thought, but with the southerly winds picking up again, they didn’t.

Oh, well.

Flint scared the hell out of me when he said hello. I hoped that it was too dark for him to see my reaction, but he had to have heard it in my voice.

“Storm watching, Lizzie?” he asked. Flint always said my name funny, softening the Zs, almost more S than Z. In my fantasies, it was even softer.

“Air’s broken.”

“Want me to take a look?”

He did things like that for me, sometimes. “That’s okay,” I said and offered him a beer. I suppose I could have invited him up onto the porch, but instead, I just tossed him a can.

“You’re welcome to cool down at my house. You know, to get you out of those hot things.”

“One of these days, you’ll be sorry when I call your bluff.” I liked the attention, but I very rarely flirted back. Seriously, he was like ten years younger than me. “What are you doing out in this heat? And you’ll get caught in the storm.”

“Feeling a little restless, I guess. Besides…” He wet his finger and stuck it in the air. “The rain won’t start for another hour.” He sat on a step and sipped his beer. I was glad he stayed. “I heard about Les. You doin’ okay?”

Everyone had heard about my husband. “He wasn’t driving, just disorderly. You know, nowadays, he does real good from Monday to Friday. I’m real proud, but sometimes, some Friday nights…”

“He’s okay at work, then? During the week? That’s good.”

“Yeah. I told him I couldn’t get the bail money until Monday.” We sat in silence for a minute. I try not to babble when we talk. “Thanks again for mowing my lawn last week.”

Les hadn’t been around to do the lawn work. I could have done it, but Flint offered, and Flint doesn’t wear shirts when he’s outside. He’ll carry one around and put it on only when he has to. I like it when he doesn’t have to. He was fat-free eye candy who did stuff like light construction work summers when he wasn’t teaching school, and he worked in his own yard a bunch.

“Thanks for the lunch for doing your lawn,” he replied.

My head wandered, thinking about other ways I’d repay him, like with a can of beer and my tongue, until a rumble of thunder warned me to cut out that nonsense.

“And thanks for the beer.” He came up the steps to hand me the empty. “I’m gonna go finish my walk.”

“In the storm?” I didn’t want to sound like his mama, but I didn’t want him to leave, either.

“All the electricity, I guess, in the air. Come with me.”

“In the storm?” No. I always said no to everything. What if, what if…

He offered his hand. “So what if you get a little wet? Afraid you’ll melt?”

I let him help me up. “Are you calling me a witch?”

He led me down to the sidewalk. “I’m calling you ‘sugar,’ Sugar.”

I made myself relax. We were two neighbors, going for a walk. Nothing was going to happen. The little hairs standing on the back of my neck surely only meant that he was right about the electricity. I could smell it.

We walked, and I babbled until a sudden, strong wind gust took my breath away. Then a flash of lightning made the world brighter than it had been all day. A thousand and one, a thousand and two… The storm would be here soon.

The wind calmed, and I heard the rain splat onto the sidewalk before I felt it—huge drops that stung my bare shoulders. I almost turned around for home. My instincts told me to turn around, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t melt. The rainfall got a lot heavier, and Flint tipped his head back for a drink, so I did too.

It didn’t take long for the rain to plaster my tank top and shorts to my body. Better yet, Flint’s tank and shorts were plastered to his. The rain and occasional breeze weren’t cold at all, but I still got goosebumps.

“They call rain like this ‘wash me’ rain, you know,” he said.

“Uh-huh. You’re making that up.”

“No, really, it’s a thing. It’s like when a car has so much dirt on it that someone writes ‘wash me’ in it. Rain like this washes it away. If a person does something, maybe, like this…”

He kissed me and stopped just as I was about to kiss him back.

“If someone does something they shouldn’t have done, then the rain washes it away.”

“We shouldn’t have done that.” We shouldn’t have been out in a storm, either, but there we were.

“Fair enough,” he said. There were other flashes and more thunder, still far away, but getting closer. “Done what?”

I wanted to show him ‘done what,’ but real life couldn’t be like a Hall-fucking-mark movie. The next thunderclap exploded overhead, one-thousand-and-nothing, after the lightning flash. It made me jump, and I clung to Flint’s arm. I was embarrassed, but I didn’t let go.

“Don’t be scared,” he said, unwrapped our arms, and held my hand too firmly for me to let go.

“I’m not.”

“Good.”

The fire station siren sounded in the distance and was followed soon by the horns and wails from its trucks. This was a “wash me” rain, right? So that could only help. Quench the fire.

We walked further from the safety of my front porch and turned onto the path into the park. I slipped a little, but Flint still had my hand. I shook off my sandals and stepped onto the grass. The ground was already saturated, but the puddles were warm when I splashed in them.

Flint took off his drenched shirt, and I asked him why he bothered. “It’s raining,” he said. “It’ll get wet.”

He had that kind of kind humor, and he always could make me laugh. “Leave it to you,” I said.

“You should take yours off, too.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’ll catch your death.”

“You just wanna see my boobs.” I couldn’t believe I actually said that. It was fun. My top was soaked and clinging to me, and in this heat, I certainly wasn’t wearing a bra, so he could practically see them anyway.

“You know me better than that. I wouldn’t look.”

Some unknown woman who certainly wasn’t me lifted my top up and pulled it right back down again.

“Did you just flash me?”

“Nuh-uh. Wasn’t me.” Lord, I hadn’t flashed anyone since a bunch of us did it on a dare, decades ago, the summer after we graduated. That certainly wasn’t me who was smug and happy in the rain, either, but I liked her.

“I missed it. Do it again.”

I didn’t say a word. I marched away as quickly as I could without slipping, and dragged him along because he wouldn’t let go of my hand.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” he said and dug in his heels. “C’mon!”

Shaking off his hand, I blocked the path and looked him straight in the eye. I made certain that he saw me not smile. He stared back. I grasped the hem of my top and froze. His eyes dropped to my chest, and then back up.

We stood like that, waiting for the other to crack. I faked a lift, and his eyes dropped again. I faked it again.

He didn’t say anything out loud, but he mouthed, “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon…” until I did it. I flashed him, and I flashed him good, and when I did, so did the lightning.

“Oh, my God!” he shouted.

“Oh, my God!” I cried and covered myself up as quickly as I could.

“Perfect!” he said, laughing. “Perfect timing!” I told him to shut up. “No, really. Either that was perfect timing, or your tits can conjure lightning!”

I stormed off, red-faced, but only pretending to be upset. For a very brief moment, I considered mooning him. Friends moon each other all the time. He called after me, but then I heard him whoop, and I turned in time to see him land on his back in the mud. I knelt by his side, ready to feel guilty about laughing if he were hurt.

“You have a pretty laugh, Lizzie,” he said and stroked my cheek with a muddy, gritty thumb.

We were having such a good time until then, but I knew that look. The rain had let up a little before but was falling harder again. I used that and the relentless thunderbolts as an excuse for us to call it a night, but Flint held me where I was when I tried to stand.

I pushed against his chest with both arms, and he rolled us onto my back. Dazed for only a second, I steeled myself against the kiss that didn’t come. “Don’t say no,” he said and drew a dirty heart on my chest. I wished he’d just give up so I wouldn’t have to say anything. The downpour washed my heart away, so he gave me another one.

“I wanted you the first time I saw you.”

That couldn’t have been true, and I don’t fall for lines. “Another notch on your bedpost.”

Flint slipped his fingers under my top. His steady hand was hot on my cold belly, and his erection pressed insistently against my leg. “You know that’s not true.”

I wondered why he wouldn’t be the strong one, then scoffed at my foolishness. I tried to reason with him. “You can have anyone you want.”

“Let’s say that I can.”

He gave me every opportunity to stop him as he slowly, painfully slowly, lifted my top. My heart skipped when he took my breast into his mouth, and I moaned like a whore when he sucked on my nipple. I drew a big heart on his back and felt it melt to mine. I lifted my arms so he could take my top off, and he feasted on my breasts. He shook my hands away from his head to be free to choose the one he wanted, when he wanted it.

He shifted, not exactly on top of me, and not exactly pinning me. His hard cock pressed still against my thigh, the inside of my thigh, but out of my reach. Flint squeezed my breast, shaping it to fit more into his hungry mouth. I hadn’t realized that I had spread for him until he rubbed my pussy.

I writhed under his touch and moaned his name. I meant to say, “Flint, we shouldn’t,” but it came out, “Oh, God, Flint…’ I was too late. If he wasn’t going to take me, then I’d make him take me.

He said, “Lizzie,” the way I loved him to say it, and he climbed exactly on top of me. He pinned my arms in the mud over my head, and we kissed feverish, sloppy, rain-washed kisses. I fought to get out from under him, and that confounded him until he saw what I was doing. I couldn’t take my shorts off quickly enough.

Flint stood, a silhouette behind the curtain of rain. He took his time, the bastard, pulling his shorts away from his bulge and down to the ground. This time, it was he who had conjured the lightning. There he was, my god, and he could have any woman he wanted.

He got down between my legs, one knee, and then the other. My hands were dirty with mud, and I wiped them on my rain-wetted skin, my stomach, and legs, to seize and claim him before he could change his mind. I wasn’t fast enough, but I didn’t have to be. My hips lifted when he pressed down on my knees, and he positioned himself.

I squinted up at him, afraid to close my eyes even with the rain beating down on my face. With two breaths in for every breath out, he slowly filled me—two heavenly pushes in for every slide out. All of his weight was on me, all of his cock was in me, and I died.

He moaned or groaned, I don’t know. I lay listless under his thrusts, and I don’t think he noticed. The entire universe had become a surreal reverie of his cock and my cunt, and I hadn’t realized that I stopped breathing until a crack of thunder brought me back. I clawed the ground and slapped mud on his back. I wrapped my legs around him and humped up because, dammit, he wasn’t fucking me hard enough.

I climaxed with the lightning and cried out with its thunder. Flint desperately thrust faster, and, one-thousand and one, one-thousand and two, I came again before the first one had a chance to wane.

Flint pushed his body up from mine and slid out his cock. It twitched and spat, twitched and spat, and I stared at it until his arms trembled, and he was too weak to hold himself up. He fell to my side, and we lay, panting. We found each other’s hand, and the rain cleansed us before I could write wash me in the spunk on my belly.

There was a faint smell of smoke in the air from deep into the park. When we heard the approaching fire truck, we hurriedly looked for our scattered clothes. Mine weren’t to be found, but he plucked his from a puddle. His tank was big enough to cover me, but I could have run home naked, anyway, it was so dark.

That might have been fun. Now I wish that I had.

And then, we were two neighbors, going for a walk.

Flint broke the silence as we neared my house. “Sleep with me.” He picked up on my confusion and said, “Come home with me. Wake up with me. Mi cama es tu cama.”

Between good-night kisses, I gave him a hundred excuses why I shouldn’t. Between my excuses, he gave me a hundred and one reasons why I should. And so, his bed was my bed.