AFTER THE RAIN (Bonus edition)

12. Be sure to wear some leaves in your hair

Stormy wiggled her toes together. They were dusty from the dashboard, but a bit of dust never killed anyone. It certainly didn't bother her. But Marcus, on the other hand... She could imagine him as one of those people who disinfected everything. He probably used anti-bacterial soap and freaked out when his shoes got dirty or a splash of coffee landed on his table.

His house was probably the picture of order. Clean. Organized and perfect. He probably had scatter cushions, which in Stormy's opinion were the most pointless things that had ever been invented. He probably had one of those vibrating chairs that massaged you too, and a flat screen TV the size of an island and all the other things that she disapproved of. He was by far one of the most uptight people she had ever met – but also one of the most contradictory, too.

The way he had – for lack of a better, less crude word – fucked her, was anything but clean, organized and orderly. It had been downright dirty. Vertical, horizontal and sometimes at an odd angle kind of dirty.

She caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye as he was fiddling with his new phone. Nothing irritated her more than phone-fiddling. These days, you couldn't go out with friends without them sitting on their phones almost constantly instead of interacting with the people who were actually there in front of them. She'd just never understood it, this need that people had to exist in a cyber-computer world.

"What are you doing?" Stormy pointed at the glowing screen with disgust, as if it were some foreign creature – which to her, it was. She would never own a phone like that; where were the buttons, even?

"Just sending an email to someone at work," Marcus replied distractedly, his fingers quickly gliding over the touch screen.

Stormy scoffed loudly, unable to hide her contempt. "An email! Is that really necessary, Marcus?"

Marcus turned his head and met her eyes. He looked completely shocked and put out by her comment.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Look around, Marcus. We're on holiday! We're in a beautiful, exciting new country, and you're being all business-y business-y and sending emails."

"Business-y business-y?" he repeated.

"Yes!"

"Don't you mean businesslike?"

"Whatever," Stormy waved her hand dismissively. "The point is that you're missing out on what's in front of you in the real world, with your face buried in your phone like that. Plus you'll get square eyes."

"Isn't that an old wives' tale about watching TV?" He sounded irritated, and he wasn't doing a very good job of hiding it. "Besides, what else am I supposed to do to keep busy? We have a long drive ahead of us."

"You shouldn't fiddle with a phone while driving," Stormy scolded. "Besides, we could use the time to get to know each other. Have a real conversation. Use our mouths to make real spoken words with our vocal cords... or have you forgotten how that works?"

Stormy wasn't sure her attempt at a joke had gone down well, because there was a sudden, long lull in the conversation. Maybe they had nothing to say when they weren't at each other's throats – or screaming out each other's names, drenched in sweat.

"Why is it that whenever we try to have a normal conversation, we argue?" Stormy asked, finally breaking the silence.

"I don't know," Marcus sighed, his tone much softer now, any signs of irritation gone.