I met her in the rain.
            We were on a quiet street lined with old buildings and flowers pots, devoid of people save for the two of us. She was in the middle of the road with a light burgundy coat on and no umbrella. Rain dripped from her clothes, slipped off the ends of her curls and her eyelashes, ran down her face.
I offered her my umbrella.
"Oh, no, that's alright," she'd said, laughter hiding behind her voice. "I'll take your number instead, though, if that's alright."
My initial laugh was out of shock at how forward she was, but then I really laughed and asked for her name, then told her mine. I didn't give her my number, though; her phone wouldn't work with her wet fingers. She gave me hers instead.

She always liked the rain, and that was something I never quite understood. It was dreary and dark, made me want to stay inside. We usually did, and she would doze off as the rain tapped against the window. An open book – some fantasy, science fiction, romance thing – would slide from her slumped wrist, and her face would be half-pressed into the arm of our soft, tan couch. She fell in love with it on sight when we went furniture shopping.
When were out in the rain, she refused to carry an umbrella. She danced and jumped in puddles while I trailed behind, laughing as I stayed dry under the black umbrella I kept in the hall closet. It usually rested against the holiday decorations she piled up haphazardly and half-hid behind our bulky winter coats.
I would always zip hers up for her, and she would complain that she looked like a marshmallow. I always thought she was right but wouldn't tell her; she was a rather cute marshmallow, besides. But I if said that her face would turn beet red and she would shove my arm and tell me to stop as if we weren't a married couple. She would say things like that to me with reckless abandon, though.
"Have I ever told you how much I love your nose? I hope our kids have your nose."
"Oh, my gosh, you have the cutest little sneeze!"
Talking was her favorite way to express what she felt – and she felt everything so vividly. Everything new was exciting, everything pretty was beautiful, everything she liked she loved. And everything she loved, she felt something more for – an emotion she couldn't put into words. But "love" was the closest thing she had, and she used it all the time.
            "I love you," she said, keys jangling as she fumbled with the doorknob and ran to the car. I always locked the door behind her, giving her those extra seconds and hoping she didn't recklessly speed her way to work so as not to be late. It was a wonder she didn't get a ticket every other week.
"I love you," she said, passing me ingredients so I could cook dinner because she was a horrible cook, no matter how hard she tried. Sometimes I would come in the door to smell of something burning and her sheepish face as whatever it was she'd tried to cook sat in the pan, black as night. Spaghetti was about the only thing she could do successfully, and even then she'd dumped the noodles in the floor trying to strain them on more than one occasion. The distant 'splat' of the noodles hitting the hardwood floor and her, "Oh, crap!" made me laugh every time.
"I love you," she said, grabbing my hand as we walked down the street. She liked to rest her head on my shoulder, and I liked the feel of it there. I didn't always like that we didn't know where we were going, but she would say, "Let's take a walk!" and we would go. She never liked to be still.
"I love you," she said, looking at me in the mirror with her toothbrush hanging out of her mouth as she smiled. I never understood what it was about that moment, catching me mid-yawn in my pajamas and about to pour mouthwash in the cap, that she found so endearing.

After working all day, in the evenings, she would come home and curl up on the couch with the TV playing black and white sitcoms. When I came in, I was always greeted with her head popping up over the arm of the couch, her face adorned with a wide smile. "How was your day?" she'd ask.
I would put my shoes on the little shelf, hang my keys on the hook. "Fine, darling."
She would be up by then, meeting me for a hug and a kiss. "What do you want for dinner?"
I would rest my chin on the top of her head for a moment, taking in the small space, clean and lived in. "What do we have?"
She would pull away, shuffling through the tan and white living room to the teal kitchen to look in the small pantry, the fridge, the cabinets. She would tell me what we had, and I would decide what I felt like making. I bore the brunt of the work while she chatted away about anything and everything – her day with the kindergarteners, the show she watched on TV earlier, the family drama her mom told her over the phone. She'd ask more about my day, the patients I'd worked with, and I would answer as much as I could without violating HIPAA. She couldn't stand silence, always wanted to fill it. It didn't matter to her that I snored at night, then, and I was relieved to hear it.
            After dinner, we would sit on the couch. She let me pick what to watch on TV and rested her head on my shoulder, arms around me. Her hair always smelled like apples.
She always went to get ready for bed first, needing at least an hour to complete her nightly routine. When I came to bed, she'd put her book down, flick off the lamp, and say, "Goodnight. I love you."

I came home. It was July.
My tires crunched over the gravel drive. A breeze met me when I opened the car door and stepped onto the sunset-bathed rocks. The green paint on our front door was fading, and I turned my rattling keys in the lock before opening the door and hanging them on the nearby hook. A few steps later, in the living room, I found her on the couch, fast asleep in a ball underneath a blanket. The TV was on, turned down low. A laugh track rang out.
I hummed to myself and went into the kitchen to search for food. The apples we kept on the counter, I noticed, had gone bad. I tossed them and decided not to cook, ordering a pizza instead.
I didn't want to sit on the couch lest I wake her, and the rocking chair next to it likewise made a horrible creaking noise to show its age, so I sat in the chair in the corner. It was clean and almost as new as the day we bought it; only guests used it. It had a twin in the opposite corner in the same condition.
The doorbell woke her. I paid the delivery guy as she blearily awoke and followed me to the oak kitchen table her grandmother gave us. We sat down and ate in silence. She had a couple slices, then got up. "I love you," she mumbled, disappearing down the hall and closing the bedroom door with a soft click. I didn't feel like going to bed and stayed up to watch a movie, but I fell asleep on the couch before it was over. I never saw the ending.

The sky opened above us as we jogged to the car. It was September. Her umbrella was in my hand; I was taller, could cover us better. She carried the Chinese food we'd just picked up and slid into the passenger seat the moment we reached the car. I got into the driver's side and shook the umbrella, wrapping it up before tossing it in the back and taking off. The windshield wipers were going as fast as they could all the way to the house. We thought it might rain before we left, but it was a short rain. By the time we were in the house, it had stopped.
As she was getting out her sushi and lo mein, bringing it to the couch, I turned and looked out the window at the sunshine sky. "There's a rainbow outside."
She followed my gaze. "Pretty." She sat down and started eating, using chopsticks like a pro. I never could get the hang of them.

She was on the couch again. I was in the chair. It was November, and the TV was on. The news was reporting heaps of destruction, far away from us. I couldn't hear what had caused it. Rain knocked on the window, the roof.
She had an empty bowl next to her on the end table. A book was closed in her hand, her open eyes on the TV screen. I waited for her to fall asleep, but she never did. For a few moments, I wondered if she was somehow sleeping with her eyes open, but then a commercial for some sort of depression medication came on and she turned to look at the popcorn ceiling.
           "Isn't it nice to hear the rain?" she asked quietly. I hummed in agreement, but she went on. "It's warm inside, and you can curl up under a blanket, and it's the perfect sound to read or fall asleep to. And doesn't it make you feel guilty sometimes? To think that somewhere else in the world, that rain is being caused by a hurricane? A hurricane is out there somewhere that very minute, destroying buildings and streets and lives, all so you can hear the rain pitter-pattering against your window. Isn't it awful?"
            I frowned. "I don't think that's how it works."
            She sat up. "Doesn't it?"
            "You aren't God, darling. You don't command the clouds to rain. You don't have control over hurricanes and when and where they form or why."
             She sighed and lay back down. "Do you ever feel like rain?"
             I paused. "Feel like rain? What do you mean?"
            "Why do you always miss the point?"
"Is that what you hate about me?" I asked.
            "No," she said. "I love you." And she meant it.

I came home from work, but she wasn't there yet. It was February. I looked through the kitchen and decided to make spaghetti; it was simple and quick. I was already eating when she walked in the door. I watched as she hung up her coat and keys, slipped off her shoes. She got a plate then sat on the couch, but I had something to tell her before she could turn on the TV.
"I got offered a raise at work."
"That's great," she said.
"But we would have to move if I accepted it. They want to open a new office in Vermont, and they want people with experience. Apparently, that's me."
"You have experience."
"But we would have to move. To Vermont. You heard that part, right?"
She twirled her spaghetti, around and around. "I've never been to Vermont."
"I haven't either."
"Do you think you'd like it there?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. We could always look."
"Okay. We can look." She turned the TV on.

The office was helping out with everything, which was nice, but they couldn't pick our new house for us. We began looking at houses online and planning a trip to view them in March. We got in touch with a real estate agent to talk budgets and preferences. When we went to go look at the houses, we managed to settle on one.
             "What do you think?" I asked. She surveyed the brick, the slanting roof, the fence, the shutters on the windows. The curtains were open, giving us a glimpse of the interior we'd just toured – enough space, little need for renovation. It was barely within our budget, but we could do it.
             "I like it," she said, and that was the one we chose.

             We began going through our house, donating, selling, and giving away the things we didn't need. We packed everything else in a million boxes, rented a U-Haul. It was May.
I walked into our room to begin loading our things. She was sitting on the floor in front of a box she'd just opened. It was labeled 'memories' in her chicken scratch handwriting. Our photo albums were resting in the bottom, underneath things from our wedding that we'd piled on top.
            I sat next to her. Her tears fell like raindrops onto our guest book, seeping into the cover.
            "What are you doing?" I asked.
            "We missed our anniversary." Her voice shook. "It was last month, and we missed it."
            "We'll celebrate it when we get to Vermont."
"What if I don't want to go to Vermont?" she asked, wiping her eyes.
            "Why didn't you tell me that months ago? It's too late to change our minds now."
            "I know," she replied. "I guess it just hit me that we're really moving."
            "You'll like Vermont," I assured her.
            "How do you know?"
            "You like everything."
            "No, I don't," she argued. "I don't like mushrooms, I don't like the beach, I don't like country music, I don't like rain, and I don't like how you never seem to get anything that I say."
             I sighed. The photo album from our wedding stared me in the face. She had it made by a friend of a friend. The cover was a picture of us at the altar. Her dress was a cloud around her waist; she wanted a ballgown, no matter the cost. Her eyes sparkled with tears under her curled lashes, and her smile was as warm and wide as a summer day. I could see tears in my own eyes, right there in that picture, but I couldn't quite remember how I felt.
            "Will it make it alright if I say that I love you?"
            "But would you mean it?" she asked.
            I opened my mouth, but I had no answer.
            "But would you mean it?" she demanded.