At the end of our mercenary summer

There’s rain, and then there’s drinking gin in the rain, the way the pine taste of it on your tongue takes you back to the Northwest and kills your brain cells for you so you don’t have to bother holding your breath for an extremely long time or sniffing glue. Which we were not depressed. That much must be said. No, we were drunks in the rain, and that’s quite different.

We passed the bottle between us, and yeah, we danced maybe I guess, and to be honest I hated the taste of gin but she didn’t and there it was. The back yard was starting in on being puddly, revealing how uneven all of it really was. Her hair was plastered over her eyes and dripping while she smiled with the bottle thrust up in the air like she was presenting it to god. It made her bellybutton show.

We grabbed at each other and spun around and fell over. Did you ever do that? It feels pretty good. In heaps is what. We lay there letting the drops hit our faces and force our eyes closed tight, and then we got cold, and then we went inside, and then we didn’t speak for an afternoon for fear of breaking the spell.