Prologue

The air pressed wet against his skin, thick with waiting rain, and a distant sky rumbled its restlessness.

Robert watched the absurdly scenic view of a darkened, storm heavy skyline, an ocean just beginning to rock with rising winds, through his feet. it was too humid for such a strenuous task as scooting his chair any closer, but his ankles just made it to the balcony if he stretched.

Beside him sat his mother, her feet propped up as well, but she sat elegantly, smiling softly. She noticed her son watching, and made a show of breathing in deeply. "I'd bet five more minutes," she said. "Before it starts pouring."

He didn't say anything, turning his gaze to his own feet, shifted a bit, and compared them to his mother's; they were nearly the same size now. It was hard not to think of how it'd been nearly two years since they'd last storm watched, nearly two years since his mother had been coherent enough, sober enough, during a storm to follow him out there. His feet had been much smaller then.

But that was depressing, and Robert was determined not spoil this moment, not to send her back inside, to hole up in her room, in a fit of guilt.

"You're thinking too hard, you'll get wrinkles if you keep it up," she said abruptly, reaching over and smoothing the lines made by his drawn down eyebrows, "Oh Robbie, look at you," she sighed, her hand moving to his cheek and resting there. Robert stared back, fidgeting. There was a time when sitting and talking with his mother had been natural, but that time had paled and faded in the face of drunken, rambling screams and fits. They'd grown apart, and now meeting her stare was awkward. Off. "You aren't planning on becoming a man anytime soon, are you?"

He smirked hesitantly, "I did my best to keep it from you"

"You knew full well I'd put a stop to this whole growing up business," she said, all seriousness, leaning back as the first bits of rain began to fall. For a moment, a dark cloud lit with distant lightning. "Going behind my back, how bad."

"You'll forgive me one day."

"I suppose. I just wish I'd seen it coming is all. All mothers say that don't they? But," she sighed. "I wish I'd been watching closer. Soon there'll be girls, right? And cars and shaving and sorts of independence business," Robert didn't tell her that there had already been girls, and he'd been driving Peter's Bentley since it'd been bought. "Are you sure I can't talk you out of all this becoming a man nonsense?"

"Sorry, my mind is made up. I've already made plans to turn sixteen these year."

"Heartless," she declared, tilting her head back. His mother was the prettiest woman in the world, amazing when she tried to be, but especially when she didn't. Her gold hair was up in a sloppy bun, sunglasses entirely too large on her face and a wide brimmed sunhat that would no doubt be blown off her head the moment the wind picked up, and anyone else would've looked like they were wrapping up, hiding. She looked glamorous, mysterious, even in her sweatpants and T-shirt, and for once, a sober smile.

Although it was hard to tell, with her. She was so incredibly charismatic, it took more than a few drinks to take that away. When she'd gone too far, though, it was a sharp fall into crudeness and incoherency.

"It's got to start any moment now," she said, sounding remarkably sure for someone who had no noticeable control over the weather. "If the storms way out there and it's nothing but rain, won't that be a gyp?"

The beach, ocean and the two watching turned white for as long as it took a sudden streak of lightning to race across the sky, and a moment later a brilliant, heart stuttering crack made Robert's chair quiver, just a bit.

"See?" she laughed, over the sound of the abrupt rainfall. Robert watched her smile, and allowed a small tingle of hope to stir in his chest; it could be different, now, with both of them, if he just tried hard enough, he could make her better. If he could just keep her smiling, she wouldn't want to drink, and he could do that, if he tried.

And there was Robert's problem, he was always blindly believing that, eventually, there would be a happy end.