FIRE AND RAIN
Galway Bay, Ireland
February 9th, 2005
She had not slept. And she had no plans of bothering now.
Darcy was caught somewhere between the ebony swirls and the lavender strokes, lost in the middle of another well-oiled catastrophe. The old sheet beneath her was splattered with various attempts at creation. Her toes were sticking together with every fallen drop of paint, same as her fingers, and same as her hair, where she had continuously wiped the choppy strands form her eyes. The brush in her hand had been the tool of her enemy mind, and she had been trying to master both of them since the prior afternoon.
She wanted to give up, give in and leave. She wanted to throw the brush back to its box, and kick the canvas to the floor of her studio. She wanted to count the reasons why she needed caffeine terribly, and why her inspiration had run dry the last week. And then she wanted to drown in a pool of cappuccino and curse the world spinning around her so quickly, never stopping to let her back on for a ride.
By the time the studio of her apartment was soaked in grey sunlight and every window was crying tears of Irish agony in the storm, she tossed her paintbrush to the easel. She stood before her masterpiece of nothing, hands on her hips and her blue eyes squinting critically. Darcy winced. She sighed in frustration and rolled her eyes back, as her feet moved in the same direction for her bedroom.
She rummaged and dressed and comforted herself in colors and patterns that would never match. She pulled on her rain boots at the door, threw on her old jacket, grabbed her keys, her phone, and her umbrella—which she opened right there, in the doorway of her flat. Bad luck wouldn't dare touch her now.
Her green boots hit the wet pavement, the sound of falling rain struck her ears like a whisper of the universe's sadness, and she turned for Dock Street. There was a place there, where the blacktop met the cobblestone that Darcy had known for too long, and not quite long enough. It had been one of the first places she had discovered in this town as a child, a cozy nook on the bay, overlooking, at the most ideal angle, the Atlantic Ocean. There was the Blue Star coffee shop, an old record and book store, a single phone booth, and two benches carved from driftwood. That was it. That was the spot where all of her morning's tended to begin lately, for better or worse, inspired or not.
Twirling her umbrella, she skipped over cracks in the sidewalk and puddles in the street. There was a beat in her head that required no source, no headphones or instrument. It was there, always, naturally. The rhythm of this particular drum became her, carried her on every slide of every raindrop, every gust of every northeasterly breeze, to the place in question.
She skipped down to the drop-off point of the stone wall on the road, leapt onto its surface, and walked carefully, one boot in front of the other, across to the other side. The waves crashed up against the breakwater, spraying her wool stockings and skirt with cold salt. The clouds rumbled together overhead and the beat went on, a little louder, a little more ill-tempered.
Darcy's impish laughter flew from under the helm of her pink-polka dot cover. She danced to the music that only she could hear. She risked life and limb on that wall. She spun around and tried to find something in the gray of another Irish morning to motivate her creative mind. She drummed her fingers on the handle of her umbrella, tapped her green rain boots on wet stones, and in a motion as graceful as the sky was angry she hopped back down to the road again.
One there, her phone rang and she answered it.
A friend of hers, Maggie, was laughing and pouring out every detail of the night before. Apparently, in dedicating herself to her art, Darcy had missed a world of fun, and a bar full of interesting men, and an evening at the feet of the most incredible band, some traveling British faction of crooners and seducers. Her friend, of course, had taken one of them home with her.
"Sounds like a bloody good time," she murmured with a smile, crossing the road from the bay. She danced through each puddle, and made a b-line for the coffee shop when Maggie informed her that she was only around the corner from there.
"I want to tell ye all about me night with Noah the pirate drummer!"
The suggestion, and the bite of a chuckle in Maggie's voice, sent Darcy reeling with laughter of her own. Her cheeks burned a fiery pink in the cold, and with humor. Her eyes lit up brightly, and she peered through the glass of the coffee shop window, expecting to see what sort of crowd occupied its depth, curious to see if she could find anyone she knew inside. Instead though, she managed to fall directly into the penetrating gaze of a single set of black eyes on the other side.
Darcy was drowning before she even saw the face surrounding the eyes. She was madly in love with the espresso shade and the glimmer of grey light in the irises, before she was even sure it was a man or a woman. The artist in her saw the depths of two black holes, and the surface of two black coffees, and the shallow pollution of any one of the puddles she had hopped through. She saw something, instantly, that she could put onto a canvas, something that could inspire an entire piece.
That's when she felt the phone falling off her ear and Maggie's voice trailing with it. That's when she saw the distinct features of a man, a handsome, dark-haired man. That's when Darcy's smile took on a mind of its own.
She hurt, staring back at him. Her heart ached. Her hand stopped twirling her umbrella. Her legs stopped shaking from the cold and she felt only the fire of his glare, of his spirit burning through the window. Yet as much pain as she could feel of his, Darcy did not stop beaming, not even for a second. She was locked there, under the heat of his eyes. She was happy to be there, knowing him somehow, feeling and seeing things that she had not seen in a person's eyes for too long.
She saw honest, willing regret. She saw guilt. She saw self-hatred and a desire to change.
Whoever this man was, with his rough hair and course smile and heavy soul, he was utterly fascinating. Whatever he was, with his old leather jacket and worn jeans and skull rings and tired eyes, he was something she wanted to know so much better. Wherever he was going, with that rock n' roll posture, and that gut-wrenching, glass shattering aura, it was filling Darcy with a need to go inside, sit down, introduce herself and claim him, right then and there.
It was making her daft with ideas that never crossed her mind with the likes of the other men she had encountered in town, in the world. It was making her want to shake off her umbrella, wriggle out of her coat, and wrap herself up in his strong arms, warm within the shop, within the space of his essence. She wanted to simply drift off into a sea of bliss in his embrace. It was making her want to grab him by the shirt, push him against the nearest wall she could find and brush her lips all over his—
"Darcy!"
The spell was severed by the sound of Maggie's shout from around the corner. Darcy felt her smile fading into a different one, and noticed herself sliding away from the intensity of her non-verbal greeting with the stranger behind the glass. Her friend threw her arms around her, but all she could think about as she turned away with her arm tied into Maggie's, was the want in her body to touch that window pane, to see if the man on the other side was brave enough to press his palm to the glass directly over hers.
She wanted to know if their hands would fit as perfectly together as she daydreamed then, that they would.
