I'm a Walking Rainstorm, He's a Human Heatwave, and We're Falling in Love

The air in Solace, Arizona, was a physical weight. It was thick, dry, and so hot it seemed to shimmer, baking the very color out of the sky into a pale, washed-out blue. This was it. The last resort. I stood on the cracked driveway of the beige stucco box that was now my home, the keys feeling slick with sweat in my palm. For twenty-eight years, I had lived in a state of carefully curated numbness, a self-imposed emotional desert. Now, I had moved to a literal one, hoping the environment might finally do the work for me.

My sadness was a liability. Not in the way that made people uncomfortable at parties, but in the way that caused flash floods. A moment of deep melancholy could cloud the sun. A pang of anxiety could bring a relentless drizzle. True, soul-crushing despair? That was a category-five hurricane, localized entirely and inconveniently over my own head. So I learned to feel nothing. I walled it all off, becoming as placid and unchanging as a stagnant pond, and just as isolated.

My new yard was a testament to my life’s goal: dirt and rocks, punctuated by a few skeletal, sun-bleached weeds. The one next door, however, was an impossibility. It was a riot of green and startling color, a lush oasis thriving under the oppressive sun. Strange, sculptural plants with thick, waxy leaves and thorns like daggers grew in meticulously arranged beds of black volcanic rock. It was beautiful and savagely intimidating.

A man emerged from between two towering, alien-looking cacti. He was tall, with broad shoulders that strained the fabric of his simple grey t-shirt. His skin was tanned, his dark hair cut short. He moved with a quiet economy, no wasted motion, as he pruned a fiery orange bloom with a pair of shears. He stopped at the low stone wall that separated our properties, his gaze assessing me. I felt a familiar prickle of apprehension, the kind I always had to stamp down immediately. Don't feel. Don't react. Stay empty.

He set the shears down and picked up a bottle of water from a nearby stone bench. Condensation beaded on the clear plastic. "You look like you could use this," he said. His voice was low and even, devoid of any particular inflection.

I walked over, my feet crunching on the gravel that served as my lawn. "Thank you."

He reached over the wall to hand it to me. Our fingers brushed as I took it. A strange, dry heat radiated from his skin, far more intense than the ambient temperature of the air. It was a focused, penetrating warmth that felt like standing too close to a fire. I pulled my hand back quickly, startled. He didn't seem to notice, or if he did, his expression remained neutral. His eyes, a deep, unreadable brown, were fixed on my face.

"I'm Kael," he said.

"Elara." The name felt foreign on my tongue.

A corner of his mouth lifted in a small, almost imperceptible smile. It was a reserved gesture, but it held a surprising kindness that briefly softened the severity of his features. "Welcome to Solace."

He gave a short nod and turned, disappearing back into his fortress of impossible plants. I stood there, clutching the cold bottle, the ghost of his unnatural warmth still tingling on my fingers. For the first time in a long time, the silence in my head felt less like peace and more like a profound, aching emptiness.

The welcome bottle sat untouched on the counter, its condensation forming a perfect ring on the dusty laminate. Inside the stifling house, the air was still and smelled of old paint and neglect. My life was packed into brown cardboard boxes, each one a tombstone for a different failed attempt at normalcy. I slit the tape on one labeled ‘MEMORABILIA’ with a dull kitchen knife, the sound grating in the silence.

I shouldn’t have opened it. I knew better. But the loneliness Kael’s small kindness had stirred in me was a hollow ache that demanded to be filled with something, even if it was pain. Inside, beneath bubble wrap, was a framed five-by-seven photograph. It was of me and my older brother, Liam, taken ten years ago on his graduation day. We stood under a weeping willow, its branches creating a soft, green canopy. It was overcast, a typical Ohio spring day, and a light drizzle had begun to fall. In the photo, I was laughing, head thrown back, not yet afraid of the sky. Liam had his arm around me, a proud, easy grin on his face. He’d been killed by a drunk driver six months later. My grief had caused a flood that submerged three city blocks and made national news. That was when I had first learned to build my walls.

Staring at his face, at the ghost of the girl I used to be, the carefully constructed dam inside me didn’t just crack; it disintegrated. A wave of pure, undiluted agony slammed into me. It was the grief for Liam, the loneliness of the last decade, the despair of this new, empty life in this godforsaken desert. It all crested at once, a tsunami of sorrow too powerful to contain.

A sob tore from my throat, raw and loud in the empty room.

And the world outside answered.

The pale blue sky vanished, replaced instantly by a roiling, bruised ceiling of black cloud that materialized directly over the house. The temperature dropped twenty degrees in a heartbeat. A sudden, violent gust of wind shrieked around the eaves, rattling the windows in their frames. Then came the rain. It wasn't a sprinkle or a shower; it was a vertical river. A solid, deafening curtain of water hammered the roof, so loud it sounded like the house was being torn apart. Thunder cracked, not in the distance, but directly overhead, a brutal explosion of sound that vibrated through the floor and into my bones.

I stumbled to the window, my own tears blinding me. My yard, the patch of baked dirt and gravel, was gone. In its place was a churning, brown lake, the water rising with impossible speed. The parched earth couldn't absorb the deluge. As I watched in horror, the muddy water breached the low stone wall separating my property from Kael’s.

A torrent of sludge and debris cascaded into his perfect garden. The meticulously arranged beds of black rock were washed away in a slurry of mud. The water surged around the bases of his beautiful, strange plants, tearing at their roots. One of the tall, sculptural cacti, the one with the fierce thorns, listed sideways. For a moment it held, defiant, before the ground gave way completely and it toppled into the raging brown current, disappearing beneath the surface. My sorrow was literally drowning his oasis.

The shame was a physical force, shoving me out the door and into the chaos I had created. The cold rain hit me like a thousand tiny needles, plastering my hair to my skull and soaking my clothes in seconds. This was my fault. My storm. My sorrow made manifest. I couldn't hide from it.

I stumbled off my porch into ankle-deep, churning water. The mud was thick and greedy, sucking at my sneakers as I waded toward his yard. The roar of the rain was punctuated by the low growl of thunder, a sound that echoed the grief still rumbling in my chest. I had to stop this. I had to choke the feeling down. I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing on the cold, the mud, anything but Liam’s smiling face. The downpour seemed to lessen slightly, from a deluge to a mere torrential storm.

Kael was standing in the middle of the devastation. He wasn’t looking at my house, or at the sky. His back was to me, his shoulders slumped as he stared down at the spot where the magnificent cactus had been, now just a muddy hole in the earth. He was so still, a statue in the heart of my hurricane. I braced myself, expecting him to turn and scream at me, to rage, to threaten. I deserved it.

“I’m so sorry,” I cried out, my voice thin against the noise of the storm.

He turned slowly. His face was wet, rain dripping from his short hair and down his temples, but his expression was one of profound, weary calm. There was no anger in his eyes. Only a strange, deep-seated resignation, as if he’d been expecting something like this all along.

“I’m so, so sorry,” I babbled, sloshing closer to him. The water swirled around my calves. “I don’t know what happened. I’ll fix it. I’ll pay for everything, for the plants, the rocks, all of it. I’ll have it all replaced.”

He held up a hand to stop my frantic stream of words. “It’s alright,” he said, his low voice cutting through the din with surprising clarity. He took a step toward me, his gaze holding mine. “Don’t worry about it.”

As he moved, his arm brushed against a set of long, metal wind chimes hanging from the low branch of a Palo Verde tree. The contact was brief, accidental, but the effect was instantaneous and impossible. The tubes of polished steel glowed a sudden, violent cherry-red. A sharp hissing sound split the air as the cold raindrops met the superheated metal, vaporizing into puffs of steam. The chime sizzled, the red glow pulsing with an intense heat I could feel even from several feet away.

I stopped breathing. The rain around us continued to fall, but the frantic apology died in my throat. I stared at the glowing, steaming metal, then at his hand, which was entirely unscathed. He pulled it back quickly, a flicker of something—annoyance? embarrassment?—crossing his features for the first time. He looked from the chime to my face, and in his dark, unreadable eyes, I saw it. A reflection of my own impossible secret.