I sat in the rocking chair on the deck, wrapped in a blanket. I watched the rain pour down and the lightning strike in the distance.

Was it stupid of me to stick a foot out into the rain? Would I catch a cold?

I was feeling melancholy and the rain helped. I loved the smell of wet earth coming from the woods that surrounded the house.

Petrichor, it was called.

I had smelled it many times during my time in this house. I had recently inherited it from my mother and I was still deciding whether to sell it or keep it.

After my parent's divorce, I had chosen to stay with my Dad in Spain. I didn't want to leave my school and friends behind, so my parents made an arrangement.

I lived in Madrid during the school year but spent all of my summer vacations and every other Christmas in Michigan.

My mother was an artist, she painted and made sculptures. The backyard was full of some of her best work. I particularly liked her version of Michaelangelo's David.

Whenever I was with her, Mom did her best to take her meds and not drink. She didn't always succeed and I would find her in front of a canvas, emptying her soul onto it.

She would forget to cook me dinner since she hardly ate in her "elevated" state. The neighbors always reminded me that if I needed anything that I should let them know.

I thought that Mom had a superpower, so when she needed to paint like her life depended on it...

I ordered pizza.

I had many memories from my vacations with my mom but my favorites were always of Aaron.

When I first came to see my mother, I was fourteen. I realized that I liked him from the get-go but it took two more summers to scrape up the courage to kiss him.

He had kissed me back!

That year we fooled around a bit but neither of us had dared make the first move towards sex. It was the biggest regret of my life, I had desperately wanted him to be my first.

The next year, Aaron was gone.

They had moved to Southern California. We tried to stay in touch but back then it wasn't as easy as it is now.

Eventually, the communication stopped. Our lives had become very different, we had become very different.

I never thought that I would see Aaron again. Imagine my surprise when I spotted him in the back of the room at my mother's funeral.

In the middle of my eulogy, I looked up and his green eyes grabbed my heart. I recognized him instantly, despite there being a decade in between.

We weren't boys anymore.

After the wake, he gave me his sincere condolences and asked me out for a drink. I didn't object, he was even more beautiful than I remembered.

Two drinks easily became five. I had been hell-bent on getting drunk but I didn't know that I was going to be taking Aaron back to my mother's... MY house.

That was a week ago. We have been literally inseparable ever since. 

Aaron had been the one that found it, the portrait of me. It was picture perfect and Mom had probably painted it shortly before her death. It was a much younger me.

"I remember him well," Aaron had whispered.

"I hardly remember him at all," I had muttered. I kissed him roughly and bit his lower lip. I needed to push certain memories out of my head.

I had opened his robe and pushed my hand past the band of his underwear. Aaron had stepped back, knocking over the ezel with my portrait. The painting had fallen face down onto the floor and my eye had caught the key taped to the back.

Was that THE key?! The one for the attic room that I had still not been able to open? If it weren't for Aaron, the locksmith would have given me access days ago.

Like an excited kid, I had snatched the key from the back of the canvas and left Aaron standing there.

I had run upstairs and fumbled the key into the lock and burst into the room as if expecting to find treasure.

Instead, I found an entire room full of portraits.

Portraits of me!

One for every year of my life. I even recognized most of the pictures from which she had painted them.

Mom hadn't flinched when I came out to her but she rarely told me that she loved me or that she was proud of me. Were the paintings her way of telling me? Why had I never been allowed to see these before?

Aaron had stared at the walls in awe and said, "You can't sell a house with a room in it like this."

So here I was, staring at the rain and contemplating whether I should sell or stay. To be honest, my real question was...

Would Aaron stay with me if I did?