My head rests against the cold, dark window of the cab. Lit signs to places I don't care about slide out of sight. 

I desire the sound of a downpour, so strongly, that I can almost see the droplets streaming and beading on the windowpane, the cold fog forming on my cheek, and the heavy smell of damp in place of foul smoke, spiraling lights, and a too quiet ride.

Strange thoughts catch up to my tired mind as the car glides. 

Like how my reflection must have looked ten minutes past when I pinned a thin piece of lined paper with a scrawled note to the mirror in my bathroom so Donnie knew where I went.

I assumed he knew I was away and yet, like a far away lover, I sometimes wanted him to smell the same air and trace out the odd angles of my life. Because none of us quite saw it the same, you know, and I'm curious as to what he sees in me.

But...

That wasn't why I wanted the rain. Rain brings my memories. I think back to a glimpse into a room between a gap in the door, of a virtual game on the screen of my father's computer as I crack open the door.

On the screen is a darkened rooftop romance. An innocent meeting of two teenagers across a table made of an upended wooden crate now topped with a checkered cloth, two plates with pasta, and a white rose made from a folded napkin. Handmade flickering candles of wax poured into the bottoms of alcohol bottles are scattered over the concrete ground where they sit and I wished that it were me and Ronnie on that roof, beneath those animated stars. The only thing to be made more perfect would have been to add a few pillows. The only thing better, if it were real.

"Hey, girl," the cab driver calls for my attention.

I lift my head from the glass. The cab has come to rest in a neighborhood on the fifth layer. A clean, tree-dotted area. The driver looks at me expecting money. I don't know why. I pre-paid and the hovercars practically fly themselves. I pull a bit of paper, a coupon, from my pocket and discard it on the seat, just enough to play into his fantasy, before I shut him out of my life.