Umbrella

The water was pouring from the sky in buckets, it seemed. Very, very large buckets that never had to be refilled, or were possibly bottomless. Jonny stood on the curb and waited for the bus while passing cars hit the puddles the wrong way and the subsequent water splashed threatened to soak Jonny's entire being. Then the umbrella would have been totally useless.

A man stood a few feet away, unprotected from the weather. Jonny couldn't see his face hidden behind a mass of curls, which were now drenched and stuck to the man's skin, but he could see that the man appeared to be shivering. It was a fairly cool day as well, Jonny thought, and so it was safe to assume that was what the man was suffering from.

Jonny, being the good Samaritan he was, took a few steps to the right and held his umbrella over the other man as well as himself. When the man suddenly noticed a disappearance in the water beating down on him, he turned his head an inch or so and looked at Jonny out of the corner of his eye.

“Thanks,” he said in a deep and throaty voice. It sounded like he had a cold or something, which wouldn't have been so surprising given the man's behavior of standing in the chilly rain with no protection whatsoever. Jonny meagerly grunted in reply, and for the next few minutes the men stood silent.

Jonny glanced over at the other man, and that was when he noticed the man's shoulders were shaking again, but this time he thought he could hear light gasps of air being pulled into the man's lungs. He was a bit unsure of what to do; after all, it's not like he really knew this man. But he didn't want to appear inconsiderate.

“I don't mean to pry,” Jonny began, “but are you...?”

The man looked fully up at Jonny, and Jonny could see down his cheeks the tracks left behind that had nothing to do with the rain. “I guess it was easier to hide when I was standing in the rain,” he said, frowning.

“If you don't mind me asking...” Jonny lightly shook his head. “Are you OK?”

The man shrugged his shoulders a bit. “I'm... I-I'll be fine,” he stuttered.

“Yeah, and I'll be a millionaire,” Jonny sarcastically remarked. The man looked insulted for a tiny moment, and Jonny felt bad. “Sorry.” But the man shook his head as if to tell him not to be.

“My grandmother died this morning,” he sullenly explained. “And we were really close... I know that's kinda stupid.”

“It's not stupid at all. Listen, do you want to...” Jonny didn't know how he was going to finish that question, or even the possibilities to choose from to end the question, but the man seemed to find an option of his own.

“We just met,” he said, and while Jonny had no clue what the man was thinking, he at least knew now that they were not familiar enough for much of anything. It was understandable.

“Right,” Jonny replied, nodding a little, though he really wished he could have helped in some way. Silence laid over them again and the man continued his quiet mourning.

Eventually, it became too much, and the man collapsed onto the curb, burying his head in his knees as his entire back trembled violently and unevenly. Jonny was quick to sit beside him, intent on lending a helping hand. He took that very same hand and placed it on the man's back, but there was no reaction from the man. For several long minutes the man bawled into himself, and Jonny just sat there with him, keeping him out of the rain.

When the man began to calm down he lifted his head a little, his arms still wrapped tightly around his legs. “I think it stopped raining,” he said, sniffed, brought a hand up to his face to wipe his nose on his sleeve.

Jonny looked around, listening. “So it has. I guess I look like a prick with this up, then,” he replied, and he stood up as he brought down his umbrella and closed it. He looked back at the man, who was also slowly making his way onto his feet. “Listen... uh...”

“Chris,” the man said, and it was at that particular moment that Jonny noticed the bright blue of his eyes. Jonny smiled a little for no particular reason.

“Do you want to go get something to eat? We could go somewhere dry and warm. I mean, it can't be good being out in this sort of weather for long, and you already look a bit sickly...”

“All right,” Chris finally agreed, after several moments of staring blankly into space. Then he looked up at Jonny and raised his eyebrows as if he were expecting something.

“Oh- sorry, I'm Jonny.” Jonny foolishly held out his hand, but Chris shook it with the same odd smile Jonny had given him.

“Well, it's nice to meet you. I guess... when one door closes, another opens. Right?” Chris took his hand back, folding his arms across his chest. The shivers soon to follow actually were the cause of the temperature now.

“It at least sounds good,” Jonny said with a hint of a chuckle. “Come on, then.” And the two men began to walk down the wet and mostly unoccupied sidewalk, away from the post on the corner that read BUS STOP.

Chris glanced at it briefly, furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “Were you waiting for the bus before?” he asked as he turned back to Jonny.

“Yeah, but that was half an hour ago. I don't think the bus is coming.” Jonny quickly pulled back the cuff of his jacket and looked at the watch resting on his wrist. “It's also possible that I had already missed it when I arrived.”

“Oh.”

“It's all right, it's been known to happen to me,” Jonny continued. “Nothing new, really, and anyway, I wasn't going anywhere special.” Jonny swung the umbrella a little, tiny droplets of water jumping off into the air as he did so. “Besides, as strange as it sounds, I think you and I were meant to meet.”

Chris looked at Jonny wondrously with his big eyes and after a while he nodded. “Yeah, it'd seem so.”