It started raining on the way back from her room. He hadn’t brought an umbrella and his jacket had no hood. Rainwater was bleeding on his face and through his socks. He’d left in the silence of her asleep with her hair around her shoulders and the covers up to her chest. He moved to pass his fingertips over her cheek but pulled away. He didn’t want her to wake and find him leaving. His breath was turning to fog in the cold. He’d fast forwarded the film on her television before he left. He could imagine her waking in the middle of the night and blinking her eyes to adjust to the dark. He knew the film paused at the end would make her smile. She’d call him in the morning believing that he’d stayed with her even after she fell asleep, just to be with her a while longer. 

He made a wrong turn two blocks from his dorm. He entered a building made of windows and walked up three flights of stairs. He gave his reflection a once-over in the windows of her hallway. She opened the door before he even raised his hand to knock. Her hair was stuck to her lips and her eyes shot to his hair. It’s raining, he explained. She stared at the locks dripping rainwater on his brow line. He waited a moment then walked past her. He took a seat at the foot of her bed and heard the door close behind him. They put on a film and shared a beer even though it was too late for doing either. He hadn’t seen the film before, but he was watching her drum her fingers on the bottleneck instead. He knew her like a mantra. The citrus smell of her soap and her fingernails bitten to the quick. She slapped him on the shoulder at the jumpscare and his skin stung where she hit him. He wondered if this was the closest he would ever get to her and if that was such a terrible thing. He took in the line of her nose and the length of her hair and thought of all the ways he could describe her. He wanted to hold her face in his hands in the dim light. He wanted to learn her so well there would be no need for imagination in remembering her exactly as she was. But trying to memorize every little thing about her didn’t seem like an intention she’d like to hear. So he told himself he’d forget the quiet in the room and the water stains on her bed and everything about this moment by the time he’d gone. 

The rain on his neck evaporated. The film ended. She took the bottle in his hand after he’d finished what was left. She was watching the rolling credits and he could think of no excuse to stay, other than that he wanted her for now, other than that at random times, suddenly and recurrently, he found himself wishing he was at her door, hand raised to knock, wondering if she was on the other side to answer. At those times, he reminded himself that his attraction was intermittent. His longing for the sleeping girl had surfaced and faded. He’d learned it was better not to say something and regret it afterward. But then she got up off the bed to throw away the empty bottle and his body followed her across the room. When she turned to find him there, she avoided his eyes. She looked up at his hair even though it was no longer wet. He wiped an imaginary piece of dust from her head. She blinked when he touched her. But very quickly she moved away and told him that the rain had stopped. He looked out of the window and agreed that it had. It didn’t start on his way out the door or past the hallway of windows. It didn’t start down the three flights of stairs or on the walk back to his dorm. So there was no reason for him to turn around and ask her to let him back in. No reason to tell her that the same night, he fell asleep alone and dreamed of a downpour of rain through a window. That when he awoke in the morning, it wasn’t to the thought of the girl he’d left sleeping, but of the quiet of her room, a film playing out to the end, and having a reason to stay even after it had.