Once with Blue: Playing in the Puddles

It's pouring outside.

Every rainstorm, I think of Blue.
Mostly because we solemnly swore to pounce every puddles without remorse, but I'll explain the backstory.

Kelsey Blue and I were crammed with mid terms. We crowded her dining room table with class notes and caffeine. She had this soap, caffeinated soap, which she rubbed occasionally -hoping it might jolt alertness through her bloodstream. I had coffee, gas station coffee, with the label "Xtreme" written in lightning bolts. It was dreadful and smelt like earthy toilet scum.
But there we sat, still as stones, memorizing formulas and definitions, trying not to breathe through our noses.

Then the clouds thickened. We paid no mind.
The winds picked up. We kept studying.

Finally, a downpour of liquid marbles tumbled from the clouds' pockets. Unignorable.
The droplets, if you'd care to call them such a dainty word, struck loudly, almost horizontally, onto the sliding doors by her table.
Kelsey glanced up. I couldn't concentrate either.

She closed her notes and nudged me,
"Intermission?"
"No question," I said, nodding profusely.
She sprang from her seat and examined the showers through the sliding glass door.
"Are you a fan of the rain?"
Was I a fan of the rain?
I was born in June. Every year, it rained on my birthday
like a present from the gods.
"Yeah," I was very much a fan.
"Great! Let's give it a visit," she said, sprightly.
My face shaped into that smile small children make when receiving a carnival balloon-animal.
"Sure," I called out, "but there's this minor detail about having no backup clothes."
"Ditch them," she concluded, giving it no thought.

And so I did. Her folks were out, not due back for at least a grocery shopping's worth of an hour, and I shoved my shirt, shoes, shorts and underclothes by the cat-scratched leather sofa. She followed suit.
Just then, Blue and I hit a landmark.
We hadn't, to this point, seen each other naked.

We acknowledged it briefly, noting that the other human in the room was definitely made of girl parts, and ran past each other, flailing those girl parts right round the fenced-in yard, soaking in the deluge.

I'd never felt so damn refreshed in my life. Baptized might be a better word.
The drenched sky seemed more of an endless aquarium, swimmable.
The grass spit mud from beneath its blades, painting our stomping legs brown.
The trees shook and shined, delighted in their quenched thirst.
They had plenty.
We had plenty.

We solemnly swore to dance out in the rain whenever it blessed us with a bath.
She struck a brave match in me, and I was, with her, on fire with constant courage.

We kept our promise.