Cryin' in the Rain: Conclusion

"Okay," she said. "But can we at least SLEEP in the same bed?" I just nodded.

"Nothing is going to happen, Abby," I said.

"I'll bet we end up fucking," she told me confidently.

The next morning I woke up with Abby wrapped around me like a python. "Jimmy was right," she said. "Apparently, you are only attracted to redheads with lots of freckles and no tits."

After that, Abby came out to stay with me occasionally. We settled into a comfortable relationship with her as my little sister, just as she would have been if Gretchen and I had stayed together.

My house became the second house for the entire extended family with the exception of Jimmy and Gretchen. No one ever mentioned them to me until just after Gretchen gave birth to her daughter Pattigail. Carla called me the next day.

I was driving to Tallahassee for a meeting with one of the plant's suppliers. I didn't have breakfast that morning. My stomach was upset. The last time I felt that queasy weird feeling had been when Jimmy had his accident. It just felt like someone important to me was in pain. I had recovered or they had, and now I was starving. I pulled into a really busy little mom and pop restaurant, just off of the freeway. It was called Sam's Casablanca Cafe.

I had never been in there before, but judging from the number of trucks parked outside of it; the food had to be good. A waitress, a really pretty younger black woman smiled at me and gestured for me to sit at the only empty table in the place. Even though it was late for breakfast and early for lunch the place was raucous and lively. An older man who looked like he'd been around forever was playing a mix of swing and boogie woogie songs on a piano that was probably older than he was. Just as I sat down my phone rang. I looked at the screen and saw who it was.

"Dylan, Gretchen had her baby, yesterday," she said. From her halting tone, I knew that she wanted to talk. "Honey, I think you should c..." I cut her off.

"Mom, I just can't," I said.

"Dylan do you realize..." she began again.

"Yes I realize who you are Carla," I said. "And I called you Mom because you're as much my mom as my mother is. Both of you raised both of us. I know that the birth of a child is a special thing in a family. It should bring out the best of us, and we can use it to mend old issues, but I just can't. I love Jimmy like a brother, but I can't forgive him. He didn't even love Gretchen when he did what he did. I doubt that he even loves her, now. Abby tells me that he cheats on her regularly. I hope that being a father teaches him some responsibility and that he and Gretchen, and the baby are all healthy and happy. However, he stole the only woman I have ever loved, and I don't think I can forgive that." I hung up the phone and started to look at the menu when I heard a voice.

"The only woman you ever loved, huh? So what does that make me?" As soon as I saw her eyes, I recognized her.

"Dylan Marshall," she smirked. "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, you walk into mine..."

As soon as she said my name, the music from the piano in the corner of the room stopped and started again. The boogie woogie tune was replaced by another old out of place chestnut, "As time goes by."

"Sarah," I gushed!

* * * * * *

Gretchen

A pregnancy is supposed to be a magical and romantic time for a couple. Perhaps if I was a part of a couple, this one would be. But a couple involves two people in love with each other, and that's not what we are. Jimmy and I are two people who are tied together not by love but by mutual contempt. The only thing keeping us together is the hope that the person we both love will someday come back into our lives and jointly, one of us has a chance at a life with him.

To that end, I am keeping this baby. Dylan made my first pregnancy a wonderful experience. That time I was so afraid of the changes to my body and the life I carried within me. I was more fearful of my baby than anything else. I worried about everything that first time. I worried now my parents would take it. So I didn't tell them anything until I lost it.

I worried that Jimmy would never come back into my life, and he didn't until it was long over and done with. I also worried how my life would be. Would I finish school? How would my friends see me? What would I do? How the hell could I bring up a child by myself? Especially when I felt like a child myself.

The funny thing about it is that as frightened as I was, as much as I wished and sometimes cried for Jimmy to come back, that pregnancy turned into the second most magical time of my life.

During that pregnancy, I discovered what unconditional love was really about; not from Jimmy of course, but from Dylan. Dylan never left me alone. He cooked for me and cleaned for me and took care of any and everything I asked of him. There was never the slightest hesitation or question.

I had never realized it until much later but Dylan, unlike the way I thought he saw things had feelings for me himself. He'd been sleeping during the argument when Jimmy broke up with me and blamed me alone for getting pregnant. However, even though Jimmy complained about him doing it, Dylan had gotten out of bed to drive me home and try to calm me down. Dylan, who I'd always thought hated me, took me to all of my doctor's appointments and rubbed my tummy and fed me and cuddled with me and watched stupid girly movies with me, so I was never sad and never felt like I was going through it alone.

Dylan could have very easily gotten me to have sex with him during that time, but he never did. He not once made a single demand on me. And then when I needed him most, before I even knew I needed him, Dylan had saved my life. While I was in the hospital, nurses told me exactly how lucky I was. Most of them had seen too many stories of women who had died during pregnancy due to spontaneous hemorrhages. Something inside of them, some tiny or not so tiny blood vessel is over stressed by the weight or position of the life growing inside of them. In some cases, they move a certain way, in others it's a matter of time, but that blood vessel gives way or ruptures, and they bleed to death before anyone can do anything about it.

I'm still here, still breathing and complaining because Dylan awoke from a sound sleep and as usual his only concern was for me. He felt the beginnings of my bleeding out and rushed me to the hospital.

Even my doctor considered it a miracle. "You should have died," he told me. "If Dylan had stopped to get dressed, or do anything else... If he'd been less insistent when he demanded that someone take care of you right at that moment... You wouldn't have survived. That man is wholly responsible for you being alive, my doctor told me."

Then things got even more confusing. They had contacted my parents because in my wallet, I had my I.C.E. card. It lists the people to contact in case of emergency. My mom, dad and my sister were all there within hours of my being admitted into the hospital. Dylan had sat there with his feet bleeding, holding my hand while I slept. A nurse whom we both knew had convinced him to go home and change, during the time that he was gone, my family arrived.

My dad took one look at Dylan and thought he was Jimmy. During my few lucid moments, I'd mumbled to my dad that Jimmy had gotten me pregnant and ran out on me.

My dad was enraged; Dylan was frustrated. Dylan was also really upset at Jimmy. He was like a powder keg, just waiting to go off. My dad was the fuse. He ran up and took a swing at Dylan and Dylan slammed him into a wall. The witnesses explained to my Dad what had really happened. While the security guards held my dad in one office and Dylan in another, they showed my dad the video of Dylan bringing me in and explained to them that Dylan wasn't Jimmy. They told my dad to calm down, or they'd throw him out of the hospital.

Meanwhile, they asked Dylan to leave the hospital to keep the peace. Dylan was on his way out when my dad called him and brought him back in. My dad once he calmed down realized that he had actually blamed a person who was not only innocent, but had saved my life.

And then for everyone except me, the magic happened. When my dad escorted Dylan back into my hospital room, he saw it instantly. My mom saw it too and so did my sister. All I saw was Dylan walking into the room. I saw that several times a day every day. In fact, I saw Dylan so often he had become like a part of the furniture.

My mom and dad were staring at me like I had won the lottery. Over the next few days, I had the chance to talk to them all while Dylan was out running errands for me or getting my books, so I could stay up on my class work.

"He's truly a handsome young man," my mom told me. "And he really loves you."

"Mom are you high on something?" I asked her. "Jimmy loves me; Dylan is just standing in until he comes back."

"Don't worry about it, Honey," my dad told me later. "For whatever reason, you ended up with the right guy. Dylan would probably die for you."

"Daddy, have you lost your mind?" I asked.

"Gretchen Marie," he said. "Have you ever noticed the way he looks at you? Next time he comes back from fetching something for you, take a real hard look at the way he is when he sees you. He doesn't see anyone else in the room. Watch the doctors. You're their responsibility, but even they look around. Of course, your sister dressing like a hooker doesn't help. However, I think the poor girl could stand next to you naked and Dylan would probably never notice her."

Even Abby had something to say about it. "You lying bitch," she hissed the first time we were alone together.

"Abby what's your problem?" I asked her.

"You," she spat. "What happened to me transferring to this school? When you first hooked up with Mr. Wonderful, who got your cherry and apparently got you pregnant, you told me the brother was all mine, didn't you?"

"Well... Uhm... Yeah," I admitted. "But Abby, there are lots of guys out there. You keep bragging to me about how many guys at your school that you've had sex with. And right now I need this one. As soon as I get through this, I'll arrange for the two of you to meet."

I did tell her that, but it never happened. Dylan did come back a short time later, and I realized that my parents were right. Dylan loved me. But try as I might, all I could see was how much like Jimmy he was. However, he was like an unfinished version of Jimmy. The ballsy dominating personality was missing. The swagger and the confidence were also missing.

It took me weeks to realize that Dylan had other qualities though that more than made up for those things.

As soon as I was able to return to school, I started hearing things. And a lot of those things hurt me. I learned that several of my friends had slept with Jimmy. Not only was he cheating on me and had been since we first got together, but he had no scruples about screwing my closest friends.

Since they were all mostly one-night stands, I convinced myself that he was just sowing the last of his wild oats. Jimmy had been through hell after all. He had been badly injured and had lost his lifetime dream. He'd been going through a depression, as I was then. It made people do things that were normally considered outside of their character.

I clung to that reasoning until people started laughing at me and reminding me that he had cheated on me before he got hurt. They also told me that he had cheated on the girls before me and the girl before her. They told me that I should ask Dylan about some girl named Sarah.

But almost every person I ran into, male or female told me that I had, in fact, won. I ended up with the better of the twins. There were girls that wanted to date Dylan, but he was far too shy ever to approach them. One of my friends reminded me of how sweet Dylan could be. She reminded me about his "date" with the woman who ran the library. I began to see Dylan in a brand-new light.

I didn't want to make another mistake, so I watched Dylan for weeks. I waited to see if he would cheat on me even though we weren't actually together. He never did. I decided that he just needed the right motivation. So I convinced a couple of my friends, one who was built like me, taller, slimmer and less endowed; the other was very curvaceous and flirtatious as well, to help me out.

The two of them stalked Dylan and both of them caught him, and asked him out. One was pretty subtle. The other just flat out asked him out and hinted, without an ounce of subtlety that he could have sex with her. These were two very pretty girls. They both got their feelings hurt. Dylan turned them both down flat.

That told me that I could probably trust and count on Dylan. It also generated a bit of excitement for him in me that had been lacking. Maybe he wasn't a wild and unpredictable animal like Jimmy. Maybe he wasn't someone exciting who could never be tamed, but he was someone unattainable to everyone except me. Dylan was something that Jimmy would probably never be. He was mine alone.

So I confronted him. I asked him about everything I had heard. I even asked him about Sarah, and I was shocked. Jimmy had once mentioned the possibility of him, me, and Dylan doing a threesome, but I had thought he was joking. Of course, Jimmy could probably have gotten me to do it, but I saw now that what I had thought of as a joke or a test was probably real.

Jimmy had gotten another woman to have sex with Dylan, just so he could go out and cheat on her. What he hadn't expected was that Dylan had fallen for her. The tragedy had been that Jimmy hadn't foreseen that Sarah would have fallen for Dylan too. In fact, I saw something that I don't think either Jimmy or Dylan saw. In the end, it had been falling for Dylan that had given her the strength simply to walk away from the whole mess.

The problem was that even as she decided to get away from the toxic triangle, she realized that as much as Dylan loved her, he loved Jimmy more. Separating the two of them would have killed Dylan. Or at least, it would have killed everything that she loved in him. So she walked away from both.

Sarah leaving them hurt Dylan far more than anyone else. Jimmy simply didn't care. In fact, he was still making fun of Dylan moping over Sarah when he met me, more than a year later.

I should in reality be grateful to Sarah. It was the pain of what Dylan went through with Sarah that actually gave him the strength to stand up to Jimmy over me. Jimmy had intended for both of them to leave, but Dylan had not only stood his ground but had been taking care of me ever since.

The funniest thing about it was that I had believed all along that Dylan hadn't liked me when we first met. However, he actually fell for me instantly. But there were two reasons, both related to Jimmy; that made him avoid me. The first was that no matter how much he liked me; I was Jimmy's girl. That alone made me like poison to him. The second was that he didn't want to get to know me or spend any time with me, because from the very beginning, he'd known that Jimmy would eventually discard me as he had Sarah and Dylan just didn't want to go through that kind of pain again.

I made Dylan promise me that from then on he would always put me first, even before Jimmy, and he said that he would. And for the most part, Dylan has kept his word, but I also know after my talk with Sylvia that Dylan had always known that Jimmy had never loved me. Sylvia had told me what echoed a lot of the things my friends back in college told me. Jimmy was simply not turned on by women like me at all. In fact, he could have picked any one of a number of women when he picked me.

Jimmy's agent had told him that he needed a more clean cut type for his steady girlfriend. Jimmy preferred women with huge boobs, thick legs, and big butts. Sylvia also filled me in on the fact that Jimmy had told Dylan that he hated my freckles and my face. I had basically ruined my life over a man who had never loved me and never would.

The thing that bothered me even more was that according to Sylvia, Dylan had gotten angry and walked out of the bar. He had told Jimmy that he would talk to me about letting him stay with us, but not only had he never mentioned it to me, he had never called Jimmy back. Dylan had, in fact, made up his mind. Dylan had picked me over Jimmy.

Dylan had known from the beginning that Jimmy didn't even like me, let alone love me, but whether he hadn't wanted to cast Jimmy in a bad light, or he had just wanted to spare my feelings, he never told me.

What he did tell me though was how beautiful I was. He told me that every day that we were together. He told me that and how much he loved me so often that I made the worst mistake a woman can make. I took it for granted. Dylan was never ashamed of me. Dylan had no pride when it came to me. He loved me unconditionally. Dylan would tell me how beautiful I was when we were alone, or if we were in public. The man even embarrassed other people by asking them or telling them how beautiful I was.

My dad even laughed about it. And my mother loves Dylan completely. Dylan has often pointed out the similarities between us and told her that he couldn't wait until I look exactly like her. Even a woman as old and happily married as my mother can be swayed by that type of flattery.

The funny thing about all of this... the one thing that makes it some sort of cosmic joke is that Jimmy always tells Dylan the truth. Not every man likes redheads. Most men prefer women who can tan. The freckles are also a big turn off for some men, especially when a woman has as many as I do.

However, some men, as my sister puts it, just love eating at Wendy's. Dylan and I settled into a perfect life. It was the best time that I can remember and Dylan had to ruin it all. Nope, I didn't mean Jimmy ruined it. I mean Dylan did. Dylan gave me any and everything I wanted. As I've said before, he filled my head with how beautiful and sexy I was, and how much he loved me. So I began to believe that I deserved it all.

I can see now that Dylan busted his ass to make me happy. All along I considered that Jimmy and Dylan were two very similar men, but all along Dylan was far more complex than I ever have him credit for. At the plant, Dylan was dynamic and forceful. At home with me, he was loving and tender and always gave in to me. He loved me so much that I really believed he was some sort of submissive. What I simply didn't understand was that Dylan was only that way with people he loved. And under all of that love lurked a man who was just as forceful and dominating as Jimmy.

It first peeked its head out when he punched Jimmy out for bringing up Sarah, after he came home and somehow knew what had gone on between Jimmy and me. I should have gone to him and talked to him honestly about the whole thing. Instead, I let Jimmy con me into tricking Dylan and we all lost.

Jimmy and Dylan lost each other; I lost the most wonderful time in my life and a man who truly loved me. Dylan took care of me so well when I was pregnant the first time. He did it even though the baby wasn't his.

Jimmy could care less about our child. He goes out most nights and comes home smelling like pussy, cigarettes and liquor. One of our biggest arguments happened when I confronted him about our relationship or lack of one.

"Why do you have to go out every night?" I yelled at him. "And you hit on all kinds of women, some of whom I even know. Why can't you just stay home? We are having a baby remember?"

I guess I was so used to dealing with Dylan that I had no idea of what I should or could say.

"We aren't having shit!" he yelled right back at me. "It isn't my fault that every time I look at you; you end up pregnant. I don't want any fucking kids. You're a grown assed woman. Someone should have taught you about birth control by now, unless you're just too stupid to use it." I was floored. And he wasn't finished.