Summer Storm

Ahh, Summer Lovin'! This is my first time encountering this event since I started writing here, and this story went from conception to completion in record time as soon as I started examining the contest.

Harking back to life in South Florida, year round is mostly about the themes of sun, heat, and maybe the beach. The actual Summer... is about rain.

For the amateur meteorologists among you, along with other seekers of serious believability, please understand that I am neither. I strive for the plausibly ridiculous in my stories.

Please enjoy.

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SUMMER STORM

Cassie bounced down the concrete stairs of her apartment building. After a flight, she slowed her pace. The brunette was always a bundle of good-natured energy and did everything at speed, but she was just discovering that the new bra she had on under her scrubs was not up to keeping her considerable assets comfortably under control when making her usual two-step leaps down the stairs. She lived on the fourth floor and of course there was an elevator, but she only ever considered that option when she had a cart load of groceries. Elevators were for sloths.

She restricted herself to taking one step at a time, though still faster than most other tenants. Her slower pace still left her girls swaying enough to earn her a long, idly longing gaze from a middle-aged male neighbor coming up the stairs between floors two and three, and an outright frown from the even older woman that she passed on the long stretch of stairs down to the ground floor. Cassie barely registered either expression. She had her own issues on her mind, despite her always upbeat stride.

This was a very nice apartment she had down here on the southern gulf coast of Florida (well, ten miles inland from the coast). It had all the amenities, was in a super upscale area, and was less than a mile from her nursing college. With her roommate, she could just afford the rent, and Cassie was fretting about how to light a fire under Helen. If the girl didn't buckle down and get her grades together, she was going to flame out and have to go home to New Jersey. Cassie would then likely have to move to some shitty, older, less deluxe, more distant place.

The buildings of her complex (while she could still live here) were at the heart of one of those mixed-use 'communities' that developers liked to build in suburban areas these days, with a few shops, restaurants, and even a grocery store within easy walking distance, even for the majority of residents who were less energetic than Cassie. She felt the apartment suited her especially well, because it meant that on days like this, she could quickly walk over and get a drink from the excellent boba tea place on the central drive, sandwiched between the barber shop with its own cocktail bar and the day spa, and then walk back to her car.

In the winter, or more accurately for coastal Florida, the 'dry season', Cassie rode her bike to school almost every day. But now, during high summer, she settled for driving, not because it was so hot, but because you never knew when you might catch a rain shower.

They were backed up more than usual at the tea place, and Cassie tried to settle her energetic nature, waiting impatiently for them to complete the order she had just given to the counter guy. His name was 'Kevin', and he was new. Kevin would likely be cute, maybe seriously cute, once he grew out of puberty.

In an effort to stop herself from macking on teenagers, she looked around at the other people waiting for their orders. The tall, red-haired guy who had ordered right after her saw her looking around and asked, "What practice? Where you work, I mean," he added to explain himself.

Cassie just twisted her torso toward him so he could see the logo of her nursing college embroidered over her left breast. She pointed at it helpfully, though most guys had little difficulty directing their eyes to that area on their own. "Still a student," she declared herself cheerily. "But why didn't you think I worked at the hospital?" There was a large regional medical facility just down the road, and most non-students in scrubs she saw around the area worked there.

"You don't look nearly worn-down enough to be a hospital nurse," he chuckled.

"Ha!" Cassie laughed lightly. "You should see me around finals."

"I'll make a note of that," the guy said drily. He was actually wearing a long-sleeved white shirt and tie! What poor, miserable kind of dude had to do that down here in the high summer?

"What's with the noose?" she inquired, nodding at the tie.

"Some people in our industry don't get to wear super comfy scrubs for work," he sighed. "I'm a Pharma rep and am expected to dress like a grownup. That's why I asked what practice you worked for. I was hoping you'd be my next tool to get to your doctors!"

Inwardly, Cassie grumped. Oh, so stick-in-the-mud here only wanted to talk to her for business purposes? Outwardly, she just smiled. "Well, I'm not sure if I still want to live down here in this heat once I graduate, but if I do, I promise to sneak you in by the back door so you can pounce on Old Doc Potter!"

They both laughed. He had a nice smile for a douchebag. Just then they called his name. She missed what it was, mostly because she no longer cared. "That's me! Gotta go," the guy said, stepping toward the counter. "Nice meeting you!" And he was out the door. Dude even got his tea before hers, and she had ordered first...

*

She saw him again, a little over a week later. This time it was in the small grocery store around the corner from the boba place. She was just there to stock up on flavored seltzer and grab a salad for dinner. He was bent over, examining the seltzers himself, with a dissatisfied expression. He was once again wearing dress shirt and tie, a little the worse for wear after a day in the Florida heat, but still quite presentable. It occurred to her briefly that he was about the only adult redheaded guy she had seen in ages who didn't rock some extravagant beard. A clean-shaven redhead was a novelty to Cassie.

"Problem?" she asked. The douche was in her way, but Cassie liked to be polite. "None of the seltzers want to buy boner pills?"

"I don't represent any ED drugs," he replied absently. As he did so, he looked up and recognized her. "Hey! It's Nurse Boba Tea," he said, straightening up. He flushed a little, a very noticeable event on the pale complexion of a redhead, embarrassed at finding himself talking about 'boner pills' with her. "No, I'm just irritated that this store never can keep the passionfruit flavor in stock," he said quickly, changing the subject and waving irritably at the shelves.

"What?" Cassie was now also irritated. "Passionfruit is what I was looking for, too. It's my favorite."

"Then we are both out of luck," he said. "Now I must settle for frickin' 'pamplemousse'."

Cassie sighed. "Hand me a box of that too," she said resignedly. He grinned as he handed her the pack he had just taken. He grabbed another, and turned away while saying airily, "First World Problems, huh?"

Cassie turned in the other direction toward the checkouts. She found herself looking back over her shoulder at the guy.

So. He lived nearby, it seemed. And he really did not appear to be a full-time douche either.

She dismissed him from her thoughts. She still didn't even know his name, after all. Her disappointingly grapefruit-flavored seltzer duly purchased, Cassie shook her head as she left the store. She did rather like redheads...

*

Cassie popped out of her little car the moment she had it parked back at the apartment after class for the day. School was in general pretty easy for her. She was smart, had an aptitude, and her usual boundless energy served her well in class and in practice alike. But today had been sheer drudgery, and she needed some serious exercise.

Standing in the parking lot, she gazed speculatively up at the sky. It was a beautiful blue, with a scattering of small, fluffy clouds. She had had to work out the last two days after school in the very nice gym of her apartment complex, because the rain that regularly marred the local summer days, while simultaneously making the temperature bearable, had washed out any chance for outdoor exercise.

Things looked much better today, and she resolved to get in a good outdoor run. No treadmills today!

She grabbed her book bag, locked the car, and bounced up the stairs. Bounce was once again the operative word, as she was giving that new bra another try. It really was not good on stairs, but she still found it to feel all kinds of sexy. Cassie liked the little boost of confidence it gave her, knowing she was wearing it, hidden away under her almost shapeless scrubs.

In her apartment, she shucked her top, leaving only the bra, the moment the door clicked closed behind her and while she was still moving through the living room toward her bedroom. Helen looked up from her textbook (thank God she was studying for once), and shook her head. "I've seen those, you know," she observed drily. "You don't need to keep showing them off."

Cassie just kept moving, waving idly at her roommate. It wasn't really an issue any more. The first time she had forgotten Helen was there and come out of their shared bathroom with her towel only wrapped around her waist, there had been a real discussion.

Helen was plainly jealous of Cassie's rack, and had felt intimidated, as if Cassie had been flaunting her assets. Cassie had had no such intention, of course, but things had been tense for a while at first. In the following months, they had settled down to good-natured snarking when one or the other wandered around in their underwear.

Not that Helen wasn't nicely put together in her own right. In the almost calendar year that they had been roommates, Helen must have (often noisily) had sex twice as often as Cassie, and with a much larger number of different guys over that time. The interior walls of their super-deluxe, expensive apartment building were of course paper thin. The 'reviews' were clear that Helen had nothing to worry about...

Cassie did wait until she closed the door to her room to unhook the bra—she was at least that considerate by this point. She hadn't meant to bra flash Helen at all. She just had been caught off guard by the girl actually being around the apartment studying at all, much less at that time of day. She had to be careful to do nothing to discourage that behavior!

Striping naked, Cassie sorted through her workout clothes and pulled on a pair of mid-thigh length black workout pants that fit like a second skin. There was just enough discrete padding in the gusset to prevent cameltoe, allowing her to not have to wear a pair of panties and exacerbate her laundry situation. Cassie hated laundry.

Then she picked up the new athletic bra she had bought. It was a new brand and she had been interested when she discovered it online. She had bought one immediately. Unlike most athletic bras, this one didn't strap her down as much, letting her keep a lot more of her considerable shape. She hoped it would do the trick for support, as one of her favorite Instagram content providers had claimed.

She pulled it on over her head, and settled her girls into it. It fit perfectly, and a quick look in the mirror told her it looked great too! She actually looked like she had boobs in this bra, not just a rounded chest. A scratch in her back told her the she had forgotten to remove a tag, and she popped it back off again, breasts bouncing free. She waggled her chest for a moment, then, after yanking off the tag, she slid the bra back on again and waggled again. The garment was really comfortable, and with it on, her tits waved but definitely did not wobble.

Just as advertised.

Unfortunately, as she looked at herself in the mirror, Cassie saw a problem. Unlike most of her sports bras, this one really looked like a bra, especially in all white, which had been the only available color in stock. She was used to going running with only her jog bra for a top, since most were styled to look like an outer garment. Running in this bra, assuming it was comfortable enough for the activity, would be embarrassing without something over it. Hopefully not something that would leave her sweltering.

Grumbling, she rummaged through the drawer and pulled out a loose white cotton tank. You could still catch glimpses of the white bra through the arm holes and open neckline, but the effect was sexy, not blatant.

She bounced on her toes. All systems seemed go. Time for a run.

The stairs were a good test, and she found herself quite comfortable taking the steps two at a time. Despite how high the bra had her breasts riding, they were not flapping around uncontrollably or uncomfortably. As she ran out of the building and into the summer heat, she found the bra did the best thing possible. It let her forget about her tits while she ran.

She pulled her phone out of the back pocket where it was tightly pressed against her ass and activated her run tracking app. It was super hot that afternoon, so she'd settle for her favorite short route, a four mile loop that mostly ran through a private park belonging to the gated community of expensive houses just to the south of her apartment.

Sweat was immediate and plentiful, and she realized that the temperature was probably nearly a hundred. Cassie chose a more gentle pace than she usually set on a shorter route like this. Heat stroke would suck.

After crossing the main road, she ran smoothly past the huge entry fountain and ostentatious gates of Chestnut Expanse. The temperature got more bearable for a while, as the main road through that neighborhood was lined with large water oaks that provided delicious shade.

It was a wonderful day for a run.

Okay, it was a beautiful day for a run. But it also was absolutely beastly hot, even in the dappled light under the canopy of trees. If it really was a hundred degrees that afternoon, and it sure felt that way, that was much higher than had been forecast. Re-emerging into the sun when she reached the path through the lovely nature preserve at the back of the sub-division, Cassie almost turned around and headed back home. But the thought of finishing her run at the apartment, on a treadmill, in the air-conditioning, turned her right off.

She'd finish the run.

The park had a small but attractive lake with an island in the middle. The path ran around it, placed well back from the water, and also with plenty of grass between it and the small amount of woods that surrounded both pond and path on the outside. There would be no escape from the sun out here. The reason the path did not run closer to the water and the shade of the few trees at its edge was explained by signs regularly spaced around its perimeter: "Warning: Alligators are prevalent in this area and are faster than they appear. They can be hazardous to you and especially your pets."

The direness of that alert was undermined somewhat by the second set of signs, interspersed between the gator warnings, that read "Fishing is restricted to residents of Chestnut Expanse and is catch and release only. By order of the Chestnut Expanse Master Civic Association."

At this time of day, in this heat, neither the wealthy older residents of Chestnut Expanse nor their pedigree pooches had any interest in going walkies at the park. The gators would need to find non-canine fare.

As the path curved toward the back of the park where it butted up against undeveloped swamp, something made Cassie look up. It was still brilliantly sunny on the path where she ran, but there was a massive wall of black, boiling straight up in the sky right in front of her, she realized to her instant dismay.

Fuck.

After the last two days of torrential rain, the news had said it was unlikely to rain again today, and if so, it would just be scattered showers. The news had also promised it was going to top out at only ninety... The cloud formation in the sky did not look like a 'scattered shower'. Cassie quickened her pace, hoping that would get her home before the shit hit the fan, but she didn't turn back, intent on getting in her workout.

As she reached the backside of the pond, Cassie was made aware of her error.

A sudden rush of deliciously but unnervingly cool wind hit her. She knew what that meant, unfortunately. It was displaced air, cooled and shoved violently aside by a sudden, immense rush of rain crashing earthward from the clouds. She started to sprint, but knew it was too late. She had barely gone twenty more steps when the first fat drops of rain hit her. She could hear how hard it was coming down close by. In ten more steps, the rain was on her in earnest. In ten more, it was pouring everywhere.

Almost instantly, her steps became splashes. Cassie put her head down and resigned herself to a miserable, desperate run back.

Then her wrist thumped and her heart raced. As she lifted her wrist to look at her smartwatch, she already knew what she would see. There it was. A bright red circle around a jagged line, with the text: "Lightning Alert. Lighting has been registered within ten miles of your current position. Seek shelter for at least 30 minutes after the storm has passed."

Worse, she realized that the rumble of the strike that had triggered that near instant warning was still going. She could hear it. It had been close. It had been big. Despite being drenched, every hair on her head and arms felt like it wanted to stand straight up. There would be more, with all the electricity she could feel in the air.

'Shelter'? Out here?

Then, like an answered prayer, she saw one of the scattering of benches in the park. The benches themselves would be useless to her, but each had a small, sturdy, wood and metal Chade cover on two poles. In all the time she had been running in the park, she had never seen anyone using one of the benches or taking advantage of their shade. She supposed that they must have looked good in the brochures.

She was sure going to use one now, and dashed toward it.

As she reached it and ducked under the roof she discovered a number of things in swift succession.

First, the roof was small, and since there were no sides, the 'cover' provided against the rain was pretty problematic. With the breeze, and occasional stronger gusts, the space under cover was not dry, but mostly filled with a light mist. At least she was no longer trying to run under a waterfall.

The temperature had plunged to something chilly like the mid-80s...

Her shoes were full of water.

And last, suddenly she was not alone. Emerging from invisibility produced by the driving rain, in the other direction from which she had come, was another runner, dashing for the same cover she had found.

Splashing to a stop, aided by grabbing the supporting column, was the redheaded Pharma Bro!

He tried to wipe his sodden hair out of his eyes, and only then became aware that he was not alone himself. He jumped in surprise, and Cassie almost smirked. "Did I scare you?" she asked, her voice the only dry thing for miles.

The guy wiped his eyes again, then his eyes widened. "Hey! It's Nurse Passion... fruit!" His smile faltered slightly. "I hope you don't mind if I share your shelter?"

Cassie shrugged. "Such as it is. This was not supposed to happen today, was it?" She waved at all the sudden weather around them.

The guy just shook his head. "I've lived here for four years now. I've given up even watching the forecast unless there is a tropical storm out there that we need to keep an eye on. The weather is always going to be: Hot, sunny, with chance of cats and dogs at any goddamned moment." He shook his head again to clear the water from his hair, just like a cat or dog.