Rainy Night in Georgia

Title: Rainy Night in Georgia

Subtitle: Sometimes, theThe rain came in slow, heavy sheets, the kind that didn’t ask for permission. It just was—thick and relentless, soaking the red Georgia clay until it bled into the streets. The kind of night where the air was warm and heavy and every drop sounded like a memory hitting the pavement.

Clara hadn’t planned on being back in Savannah. She’d told herself she wouldn’t return—not after the way things ended. Not after Marcus. But grief has a way of pulling people home. Her mama passed two weeks ago, and the house had to be sorted, sold, and sealed up like it never held anyone’s whole world.

She sat now on the old wooden porch, wrapped in her mama’s crocheted shawl, rocking in a chair that remembered her childhood better than she did. The sky was bruised purple, thunder humming like a lullaby meant to comfort ghosts. And it smelled like everything she’d forgotten—wet grass, magnolia, and the low hum of regret.

Her phone buzzed, but she didn’t check it. She knew who it was.

Marcus.

He had texted three times since he found out she was in town. The first was cautious: “Didn’t think you’d come back.” The second, more vulnerable: “I’m sorry about your mama. She always liked me.” The third, the one she hadn’t responded to yet, simply said: “Can we talk?”

Clara sighed and pulled her knees to her chest, watching as the rain carved trails down the steps like little rivers that knew how to run away better than she ever did.

Their story had never been loud. It wasn’t fireworks and screaming matches. It was quiet disappointment. Missed calls. Words left unsaid. The kind of love that didn’t break—it faded, like paint on the side of a sunlit barn. And when she left for Atlanta, it wasn’t because she didn’t love him.

It was because she didn’t love herself enough to stay.

A pair of headlights cut through the wall of rain. Her breath caught. It was an old pickup, familiar and battered and loyal in a way no man ever managed to be.

He parked but didn’t get out immediately. Just sat there, engine idling, maybe thinking through all the things he’d rehearsed in his head. Maybe wondering if she’d slam the door in his face. Maybe wondering if he deserved it.

He stepped out finally, hood pulled up, hands in his pockets. He didn’t run from the rain. Of course he didn’t. Marcus was the kind of man who let the storm touch him, as if it earned him some sort of forgiveness.

“Clara,” he said, voice softer than she remembered, but still stitched with gravel.

She didn’t answer. Not right away.

Instead, she asked, “Why now?”

He looked down at the soaked floorboards. “I don’t know. Maybe because the rain reminds me of that night.”

She didn’t need him to say which night. She knew. The one under this same porch roof, seven years ago. The night he told her he couldn’t go with her to Atlanta. That he didn’t know who he was without Georgia. Without these roads. Without this house.

She left anyway.

“I thought you hated the rain,” she said quietly.

“I did,” he replied. “Until it was the only way I could still feel close to you.”

Silence stretched between them, as fragile and sharp as a broken string on her mama’s old guitar.

“I don’t know why I came back,” she said finally. “Maybe I thought the house would feel smaller without her in it. But it doesn’t. It feels like she’s in every wall.”

“She loved you,” he said. “Even when you stopped writing. She kept your postcards.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“She read them out loud. Pretended you were still around.”

A lump formed in her throat, heavy and aching.

Marcus stepped closer, still keeping a respectful distance. “I never stopped waiting,” he said. “Even when you didn’t call. Even when I saw pictures of you with someone else on your birthday.”

“That ended,” she whispered.

“I figured,” he said. “You always smiled bigger in your letters from home.”

Another pause. Then, gently: “You gonna let me sit with you?”

She hesitated, then nodded toward the chair beside her. It creaked under his weight like it was waking up after a long nap.

For a while, they just sat.

Let the rain talk for them.

Let the thunder remind them of old lullabies and open windows and the promise that even storms don’t last forever.

“I’m not asking to start over,” Marcus said, voice low. “I’m just asking if we can start from here.”

Clara looked over, eyes meeting his. The years hadn’t changed him much. A few more lines around the eyes. A scar on his hand she didn’t recognize.

But the way he looked at her?

That hadn’t changed at all.

“I don’t know what ‘here’ is,” she admitted.

“Maybe that’s the point,” he replied. “Maybe it’s not about knowing. Just… choosing.”

She thought about it. Thought about the quiet mornings, the lost years, the rain that kept falling like it knew how to soften even the hardest ground.

And then she reached over, her hand slipping into his.

Not tightly.

Not urgently.

Just enough.

Enough to mean maybe.

Enough to mean this was a start.

And on that rainy night in Georgia, they didn’t find the past.

They found the possibility of a new chapter.

Not rewritten.

But reimagined.