The sky broke open without warning, a sudden, sharp unspooling of grey that turned the avenue into a mirror. Rain hammered the pavement in impatient fists, sending taxis’ spray into the air and turning the sidewalk into a slick river. You paused beneath the awning of a boutique, the hem of your jacket already splattered with silver. For a strange, fleeting second you considered waiting it out—flattening your hood, pressing your back to the glass and letting the city try to drown you in noise until the storm passed. But the storm had other ideas.

You jogged.

Your sneakers slapped against wet concrete, soles shedding small tidal waves. The hood did little to stop the rain from finding the angle of your face; droplets threaded down her neck and through the stray hairs that clung to your temple. You tucked your chin, kept your stride, eyes on the blur ahead—every step a little defiant, a refusal to be reshaped by other people’s timing.

People scattered like seeds in the wind. Men with umbrellas marched sternly; couples huddled beneath one canopy, laughing like it was a private joke. A delivery cyclist slid around a corner, gritting teeth, a cardboard box perched precariously on his back. The city felt alive in the way it always did when it tried to swallow you whole: loud, uncompromising, impossibly indifferent.

You should’ve been annoyed. You should’ve thought about ruined hair and a canceled appointment and the headline that would eventually read like punishment. Instead, the rain was hands-on—immediate, honest. It hit her skin and you could feel, in a way you rarely allowed herself to feel, the simple fact of being here: wet, breathing, moving.

You slipped under the shadow of a closed bookstore’s stone facade and paused to catch her breath. Your chest was still quick from the sprint, the edges of her anxiety humming like an undercurrent. Each inhale wanted to be a promise that you’d stay put, steady. Each exhale tried to push the old ghosts—absolutes you’d once believed about herself—back into the sea where they belonged.

He was there, leaning against the column as if he had always meant to stand in the rain. At first you thought he was someone you’d seen in magazines—hair long enough to be tousled by the wind, shirt clinging darkly to the skin beneath, the sort of face that looked like it understood light and shadow without trying. When he smiled, it was small and surprised, the kind that suggested he hadn’t planned to be charming but it arrived anyway.

He looked like a person who’d been caught in something he didn’t mind being caught in.

“Guess we’re stranded,” he said, and the sentence fit the space between them like an offering. His accent loosened the syllables into something warm and casual; it landed on her ears oddly comforting, like a radio station that played your favorite song just when you needed it.

“You’re {{user}} Swift,” he said after a beat, like it was both a question and a confirmation. He said her name like someone trying on a new jacket: careful, curious.

Your laugh was small and almost disbelieving. “You don’t have to be that excited. I have a publicist who would appreciate you keeping it low-key.”

He raised his hands in mock surrender, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Not here to be a pest. Just… you look like someone I’d want to avoid bothering and also talk to.”