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“What are you talking about? What do you mean, ‘it's finished’?”
Marcy stares at David like he’s his own particular brand of stupid. It's not an expression he's unused to receiving from Marcy, but it somehow packs a bigger punch now -- here, with his (ex?) girlfriend staring down her nose at him as David is slowly soaked by rain, he feels every ounce the idiot she seems convinced he is.
“You have an obsessive personality, David. You're obsessive with a fear of serious commitment, you're insecure in your own identity, you have a Freudian complex, and you ramble about inane things.”
“Again, with the psychology degree? Is that what this is about?” David takes a step forward, reaching a dripping arm towards Marcy, but she takes a step back. Her umbrella moves with her. “What does half of that garbage even mean?”
“It means,” says Marcy, voice going hard, “you have Mommy issues, you're boring, you're clingy, and I'm pretty sure you're gay.”
David goes still, blinking watered-down eyes at her. Oh. Well, that was quick and to-the-point. Definitely not painless, but at least she's honest.
“I -- I'm not boring!”
Marcy heaves a beleaguered sigh and turns her back on David’s miserable figure. “You'll shake it off. Don't text me for a while, okay?”
It's not a question.
David watches as his pretty Harvard psych major girlfriend, with her lipstick and short skirts and neatly cropped hair, abandons him in the middle of a rainstorm. Marcy had been his first girlfriend, and she was everything he could have wanted in one. Sure, she had next to no empathy, but at least she was smart. At least she was blunt, and dryly funny, and looking at her could affirm that David was definitely a guy who liked girls. As long as he had a girlfriend he had no identity issues, and he definitely wasn't…
Any of the things Marcy said he was.
It hits him as her umbrella vanishes into the midst of other umbrellas crowded at the end of the opposite sidewalk. He doesn't have a girlfriend anymore -- he lost his girlfriend after not even a month.
Utterly stunned, David struggles to remember how to take a breath. He doesn't realize he's crying until his eyes start burning; by that time he's already on his knees on the sidewalk, allowing the storm to fall around him. The water washes over him, stinging every inch of bare skin it can find. If he's lucky, maybe it will wash him and all his flaws away.
(Overdramatic. There’s one Marcy forgot.)
Disconsolate and really not eager to get on his feet any time soon, David sits right where he is and stared vacantly down the street. His mind is a torrent of emotions, from despair to an odd sense of relief he knows he should feel guilty for. He feels like he's drowning; the memory of her dark figure retreating down the street, shielding herself from the rain, is burned into his eyelids when he squeezes them shut. A small sob escapes him, and he buries his face in his hands, feeling far too overwhelmed.
He doesn't realize he isn't alone, or that rain is no longer falling directly in his head, until he is startled out of his breakdown by the heel of a foot nudging his back.
“Jesus fuck,” says a raspy voice above him head. “You're a goddamn mess, ain't ya?”
The guy has to raise his voice to be heard over the rain, which does little to assuage David’s sense of being intruded upon during a personal moment. He jumps, rounding on the stranger with a ready scowl before he can give a thought to his own dignity. Only then does he realize why he can no longer feel the rain, though it pounds the pavement all around him.
The guy -- very tall with a mess of unruly brown hair, a thin face, and eyes that are regarding David like some pathetic sort of roadkill -- has an umbrella. This umbrella is currently being held over David’s head, shielding him from the downpour.
David gives an unattractive hiccup. Rather than gratitude, the first words out of his mouth are, “What's the point? I'm soaked anyway.”
“No kidding,” says the guy. “You look like a drowned rat. What're you doing out here?”
“What's it look like?” David swipes ineffectually at his face. “I'm crying.”
“No shit. Why are you crying?”
David doesn't feel like humoring this stranger. He's admittedly kind, but this is none of his business. “My girlfriend just broke up with me. She says I'm annoying,” David tells the guy -- then, as an afterthought, “I think I might be gay.”
“Damn,” says the guy. “You're having a worse day than me.”
“What happened to you?”
“I hate the goddamn rain.”
The stranger's umbrella is not large, and David notes with guilt that water is beginning to creep in at the outer edges. The guy is steadily growing damper the longer he stands here. He runs a hand through his hair, flipping soaked bangs out of his eyes, and frowns down at David. “You gonna stay there all night long?”
David sniffs, finally starting to feel embarrassed (this comes with the realization that the stranger is very attractive, especially when soaking wet and looking baffled). “Would that be pathetic?”
“Fuck yeah. Get up, man.”
The guy offers a hand, and David takes it with the proper amount of sheepishness. He is conscious of his swollen eyes and bedraggled curls, knowing that he must look like a wreck. As he pulls himself to his feet, however, his jaw drops in shock. Even dripping with rain, it is impossible to ignore the fact that his savior is even more gorgeous up close.
“I'm David,” he blurts out. “David Webster.”
“Joe Liebgott,” the guy says, shaking the hand that David has yet to let go of. “I gotta say, Web, this is the weirdest way I've ever met someone.”
“W- would you like to?” David’s tongue, apparently, has not yet recovered from its post-breakup trauma. Neither has the rest of David, if he's being honest -- but if Joe is a rebound, he's the most attractive rebound David’s ever met, and he gave him an umbrella. “Meet me, I mean?” he clarifies sheepishly. “Like. For drinks or something. Or we could do that now. Whatever.”
Drinks or something. He's a writer, for pete’s sake.
Joe blinks, not having expected the offer but not looking displeased. He raises an eyebrow as David hastily swipes hair away from his forehead, trying to look even a little bit less of a hot mess. “You askin’ me out, Lover Boy? You just lost your girl.”
“According to her, I need to find my identity,” David replies, taking a deep breath. “Meeting you seems like a great place to start.”
He has no clue why, but somehow this answer makes Joe grin -- wide, amused, a little dangerous. “Well, Web,” he replies, shifting the umbrella just enough that it shields both of them from the rain. “Where d’you wanna go?”