You will hear thunder and remember me,

and think: she wanted storms.
-Anna Akhmatova

Four ice cubes clinked, echoed, and settled in a moist mason jar on the corner of a glass table-top where two kids sat slumped on stiff patio chairs. Her chin rested precariously on the cap of one knee as she stretched her opposite leg onto the table in front of them.
"Don't knock your water over."
"I see it."
Both of his feet remained parallel to each other on the tiled deck.  His left forearm drooped across the arm rest toward her chair next to him. The blue veins in his wrist seemed to glow under the florescent patio light buzzing on the wall behind them next to the sliding glass door. She often studied those veins, imagining them as lightning bolts shooting electricity through his body, the symbol of a superpower he had to cover up with a secret identity.
Thick with the smell of threatening rain, the Florida air strained against their breath, weighing on their lungs.  Silence blanketed the rich darkness of the empty golf course beyond the patio.  Only the faint outline of a distant clump of trees was visible in the violet light.  The stars hid behind clouds that hid behind the darkness.  The moon was new and not yet ready to make an appearance.  Breaking the stillness, the girl's chair screeched across the floor as she heaved herself forward, letting her knee slide down the chair as she stretched her fingers toward the mason jar.  Gently, she began wiping beads of condensation with her index finger down the sides of the jar.  The ice had melted.
The boy allowed the slightest movement of his head in order to stare at the red spot imprinted on her chin from resting it on her knee for so long.
Thunder cracked through the silence.
A smile rippled over her face.  His face remained withdrawn to a center point somewhere between his eyes.  He scratched the nape of his neck where his dark feathered hair faded and disappeared at the beginning tip of his spine, then pushed his glasses back onto the ridge above his nose.
"We should probably go inside now," his mumbled words were for her but his eyes were on the mason jar.  The water in it tremored slightly with another peal of thunder. The wind that had been playing in the trees beyond the golf course came charging over the children as if the sky was drawing breath.
"What?" she asked between the sky's increasing guttural chant.
"Nothing." His eyes never left the jar.
"I want to stay.  You can go in if you want."
He scratched a mosquito bite on his ankle with his toe.
Lightening.  Thunder.
"Just look at it!"
He didn't respond.
She reached for him, imprinting her thumb into the hollow of his rounded shoulder and pointed him toward the gathering storm beyond the trees which trembled out of reach.
Five beautiful bolts of lightning suddenly veined through the purple sky.  She sucked in her breath and turned toward him to find the same condensed look molded into his face -- not blank, but unmoved. The rain thrummed and built to a roar as drops of water charged into the ground and splattered under the over-hang unto the patio floor.  The wind danced, maneuvering the rain like a murmuration of birds, redirecting its course.
She climbed out of her chair and stepped out from under the protection of the patio.
"What do you think you're doing?" He shouted over the storm.
"This is the kind of weather people die in!" She squealed, lifting her hands palms up; water sparked off them.
More lightning jagged across the sky like pulsing blood veins, illuminating a lonely palm tree in the middle of the golf course. Peeling his eyes from the mason jar, the boy caught sight of the tree swaying in the storm with the power of letting go.