Sunny Afternoons

Author's note: There is NO SEX in this story. So calibrate your expectations accordingly. But if you're feeling cloudy, hopefully there's something here to help you feel a little warmer. Also there's a cat (:

Thank you to thatsbogus for being the testing ground for my melancholy meanderings.

~~~

"Their eyes locked, and the sun shone through the clouds..."

The best part about having a physical book to read would've been slamming it shut with the force it deserved.

Liv settled for retching dramatically, shoving her finger down her throat for extra effect as she switched off her phone. She smirked to the empty spot on the bench next to her, as if there were anyone around to witness her review. Still, it made her feel better that her point had been made, if only to herself.

Things don't work that way! How do people read this stuff?

Pulling her hood strings tighter, she got up with a sigh, fully aware of the irony while she loped out from under the bench's covering and through the empty park. It was almost always empty at this time of day, probably because it was almost always raining and everyone was almost always at work now anyway.

Her tele-therapist had suggested taking her lunches somewhere outside of her living room. If she was tired of being alone, wouldn't the odds of remedying that situation increase just a tiny bit if she went somewhere that had more people than just her?

Liv had reluctantly agreed that made a certain amount of sense. So she'd been trying it. Well, not the lunch part. Nobody she wanted to meet would want to see her shotgun a sandwich.

Instead, she'd been making the short trek from her apartment to the park, spending her "lunch break" reading ridiculous romance stories where everyone was just a victim of circumstance or a vengeful ex and ended up happily ever after.

Because that's toootally how it works. Hardened ice queens are thawed out by sensitive hotties and lonely, broken boys are healed by prostitutes with hearts of gold alllll the time.

Where were the romances for people who just...

What? Have given up? Yeah, weird nobody writes stories about middle-aged lesbians who wear old hoodies and have a messy living room because there's no danger of anyone ever seeing it. Well, okay, NEARING middle age. Hey, who said it had to be about me anyway??

She snorted, opening the door to her apartment and logging in for the afternoon Teams meeting. Everybody else on her team, scattered across the globe, had better-looking studies or bedrooms or living rooms -- whatever professional-looking environments were in back of them. They all even looked like they showered every day.

Who are you trying to impress, huh? Your friends and family?

She snorted again. Her therapist said her sense of humor was a good coping mechanism... but the fact she recognized exactly what she was doing wrong and hadn't done anything about it... well, if she were perfect, she wouldn't need therapy, right?

The rest of the team dinged in, seemingly chipper and eager to discuss the riveting assignments that made them all glad to have gotten into editing technical documents for appliance manufacturers. It was a tough job, but...

Okay, no, it's not a tough job and actually no, literally no one has to do it.

But it was a job that existed, paid well enough, offered health insurance, and let her work from home with flexible hours that accommodated her inconsistent sleep schedule.

Michel held up his cat, Louis Pasteur, to the camera. She wasn't allowed to have pets at her apartment, so easily the best part of every day was getting to see her coworkers' furry friends. Almost good enough to make it worth having to interact with her coworkers.

Liv had no interest in pretending to be friendly with the other members of her team. But their pets? Ugh. She did always have a smile for Louis Pasteur.

Who wouldn't??

It was frequently the only smile she'd have all day.

***

"Their eyes locked, and the sun shone through the clouds..."

Okay, fine, that wasn't what it said this time. But at this point, all these stories seemed the same, so it might as well have.

Oh no, girl is lonely. Oh no, boy needs someone to fix him. Oh no, they're both really good looking, at least to each other. What EVER shall they do??

They always had interesting jobs in those stories. A cowboy. A high-powered corporate executive. A nightclub DJ.

How come nobody's ever like, a Walmart greeter? I see them with wives and husbands. How the fuck does that happen? THAT I'd like to read about. I feel like somebody who can fall in love with a Walmart greeter could fall in love with me.

She knew that probably wasn't even true, though.

People who fall in love with Walmart greeters aren't that snooty. Even in their heads. As soon as I opened my mouth they'd start running the other direction.

Where was she supposed to meet someone who wouldn't feel weighed down by how dull and unexciting she was -- by what a general bummer she was? Where could she find someone like her?

If she's like me, she's probably in her living room, wondering the same thing and doing nothing about it.

Liv sighed, putting her phone down. Across the little park, passers-by occasionally flashed past on the sidewalk outside, under their umbrellas.

There was always a light rain here, so an umbrella got plenty of opportunities to say something about the person holding it. The blonde with the pastel polka-dot one was probably more fun than Liv had ever been. Didn't matter she was on the chubby side. Liv could see from here the woman had more confidence in one ample ankle than Liv had in her whole bony body.

Maybe she's a Walmart executive. Worked her way up from greeter and bangs the model for the Rollback Cowboy every night. Maybe that's where she's going right now.

Wherever she was going, it was more interesting than what Liv was doing.

Movement next to her on the bench caught her eye, making her jump.

It was a calico cat, not too svelte itself. It had a look in its green eyes like it couldn't decide between utter disinterest and overwhelming annoyance that Liv was also on the bench.

Liv watched as it made a show of sniffing her suspiciously. She must've passed whatever test had been given because the cat flopped down next to her, gazing out at the sidewalk the same way Liv had.

She shrugged and watched too, pulling her hood a little tighter around her face. She liked to feel it was still there sometimes, a reminder that she wasn't sitting out here exposed to the world.

Damn, with self-insight like that, what do you even pay that therapist for? Just to have someone to talk to every week?

A man went by this time, in a hurry: tall, with no umbrella and wearing cargo shorts.

"Probably rushing off to see his boyfriend, hmm?" she said idly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the cat cock its head at her.

"Okay, fine, you're right. Not boyfriend," she amended. "Not in those shorts."

The cat licked its paw, apparently satisfied with the correction.

A gleaming tag jangled from a collar Liv hadn't noticed at first. Carefully, she extended her hand for the cat to sniff before she pet its head and fingered the tag to an angle she could read: Sunny. She couldn't help but let out a sardonic laugh.

So there is a God, and he spends his time fucking with me to amuse himself. Cool cool cool.

Sunny bashed her hand to let her know she should keep petting now that she'd started.

It was the best lunch break she'd had yet.

***

Over the next few days, Liv never had to wait long until Sunny would saunter his way into the park, unbothered and unhurried by the equally lazy drizzle.

Like he had every day, today he hopped up next to her and waited for her to pet him before settling in alongside her leg.

The cat kept watch on the sidewalk and Liv and scrolled through another romance story. It was pretty much the same stuff as always.

The beginning was always fine to read -- learning about the characters, imagining herself in their lives. Yes, they were usually far-fetched. An overworked nurse who fell in love with a burn patient who turned out to be quite handsome underneath all those bandages. And kind. And rich.

Or a beautiful actress -- was there any other kind in these stories? -- who fell in love with her strong, caring female driver, finding out she was a closeted lesbian inside the whole time.

Usually, though, there was something bad that happened that was beyond their control. A robbery. A death. A nasty divorce with an even nastier ex. Always something they can get over or get past that allows them to be the person they were before, or the person they never had the opportunity to be in the first place.

Never someone who doesn't have anything particularly bad -- or good, for that matter -- happen to them, but still lacks the minimum self-confidence required to attract... well, pretty much anyone at all.

But it was a fantasy. That was the point. Not to be realistic, but to be aspirational -- or at least just comforting.

The problem was, Liv couldn't even wrap her mind around the fantasy, much less find it comforting. All she could see were the clouds that made the silver lining necessary.

Yay, the student in your class you've been banging is staying here to go to college so you can keep fucking. Nobody's gonna start asking questions about when THAT started. And it's totally not creepy!

"Oh how did you two meet? 'Second-hour algebra. She was just an 18-year-old who couldn't remember the quadratic equation and I was just a middle-aged teacher with zero impulse control and low self-esteem. Or as we call it, happily ever after!'"

Sunny sneezed, which she took as a dramatic agreement with her point. That earned him reward pets.

"Exactly. Not for us, huh, Sunny."

He jerked his head back from under her palm and she rolled her eyes.

"Okay fine. Not for me then. I won't bring you down with me, you're right. I bet you've got a pussy in every park, huh."

He didn't seem amused.

"Sheesh okay, you win again. The pussy jokes probably get old, I get it."

Liv sighed, watching the empty sidewalk while she rubbed under Sunny's purring chin. It was hard to imagine some random stroke of luck leading an unsuspecting soulmate to her here any more than to her living room.

Life didn't work that way.

***

Liv looked forward to her afternoon "lunch breaks" now. The hour or so she got to spend with Sunny every weekday soon stretched into weekends, too. Sunny didn't seem to know the difference, so Liv figured, why should she?

He was a good listener, putting up with her complaints about the love stories she never could relate to, but kept trying to read anyway.

It wasn't that she didn't want to finish them -- she did want to. They just... stopped being believable to her so quickly. There always seemed to be that stupid moment when the rest of the world ground to a halt, when everything around the two special people just melted away, when the...

... when the fucking clouds themselves get in on the act and let the sunshine through, as if the entire fucking universe revolves around these two dopes. Why even keep reading! Everybody knows it's all gonna end with some cliched, unfathomably happy ending where everything just fucking works out because... you know, love. As if that fixes all the other shit that makes life so fucking annoying to live through.

She rolled her eyes as hard as if she had really been reading a story, which she hadn't actually been doing. Just thinking about reading one of those stories was enough. The world didn't work that way! People just... hooked up with whoever they thought looked good enough in the moment, and then if things didn't go wrong, all of a sudden you were dead.

Boom. Happy life lived.

Liv sighed. She read the stories to distract herself from those kinds of thoughts, but she hadn't actually started yet because she was waiting for Sunny. He was usually here only a few minutes after her, like he left at the same time from wherever he spent the mornings and trotted along at that same deliberate pace to their bench.

But he wasn't here today. He was 15 minutes late. That worried Liv more than it should have.

He has a collar. Clearly he's somebody's cat, not mine. Maybe they just decided they'd rather spend their lunch break with him instead of letting him wander the city alone. I would, too.

The hour went by with no Sunny.

Then another day.

And another.

And another.

It was stupid how disappointed that made her. Sunny couldn't talk. He couldn't even understand her when she'd make her snarky comments. A relationship with a cat was not what her therapist had in mind when she'd suggested this.

No. It was better to just... have a clean break.

You know, before you become too attached to this CAT. Ugh. Jesus. How fucking pathetic can you be?

The hour wasn't up yet, but Liv got up and went back home anyway -- before she could find out the answer.

***

It was cloudy again. Raining again. Most people liked sunny days. Liv didn't. They were too bright, too overbearing. Cloudy days suited her just fine.

She'd wanted to stop coming out here for "lunch." But she didn't have the guts to tell her therapist she was going to backslide because she'd been stood up by a cat.

See? Shame has its positives.

A week or so later, though, Sunny appeared again without so much as an explanation. He just waltzed in as slow and unhurried as ever while the rain soaked his fur and Liv stared him down.

Once he'd jumped up to the bench, he shook himself off -- almost like a dog -- and started furiously licking himself. Liv helped him out with the little hand towel she occasionally used to dry her phone screen, though she couldn't tell if he appreciated it or just saw it as another impediment to getting clean.

Either way, he seemed to give up and curled up next to her, as usual.

"Hey buddy," she said quietly. "I missed you."

He didn't look up, but let her pet his head. His familiar, comforting purr against her leg brought a smile to her face.

She didn't want to admit how much she'd missed that. Missed him.

Liv hadn't had a friend in... a while. Not one she could talk to in person, could touch. She felt even more pathetic that she was thinking about this cat she saw for an hour a day as her first friend in years -- that when he was gone, her day really felt emptier.

Yikes. Can somebody that fucking pathetic even make a friend anymore? Or do they just reek too much of pathetic desperation?

She instinctively pulled at the strings of her hood, tightening it around her face.

Nobody writes stories about women who live such boring, uninteresting lives that they cry when a cat they met a couple weeks ago shows up for a lunchtime hang again. People don't wanna read about someone that disgustingly pitiful. They'd probably see something like that and think it was as ludicrous as I think all those other stories are. That nobody's that pathetic.

A tear ran down her face. She couldn't help it. She tried not to think these thoughts so much anymore, but with Sunny here again... they just... poured out of her.

This was all she could really hope for. This was real life. Where the only one who seemed to notice her at all, much less like being around her, was a cat that wasn't even hers. Because who the fuck would want to hang out with an aging sad sack like her? She didn't want to hang out with herself, so why would anyone else?

Even though no one was around to see her, she still felt embarrassed, trying to sniff back and wipe away the tears that were coming faster and hotter now. Sometimes, she just couldn't stop them, couldn't distract herself from staring her life in the face.

Sunny raised his head with a little chirp. He was probably just annoyed she'd stopped petting him.

But slowly, he stepped into her lap, and she couldn't stop a smile, either, as he poked his nose up at her chin.

Liv gave in and let him nuzzle her, some tears mixing in with the dampness of the rain on top of his head. He didn't seem to mind.

She wrapped him up in the tightest hug she could without smothering him. She hadn't hugged anyone -- anything -- in... years, she realized. She'd lost track. Who was she going to hug in her living room?

His warm, vibrating purrs against her face seemed to loose the full-body sob that had been threatening to burst out of her. When it did, she started laughing, too. The whole scene was just too ridiculous not to laugh.

I'm a middle-aged woman alone in a park, giggling and sobbing into a cat. Okay, nearing middle age.

A lack of self-awareness had never been one of Liv's shortcomings. That was always the problem, really. If she weren't so fucking aware of just how easily other people managed not to be depressed balls of standoffish anxiety, she probably wouldn't be a constantly depressed ball of standoffish anxiety in the first place.

Where were the love stories for people who didn't love themselves?

"I don't need a happy ending," she whispered to the cat named for the days she didn't like, rubbing her cheek against his welcoming fur. He was still purring, still tolerating her squeezing embrace. "I just... I just want someone to be cloudy with. Is that so much to ask?"

Sunny didn't flinch when she looked into his eyes, but he didn't seem to have any answers. She kissed his wet, black nose anyway, which did make him flinch.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she wiped away the tears and he settled into her lap.

Liv tried to do some settling of her own, pulling up some new story to read -- the same old confounding tripe. She tried to focus on it anyway, lightly stroking the relaxed cat curled on her thighs until her thoughts were appropriately filled with the snarky criticisms she preferred.

"Umm, excuse me? That's... that's my cat...."

Liv jolted in her seat, though the cat seemed as undisturbed as ever, letting loose a lionly yawn and stretching out.

The woman didn't sound mad, or accusatory... more like... like she was embarrassed about having to bring it up.

But Liv was too mortified to lift her eyes. She hadn't heard the woman approach.

Oh my God, how much did she see....

Her face heated up inside the formerly safe confines of her hood.

"I... I didn't want to interrupt, it seemed like... like Sunny was doing for you what he does for me."

The voice was small, quiet -- matching the size of the stranger's worn tennis shoes. They were attached to baggy sweatpants and an old sweatshirt with a couple of holes in it. The ensemble wouldn't have looked out of place on the part of Liv's bedroom floor that doubled as her closet.

Sunny hopped down from Liv's lap and crisscrossed through the sweatpants before the woman reached down and picked him up.

Fuck. This is gonna be so awkward. Why did I keep coming out here? I can't be trusted to be in public, that's why I don't do stuff like this. Should've just stayed in your apartment. Can't be embarrassed if nobody sees you!

Slowly, Liv's eyes followed Sunny while his owner lifted him up to her face. As her gaze rose, she realized how incredibly improbable it was, how many dominoes had to fall just right for her to be sitting on this bench, with this cat, at this exact time, so that this could happen.

So she could be absolutely shocked... that she didn't feel awkward at all.

Peering up through the easing drizzle at the anxious woman who looked like she went outside about as often as Liv did -- the world around them ground to a halt, everything else seeming to melt away. And Liv felt something she really hadn't thought was possible before. At least, not for her.

Their eyes locked, and the sun shone through the clouds...

And even though she knew instantly how their story ended, Liv couldn't wait to find out what happened next.

~~~

Thank you for reading. I hope a sunny afternoon breaks through whatever clouds may be hanging over you. You never know where you might find it (:

Arcadia