The storm had been threatening all afternoon, and by six it made good on the threat. Dara watched it come across the valley from the doorway of Mika's pottery studio, a blue-black shelf of cloud swallowing the hills, and did the math on the drive back to town.
"You're not going to make it home before that," Mika said behind her, not looking up from the wheel. "The road floods at the culvert."
"I have a very responsible car."
"You have a twenty-year-old car with a prayer card in the windshield."
Dara laughed, and the first thunder arrived at the same time, low and unhurried, like the storm was agreeing with Mika. It always unsettled her, how much she liked being in this studio. Six Tuesdays of pottery classes, and she'd stopped pretending she'd enrolled for the bowls.
"Stay," Mika said. Simple as that, hands still shaping the clay, and Dara felt the word land somewhere lower than her decision-making.
They lost power at seven. Mika found candles without hurrying, the way she did everything, and the rain hit the tin roof so hard it was almost architectural. They sat on the studio's old couch with tea going cold, close enough that their knees touched, and Dara stopped performing casualness.
"I've been distracted for six weeks," she said. "I want to blame the wheel."
"It's not the wheel." Mika set her cup down. "Come here."
Dara came. Mika's hands were clay-rough and sure, cupping her jaw, and the kiss was slow in a way that had nothing tentative in it — a question already answered. Rain hammered the roof. The candle guttered and held.
"Tell me what you like," Mika said against her throat.
"I like that you asked." Dara pulled her shirt over her head, unhurried too, matching her. "And I like your forearms. Six weeks of watching your forearms, Mika. It's been a lot."
Mika laughed, low, and pressed her back into the cushions, mouth traveling down her sternum, unhurried again, making a night of it while the storm made a night of the valley. Dara's breath went ragged early and Mika slowed further, patient as the wheel, finding the rhythm her hips asked for and holding it exactly there.
Thunder cracked directly overhead and Dara came with it, her cry lost inside the sound, one hand fisted in Mika's hair, the other gripping the couch like the room might tip.
"Oh," she managed, after. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Do it again and I'll say something more articulate."
Mika kissed the inside of her thigh and grinned against it. Then she did it again, slower, and Dara stopped being able to track the storm at all — only the candle, the rain, the warm dark weight of her mouth, and Dara saying her name in a voice she barely recognized as her own.
Later the storm moved off east, grumbling. The candle burned low. They lay tangled on the couch under Mika's kiln-dust blanket, and Dara drew a slow line down Mika's spine with one finger.
"My bowls are going to be so lopsided now," she said. "I can't focus at all."
"Sign up for another six weeks," Mika said into her shoulder. "We'll work on it."
