Excerpt: G2G

Prologue

The water cycle is a complicated one. Water from oceans, from puddles, from people's sweat and tears evaporates and becomes clouds. When the clouds get too large and too heavy to continue drifting through the sky, they turn dark, and down comes something known as rain.
To many, rain is an obstacle, a nuisance. Rain is something that ruins your hair your clothes, or stops you from taking a walk. If these people see rain outside, their hearts sink, and their days are spent in depression.
But there are a few rare people for whom rain has nothing negative about it. To them, rain is a beautiful form of nourishment for the Earth and all life upon it. When it rains, their hearts do not sink; they leap for joy and take them outside to savor the sights, sounds, and smells that rain produces.
Such a person was Gianna.

Chapter 1

The streets were remarkably busy. Cars drove quickly from place to place, and hundreds of people, from teenagers to seventy-year-olds, were taking walks along the shoreline roads. Gabriel was very pleased. It was sunny and the air smelled of summer. Best of all, today was the day when he would finally, finally ask Alicia to marry him. He had been waiting for this day for five painful years, and he was glad that it had finally arrived.
So naturally he was quite annoyed when it began to rain. He stopped skipping in a gleeful manner and resolved to a more practical-looking* means of movement.

* Actually, skipping gleefully is quite practical, as it gets you places quicker and more amusingly than running.

The crowds around him were dissolving as if they had been made up of instant vitamins as opposed to human beings. Gabriel instantly became frightened that he would be the only person left on the street, and would be gawked at by the drivers and passengers of the cars; they did not have any need to dissolve their lines, for they were aptly protected from the rain. It didn't help that he had no umbrella, and his jacket was getting soaked through. Not only would this mean that he would propose to Alicia dripping wet, it meant that the dry people in the cars would gawk at him even more.
It was then that he heard a voice behind him. Upon turning, he discovered that is belonged to a girl of about twenty.
"Do you need an umbrella?" she asked.
"Um, yes, that would be nice," Gabriel said, wondering who this sudden kind person was.
The girl moved closer to him so that her black umbrella covered them both. Her wardrobe seemed to match the weather: black umbrella, black leather boots, and a long gray sweater. The only splash of color was her pants, which were purple jeans tucked neatly into the aforementioned boots.
Her umbrella wasn't particularly large, so they were pretty close together. Normally, Gabriel wouldn't have wanted to be this close to anyone – except possibly Alicia. But the girl did not seem to notice the closeness, and he felt that if he mentioned it, he would ruin something beautiful.
They continued to walk along the shoreline, watching the ocean, although that may be stretching it a bit – they were really mostly looking at their shoes. Well, Gabriel was, anyway. The girl was looking directly ahead of her, occasionally glancing upward, and, seeing the continuing rain, smiling and looking directly ahead again.
However, after ten minutes Gabriel decided that he had run out of interest in his shoes, and inquired to whom it was that he owed his relative dryness.
"I'm Gianna," the girl answered in a way that indicated that she would not find any unpleasant remarks about her name amusing. Or angering, for that matter. She simply looked at him expectantly-bored-like.
"That's an interesting name. I'm Gabriel, by the way."
Gianna smiled. "We match."