whatever happens from here, know i'll always go to bed with hopeful thoughts for your journey home.

Lost in the brownish tint of beer bottles and the chorus of drunken peers, she stepped over the bodies and made her way out the door and down the steps and in to the streets. Hugging her arms close, she travelled along the road and watched her shadows grow and fall in the different street lights. She felt like she was running and coming in the exact same step, just as she felt like multiple people in the light of something ten feet above her and guiding her step.

It wasn't until she reached the bridge that she realized the weight of the situation. It was the summer, and it was supposed to be the most important summer of her life. "Freedom and forever and the possibility of love and something better." Wasn't that what her best friends had always promised each other for this summer? Not quite sure, but she figured that her old yearbooks would confirm. I can't believe I'm validating myself in lines on a page that weren't ever quite thought through. She thought to herself, before realizing that she wasn't quite okay with the thought of not mattering, and chose to validate herself in things that didn't mean shit instead.

Leaning over the bridge, she allowed wind to whip around her face and remind her that she was cold. That she was lonely. Cold and lonely and standing above water where fish were getting more action than her that night. More laughter, more affection, more worthwhile conversation. She'd spent the night speaking to wallpaper and laughing along with slurs she didn't understand. She'd spent the night walking to a bridge, talking to pebbles, and trying to make up for the lost conversation that the fish weren't having to go through.

With a heavy sigh, she turned around. Swallowed up her pride and her past and the lack of forever in her life; lack of freedom and validation. She swallowed up every expectation and hope that she'd had for herself and this summer, and chose instead to walk back. Instead, she took a step and found herself in the grasp of something tall and strong. Glancing up, her eyes fell on brownandorange, perfect eyes with a face covered by the street light. She'd never spoken to him, and when he stepped back to let her pass, she realized that she may never again. But he was watching her, and he was interested. She would walk home that night and he would stay on that bridge, but he would hope to God that she'd gotten home safe.

And for that summer, that was enough.