Walls

Four.

Tonight I didn't cry on the floor, or the couch. I decided that I would walk around town a bit, get some fresh air. It was late, but I didn't think much of it. I didn't think much of anything lately.

By now, most of the shops and food joints had closed. Some street lamps were fizzling out overhead. Even though the east side was run down and not as nice as the west side, this place was cozy. As I started thinking about it, I kind of got the feeling that roaming around town at midnight wasn't socially acceptable on the other side of town. Over here, it was normal. If you needed to get your mind off of things, you roamed the sidewalks until you were done roaming the sidewalks.

I wandered into a gas station. When I walked through the door, I couldn't remember why I had walked in there to begin with. But I kept walking forward. As if there was something to walk forward for. And there was.

He was standing in front of the cooler sat in the back corner of the gas station. His head hung low and one fist jammed into his pocket and the other rubbing the back of his neck stressfully.

I kept walking forward.

"Dallas." I stopped walking.

A thin smile surfaced on top of his lips, still peering down at the beer bottles in the cooler. "Hayden."

We stayed like that for quite a while. Me stood beside him. Him leaned over the cooler. "Um, Hay." He said suddenly, glancing up at my eyes with the same quickness. "Let's grab a bite to eat, huh?" He rushed away from the alcohol as if it was suddenly contaminated and stood in front of me, his eyes deep.

I wished I would have said "yes, thank you" or "yeah, sounds good", but with his eyes staring at me like that, I couldn't remember how to move my mouth to form words. I just nodded.

His eyes slowly began to look through me. Just like they had on the nights he set me on the counter top. But then they suddenly connected back to my own. "Good deal."

We began walking toward the 24 hour burger joint on the corner of 31st Street. And instead of walking in silence, my mouth remembered how to speak again. "Dallas." I said for the second time tonight.

"Mmm?" Was his response.

"How come we've been bumping into each other so much lately?"

There was a pause after I had asked my question. "Here," he said finally. He swung off his brown leather jacket and wrapped it over my bare shoulders. "You look cold."