This Fragile Game

Her lips were blue and she was shaking. I grabbed my jacket from the ground, putting it around her shoulders.

“Come on, I have dry cloths in my truck you can have,” I said, putting my hand on the small of her back.

“W-w-why did you pull me out?” she whispered between shivers.

“You don’t want to die tonight. Just breathe. Tomorrow may not come again,” I said, helping her up to the landing above the bridge and guiding her to my truck.

“That was the whole point of me jumping. I don’t want tomorrow to come,” she said, as tears fell from her eyes.

“I know I’m just some stranger but,” I pulled her small frame towards me and wrapped my arms around her as she began to sob, “I’m so sorry for how you feel. I don’t know what’s happened to you. But I’m here for you,” I whispered, as she continued to cry onto my shoulder.

I stood there silently holding her while humming some lullaby my mother had always used to sooth my brothers and me. She looked up to me wiping her eyes making us separate

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“I’m-”

“JOHN! WAKE UP!” Pat yelled.

My eyes flew open waking me from my dream. “I’m up, I’m up,” I said groggily wiping my eyes.

I sighed, getting out of the van and pulling a t-shirt over my head. I hated dreaming about her. Because I always dreamed about her. The girl from the bridge I met when I was 16.

I ran my fingers through my hair while swishing some Listerine in my mouth.

Has it really been a decade since the first time I met her? I thought to myself. It had been a few months since I had the dream of when we first met.

And every time I wake up after having that dream I am left feeling empty. More so than before.

The short time that I knew her, I fell in love with her. I didn’t even know if she was still alive.

The night we met she attempted to take her life. I was at the right place at the right time when she jumped from the bridge to the waters below. I instantly dove in after her and pulled her out.

And the following weeks after that moment we met at the same place at the same time almost every day. I watched her go from such a broken state to a happy one where she smiled genially and not out of trying to hide her pain.

And one day she stopped coming to our spot.

And I never saw her again.

“John! Dude, what’s up with you today?” Jared asked, elbowing me in the ribs and snapping me out of my thoughts.

“Sorry,” I sighed. “I’m kind of on autopilot today. I don’t feel good,” I said as the van pulled to a stop in front of a coffee shop.

“Well get caffeinated or smoke a cigarette or something; we have a busy day ahead of us.”

“Yeah, yeah I know,” I said as everyone started getting out of the van.

I got out, lighting a cigarette, and stood outside until I finished it. I walked inside the coffee shop. This, to no surprise, reminded me of her.

The few times we didn’t meet at our spot we would meet here. I looked down at my phone seeing a text from my mother reminding me that we were having dinner tonight for my father’s birthday, when I ran into someone. I looked down at the girl sitting on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” I said as she asked me a question I didn’t quite understand. I just laughed it off as I helped her up and she ran out of the store.

I grabbed a coffee after the guys and went outside to smoke another cigarette when it hit me.

It was her.