Chapter One
I see you.
I've been watching you for some time now.
You have no idea I exist.
I'll never forget the first time I saw you.
You were standing out on your back deck, your long black hair swirling around your angel face.
I suppose you'd call it a veranda, or some such rich people bullshit, but I call it a freakin' deck.
You didn't notice me, of course. I was just handling maintenance on your parents' property, so why would you notice me?
You were throwing a party with all your little shit-for-brains friends, and were already drunk to the point of stumbling.
You so badly wanted to be seen as beautiful. Popular. Shiny and ever so on trend.
I saw you for who you really were, though.
Lonely.
How unbearably lonely you seemed.
There you were, at your own party that was already ridiculously loud at 5pm, all alone at the guardrail. You were staring off at the horizon like you were staring into an abyss.
I'll never forget that look on your face.
What were you searching for?
Somehow, in that moment, I felt that it was the same thing that I was searching for. That you were somehow like me. Dark and irreparably, perfectly...broken.
Maybe, just maybe, we didn't have to be alone anymore.
###
Three days later I found out where you worked. It was pure happenstance, I swear.
I was just looking for a good place in town to find supplies when I happened to walk into your hardware store.
I couldn't believe it when I saw you in your ugly blue polo and slacks. You were much too posh and beautiful and rich to work in a place like this, on N.W. Expressway, nonetheless.
But you turned and smiled at me and I knew at once that it was you.
Those lonely blue eyes. That perfect sweep of silky black hair.
It was like spotting a celebrity.
Anabelle Thorne; I already knew your name. And your birthdate and corresponding Zodiac Sign: Aquarius. If one believed in that rubbish, which you did.
Hell, I knew pretty much everything about you at this point.
Only twenty-two years old, studying at the university, you were a trust fund baby. Daddy's little girl, tension with your mother, and the middle child of five other spoiled brats.
So why were you working here, of all places?
I tried to smile back at you, like I knew I was expected to, but I must've failed because you quickly lost yours and hurried by me without even asking if I needed help.
I didn't. I just need You.
