𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐄𝐍 𝐅𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃. ᵒᵘᵗᵉʳ ᵇᵃⁿᵏˢ ²

01

01 .  𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗹𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗮
𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗬𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲 . 

               𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐑𝐎𝐏𝐒 𝐖𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐕𝐀𝐏𝐈𝐃 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐋𝐎𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐀𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐘 𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐃 𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐎𝐖, scattered in different patterns and piling on top of one another. They formed constellations along the glass by nature, each one assembling a different arrangement of shapes like the stars in the sky, and made of droplets that soon slipped into streams and disappeared. Constellations were spread along the wide window, and each one dripping down to the sill like a landslide in the end didn't portray enough misery — for it had to be replayed over and over again.

There were big grey clouds swarming in the sky and the tallest of skyscrapers barely scratched them. Down below the window of constellations, pedestrians trotted on the sidewalks and scooted between parked cars, hailed for taxi cabs, hid for shelter in the phone booths, and crossed the street at the lights in quick paces. From above, for the most part, it simply looked like a sea of umbrellas and shoes trampling in puddles, but there was the occasional person who didn't have an umbrella, who was rushing for the nearest place to shelter under the pouring rain.

There was a man leaning underneath a lamppost, just across the street, with a fading cigarette between his fingers, his jacket soaked. There was a woman and her two kids, rushing towards the cab they'd called, splashing through the puddles with smiles pulling at their cheeks. There was an elderly woman, sitting underneath the hooded entryway of a clothing store with the newspaper in her hands, at the corner of two streets. All present between the business people rushing for work in their long, raincoats and black umbrellas.

There was a difference between a rainy day in New York and a rainy day on an island. In New York, time didn't stop when it rained, no time stood still when there was a storm— because time doesn't stop in a city so busy. There weren't people stopping to look up at the sky, or people to surf the surge or swim in the rain, or dance on the docks. And in the city, you couldn't see the sun peaking out from behind the clouds at the end of the storm, you couldn't see the slit of sun rays on the horizon or the lines of rain trailing away on the surface of the water. And when it rained in New York City, there was a stale smell of wet pavement. But in the Outer Banks, there was the scent of grass, salt, and sand— the ever admirable petrichor that lingers in the air after pouring rain.

Charlotte Collins' eyes blinked behind the glass. The point of her chin rested on her crossed arms, in which were sitting on the top of her knees, legs folded to her chest as she leaned her side onto the throw pillows of the bed. Her teeth were pressed together as her eyes wandered along the constellations of raindrops, and her fingers grazed the skin of her knees.

The door of her bedroom was open just a crack, letting light spill in from the living room's windows, and the quiet sounds of the apartment from different rooms. It was quiet, as quiet as it could be in a penthouse apartment. But the open kind of quiet. The apartment was filled with that open silence, a gaping and yearning silence that she once knew too well, the type of silence that just feels so lonely. Unlike the silence of her grandparents little cottage home on The Cut, where the silence felt warm and calm, peaceful and caressing on even the hardest of days or during the biggest of storms.

The seventeen-year-old girl used to call that New York, lonely and yearning silence her home. It was what she used to wake up to every morning, sit through during school and throughout the day, and go to sleep to every night, for seventeen years. It never occurred to her how lonely the silence really was in that penthouse apartment, until she'd returned from a month of living on an island, in a cottage home with real love and warmth. New York was like a world away from the Outer Banks, and she hadn't realized the enormity of that fact until she'd stepped foot back in her old home — in which she never really called her home in the first place.