Love and dances - Joel Dawson

Under the slide

Dear Aimee,

I'm here. I'm really here now. But before I start looking for you, I should probably find myself.

Joel never thought that would be the hardest part of his plan. In all honesty, he had thought convincing his parents to let him move away from home to a city across the country as a 21-year-old with no actual job would be hard - and it was, don't be mistaken; his mom had almost cried when he said he wanted to leave - but, after he had successfully convinced them that he wouldn't die being out there alone in the big city, they had been actually really cool about his whole plan. They had helped Joel some with the finances, but the young man had done most of the job of buying the plane tickets and finding a place to live in New York. He had made sure to find an apartment close to NYU where he knew Aimee was attending, but, considering he didn't have that much money to pay for the housing, he had had to find a small apartment a few blocks down from the uni where he would be living with about four other people to help pay for the rent.

It wasn't ideal, really, but it was the best he could have done given the circumstances, so he wouldn't be complaining. Not about the housing that was, but he was definitely complaining about the fact that he, apparently, could not, for the life of him, figure out how to read the map in his cellphone, where he had marked the address to his new apartment.

"Okay, so if the uni is here..." Joel mumbled to himself, spinning around himself to make sure that NYU was still standing right behind him so he could try and locate himself on the small map in his hands. Pinching his fingers across the screen of his phone, Joel tried to figure out which way he should go, cursing under his breath at the fact that his GPS had decided to bail on him right when he needed it the most, but his tracking skills were probably as good as his fighting ones because he just couldn't seem to be able to tell which way he had to go. But who could blame him anyway? Joel had never actually had to read a map before - or fight for that matter. It wasn't as if they were actually living the apocalypse, was it? "Okay, so West... I need to go West... That probably means... That probably means that way, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's that way."

And even though Joel had no fucking clue if the direction he was heading was actually West, he decided to go for it. When, as soon as he got to the first corner, he realized he was probably heading the wrong direction, he groaned.

"Yeah, that street wasn't supposed to be here..." Joel mumbled to himself, as he spun around himself again. "Oh, come on..."

He started to make his way back to NYU, hoping that, if he went down the opposite direction, he would end up finding the right way. But, as soon as he passed by the gates of the university again, so distracted by the map in his phone - as if looking at it could help him in any way, considering he barely knew where he was anymore -, he totally missed the young woman that was coming out through the gates. Unfortunately for them, however, she also wasn't paying much mind to where she was going, her eyes cast down to one of her books in her hand as she read over the pages almost frantically, having forgot about the test she would be having in that particular subject the next day. So, of course, considering the two of them were too distracted to look where they were heading, they ended up colliding straight into one another.

Joel groaned a little, fumbling with his phone so it wouldn't fall straight to the ground and crack his screen even more - after all, he didn't have the money to fix it if he needed to -, but falling back on his ass on the ground instead. At least the phone was okay, he noticed.

Taking a second to look around, Joel widened his eyes when he heard a little groan coming from beside him and he widened his eyes when he noticed the girl beside him, already on her knees as she tried to gather all of the loose papers around her before the wind could take them away, her bronze skin shining against the glow of the morning sun and her curly dark hair snapping all around her face against the wind.