Midnights Like This

Part 1, 5. Midnight Rain

     Monday, January 16th, 2023 was the worst day of my entire life, but I remember just a few days before that on a Wednesday, I remember you saying "How was that concert last night?" I said I enjoyed the concert and the music but I knew deep inside the true thing I enjoyed the most about the concert was the hope that maybe we would be together someday. Some people compare love as being as beautiful as sunshine, but I see love as something more faint, more mystical, like midnight rain, and every time me and you spoke to each other it felt like we were dancing in midnight rain. It was a love that I never felt before, only once, and never again even to this day, but that's a story for another midnight. It was your first semester so I gave you a tour of campus and showed you where your classes were. We had a good day and It's a day that I still think about frequently even 10 months later. After school we hung out in your room, it was me, you, and my best friend Brody. We did homework together and talked about drama and people we didn't like. I didn't tell you that I liked you, or that I even liked guys in general, but Brody jokingly told you that you and Charlie would make a cute couple, even after how he betrayed me by attempting to out me and himself to the whole school. I did not know whether or not you liked guys but thankfully you saw what Brody said as a joke, or did you?

     That weekend approached and felt like the arrival of the Olympics every four years, because I got to hang out in your room all day Saturday and we talked, and talked, and talked, and like a bat flying out of a deep dark cave off of the side of a mountain; you told me that you like guys... I didn't know what to say but I still couldn't bring myself to confess to you what had been clawing at my mind, flesh, and soul for the entire week, like my life depended on the rush I got from the fraction of hope I had whenever I thought about you, about us. The blush on my cheeks was maroon like the sky was the midnight we first met, and I was overwhelmed with the fact that I had a chance with you, so I ran away to go to my room and it wasn't until later that night that Brody convinced me to come back downstairs. I never told you why I ran that day, but something always told me you had an idea as to why.

     Then came Sunday, the day before the worst of my life, I woke up and waited outside for you to come outside so we could go get breakfast together. You came outside after I waited like 15 minutes and you got yelled at for wearing the wrong uniform but God, you were so... dreamy. We sat down at a table that was facing where Charlie was sitting, but we were about 3 tables away from him. I noticed that you were staring at him almost the whole time and you were blissfully unaware of the fact that I was truly in love with you, so I can understand that you were trying to find someone but I wish you could just open your eyes and and see what was beheld right in front of you, you always had a habit for not seeing the forest through the trees. I didn't think much of it at first, you looking at him, but later that day me and Brody were hanging out and eventually we went to your room and you weren't there.

      I sat on your bed and we waited for you to come back but after a while we were really starting to wonder where you could possibly be, and all of a sudden I had a feeling, like a sort of vibe or psychic sense that you were with Charlie doing something... bad. We then found that when we approached his room, it was locked and we could hear commotion from the inside. Brody demanded that Charlie open the door and after a minute or so, he opened the door and we could hear something coming from the bathroom, it was a belt buckle jingling. Brody ran inside to see who it was, and it- it was you. Charlie didn't know what to do because we had just caught you two practically doing, well, something totally not appropriate, so he went to the drill instructor that you had threatened him to, uh, do bad things! Obviously that wasn't true, at least I hope it wasn't. They had to take this claim seriously so the next day on that dreadful Monday, in order to fix this, their solution was to move you to the barracks across the campus and none of us were allowed to talk to you. That didn't stop me but of course it was harder to talk to you due to our different schedules and the distance between us, and I know I may sound dramatic that it may have been the worst day of my life, but if you never moved; everything would be so much different even to this day. I wish I could see you again so I could feel that majestic feeling of the midnight rain in my consciousness, but every night in my wildest dreams I promise I'll be with you again, dancing in the midnight rain and dodging the evanescent moonlight that I now do alone on midnights like this.