Unknown

Prologue

I still remember the first time I met him. It was my childhood friends birthday party and I literally knew no one else in the room. Apparently neither did he, not that that seemed to bother him. There was a certain tranquillity about him. It was like he was happy to just be there, to just exist. And for some reason, that fascinated me. And so while I sat on the couch in the corner all alone, it seemed that people watching, and in particular, watching him, seemed to be the most efficient use of my time.

I mean, it's not that I didn't have any friends at all, because I did. In fact, it was my own sociable nature that had led me to this very situation. You see, I was the type who made friends for life. While most people would slowly drift away from their school best friends, I would hang on to those relationships. For some reason, this was important to me and although I would usually tell people it was because of my inherent sociable nature, I knew deep down that it could only be attributed to my real fear of being alone.

And so at the prime age of twenty one, a year which legally marks an individual as a fully fledged adult, I found myself jumping from party to party. I was always that reliable friend. I was the one who would be there no matter what, who wouldn't miss your party for anything else. I was the sober one in the corner, who would take care of you when you had perhaps a little too much to drink. I was the one who would stand up and give the always dreaded 21st speech, always boasting about the good times we had shared, whilst also reminiscing on a couple of the slightly embarrassing, yet family appropriate, things that you had done in the past. I was that person who was always just happy, and that never had anything but a smile on her face. That person was just me. I was safe. Reliable.

And so I would end up in situations just like this, where I would sit in the corner and watch others having a ball. And by half way through the night, this would even become fun. I'd meet the odd couple of friends, heck even family, and I'd share random parts of my life in a lame attempt to look like I'm really enjoying myself. And once we ran out of conversation, I'd go back to my seat in the corner and pull out my phone to pretend that I was texting someone. In reality, we all knew that I was deliberately starting a conversation with another friend, simply desperate to keep myself entertained.

But for some reason, this day was different. I let my phone vibrate on my lap, not paying it any attention at all. Rather, I found myself starting at the boy at the bar. There was something about him that intrigued me. To this day, I don't actually know what it was that drew me to him. Maybe it was his dark features, like his black wavy hair and his strong jaw line which accentuated his deep blue eyes. Or maybe it was his tall frame or the clothes that he would wear so effortlessly. Maybe it was the fact that he just looked like he didn't care about a thing in the world, because when you looked directly into his eyes, it was like he was in some distant place. It was like he was never fully there, never fully living in the present, and that in itself appealed to me. Why live in the present when you can be somewhere even better?

And so now we fast forward a year later and I was still chasing that dream, never being quite satisfied with what I had made of myself.