when i'm alone

He was so incredibly blasted, he felt like an astronaut. Roaming untethered through space, staring into the great beyond with no idea of how he was going to get home.

Hours ago, all he could feel was euphoria. Happy, loved and wanted by the world. Like he’d escaped reality, gravity. Escaped consequence. 

But the comedown was rearing its head. Not all at once, but enough to make everything feel fuzzy. Distant. Uncomfortable.

His skin felt too tight, his jaw ached. His thoughts kept slipping through his fingers before he could hold onto them. 

Fuck, he really needed a cigarette.

4AM felt haunted. 

So many bodies around him, swaying rhythmically in bliss, cheap sunglasses covering glazed over eyes. But for him, something had shifted. Everything felt stranger. Everything was rotting away from the inside out.

He'd lost his friends at some point. 

An hour ago, maybe even two. 

Who knew.

Every time he thought he spotted one of them in the crowd, the lights would flash and they'd become somebody else.  

Strangers. Everyone felt like strangers now.

Everyone except her.

He noticed her standing across the room, watching him.

At first, he thought she was just another face in the crowd. Someone staring into space while rolling too hard to realise it. But then the lights flashed, and she was still there, looking at him. Watching. 

He couldn't make out her face, not really. The distance between them was too great. The lighting was too erratic. Every time he tried to focus on her features, they seemed to blur apart again. The fuzzy feeling distorts everything.

Something about her felt familiar. Not enough to place. Just enough to bother him. The dark hair, the tilt of her head. The hint of a smile. A memory sat lodged somewhere deep inside his chest. A reminder of something. Someone. Of a photograph he'd once kept tucked inside his wallet until the corners frayed. 

He should’ve looked away. Forgotten about her, tried to find his friends. But he couldn’t help thinking about her. And every time he looked in that direction, there she was. Watching, motionless in the middle of hundreds of dancing bodies. 

The crowd shifted around him in waves. Bodies colliding. Arms raised toward the ceiling. Sweat and smoke and flashing lights. 

No matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t make out her face. His gaze kept sliding off her features. His mind playing tricks on him.

Christ.

He needed water. Nicotine. Sleep. Something. Anything. 

He dragged a hand across his face. Water first, maybe a cigarette. Then he’d find his friends. Get out of here, away from the mindfuck. The comedown was making him weird, obsessed with a girl he couldn’t even see properly. 

He shoved his way through the crowd, shoulder clipping strangers as he headed toward the bar, the bass followed him everywhere. A relentless pulse vibrating through his ribs, normally comforting, now adding to his feeling of being unsettled.

He ordered a bottle of water and practically inhaled half of it in one go. Cold liquid spilled down his chin. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. 

His reflection stared back at him from a darkened window nearby. Sweaty, pale, pupils blown. 

A hand lands on his shoulder making his entire body jolt. And for one stupid, impossible second, he thinks it's her. But when he spins around, it's just some guy in a bucket hat trying to squeeze past him toward the bar

"Sorry, mate." 

His heart feels like it’s beating too fast again. Tense. He unscrews the bottle cap and takes another long drink, forcing himself to focus on something real. Cold plastic beneath his fingers. Water. Music. The familiar sting of sweat drying on his skin. Anything else. Anything to stop the hallucinations. 

He was tired, he needed sleep. That was it. He kept repeating that to himself. A comforting thought, one that settles him enough to finally glance back toward the dance floor. 

And there she is, still watching him. 

His stomach drops. 

She’s closer now. Close enough that he can make out the shape of her clothes. A dark jacket hanging loose from narrow shoulders. Dark hair falling past them. The same slight tilt of her head. Watching. Waiting. 

His fingers tighten around the bottle. 

No, no, no. This wasn’t real. This was his brain. Everything was fine, everything was normal.

The thought feels less convincing the longer he stares.

The crowd surges, a group of dancers pass between them. She disappears from sight and it calms him. Just the drugs, she’s not here. She can’t be here. 

The bodies clear, and there she is again. Closer. Still watching, still waiting. 

His heart stumbles painfully against his ribs, because he knows why she feels so familiar. 

No, no. His grip tightens around the water bottle hard enough that the plastic crumples beneath his fingers. This isn’t real. This is just some fucked-up trick of the light.

His chest felt hollow. Like something inside him had suddenly dropped away. "No way," he whispered, words vanishing beneath the music.

The girl smiled, small and soft. The way she always used to.

And suddenly he wasn't standing in a warehouse anymore. He was twenty-two and lying in the grass beside a lake at three in the morning, sharing cigarettes outside parties. He was listening to her laugh from the passenger seat. He was watching her steal his hoodies and pretending like he hadn’t noticed.

Memory after memory struck him like a physical blow.

Years collapsed into seconds.

His vision blurred as the crowd pulsed around him. The music warped, just like his mind.

And for the first time all night he could almost make out her face. Almost, but not quite.

His stomach twisted. He already knew what he would see. 

The same face he'd spent hours staring at in photographs afterward. The same face he'd traced with shaking fingers. The same face he'd watched disappear behind a coffin. The same face he'd spent the last three years trying not to think about.

The girl took a single step forward.