(This was a dream I’d had. My tenses may vary at times, please excuse that.)

The concert was boring. Why I had decided to go to it was beyond me. Some people seemed to be enjoying themselves, but I was not one of them. The spotlight hurt my already sensitive eyes. I had to leave.

I walked out of the concert hall and into the cool night beyond. What would I do for the time being? I decided to take a walk. To where, I did not know.

I had hardly taken two steps when I heard someone behind me call my name. I turned around, and there she was. I did not know that she had come to the concert too. But she had. And she had seemingly found it equally as boring as I had. We always had similar tastes.

She came up to me and asked me what I was doing. I told her that I did not really know, I was just taking an aimless walk around the place. She did not respond verbally, but I knew she would join me on my walk. Such was the understanding the two of us had.

We wandered about aimlessly in the night, eventually finding ourselves climbing the stairs to the back entrance of the hall. I heard another voice coming from below. We both looked down and there he was.

Oh, how I hated him. He who hurt her so much. And yet she would keep running back to him. Blindly. I would always try my best to let her see differently. She often would. She would always tell me that she would take it no longer. But she always lied. She always went back. And when she got hurt again, she would be confused. There I would be, comforting her. Being there for her.

But she would never see me. Only him. When she was happy, it was with him. When she was hurt, it was about him. I hated it.

He was not going to hurt her tonight. I was going to make sure of it. He climbed the steps and started to talk to us. I was not a happy man, and I showed my displeasure.

“Don’t you have somewhere to go? Like home, maybe?”

He looked at me, confused.

“I don’t want you around tonight. So…leave.”

I could hardly believe what I was saying. He had never heard such a show of emotion toward him from me before. On the surface we had always been friends. But such was the nature of our friendship. It only existed in one layer. There were so many other layers that he had yet to see from me. He had seen a crack in that first layer now, though.

He looked at me, still confused, before he said goodbye and left. I did not know why he accepted defeat that easily. But he did. And I was happy at that.

When he was gone I looked at her. Maybe? Would I have a chance? I would not know unless I tried. I put my arm around her and pulled her closer to me. She looked up at me.

“What about your girlfriend?”

“What about her? She’s not here, is she?”

And that was it. She relaxed in my arms and we sat on the steps and watched the night sky. I tried to cherish that moment, because I knew that they would not be happening often.

I knew that once I left, she would go running back to him. But this time...she would be the cause of the hurt.

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