The streets were empty of course, but she felt even emptier, more hollowed out and darker than the blacktop with the yellow lines spreading out from beneath her feet. The streets were just temporarily empty, since it was five in the morning on a Sunday and most people were laying warmly in their beds. There was something nice about how the emptiness around her wouldn't last. It wasn't permanent.
       The girl blinked her wide eyes up and down the street, ignoring the flickering lamp above her. It did a poor job at illuminating her surroundings but it had no problem lighting up her pale skin in the night, making her feel like a ghost.

What a cruel joke.

The sky was changing above her, the man in the moon slowly fading as the black started bleeding into blue. The stars were still out though, shining brilliantly above her, forever out of her reach.

She took a few steps forward and looked over the metal railing of the bridge. It just came up to her waist, cold and smooth underneath her skinny fingers. The drop below was only about eight feet, but the rushing water somehow made it feel like a million. It made her heart beat in her chest even faster, an adrenaline rushing through her veins like the drugs he had put into his. It was an exhilarating thing to feel so alive. It was the first time she had felt like she was actually breathing in a while.

And that was what she felt, alive and free. Her curling black hair blew in the breeze around her face, tangling together until she was fighting it off herself, an invisible beast that was trying to drag her back home, encircling her wrists only to drag her back to hell. She wasn't ready to leave though.

Footsteps sounded behind her, soft and gentle ones that just clicked enough to echo in her ears. If she hadn't found them so familiar, she probably would have whipped around in fright, or taken off in the other direction. Instead, these particular footsteps, the same ones that had left their prints embedded into her memory, sent chills down her arms and all the way to her toes. She smiled, turning around.

He stood a few feet away from her, stunning blonde hair shining in what was left of the moon light and bright eyes that begun to fade from her remembering of him. He looked the same, but then he looked different. His mouth was still his mouth, his body still his body, but his shoulders no longer slumped, as if the weight he had carried all his life had released him. He moved differently as well, like he was awake for the first time. Who knew that in death, life would become you?

She squinted her eyes at him, moving closer, just to make sure. Of course it wasn't actually him, but any version was fine with her. She listened to her boots slow on the black top until she was standing directly in front of him, until he was looking down at her with a grin she had missed so very much. It reminded her of the beginning, when everything was bright and they were happy. Usually these memories would make her ache, but she wanted to be done aching and something told her that it was okay to think about it.

He reached out, tucking a curl behind her ear softly. “You look like you've seen a ghost.” He breathed jokingly.

She shook her head, almost rolling her eyes. “Well, can you blame me?”

It wasn't like they hadn't met this way before, in her subconscious where he managed to slip in and steal a few minutes. It had become harder and harder each time though, and the man upstairs was growing impatient. He had been given a chance to make his peace with his former life, and his time had come to an end.

“This'll be the last time,” He whispered, his voice carrying off in the wind.

She nodded, somehow already knowing. “Why now?”

“You're almost healed. You're forgetting about me more and more each day and moving on-”

She cut the boy off, almost becoming angry. “I am not! That's not fair to take you away, I'm not healed yet.” she protested.

He smiled at her stubbornness, one of his favorite qualities that put a certain flame in her eye. “You are, though. Today you threw your head back in complete bliss, laughing with your old friends and smiling with a peacefulness that's been lost for a long time. You lost yourself for a few moments and you were happy. That's the start to rebuilding yourself, you're putting the pieces back together.”

“I'm not a damn puzzle.” Her voice rose unsteadily in the night. Although she fought with him, fought for him to stay, there was something deep inside her that urged her to be free, to let go of her own weight so that she could walk straight again.

The boy closed his eyes sadly. “I know you're not, you're more like a bridge. One that's been burned and now being rebuilt. Call it whatever you want, but you haven't cried for me in weeks. You haven't woke up from nightmares screaming because you couldn't save me. It's getting better.”

“That doesn't mean that it hurts any less when I let it. I get punished for getting myself back together?” She asked calmly, simply wondering.

“You get set free.” He muttered sincerely. He ignored to knot coiling up at the bottom of his stomach, one he had held off since the first time. It was hard to leave someone you loved behind, someone who was going to grow up and old without you by their side, without picking them up when times got hard and sharing life's greatest adventures together. They were going to travel the world together once they hit eighteen, which had come and gone in the months after his death. They were going to grow up and get out of the old small town that they had grown out of years before. It was hard to let your future go, especially one that was promised to be with a girl like her.

“I'm afraid.” She admitted, her eyes becoming shiny like blue diamonds. She moved closer to him, so that she could smell his scent of lemons and rosemary and feel his warmth that she was terrified of forgetting. She wanted to soak him up like a sponge, every last detail, from his crooked jawline to his long eyelashes, to his soft voice. She wanted to remember everything.

He took her in his arms, holding her against him. Her fingers knotted through his hair, chin resting in the crook between his neck and shoulder. It was a shame two people who fit perfectly couldn't be together.

As she breathed him in, each savoring each other, he released her reluctantly. He could feel his presence growing weaker already as the sky above them changed too quickly.

He cleared his throat, looking her in the eyes and forcing a smile. “Do you remember that night, when you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up? We were driving home from dinner-”

“I remember.” The girl said gently.

Of course she did. “Well, if I would have grown up in some other perfect world, I would have liked to be with you.”

She crossed her arms around her chest to keep herself from shaking. “It could have been a perfect world, huh?”

He grinned, not one of mischievous nature, but one of loss and sorrow and new beginnings. “There has to be one out there. A better one, and you'll find it someday.”

She wanted to tell him that she wanted to find it now, that it wasn't fair she had to wait. She wanted to cling to him and beg him not to go, win the tug of war between her and the next life. But all of these were actions were pointless and sometimes you have to lose a couple battles in order to win the war.

She ran a slender finger down his cheek, tracing the skin she would miss underneath her fingertips. “We had a good one, didn't we?”

He nodded, kissing the top of her hand with his lips and placing it back down to her side. “We sure did.”

He spun around slowly, turning the back of his leather jacket and wild hair to her. His footsteps started walking away, taking their echoes with them.

Before he could disappear, she called out a goodbye that they had used ever since the first day they had met, one that was not final in it's sadness, but ending in its rest. “I'll be seeing you,” She called, her sweet voice carrying to him in the wind.

He paused, a brilliant smile on his face. He turned around, looking back at her, and waved. “I'll be seeing you.” He said back.

And then the boy disappeared like a flash of lightening, part of this world one second, and then another the next.

* * *

She woke to the sunset peaking into her eyelids. She blinked awake to the shimmering dew littering the lawn around her and the birds singing above her head in the trees. She rose from the ground, brushing herself off and picking up the leather jacket that had served as a pillow the night before.

She stretched her long arms above her head, sighing when her body loosened and her senses awakened too. She breathed in the fresh smell of morning and listened deeply to the music of the earth, reveling in the brilliance of being alive. She felt alive.

Before turning away and heading home, only to pack her things and start her search for her perfect world, she knelt down in front of the gravestone who had been her company for many nights. It was fresh and new compared to most of the other stones in the graveyard, but he was no longer there with it. She didn't feel him hovering anymore, she didn't feel his breath lingering in the air. She felt him inside her.

When she arrived home to an empty house, she stuffed a couple duffel bags with her things, packed up all the money she had saved since she was a young girl, and hopped into her car. She drove away with the windows down and music turned up so loudly, she was lost to the town that was just too small for her now.

Just like this world had been a little too small for him.