I check the time on my phone. It’s 3.14AM.
     “S***,” I whisper under my breath. I’m currently sitting in an empty field in the middle of the ---- night next to my best friend because I can’t stop thinking about a boy who left me 5 months ago. I’m f***ing pathetic, I think to myself. I lay my head back in the grass and put a cigarette in my mouth. Arlo is still sitting with the bottle in his hand. We’ve only had up to half. He sighs and looks up at the sky.
     “You know Xael, you can’t keep being sad,” he chided. I just close my eyes and take another hit from the cigarette. All of a sudden I’m hit by a memory.
     I’m holding his hand as we walk into a small café. He sits me down across from him. He sits down and holds my hand again. He stares into my eyes and coos to me how much he loves me and how he thinks I’m the prettiest girl in the world.
     I feel a tear slip out of my eye. I grit my teeth. F***ing liar, I think to my self. Arlo lays down next to me and lights a cigarette for himself.
     “Why do you care for him so much?” he wondered out loud. I keep my eyes closed and take another drag.
     “He was the light of my life when I was surrounded by complete darkness,” I divulge. In complete silence, you can hear my heart break. I sit up and take the bottle from Arlo and chug it. Arlo sits up and just stares at me. He knows me well enough to realise that I need to do these things sometimes. He knew about my previous break-ups and how I thought he was going to be different. Arlo was a great friend. He pats my back.
     “Hey man, you can’t just hang over this forever, let’s take a walk,” he suggests as he stands up. He holds a hand down for me and helps me up. I hold the bottle in my hand and take another drag from the cigarette. I feel another tear slip down my cheek but I wipe it away. I know that if I let myself, I would cry rivers that could stretch across the globe, but instead I took another drag. I look at the grass and it looks wavy. Arlo taps my arm and we begin to walk. Once we hit asphalt I hand him back the bottle. He takes a swig and we keep walking. It’s nice to just walk in the early hours of the morning on an empty road. It feels like it could go on forever. I want to stay here and walk down the road until I reach the tip of the world. I want to keep walking until I fall into space. Into infinity. I just want to keep going until I no longer exist. Until I can no longer feel this way. Until I can forget that this ever happened. That I’m me. I pull out another cigarette and light it up. I look over at Arlo and he has a hard look on his face. I feel terrible for dragging him out here and helping me out when I’m sad.
     “Hey Arlo,” I begin to say, but he interrupted me.
     “No, Xael, there’s no need to thank me,” he assured as he hugs me. I begin to cry. I let the wall that blocked my feelings crumble brick by brick. I couldn’t hold it back anymore. The emptiness, the pain, the sadness that I felt within my chest poured out. I felt the Earth collapse on top of me and I can’t do anything. I just keep crying.
     “Why did I risk it?” I question between sobs. My shoulders feel like an Earthquake.
     “Hey man,” he said as he pat my back. “Sometimes you just gotta say f*** it and take the risk man,” he said as he put me at arms length. He didn’t put my at arms length because he didn’t want the hug, but because he wanted to look me in the eye so I would know he’s being serious. Arlo does that when I get sad. “Life isn’t meant for waiting around or playing it safe. There are going to be moments where everything seems so f***ed up, and there are going to be moments where you feel like the world has no end,” I nod my head as he lets me go to pull out and light a cigarette. He lights one for me too and hands it to me.
     “Why do we have to risk it though,” I babbled as I feel the tears come back. “Why do we put ourselves through such pain? Why do we end up regretting things that we once wanted?” He takes another drag and puts his hand on my shoulder and lowers himself to my eye level.
     “We regret the things we once wanted because during that time we didn’t know the bad that they could do to us. What’s the point of life without danger, without risk? We live for such a brief moment, but we die forever. Why would you limit to yourself? Everything is temporary. Just go ahead and let yourself feel those things, because one minute you’re smelling pancakes and the next you’re 6 feet under wondering why you didn’t do more s*** in your life.” I nod again.
     “Okay,” I whisper. He nods back at me and softly hits my cheek. We begin to walk again and I clean my face off. He hands me the bottle and I take a gulp. I hold my hand to my lips because it burns as it goes down. I hand it back to him and take another drag from my cigarette. “Maybe I should just date women,” I suggest, trying to lighten up the mood. Arlo laughs.
     “Hey, I’m the gay one here!” he boasted. I just nodded and smiled because I’m too tired to say I know. We walk down the road a bit and I zip my sweater because I start to feel cold. I take one last drag of my cigarette before I throw it ahead of me and put it out. I’ll be okay, I think to myself and rub my arms to warm myself up.