h2>Dating : Long Lost Friend.
She had once known how to code.
Only through the whispering winds of the summer nights was there any respite. And it was into the winds that she fled with the elusive destination of an endless summer alone to guide her.
She felt broken and trapped within herself like a brittle leaf scraping the cobble wood of an abandoned town. She felt a sense of relief with every promise broken and all tethers to humanity, when severed, gave her a lightness of step.
But for all of her running, she found that he followed her, like a hooded phantom. She inhaled, chased back whiskey and even pushed needles in her arms. All to no avail. He was still there. But if she destroyed herself then who was there left to torment?
Fall, on its deathbed, chased her south of New England’s winter warnings. She found herself in Virginia Beach, tending a bar with a smile that never reached her eyes, pouring out drinks to patrons who didn’t care enough to wonder why.
Two years had passed since he started visiting her through the vaulted night sky. She’d quit drugs. She still had a sister.
Her weekends were spent waiting for feeling to return by the ocean where its vast capacities brought her lost mother and memories of her childhood in on the salted breeze.
Christmas morning. In front of her was a cup of coffee steaming in the mornings cool light. To the right of the mug lay a closed laptop. A coworker, a UVA dropout with a Ritalin addiction and a surfboard, sold it to her. His ill formed plans urgently acted upon ensured the sale was cheap.
An admixture of nostalgia and excitement flooded her staring at the Big D and the Kids Table sticker on atop the cool black gamers machine. With excited hands, she opened it and the keys pulsed different colors before her, waiting.
Her pulse was high. Click, clack, sip, search, her fingers moved expertly exercising a skill long since forgotten. Enter.
After a moments pause “Hello World!” blinked before her in small green print in a black terminal window and, unknowingly, she smiled.
