The beginning of the year has never ceased to bring out the best in people.
And as my friends circled around me in the crowded street, I searched the crowd of faces. Our shoulders brushed due to the packaged state that we stood in under the darkened sky. I shivered in my winter jacket, pulling the collar up over my mouth to protect my lungs from the cold. The depth of the air never ceased to extract the excited breath from our lips, visibly rising into the cold air. I searched the faces, one by one, looking for the one person I wanted to spend this moment with. But face after face, they were no where to be found.

And the seconds passed too quickly for me to count, the countdown beginning to scream through the square. The streets brightly lit as everyone looked to the sky, waiting for the moment to arrive. My friends, in their woolen coats and scarves, were screaming down the seconds as I scanned the crowed frantically. So many faces blending together in magnificent mayhem as I attempted to recover the one person I wanted to be there with me. Slowly, the people around me began to jump and dance, still screaming the seconds into the sky as if the sky would shout them back. I felt myself tipping and swaying with them as I searched. One of the group shouted out to me, reaching for my hand as I was pulled away by the current of the moving bodies. Suddenly, a hand gripped mine and pulled me foreward into a pocket of brief space. Glorious space in a moment where I could hardly breathe. The firm, warm hand pulled harder so I spun into the owner, grasping the strong shoulder in hopes of not falling over and getting trampled to an untimely death.

And it was him. The one I had been looking for. As his soft dark hair brushed against my cheek, he murmured something in my half frozen ear, but it was blocked out by the roar of the crowd. Cheering grew like a wave through every face in the street, gazing up to the sky where the great, silver ball slowly sunk from the sky. But I couldn't hear them. I didn't need to. All I could hear was his thickening breath as he took my other hand and pressed it into his, our faces inches apart. His emerald eyes sparkled the reflection of every star and every light around us in the moment we were held together by what seemed a force that I could never begin to explain.

And as just as I had begun to inhale his deep scent, his lips let mine in a moment of bliss. It was warm and comforting, everything I had expected it to be. Or rather, unexpected it to be. His fingers coarsed through my hair and I squeezed his hand, never wanting to let go. I silently wished our hands could stay intertwined forever, even as he slowly pulled away from me. A moment suspended in time just as I had wanted but never expected to get. He was everything I had ever wanted, everything I would ever need. I had hardly expected it to come in the middle of an unfarmilliar place with unfarmilliar people. He was all I needed. He took my breath away and stored it away, replacing it with his own. He was my lungs, he helped me breathe.

And as the fireworks sparkled overhead the new year broke, right there in Times Square. He kissed me once more, just beside my mouth. The emerald green eyes that I had once wanted so badly and now had stared back into my soul through a row of thick lashes. His skin flawlessly glowed in the colourful glimmer of the fireworks above as we gazed at each other through the light snow. A moment. A moment that I wanted and needed for so long.

"I'll never love anyone but you," he screamed as the crowd swept him away from me, our hands slowly pulling apart. And as I watched his beautiful face disappear into the mess of people, all I could think of was how much I could hardly wait to get my hand back into his. Because I know I found myself that night, in him. The beginning of the new year, I found not only love; but also life.