As the door slammed behind me I heard the repeated warning to "be home by midnight Helena!" from my mother.

My worn out and beat up, almost knee high converse shoes flopped open at the tops reveling the green inside as I rushed down the porch stairs. The night air cut through me sharp as the cleanest edged knife and another gust of fall wind had me shivering in my short jean shorts and pull over black sweatshirt.

I wandered the dark and deserted streets, meandering farther and farther away form my house. I had no real intention of going somewhere, all I wanted to do was to walk the simple spread of my neighborhood but my feet began to trudge along almost automatically in their own direction and soon I was walking along the familiar main road as cars whipped by, blowing my straightened blond hair into my bright blue eyes and getting caught in my mascara coated lashes.

I turned into the small parking lot of the local Starbucks just as the first corpulent drops of crystal rain began to plummet from the clouded heavens. I turned my golden tanned face up to the powers of the downpour and let the rain wash away all of the memories of the last time I saw him here, in this very parking lot, when I said goodbye two years ago.

o)O(o

I had been sitting here for a while, sipping at the slowly growing cold coffee. One of the Starbucks girls kept asking me if I wanted more but I kept turning her away. The coffee was not the real reason I was here; no, I was waiting, hoping that she would appear again, like a beautiful memory emerging from the shadows of the evening.

Almost every night or so the same girl would plod in to this coffee shop's parking lot and just sit on the curb for an hour or so, just sitting. Maybe she was thinking about something, someone, maybe even about me but I knew that was too good to be true.

It had been two years since the last time I saw her and on that day, she had told me she would hate me forever. We were both 15 and best friends but my father was in the military and we were forever moving so one day it was "have a good day at school son" and the next "lets get packing". We had stayed in this town for three years, longer then most places, but that day came, just as I knew it would.

I called her and we agreed to meet in this very parking lot to say goodbye. As we hugged for one last time, I bent my neck just a bit so that I could whisper, "I love you Helena, I really do." I remember her face, streaked with tears from her sapphire eyes yet still as gorgeous as ever, turning up to mine and her next words shattering my heart as she screamed them, pushing me away "if you loved me Taylor, you wouldn't leave me all alone! I hate you! I'll hate you forever! I never wanna see your face again!"

But here I was, wishing she would notice me and at the same time, hoping she would not.