"This is me." Ava spoke, looking to our right.

"Is it?" I asked, carefully letting her down from my back.

Nodding, she took several steps forward before stopping and then turning. "Your knuckles are bruised and you have that cut on your cheek. Come in, I'll clean them up for you."

Even if she had been my second chance, who was to say that I had even wanted one? Ava stood in the same spot, expectantly waiting for an answer that would have likely never come out of my mouth. I had wanted to give her a clear rejection - a rejection to what was a clear-cut pass at me, and her offer to enter her home.

"I'm f--"

"Ava?" a burly voice questioned her with a raised brow. His stare soon turned to me. "Did he do this?"

Turning my head slightly, I saw a man who did not, in any way, reflect his voice. He was all bone, almost to the point of looking sickly. Standing at about the same height as me, the only thing that had been halfway intimidating about him were all of his tattoos. From his jaw down, there wasn't an inch of skin not touched by ink.

"No, Dad." Ava spoke. "I got hit in the face with a ball, he only carried me home."

Without being outright disrespectful, I began to walk forward. It didn't feel right, none of it. This was a girl I had only just met, yet I had punched someone for her, I had carried her all the way to her home. It wasn't her at all, it was me. I was fucked up, a man who she shouldn't have even been close to. She needed to be around better people than me, otherwise she would have ended up just as broken as I was.

Everyone I was around, everyone I was close to, every last damn fucking thing I touched was destroyed, broken beyond repair. I shouldn't have been around anyone, I shouldn't have had gotten close to anything, I shouldn't have touched a thing. I shouldn't have been born, I shouldn't have existed on this planet.

I should have died that day.

What I would have given to go back and switch places with her. Anything, I would have given anything to go back to that day to die. If I had been the one to die that day, I wouldn't have needed to feel the overwhelming cruelty that reality had served to me on a silver platter time and time again. I wouldn't have needed to feel anything at all, absolutely nothing. I would have been able to disappear, vanish like I had never existed at all.

At least that way, Kylie could have been truly happy. She would have been able to meet a respectable human being, she would have gotten married and had children. She should have been able to live a life with someone should she had truly loved. Instead, I was the one forced to live with myself, forced to live with the loss of the only person, the only thing I had loved.

"Where you going, man?" the deep voice echoed throughout the quiet streets of the neighborhood.

I turned my head to see her ink embedded father jogging towards me. I stopped, waiting for him to reach me. Behind him, back at their home, Ava stood - looking, biting her lip in wonder of what her father was going to do. I thought I had made it clear, both to her and her father, that I hadn't wanted to stay around. Yet, he still came running after me.

"Home, I suppose." I answered his original question.

I could hear myself mentally laughing at me. What home? Surely, I had a roof to sleep under and clothes on my back, I had a lot of things - but, in the end, they were all just materialistic bullshit. That "home" lacked the one thing that would have made it feel like a home, and that one thing was love. In that place, love was void, lost and never to be found - cold, heartless, and self-centered.

My home, in essence, had been the streets. While love, likewise, had been non-existent on the streets, the streets themselves reciprocated my feelings, so to speak. It was my Neverland, my Holy land . They accepted my disastrous self, they never lied, hurt or judged. Everything was external, shown through eyes and fists.

"You helped my daughter out, the least we can do is have you for dinner." he smiled. "Come on, my wife makes a great steak."

"No, I couldn't intrude like that." I smiled, barely holding down my facade.

"You can and you will." he put his arm around my shoulder.

---

The rest of the afternoon passed with me on a couch, talking with Ava's father. Finally, he was asked to help with the food being cooked, giving me a chance to step away. Making my way through their house, I finally found their, admittedly huge, backyard and stepped through the sliding glass door. It was quiet, so dark and quiet. The silence had become tranquil. Serene, but only intermittent.

I pulled out a cigarette pack that had been holding a joint inside of it. Pulling it out and lighting it, I exhaled the thick smoke and let it float in front of me, undisturbed. I took another hit and let my head fall back as I heard the sliding door open. It was the softness of her footsteps that had given her identity away.

"I'm sorry...Once he finds someone he likes, he just doesn't stop talking." she released a mild sigh. "Um, anyways, my dad said he could smell it a mile away and told me to bring this out for you."

As I opened my eyes, I looked to the right and saw what was likely the weirdest sight I had ever seen in my life. There she stood, planted to the ground with a long, beatific smile on her face, and of all things possible, a huge bong in her right hand. I couldn't have helped it, I just had to laugh. You could say that it had been a laugh that I had desperately needed.

"Seriously, why are smoking that pussy shit?" Ava hit the joint out of my hand and pointed the bong at me. "You know how it is...ladies first."

Out of spite, I took the biggest hit I could have possibly taken. After holding it in for several or so seconds, I exhaled the smoke in her face. She hadn't expected it to come her way, and as a result, I had the pleasure of hearing a cute, almost chipmunk-like cough.

"Asshole." she smiled as she took the bong and lighter from me. "By the way, this stuff is going to put you on your ass. Even now it still does."

For a single moment, everything on my mind had disappeared. I had truly enjoyed myself for what felt like the first time in forever. However, even if all of it had momentarily vanished, I knew that it was still floating somewhere in the back of mind, hiding until it was ready to take me down again - just like it always did.

"Next Sunday..." Ava murmured.

"What about it?"

"Next Sunday we're having a small barbecue with some friends and family in celebration of my mom opening her shop." she explained. "Will you come?"

There it was, life had just hit me in the face once again. Just when I had thought something good may have been forming for me, it decided to come back and take me down like always. It wasn't Ava, nor was it her invitation - it was the day she wanted me to come. It was as though lady luck was in front of me, laughing in my pitiful face.

Next Sunday had been the anniversary of Kylie's death.