Hello!

Today is another short story day – this inspiration for this one came from Google Image searching ‘photography’ and finding this photo.

I hope you like it!

I didn’t mind rain. At this time of night, in a city like this, the rain sent a flurry of monotone umbrellas into the early evening sky or everyone scurried into the nearest cafe or fish and chip shop for shelter.

I’d pull my hood up over my head, push my hands deeper into my pockets and carry on walking – my scuffed shoes letting the puddles seep into my socks. I didn’t mind really because I had a semi-heated flat to return to.

Tonight was different. It was a Friday night – everyone was at home with their families or loved ones, out for the night trying to forget the week or somewhere in between. I felt like I was the only one out in the city – I felt like a stranger in a familiar world.

My hands were somehow deeper in my pockets, my chest felt heavy, biting my lip to try and prevent tears from running with the rain down my cheeks.

I paused, looking down the street at the false-yellow illumination of the street lamps on the rain, splashing in the puddles that always seemed to find the soles of my feet. The lights blurred with the tears in my eyes and I blinked them away, looking down at my shoes, somewhat soggy.

I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to go out. I didn’t want to move from this spot. I wasn’t content standing here, letting my god damn emotions blur the lights of the city and feeling the rain soak through to me skin but I was numb. Numb was the best I was going to get at the moment.

The numbness should have intensified – the longer I stood, the more detached I should have felt from myself and what happened but it didn’t. I felt more. The longer I stood in the rain the more tears leaked down my cheeks; the more I thought about going home, the more my chest ached; every time I tried not to think, a thousand inevitable thoughts surrounded me. 

I felt claustrophobic in an open space. I couldn’t escape it. I couldn’t escape inside my own head.

My chest clenched, whatever creature claimed my heart let it’s fingers tease my throat, slowly tightening, stealing my breath and forcing more tears.

“Hey,” There was a hand in the small of my back and I jumped. “What are you doing out here? You’re getting soaked.” 

I was turned and I saw him – his hair that desperately needed a cut that was beginning to stick to his forehead with the rain and his bare arms with goosebumps. He draped a coat over my shoulders, trying to pull me back into the flat but I wouldn’t, couldn’t move.

He sighed, trying to mask the stutter of his jaw and his shivering fingers. He forced a smile, his hand running from my shoulders down my arms to my hands, interlocking our fingers. “It’s going to be okay. It’s not okay now and that’s why I’m here – to look after you – but it will be okay. Things will get better again.”

“You’re here?” I whimpered. He wasn’t meant to be here. He was meant to be in a different city making his career.

“For you, I’m always here. Come on.” And I let him pull me inside.

Now I was numb, completely incapable of doing anything. He made me take off my soaked clothes and found some clean pyjamas for me to wear. Wrapping my hair in a towel and sitting me down on the sofa tucked under a blanket with a mug of tea in my red-cold fingers, he left for a moment to return wearing a pair of checked pyjama pants and a tight muscle tee.

He settled himself under the blanket, grabbing his own mug of coffee and playing a movie that he’d already set up.

He was always there and I always needed him. I couldn’t have loved him more.

This is quite a lot like the kind of stories I write on my 5SOS blog but much more respectable because it’s not about some guy in a band. I love writing these short stories but I limit myself to one a week for the sake of variety, so do let me know if you want more or less! Comments are always well appreciated.

Thanks for reading,

Sophie xx



That’s where you’ll find me:
My GoFundMe Page for my trip to Ecuador: http://gofundme.com/iwz21w
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