#wandering aimlessly on my bike at night is what I'm meant to do

[shy-electron]

hot takes

[rowdyhughesy]

Beside you - Jamie Drysdale

“ you feel like home, and everywhere I’ve never been. All at once “

- butterflies rising

Word count: 1K

She’d fallen in love with Jamie Drysdale the summer of her junior year of high school. He was pale skin, freckles dusted on the apples of his cheeks, dark hair and piercing blue eyes.

It was a blur of hours spent in his backyard. Talking about what they hoped senior year would bring. Laugher and big smiles as the two rode their bikes down the streets of Torontos suburbs.

“What do you wanna be when you grow up?” Jamie’s voice had sliced through the comfortable silence like a knife. The darkness consuming the four walls of his bedroom as they lay under the blankets on his bed. Legs tangled together and one of her hands running through the strands of hair on his head. Jamie laying on top of her, the side of his face pressed against her chest listening to the rhythmic beating of her heart.

“I think I’d like to be a teacher. Kindergarten. What about you? I know you wanna be a hockey player but what if?” Jamie hums in thought.

“If I can’t play hockey I’d be a coach. Teach little kids how to play, watch them grow to love the game like I do.” The girl smiles at that, an image playing in her head of Jamie teaching young boys and girls how to skate. How to shoot the puck on net and grow their confidence step by step.

What nobody tells you when you fall in love at the age of 16 is that with love, with love comes your first heartbreak.

When we both fall asleep, underneath the same sky

To the beat of our hearts at the same time

So close but so far away

Can you hear me?

Tossing and turning on her bed her mind goes back to the freckled boy. She wished he could hear her thoughts wherever he is right now.

The very same freckled boy was laying in his bed, a newly familiar bedroom in Pennsylvania. Thinking of the girl back home in Toronto and how he left his heart back there with her.

“I wish you could hear me right now Y/N.”

My heart wants to come home

I wish I was, I wish I was

Beside you

She watches the NHL draft when she knows it’s his year. Tears pricking at her eyes when his name gets called. Fingers itching to send a text. Tell him how proud she’s feeling in this moment but she doesn’t. A small voice in her head telling her he’s forgotten all about her. That the two kids that fell in love is just a distant memory now.

Heart aching, longing to be back to that summer. To be with the person who still two years later holds every tiny piece of her heart in his hands.

A heart and soul that wants to come home. Home being Jamie’s arms and the way he smiled everytime they locked eyes. The comfort of his presence when he walked into a room. Pulling people in without even trying, like a siren song to sailors in the ocean. Captivating.

There is no home like the one next to Jamie and god if she doesn’t want to go back home when she sees him on the tv. Even more beautiful now than when she last saw him:

Another day, and I'm somewhere new

I made a promise that I'll come home soon

Bring me back, bring me back to you

They say if you love something you let it go, if it’s meant to be it will find it’s way back to you.

It’s something she’s been telling herself since she said goodbye to Jamie. That they’ll find their way back somehow.

It’s been almost three years and they’re both still wandering around, having missed the right turns to find their ways back. She moved out of Toronto the summer she graduated from high school, leaving no way for Jamie to find her when he came back.

He’s been aimlessly searching for the girl since.

Seeing her face in every person he crosses on the street. His promise of that he’d come back looming over his head like a rain cloud.

There are pieces of us both

Under every city light

And the shining as we fade into the night

Their first kiss had happened during one of their walks late at night. Jamie’s hand had brushed against hers, a blush rising on both of their cheeks at the small sparks that ran from the tip of their fingers to their chests.

Jamie deciding that he wanted to be brave had grasped her cold hand. Thumb rubbing the girls knuckles as he stopped walking.

Standing still under the glow of a street lamp Jamie looked down at her. The boys blue eyes looking darker than usual from the darkened sky and overhead light.

Taking a deep breath he utters the words he’s been wanting to say since he first met her a month ago. “Can I kiss you?”

Standing on her toes she slots her lips against Jamies. Everything around them fading away as they stand there for ages. Kissing, hands sprawled across their cheeks and teeth knocking together from smiling so hard.

She knew then she was going to fall in love with Jamie and he knew the same. That this first kiss sealed the deal of their love.

Some loves happen so you know what love is supposed to feel like, they’re not meant to last but that doesn’t make it hurt any less when it ends. When it ends it still hurts just as much as.

It hurts because you believed it was meant to last. That this other person is the one made specifically for you and when they leave this gaping hole inside you grows and grows where they’re supposed to be.

So she lays there in her bedroom, mind and body restless like it has been since Jamie left. Yearning for him to bring back the pieces of her she left with him and that he’ll finally be back beside her once again.

I miss you Jamie whispered into the air before her eyelids grows too heavy and she falls into a heavy sleep, dreaming of pale skin and blue eyes.