For the sake of his physical and mental well-being, Ben the Bartender begged internally through the fog of obscure boredom that had overtaken his brain, time, please move faster. When he wasn't paying attention, his head had the tendency to droop low, and rest on his folded arms. It wasn't a position he wanted to be caught in. His aunt, the owner of the bar, had long thought of him as a hormonal, no-good teenager, and the last thing he wanted to do was confirm her lest he wanted. . . something He knew that if he didn’t find someone interesting to latch onto - and fast - he would be found asleep at the job. Again. He peeled his eyes open, and let them roam the bar. His eyes slid past the sleepy drunks in front of him, to the couples seated in booths beyond. Most of them were making out passionately, without a care in the world. Ben wrinkled his nose. He looked past them and -

Jackpot.

She would be very average looking, having the kind of face that nobody really remembered, if not for the mascara running down her cheeks and the very large wad of used tissues sitting very comfortably in her lap.

He instantly jerked awake, piqued by his curiosity.

What’s your story? He wanted to ask her. Her devastated form begged to be labelled with an equally petty story. Numerous mildly humorous possibilities began to rise to the surface of his mind: Fallen ice cream cone? Did she lose ten followers on Instagram? Ran out of data?

Suddenly, her head snapped up. Her eyes swept over the bar once, before piercing his.

Ben gulped. He was suddenly sorry that he’d dreamt up such fickle scenarios. The sorrow in her eyes told of a hurt that resulted from life gone wrong.

She stood up, scattering the tissues. Her eyes still bore into his. She didn’t apologize to the affronted elderly lady whose lap had caught a stray. Instead, she took purposeful strides that were at a define odds with her mental state towards him.

And Ben caught his breath.

Never has he seen such a perfect picture of hopelessness.

_____

Phoebe the previously emotional wedding guest seated herself on the stool nearest the bartender to alert him to her presence. Not that she needed to. The bartender was staring at her, not even making an effort to be subtle about it. She ignored him.

She knew she was attracting a lot of stares with her makeup running down her cheeks, but she didn’t have the energy to care. After him, she didn’t think that she had the energy for anything anymore.

She flinched at the thought of him, then shuddered. She couldn’t do this anymore. He was too exhausting to think about - this was all too exhausting to think about. That’s why she’d come to a bar, wasn’t it? She’d come to be free of it all.

She ordered her drink impatiently from the gawking bartender. Then, she downed them all, one by one.

Through drink, she would be free.

_____

The aftermath of every tragedy she had ever suffered was sitting in front of him, and Ben couldn’t look away. Now that she was so close, Ben could make out every crease and every crevice of her prematurely lined face. He could see how brilliantly greasy her hair was, most likely the product of hours spent moping and eating junk food in her apartment.

Immediately, he withdrew. He didn’t know what happened to her, but the physical imprints it left on her told of a story so intimate and personal that he felt like an intruder.

But he couldn’t look away the same way a grotesquely fascinated person couldn’t help but keep their gaze on an inevitable collision of two paths that were never supposed to intersect. And, afterwards, the same way passerby craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the product of chaos.

He watched her, now more riveted than ever.

“What possibly could have happened to you that you’d need to forget so badly?” He wondered aloud.

In reply, she slumped onto the counter.

_____

She welcomed the increasing lucidity of her thoughts. Her previously racing mind slowed to a consistency that was thicker than honey. Oblivion was coming, she could feel it.

Though her mind had become thick and slow, her body had become lighter than air. She felt as if she was floating aimlessly, high above her sea of wretched memories, much like a helium balloon.

Up and up she went, higher and higher and further and further away from this devastating place that was reality. Away from the place where dreams were crushed beyond repair and would never come true. She would escape. She was a helium balloon, oh so skilled at evading children's fists and finding freedom . . . .

But she was a helium balloon, and regardless how good she was at finding freedom, it was only a matter of time before she would fall.

And so she fell. Down, down, down she went, so different from the euphoric high she had experienced only seconds before.

When she crashed, the sensation was unlike one of waking up in a bucket of ice. Only, this experience was far worse, because the memories that she had tried so hard to suppress came flooding back. When she opened her eyes, she found that she was no longer in a bar during the wee hours of the morning.

She was at the place where it all began.

In her dorm at the University of Tokyo, reliving a moment she had lived a week before, Phoebe stared at a thick, creamy sheet of paper. Even now, after all that had happened since, she still found the lines spidering across the sheet difficult to decipher.

Kindly join us at the joyous union of

TRAVIS SCOTT ANDERSON and KENDALL LEE DAVIDSON.

The invitation to Trey and Kendall's wedding had arrived with the rest of her mail during the last week of university. The mere sight of it had made her rapidly beating heart go cold.

She didn’t know why she was quite so hurt, or so incredibly baffled. Or, maybe, she did.

After all these years, this was the first piece of news that she got from Trey, her Trey?

The boy whose face she yearned to see every day first thing in the morning and last thing at night, the boy who who preferred vanilla ice cream above all else, the boy whose worth encompassed that of the sun, moon, and stars combined, was getting married to someone that wasn’t her.

He was her Trey.

How could he do this to her?

_____

Gasping, Phoebe pried her eyes open and reached desperately for another shot. With reverence, she dumped the contents down her throat. She needed oblivion, not this in between state that kept showing her everything she never wanted to remember.

_____

She forced down a fourth glass, or was it the fifth? What had been a pleasantly bitter sting in the back of her throat was suddenly overwhelming, as were the tears threatening to spill onto her cheeks. She squeezed her eyes shut, unaware that her body was tilting backwards until it was too late.

Ben the bartender heard a loud thud! and spun back around. His entertainment for the night disappeared, leaving only several empty shot glassing rolling around the table in her wake. He let out an annoyed puff of air. The intoxicated, he had learned over the course of his employment, had little to no sense of balance.

Knowing exactly what to expect, he peered over the counter and sighed.

_____

Phoebe opened her eyes with a sudden jolt. Trey was sitting across from her, looking a million times better than he did on those postcards he sent her every Christmas. He was wearing the lopsided smile that made her want to lean over and kiss him over and over again.

She could recall every insignificant detail about that day at the drop of her hat. She could remember the smell of chocolate lingering in the air, the feel of the hot sun against her face, and the warm breeze that did little to cool her down. She remembered the way his hand had hung limply at his side, and the way she had to forcibly suppress her desire to hold it tightly.

Her excruciatingly detailed memory had served her well in many situations. But not this time.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.