I hung out with J., my super pretty friend, yesterday and today. In school, I used to think she was an airhead (she’s that kind of pretty), but in the couple of months I’ve known her here I’ve realized we have a lot in common. We talk about surface stuff, but also about life and how this year is about figuring out a lot of things.

Saturday night I spent thinking seriously about getting an MA roughly two years from now. Two years because that allows me to (a) apply, (b) possibly get it fully funded and (c) pay off all previous student loan debt plus bank enough to cover some of the transit/living expenses. I think, regardless, I will end up doing it before I’m 30. Not for the cred, although I guess that’s a bonus, but because it’s the best excuse EVER to live in another country for a year and it won’t sabotage my resume if I do it properly. The criteria? Proximity to surf spots, obviously.

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A random song switches on. I know the singer.

I've kissed the singer, while wasted, because he said he had deliberately not been involved with anyone from [edit] and I thought that was a shame. That this happened was forgotten until he called me on it, I denied it, and he started to describe the setting in detail. I know his secrets, extracted over the years; he regularly whispered I'd be one of them. Backstage, with a hand on my back, in the cab with a brush across my knee.

I'm following my boyfriend out of the bar, down the precarious stairs I've been up and down hundreds of times (I used to live here) but have never bailed on. Wearing a skirt and some cheap heels, tanned and calm from running away from everything and finding a way home again. I look down and he's there, watching me come down the stairs, and it's the kind of look that flash points into memory and drawn out months, years, later makes toes curl a little. From thirty feet away, every thought in his head written across his face, observing a slow walk down a long set of stairs. The kind of gaze most men never learn to give a foot away, never comfortable enough. But, that's why he's the lead singer.

I grabbed my boyfriend's hand and walked out into the night; he didn't notice, I didn't point it out. Every once in awhile, that voice appears on my playlist and it's ten more steps down.