All We Are

Epilogue

*****

"You were shaded with patience, your strokes of everything, that I need just to make it, but I can see. Lord knows I failed you time and again, but you and me are alright. We won't say our goodbyes.
You know it's better that way.
We won't break, we won't die, it's just a moment of change. All we are, all we are, is everything that's right. All we need, all we need, a lover's alibi." - All We Are, by OneRepublic

*****
Epilogue:

There she stood. A girl who looked to be about eighteen or nineteen years old. She had long brown hair, a small slender frame, and deep brown eyes that looked like they had seen good times and bad times. She had a haunted aura about her, she just looked nervous on a daily basis.

If anyone one stopped on the street to study her, they would probably just dismissed her, as a troubled teenager, but after all they didn't know anything about her.

This girl, Rose Holland, had spent the past few years just trying to get away from all that haunted her. She was trying to escape her anxiety, her fear, and her heartbrokenness, but it only resulted in her almost being murdered by the cause of her anxiety. She also lost both of the men that she loved. One to death, and the other she ran away from.

Rose stood at the corner of Park and Lexington Avenue, waiting to cross the street to get to her favorite cafe. She was going to meet a friend before her trip.

She stood in a pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt with her hair slung up into a high ponytail. She looked very different from her old self, she had cut it in the past year and it was now just a little bit beneath her shoulders instead of down to her lower back. She also died it to a light brown, instead of her almost black brown hair.

Rose had grown up so much in the past year, because of the city. She was incredibly grateful for it too, and she often had a hard time figuring out how she got so lucky here. New York was the city that never slept, the empire of America, the concrete jungle where dreams are made of. Somehow she had an easy time adapting to life here. She had a place to live, she had a steady job, and she had been accepted into Fordham University and NYU.

She was currently living in an apartment in outside of Manhattan, in a friendly enough place. Turns out her dad had a close friend that happened to own an apartment complex, and gave her a small discount on her rent.

The apartment itself wasn't too shabby, but she hoped to move soon. She was thinking about maybe searching for an affordable place in Brooklyn, but it all depended on the internship that she was hoping to get the next year too.

Rose was a girl from Oregon, that ran so far away until she landed in New York. When she first got out of the cab that took her from the airport to the heart of the city, she knew immediately that she belonged there.

Her dad had played a major role in helping her make it here, and he got her into a nice high school to finish senior year as long as she maintained her ninety and above averages in all advanced classes.

It was safe to say, that this year she really had distracted herself with work, but wherever she went, she was reminded of the people from her past. Her old friends from Gresham. One in particular.

James.

James was her first love, her first heartbreak, and her most likely her last love. She never stopped loving him. She tried and tried, but the flame for him never went out.

He was your typical complicated entitled high school boy, to put it shortly. He went through life without a care in the world. He drank, he smoked, he partied, and he used girls. He loved the game of chasing the good girl though, and that good girl just happened to be his long time friend Rose.