Finding My Way

So here I am, alone on the street, it is another cold wet night in the city. I am broke. My last few pennies spent on some food but I’m still hungry. I look for some shelter but it’s no use, nobody wants me there, I just feel alone. Eventually I find a bench. I sit there thinking about how I got here and how I can get out of this situation but I just don’t know how, I now have no home, no job, nothing in life. The rain gets heavier and all that’s protecting me is a dirty blue hood from my what once was a warm hoodie. I decide to crawl under the bench to hide myself from the rain. I’m drenched. I lie in silence, knowing it will be another sleepless night, all I can hear are distant cars and the downpour of rain on the street. Why me? The start of last month was great so how did I get here? I wanted to start a new life after finishing high school. Some lovely lady found me wandering helplessly around the slums of New York, she offered me a place to stay. Her name was Jenny, she had long shiny platinum blonde hair and a smile to dye for. Her eyes were hazel and seemed kind. She made me feel safe. She smelled of cookies, pine and logs burning. It made me feel warm. She must’ve been not too much older than me but she seemed to be reasonably well off with her own two bed apartment in New York. “Girl, you must be freezing, please let me help you” she told me when she first met me with a worried look on her face. In all honesty I was quite warm, it had always been a gift of mine, being warm to touch no matter what but still of course I took her up on the offer. I hadn’t thought too much about where I’d stay, originally I was thinking about getting a hotel but they were just so expensive here, everything was. “What’s your name love?” She asked. “Felicity, my name is felicity” I muttered, I was confident most of the time but I knew that I looked a state and so didn’t feel very confident in that moment. She took me in and helped me. She gave me food and a place to live, she helped me find a barista job and just asked that I pay her a portion for rent and food. I later found out that she was 26, 7 years older than me but her father was a successful business man and so helped her out with all that she has so she wanted to offer back his kindness to others. We didn’t that often, she lived a completely different life to me and I didn’t fit in but I still appreciated her generosity greatly. After living there for a month, things went down hill, she had a new boyfriend - Jackson. He had green eyes, freckles and blonde curly hair. He was handsome but wasn’t really my type, they were very cute together however but they liked to party a lot. I loved a good party but I still wasn’t too close with Jenny and I didn’t know her friends so if she ever had one in the apartment, I would try to avoid it. I had made friends with a girl from the coffee shop and she had decided to invite me out on Halloween with her to go to a local college party. Jenny was having her own Halloween party at the flat so took me with her to find our outfits. She decided to go as a fairy where as I went for a pirate. I found a corset, white mini skirt, and white crop top with puffy sleeves. I added a bandana, thigh high boots and lots of cheap jewellery to complete my look. When I tried it on, I looked sexy. The outfit hugged my hourglass figure and amplified my best assets. I had hoped to find someone that night to help me forget my past and replace it with pleasure, at least for one night. I got completely ready but my friend had to cancel last minute because her mom had had a heart attack so she went back to Illinois to be with her. I was gutted for her and sad that I couldn’t party but decided to drink and watch horror movies instead. I couldn’t be bothered to change out of my costume because there was still a party that would be going on in my apartment later that night and I didn’t want to have to walk out to go to the bathroom in just PJ’s whilst everyone else looked hot. I was 5 jäger bombs and 1 horror movie into the night when the party was at full blast outside my room. I was feeling very left out so decided to grab the cheap bottle of wine I’d picked up when I bought my costume. It was an hour later and most of the wine had been demolished. I was DEFINITELY not sober but I was known to be able to drink quite a bit without being too drunk. That was when a stumbling Jackson came into my room. He was mumbling about a fight so I tried to relax him and went to leave to find Jenny. He grabbed my wrist on my way to the door. He went to pull me into him, and I tripped and fell onto his lap and twisted my ankle. “You look too good tonight Felicity” he whispered into my ear. I was so confused and went to get up but before I could get up to my feet, Jenny walked in. She was horrified. She assumed I was trying to get with him, I tried to explain myself but it was no use, she was too drunk and had apparently just been in a fight with her boyfriend and assumed I tried to pounce on him because of it. She took the key from me to her apartment and threw me and my belongings out. I was back with nowhere to stay. I decided to get a hotel for the night. A week passed and I had officially run out of money and I couldn’t bring myself to ask my friend from work so decided to spend the night on the street. After all, how bad could it be, I’d been through worse. It was bad. I had ended up getting into a fight with some men who were trying to take advantage of me. I had always been abnormally strong and fast so used it to my advantage. By morning I was still fine, no scratches but I looked a state. I still had my job so went to work. I continued to sleep on the street for the next week. I was beginning to smell awful and looked worse each day but I still tried to hang onto my job, I really needed the money, I just needed to keep them from finding out that I was homeless. Costumers were starting to complain though because they didn’t want someone who looked uncleanly to be serving them. I couldn’t help it though. I just tried to wait til the end of the month when my pay check would come through. I didn’t make it to the end of the month with the job though, they fired me this morning, they could tell I was living on the streets and I began to drive customers away. So now here I am, I’m alone on the streets, under a bench, in the rain with no job, no home and I don’t know what to do. I had had barely any sleep recently either so I was just so exhausted. I lasted another dreadful night on the streets of New York. The next day I decided to try to head towards the water so that at least I could become a bit cleaner or maybe just not smell as bad, I was becoming insecure. I had just cleaned my body, I no longer smelled so bad so walked around to try to dry myself off. It was then that I smelled an overpowering smell. I felt drawn to it. It was strong and was a joy for my nose. It smelled of honey and freshly cut grass. I loved it. I decided to follow the smell to see where it was coming from, that’s when it happened, I bumped into him. Quite literally. “I’m so sorry” I exclaimed, hiding my face away and stepping back, hoping that he couldn’t see how run down I looked. All I could see were his shoes and trousers. His shoes were clean and made of brown Italian leather and he wore smart, tailored navy blue trousers. He must’ve come from work I thought. “It’s okay” he muttered as he lifted my face up, putting his index finger under my chin, so that my eyes could meet his. I realised that he was the smell that I had smelled. I gasped, he was gorgeous. His eyes were a piercing grey-blue color, he looked deeply into mine as though he was looking deep into my thoughts. His touch when he moved my chin felt electric, it sent shivers down my spine, I’d felt nothing quite like it. My stomach began to flutter. He had dark brown slightly curly hair that looked like it was purposely scruffed. His jaw was chiselled and he had a lovely tan as though he had just been in Sicily for the past few months. He had a slight bit of stubble from where he must not have shaved in the past couple of days and perfectly placed dimples. He had on a matching blazer to his trousers and a white button down shirt with a few of the buttons undone at the top. I was in awe of him but felt very ashamed of myself next to him, I knew that I looked like I had been living on the streets and well I had been but I didn’t want this godlike looking man knowing this. “What’s your name?” He asked with a deep sultry sounding voice. “Felicity” I said, surprised that he had asked. He got closer to my face looked me in my eyes and said the word “mate”. I shot him a look of confusion and he could tell that I didn’t know what he was on about and so he took me by the hand and asked me to follow him. I couldn’t help but feel drawn to him and so I did just that, I followed where he led me.