Little by Little

“What are you most afraid of?”

Her eyes glittered like the lights reflecting off the glass building across the crowded city street below. Her hair, as dark as his eyes, blew across her face, but she didn’t move it away and he resisted the urge to do it for her. “I don’t know. I guess-” she sighed then, heavily, before taking a drink from the champagne flute she held delicately between two fingers “-I’m afraid that nothing’s going to change.”

He nodded at that, taking a swig of his own drink, a mixture of apple cider and rum. The two of them were leaning against the railing on the roof of a skyscraper, the music from the New Year’s Eve party on the floor below making the floor vibrate beneath his brown leather shoes and her black stilettos. “A couple years ago, me and my brother crashed this insane New Year’s Eve party. I mean, these people had rented out some sort of architectural wonder to host the year’s best last party. Anyways, about an hour before midnight, a bunch of people started going up to the mic and proclaiming their New Year’s resolutions.” At this, he pushed away from the railing and held his cup to his mouth as if it were a microphone, smiling lightly when she tipped her head to the side to watch him with interest, “‘Ladies and gentlemen, this year, I vow to go running every single day!’, ‘I vow to lose a ton of weight!’, ‘I vow to be better and different!’” 

The woman laughed at his impressions of the people in his story.

He continued. “So on and on they went, person after person, claiming huge changes to their lifestyles and to themselves. My brother, the rascal he was, mocked each and every one of them and I remember laughing so much that night, thinking about how people say things like that and never do anything to do them.” 

“Are you saying then, that nothing really ever changes?” She was genuinely intrigued by him, this man she’d seen from across the room, looking for all the world as if he belonged among the partygoers but standing out just enough to make her realize he didn’t. She’d approached him then, a flirtatious smile on her lips and two drinks in hand. He’d smiled back and taken her hand, dancing with her and whispering nonsense in her ear that was either meant to make her blush or make her laugh.

He took another drink from his cup, leaning back against the railing so they were shoulder to shoulder, the city sprawled out beneath them like a glittering maze with one too many distractions. “The way my brother used to say it was that sometimes we're so worried about staying the same, about things not changing, that we convince ourselves that we need to make these incredible changes that we never really carry out because they’re not real, they’re fantasies. He used to tell me that the way to really work on something, was to simply work on it, to be determined every day and to get a bit closer to that goal little by little.” He paused then, laughing lightly. “He used to say ‘Time is a concept, little brother, so why wait for a concept to tell you when to get your life in order? Start now, right now, if you want.’”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Your brother sounds like a smart man.”

“Yeah, he was.”

“Oh,” she lifted her head off his shoulder and turned to look at him, but his eyes were trained on the artificial lights littering the street below, “I’m so sorry.”

He grinned, looking at her gently. “Don’t be. He’d hate to have made a beautiful woman sad.”

She reached out then, her fingertips ghosting across his cheek and he exhaled, closing his eyes as he leaned into her touch. They kissed then, softly, gently at first, but then with the explosion of a thousand fireworks. 

She could swear the fireworks were real, their fire lighting up every inch of the city and the dark sky and their booming sound ringing in her ear. It wasn’t until they pulled away from each other that she realized the fireworks had indeed been real, their smoke tracing lazy patterns across the clouds as new explosions lit up their surroundings. 

“Happy New Year.”

“Happy New Year to you.” He kissed her again, a quick press against her lips this time, “and hey, you have nothing to be afraid of. This new year may not be a tipping point, not every year is, but life is made up of moments, and those moments bring us closer to the big ones, the ones that change us, little by little.” He smiled. “You are determined, you’re smart - I can see that. You’ll be just fine.”

She’d almost asked him for his name, then. She’d almost wanted to know more than she should about him. She almost wanted to forget that he’d asked her for one thing and one thing only at the beginning of their night together: that he wasn’t a person she should remember, and thus names should not be exchanged. 

But who knew that by coming to this party, she’d meet him? So maybe, just maybe, she was meant to know him too. “Tell me your name.”

He seemed unsurprised by her statement, yet he shook his head. “I told you. I won’t. This may be a New Year and all, but I’m still stuck in the past - with my brother. So, until I move forward, I can’t have someone stuck with me.”

The determination in his eyes and his sad, soft smile were more than enough for her to know that this enigma of a man was meant to have crossed her path but nothing more, they were on different paths that happened to cross, and she would respect his decision to not stray from his. 

She nodded. “I hope this year brings you a little closer to the present.”

He smiled. “And I hope this year changes things for you at least a little, if only for the better.”

She never saw him again after that, after he walked away and she remained looking over the city, the light from the street lamps reflecting off the glass building across the street.

Sometimes, she wondered if he’d been a part of a dream meant to speak wise words into her mind, and although she couldn’t rule out the possibility, it never stopped her from searching from him at every New Year’s party, until little by little, she stopped searching altogether without forgetting what he'd told her.