@summerdhale
Joseph wandered the length of the beach with a bottle of beer in hand while he could hear his friends in the distance. At his age, he didn’t have many who were willing to actually go out for New Year’s, and from the small population of friends he had, all were married and coupled up by the bonfire they had made. He never felt so lonely in a crowd, and as much as he enjoyed being his friends, it was always a grim reminder that most of them were almost always disappointed to see him without his ex-wife. He was in desperate need of some breathing room, so he excused himself from the smoky fire and left to take a quick walk and ironically breathe in the smoke from a cigarette. He could hear them shout in the background, their drunken slurs and obnoxiously loud laughs. All of them would be returning to their kids tonight or, those who had now had adult children, to an empty nest where all they had was their marriage. Joseph glanced back to the crowd as he took a drag of his cigarette and felt his envy enflame again before he tossed the filter to the ground and stamped it out. For a night promised with plenty of alcohol, he still felt sober as hell.
He picked up the filter and tossed it back into his now empty bottle of beer before he headed back towards the group. He stealthily skirted around the conversation and made his way to the cooler where he studied the contents of the box—plenty of beer left, he figured he’d take two for his walk and scope things out. He heard one of his friends call for his attention before he shook his head and told them he was going to look around for a bit and probably find a bathroom. He wandered off before they could drag him back, and before long, he found himself going to one of the more secluded areas of St. Kilda’s where there were considerably less people. In the distance, he could see a figure sitting alone, and the closer he came, the more recognizable she became. “Well, shit,” he said as he approached who he hoped was Summer, “Fancy running into you here, especially since there’s so many people out.” He cleared his throat as he realized he may have been intruding on her alone time, but figuring she looked as miserable as he did and feeling a little more inebriated than he thought, he took a seat on the sand anyway and placed the bottles of beer between his legs. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in a while though,” he added before saying jokingly, “You been hiding from me?”