It’s just one day.

One twenty-four hour period to get through and then it will all be over. It will all be worth it in the end. One day it will be all I need. 

Somehow this little memento is the only thing that seems to get me through the day. As I lean against the fountain, water wetting my jacket and messing up my hair, I wonder how I got here. How I ended up stranded in my life with only a cigarette and a ed up saying to get me by. 

I was supposed to be playing an all night gig, at some place that looked like it had been ed up since the Resistance era, but somehow I end up here, outside of some joint in the city, smoking my life away.

As I bring the cigarette that was in-between my fingers to my mouth, the only thing that seemed to keep me sane all these years, I look out at the people milling around me.

Some people look at me, wondering, and every time they try to get a look at my face, I turn my head to the right, hiding it under the stars and the night sky.

But, in a place like Paris, darkness seems to be a privilege.

It's not that I don't like the attention. Attention brings me something money and fame never could. But in these moments I wish I was like so many other people. Faceless beings on a meaningless earth. 

But, in a world where everyone seeks just a little bit of fame and fortune, being a wallflower is almost unheard of. In my life, money was the devil, my fan-base it's supplier. It was a back and forth and when I sold my soul all those years ago, I knew what I was getting into. 

I just never thought I would be stuck in it. 

My hand shakes as I bring the cigarette to my mouth yet again. Instead of getting groupies with my band mates, here I stood looking at hot couple’s kiss as if love was some ing fairy tale from one of those books. They touch, kiss, talk as if love was the only thing they needed to get them through life. The one thing that could cure the disease of hate spreading it's dark cloak around the world.  

Disgusted, I flick my cancer stick on the ground, put it out with the heel of my shoe, pull on my fingerless gloves, and walk away.

Standing there and looking at all those couples staring at each other, as if they were in some kind of paradise, pissed me off. If I was being honest, it made me remember things I would much rather forget. Things I had no right to want. 

Years ago I learned what love was and what it could do to a person. If you put your heart in the wrong hands, it could mean the end of the person you were. The person you were trying to become.

Love is like a disease. It gets in your blood and infects your heart. It eats at a broken soul and seeps through non healed scars on a course of self-destruction. 

Love and I just weren’t allowed to be together.

I learned that a long time ago when the first and only girl I loved, took my heart and threw it away as if it was nothing more than glass. Just like every other broken hearted person out here, I can’t help but wonder what my life would have been like if the person who broke my heart never did.

I pull my hood over my hair, getting tired of the way people are staring at me now, and I walk down the sidewalk, the smell of still open bakery’s filling up the cold night air. The smells bring memories of times that were easy and when the biggest problem I had was wondering what I should wear in the morning.

Up ahead is the Eiffel tower and music seems to be coming from some little music group from below. A girl dances in the middle of a coward, moving as if she has the grace of a swan, her mind on the music and not on the people surrounding her.

Having nothing better to do, I move pass the sweaty bodies of the people around me and make my way within the group. In a night where I was trying to be unnoticed, being close to the enemy was the best way to hide. 

Through people’s limbs, I see the girl sway to the right, as if she can hear something none of us have the right too. Then she raises one leg in the air while her back arches to the ground like moving water.

Her skirt moves around her legs, the light bouncing off the hues and little bells at the end. Her brown hair sways as the clip that once held her hair falls to the ground, bouncing a few times before coming to a silent stop. 

When she comes back up, reaching for air and going again, people start to clap.

For some reason I am mesmerized by this girl. The way she moves, the way she is moving along as if a crowd is not watching her sleazy little display, sends something through me.

“Excuse me,” I say, pushing by people, wanting to get a better look. I hear something buzzing in my back pocket, probably my friend YB telling me that he just got done screwing some girl and now he wanted to go get busted wasted.

Pulling my jacket closer to my body, I finally make it to the edge of the dispersing crowd and there the girl is in front of me.

She swings to the right, moving her hips as if she has done this her whole life, and she gracefully glides her hands to the air, rolling them over each other.

Bangles fall down her arm and with her eyes closed, she spins on her toes and her hair wraps around her as she spins and spins, matching the movement and the melody of the song perfectly.

When she stops, she bows, her arms still out. Her hair covers her face and when I think she might be done, she jerks up and brings her arms in the air again and opens her eyes, a smile spreading her lips into a serene smile.

She drops the pose and bows again, and when everyone around me starts to clap, I stand there.

Frozen.

I know who the dancing girl is and now I know why I was so interested in her before. As she walks over to the people who created the music, grabbing a hat off the ground, I watch her go wondering how, in this moment, everything seems to stop.

People around me start to move, going back to the things they did before the dancing girl put on a show, and instead of following them, I follow the twinkling sound of the dancing girls bracelets sliding together.

I move around people, navigating my way to her as if there is a whole sea between us, and in my heart I know there is.

This is the girl who left my heart broken in a store parking lot, years ago, basically telling me that the six years we were together was nothing more than the dirt on her shoe.

That was what love was for me.

Her and a broken heart.

Her back is to me when I finally get within hearing range. When I hear her laugh, I stop in my tracks. What the hell was I doing? What purpose did I have looking into the face of a ghost?

A girl who should mean nothing to me?

I shake my head and decide tonight was not the night to visit a past I would r