[Reed Winters]

His hair had obviously been dyed a bright red not too long ago because now it was some faded pink color that didn't really go with his pale complexion, his dirty blonde roots started to show through. Other than the choice of hair color he seemed to be a pretty average guy. Normal. So why was he up here?

"Look down." I disregarded his introduction and turned my eyes to the streets below because I knew I would be done there soon enough.

He looked over at me and surprised me how much fear was still in his eyes. Michael wasn't ready for this. If he was he wouldn't care and his fear of heights or anything else for that matter. He would be just like me. Tired.

"What? Why would I do that?" Michael questioned as he tried to keep his composure calm.

I smiled to myself as I kept my gaze down. "So you know what you're really choosing to do."

"I don't need to," He hesitated when he spoke. "I've already made up my mind."

"And so have I."

I inched my body closer to the edge, but the feeling of his fingers as they wrapped around my wrist halted my actions. The feeling of another person's skin touching mine felt so foreign. My heart ached for that feeling again, but my bones had turned brittle and my skin caked in dirt. I couldn't survive like this.

"What's your name?" Michael asked again, his voice soothing to the ear.

Was there any harm in telling him my name? My jaw clenched as I thought over my options. It didn't matter if I spoke to him because even with our brief interaction I wouldn't be around long enough to be memorable.

I let out a long breath and scooted back to my original position before I spoke. "Reed."

"Sorry, what?"

I think he was just as surprised to hear me answering his question as I was.

"Reed Winters," I glared over at him as I introduced myself again. "You wanted to know my name and that's what it is."

"Like Lou Reed?" His question instantly made my insides churn and I cringed, already annoyed by the conversation. This question brought back memories growing up, good and bad, and how in the end I loathed my father for giving that name.

"Actually, yes, my father was a bit obsessed with his music." I crossed my arms over my chest and turned away from his thoughtful stare.

"You said Clifford, huh?" I turned back to see that he looked somewhat nervous like I knew something I shouldn't and I couldn't understand why.

"Please tell me you've read the big red dog books. Looks like you had the hair pretty close," I tried to joke, but it only tasted bitter on my tongue.

It surprised me when he laughed, running a quick hand through his hair before letting out the breath he had held. "Like I haven't heard that joke a thousand times before."

I shrunk away from him taking his sarcastic tone a little too seriously. It was easy for him to laugh a comment like that off, so why couldn't I?

"Well, my apologies for being so unoriginal," I scoffed as I brushed my hair from my face, the wind caused it to tickle my frozen cheeks.

"That's not-"

I cut him off with a wave of my hand. There was an anxious jolt that shot through my brain reminding me why I was here and I couldn't stand to be here anymore.

"Will you leave now?" To me, it sounded as though I was pleading.

"No."

Normally, I would never be this rude to a stranger. I used to love meeting new and interesting people, and it was easy to tell that this boy had some amazing stories to tell. If I was still the person I had been a few years ago I would be doing the same thing he was, trying to save my life. But that girl was gone. Homelessness was the best way to beat someone down so they never want to get back up again.

I sighed in frustration, trying to settle the annoyance that had built up inside me. "What do you want from me, Micheal?"

"To talk." He shrugged with a cute lopsided smile on his face, one that made known that he wasn't going to give up so easily.

"I came up here to be alone, not talk to some random stranger who thinks he's doing a good deed."

I averted my eyes away from his constant stare, as though if he took his eyes off me I'd do exactly what I had come up here to do in the first place.

"Oh, I know why you're up here." Michael didn't even flinch at my harsh words and the soft smile that wouldn't leave his face made me scrunch my nose in aggravation.

The look on his face was comfortable, like sitting on the edge of a building at midnight wasn't weird at all.

"Well then Miss Winters, you just sit back and enjoy the extremely boring story that is my life."

It was obvious what he was doing and he was stupid to believe that it might actually work. Like I had said at the beginning of our conversation, my mind was made up. There was no going back now. And no stranger was going to convince me otherwise.

That didn't mean during this time I couldn't show him his options. Not all people are damned. Some can come back from the edge, while others are just too far gone.

"So I was born in Australia-"

"No shit Sherlock, like I couldn't tell from the accent," I interjected, thinking that if I made him angry enough he would eventually leave and allow me to be alone.

"It's not like you were born here either," He shot back, pointing out that I too had an accent from the normal English drabble.

I raised an eyebrow at him, surprised that he had stood his ground and found curiosity starting to get the best of me. What was the harm in talking to him for a little while? There was still plenty of night sky to blanket my fall.

"Go on then." I didn't allow him to see my internal battle with the basic human need for companionship and the need I had to end my life.

"My parents are still together, but I don't see them very often." Michael's eyes turned toward the cloudy sky in thought as he continued on with the highlights of his life. "I'm an only child. I never graduated from school."

I rolled my eyes and chuckled a little to cover up the fact that there were definitely a few similarities between us already. I didn't know about his home life or his parents, but I knew about mine and even though they fought every day, they still stayed together for my sake.

Even now, after being out of their house for years, they still acted like their relationship wasn't broken. Maybe they were part of the reason as to why I am who I am now. Maybe this love-hating girl has always been inside me just waiting for the perfect time to escape.

I listened to Michael as he rambled on about his school life, but I wasn't paying much attention, instead, I sat studying his boyish features. He had a few ticks about him like he would never quite look you in the eyes maybe because he wasn't as confident as he led me to believe. He also seemed to talk with his hands a lot, which was yet another thing I attributed to nervousness and anxiety.

"So yeah," His voice brought me back from my thoughts. "And then the next year was when I dropped out."

"Why?" I laughed at how stupid it was for him to do that. Finishing school would have given him the option of going to university, which I, not having gone am jealous of. "You literally had a year left, you couldn't just pain through it?"

"Well..." His voice dropped off and I instantly knew there was a very specific reason as to why he had given up on school.

I tapped the heel of my shoe against the outside of the building, feeling impatient all of a sudden. "Come on, spit it out. I don't have all night."

"Do you really not know who I am?" His question threw me and my eyebrows furrowed as I stared over at him, leaning in to scrutinize him a bit closer. Was I supposed to know him?

My eyes narrowed in deep thought as I continued to look him over. "Should I know who you are?"

Michael only shrugged, that same lopsided smile resurfacing. For some reason, his smile put me at ease with the situation, like even though he didn't like the reasons as to why I was up here, he still understood. I guess he wouldn't be up here in the first place if he didn't.

"What, are you famous or something?" I chuckled at the thought.

Michael glanced my way and shrugged yet again. Now he wasn't in the mood to talk? His sudden shyness intrigued me and it was easy to admit that I wanted to know the answer. My mission for being up here escaped my mind for a brief moment.

"You're not an actor." I thought hard and it looked like he was about to laugh as he shook his head.

"Do you sing?" I leaned toward him with interest.

He shook his head again. "Not really. Not very well, I should say."

"So you play an instrument then, hmm..." I tapped my finger against my chin in thought.

"It can't be the drums." I reached out and lightly pinched one of his skinny arms.

Michael yelped in surprise, the smile growing on his face at my friendly actions. Why was I acting like this? Maybe it was because it felt good to be able to interact with someone without them judging me for the way I was.

"You're shy." I pointed out one of my earlier assumptions. "But not enough for you to hide what you're good at."

He tilted his head to the side, his hair blowing back from his forehead, and for a second I lost him to his own thoughts, but I quickly regained his attention with my final answer. "Guitar, that's definitely it."

Michael was quiet again for a while, thinking about something I didn't know until he suddenly snapped back to reality and shook his head, a frown replacing his smile. "Yeah, that's it."

When someone loves something, it was supposed to keep that happy, but the bitter look on Michael's face told me otherwise. It only made me want to know more. I wanted to understand his reasons for being up here.

"5 Seconds of Summer. That was the name of my band," Michael mumbled more to himself, his voice getting lost in the breeze that drifted by us.

"Did you guys break up or something?" I watched him carefully as I spoke.

"No." The tone of his voice changed dramatically as his grip on the ledge tightened and as I glanced down momentarily I could see his knuckles had already started to turn white. "They just didn't want me anymore."

Didn't want me anymore. Suddenly I felt sick and I quickly looked away from him, feeling my heart start to ache once again. So we really weren't that different after all.

We had both put all our faith in something we thought was going to last, just to have the rug ripped out from under us. Even though our situations were totally different, they still resulted in the same hateful feelings.

I racked my already throbbing brain in hopes of that I could remember if I had ever heard the name 5 Seconds of Summer before and after a long pause, it clicked.

"Didn't you go on tour with that boy band?" I paused again as the name finally came to me. "One Direction?"