A Shot in the Dark

That was it. Tommy was the last person in the building after the graduation ceremony. Four years of college in the past, and now there was no one there. It was just Tommy standing in the lobby of his school’s basketball arena, the lights starting to dim.

It was a strange feeling he had never experienced before, being completely alone in a large, empty building, but it was one that made sense to him. Tommy went to a college that was on the other side of the country from where he grew up. None of his high school friends went there. His parents didn’t visit him often. The few friends he had made throughout college were pretty surface level friends; rarely did they hangout outside of the classroom. But that was how he wanted it. He wanted enough human interaction to stay sane, but not so much that the scale would tip the other way.

As he stood in the empty arena looking at the plaques and sports memorabilia, he couldn’t help but wonder what would be next for him. The idea of the “adult world” intrigued him, but only so far as there were more opportunities for him to be left alone. He had majored in computer science, with plans to become a website developer. This gave him some of the best odds to work in an environment where he wouldn’t have to interact with others. A purposefully thought out path for himself.

It wasn’t that Tommy didn’t like people, he did. There were plenty of people he admired or wished he was more like. In fact, he often found himself wishing he was more like others around him. But Tommy lacked a desire to keep relationships afloat. His parents, while still together, may have been an influence. Sure, they were married, but they hardly acted like it. There wasn’t a time Tommy could recall seeing his parents kiss each other, tell them they love one another, or even just show affection in a more than friendly way. This wasn’t something he thought would affect him until he got older.

His first relationship lasted all of a month during his sophomore year of high school. He really liked a girl in his class, Samantha, but he didn’t understand it would take more than asking her out to keep the relationship going. After that, he never really tried to date again. He had a few hook ups here and there in college, but he never tried to be serious with anyone. It was mostly his innate desire to be sexual that drove him to hooking up, but it was like a job. Get in, do the work, get out. A mechanical way of living, but he found no displeasure in this lifestyle.

But Tommy yearned to be different than his parents. He wanted to find someone he could be around daily and do life with. The problem was he wasn’t sure how he would know if they were that person. Tommy thought he could read people fairly well, knowing if he’d be able to get along with them after just a few short interactions. Although he didn’t realize you have to learn to live with a person’s flaws. So for him, he never found out the flaws he could live with. Instead, he’d move on from girls the moment he found any major differences. And major was a bit of a stretch. If a girl had an unusual laugh, Tommy would move on. Did they not like the same music and movies he did? Tommy said goodbye. In his mind these were valid reasons to not pursue a relationship with someone, and depending on the depth, they could be, but Tommy never managed to make it past the surface. He was looking for a reason to leave, not to stay.

His senior year of college, Tommy met Catrina. She was the first girl he dated since Samantha back in high school. Much like himself, Catrina was a bit more reserved and had a way about herself that signaled to others she was unavailable. She wasn’t a cold person, she just knew what she wanted. So when the two were paired up for an assignment in class, they clicked right away. Tommy was smitten by Catrina. He was determined to approach her differently than the other girls in his past. They only had a few months of school left, so he couldn’t waste time. He asked her out and the two started dating shortly after their first meeting for the assignment.

Something felt different with Catrina for Tommy. He tried to make their differences, which there were few of, into reasons to leave, but he couldn’t. He loved that she had a little squeal when she laughed at his jokes, though in the beginning it had made him cringe. Over time he purposefully tried to make her laugh so he could hear it. He stopped hearing the sharp noise and focused on the smile on her face. It was her “flaws” that drew him more and more into her. The idiosyncrasies of Catrina were the things Tommy failed to recognize in others. People didn’t have flaws, they had things that made them unique.

While the young couple was smooth sailing into their final semester, they didn’t plan for the future. One evening, Catrina was talking about how she was moving to New York City after graduation. She had already landed a job with a software company and was going to look at apartments over spring break. Caught off guard, Tommy, like a child, blurted out: “What about me?” The two sat in silence for a few minutes. Catrina didn’t have an answer and Tommy didn’t want to further embarrass himself. Eventually, Catrina brought up the idea of Tommy moving to NYC as well. This sounded like a fine idea, except that Tommy didn’t want to live in a big city like New York. He fired off a few snappy comments about how it’d be impossible to live there just starting out and that it wasn’t worth the hassle. And that was that. Tommy’s first meaningful relationship had hit a wall. He was so distraught at the thought of losing Catrina he avoided her for an entire week. And then she didn’t talk to Tommy until after spring break. Two weeks of zero communication with Catrina felt like a knife to the ribs for Tommy. His new outlook on life was slowly leaking out of him.

When Catrina came back from New York over spring break, she texted Tommy and asked to meet the Sunday before classes resumed. There wasn’t a scene, just tears. She wasn’t going to give up New York for him and he wasn’t going to go there for her. It was a quick decision to end the relationship, but nonetheless painful for both.

So Tommy was out in the world all alone again. This time, he wasn’t prepared. Being alone now scared him. He saw life with a partner by his side, and that life was one he much preferred. But now, there was no one there.

Tommy took one final lap around the arena, lights fully turning off as he slowly walked the loop thinking about what waited ahead. A portion of his life was ending, while the rest was just getting ready to start. But what was Tommy going to do now that he was all alone? The final light went off.