It'd been a while.

No, that was an understatement. Or maybe it wasn't. Kevin wasn't really sure exactly how long you'd been gone. Maybe a year, hell probably two by now. Days felt like minutes and months felt hours. Time passed differently than it had before you left.

He didn't hold anything against you of course. Well, he hadn't at first. When Susan went missing it felt like a piece of himself had went right along with her. The first few days of her absence weren't filled with panic or worry. They hadn't even known she went missing at first! Then close to a week had gone by without a trace of her. Worry came first before all the others.

Now she was presumed dead. Kevin couldn't blame the authorities when there wasn't a single piece of evidence to go off of concerning her disappearance. All they knew was that she clocked in at around six in the morning. She never left that restaurant where she worked after that.

And then along came you. He wasn't sure when you'd returned to Brighton, but here you were on his parents' front porch. The little gathering they had was awkard to hell and back; borderline unbearable honestly. Conversations about how older you looked and how Susan would be just oh so proud of how you'd turned out made his skin scrawl.

After it'd died down and most everybody else had left, he'd managed to sneak out to the back porch. Their backyard wasn't anything special. A pretty big oak was nestled in the corner but that was about it. Kevin didn't smoke, not like most everybody else, so he just propped up against the railing and watched as the sky slowly turned pink and purple.

It was getting colder. Most of the leaves had already turned red and brown or just fallen off all together. The once green grass was now a dull brown. Kevin liked it when it got this way until he had to bury himself under layers in the hopes that he wouldn't freeze to death.

Dull clouds were dyed by the sunset just as the sky was.

Blinking at the sound of an opening door he looked over his shoulder.

There you were.