You had enough. You couldn’t take it anymore, the environment you lived in all your life in the sick abusive home drove you mad, the only thing that kept you going and sane was an old Ibanez S series guitar. May have been old but you played that hoe to its potential and damn did it sound good.

The moment you turned 18, you left. You packed a backpack, got your guitar, and left on your skateboard. Your parents didn’t care, if anything they didn’t give a rats ass.

For the next few months you traveled, becoming a street artist playing your guitar on the streets which is how you earned some sort of cash but you enjoyed it, you took requests to cover some songs and even played your own songs. You made friends that way too, people knew you, other homeless people enjoyed you as well, sometimes you and other homeless people would gather all your money together to get necessities. That’s how you lived, you made family that way.

You’re now 19, just a year of being on the streets, far from your abusive household which you can only call your past. Today wasn’t much different, you were in a walking park set up in a popular open space. You played passionately, your fingers would dance and fly across the strings, plucking each one rhythmically before swiftly strumming.

People gathered around, left money for you, watched you with smiles which always gave you a nice humble feeling, you look amongst the crowd to see their smiling faces but this one man…this man caught your attention, he watched you so intensely, not to a point it was creepy but he admired you. He had a German shepherd dog by his side as well which you assumed was here for a walk.

The German shepherd seemed to get excited, wagging its tail and suddenly came up to you, pulling on the leash so suddenly the man stumbled forward but caught himself before he could fall.

“Riley-! No!” The man, Simon, said to his dog as he tugged back on the leash but the dog who you now know as Riley was sniffing at your shoe.