You can see someone every day and not know them. You walk past them on your way to work, or through the aisles in the grocery store but you don’t even take a second glance. You may be able to recognize the face, but you never know the name. Nor do you care.

Here are the stories of three different people, in three different social circles, who may actually be very alike. Here are the stories of how three different people, setting aside their differences, coincidentally becomes dependant on each other.

Part One - Jane

Jane’s shower didn’t cleanse her tattered body. The water ran off her shoulders like thundering rain on a tin roof. She wanted to absorb the thick droplets. Her heart was dehydrated and she so desperately wanted a drink. She pressed her nose onto the cold porcelain, gold walls and moved the shower dial to the coldest it could handle. Jane felt her arms, hoping for a reaction. No goose bumps. No shivers. Sighing, she turned the dial to the extreme hottest, praying the water would scold her skin. Maybe it did, maybe on the surface her skin reddened, but underneath she was numb. So full of pain and so empty of happiness.

Jane’s father Henry Perry owned one of the richest oil companies in the world. But money didn’t buy her affection from her own parents. Half the time, Jane wasn’t even alive to them. In fact, if she had unexpectedly died young, they’d shrug it off like some loss in the stock market. Once, they gave her a red Visa on her thirteenth birthday with a card that said, “Happy Birthday. Mom and Dad.” No “We love yous.” No x’s and o’s. Just that, written in their secretary’s penmanship. She believed this was the start, and major contributor to her own disease: life-long loneliness.

Part Two - Brody

“How embarrassing,” Brody muttered on his way to his beat-up Volvo. “Fired directly from the big man himself.”

After replaying anything that possibly would cause him to lose his job down at the construction site, Brody laughed until tears on the ride back to his low-end apartment in the city. He was so upset, that that’s the only thing he could do. The only comfort Brody had was getting home to his girlfriend. Lisa, her beautiful name soothed his mind already, was going to understand. She’d support him until he got reemployed once again.

Finally, he reached the corner of 5th and 23rd and pulled next to his two-room apartment. The kitchen was tidy. So tidy in fact, that he almost didn’t even notice the white note laying flat on the countertop.

Heard you lost your job. You know I love you, but if you loved me too, you’d know I need a man who can fulfill my needs. Or at least put food on the table. Don’t look for me. Don’t try calling. Just let me go. Good Luck with the rest of your life.
The hard and heavy blow hit him right in the chest, and choked up his throat. He sank to the ground, tossing the paper in the air. He lay parallel to the ground and watched as the note fluttered softly and landed on his heart.
Part Three - Jaime

Jaime was homeless. He’d gotten used to the word. After all, it has been six months since his parents died. With no graduating diploma, he had decided to live in New York City’s allies and booze up routinely. After six long months, he realized how lonely he really was out there.

Part Four – Alcohols Anonymous

“Hi, my names Jane, and I’m an alcoholic.”

Hi Jane.

She knew this echo of greetings was mandatory, but Jane felt as though they thought they already knew her. Almost as if her emotional deterioration inside was clear through the way she talked, the sadness bellowing in each syllable. Suddenly she felt self-conscious. The feeling quickly vanished when she realized most of the other AA’s were looking down at their feet nervously. The only one really staring was a handsome young man across from her, biting his stubby fingernails.

“I’ve always been a real heavy drinker. Especially, when my first husband cheated. Then it got worse when the second one did, too. All my life I was the pretty, rich girl, never anything else. Nobody really cared to look inside me. I suppose that loneliness was the thing that drove me to the bottle.”


“Hi, my names Brody, and I’m an alcoholic.”

Hi Brody.

“Unlike Jane, I haven’t always chose alcohol. Maybe once at a work party, or champagne on holidays, but never to the low I’ve been at recently. I started when my boss fired me, and I lost my job and the only girlfriend I’ve ever been in love with. Funny thing is, my boss fired me to give my girlfriend, Lisa, a reasonable excuse to leave me. I saw in the paper that Lisa and my ex-boss were in engaged. Small world right?”


“Hello, I’m Jaime, and I abuse alcohol.”

Hi Jaime.

“I never had a starting point for drinking. I don’t feel like explaining myself, but I will say I’m currently homeless. And like everybody so far, I’m lonely. Most importantly, I’m ready for a change.”


Part Five – Two Years Later

Brody, Jaime, and Jane sat around the small coffee table in Jane’s tearoom. This had become a routine every Monday at ten. Jaime knew it was the only reason he, and the two others, were sober for officially one year and three days. Brody reached across the antique table and rested his hand on Jane’s bumping stomach.

“We find out the gender tomorrow at eight,” Jane explained to Jaime.

The three had become best friends. And two had fallen in love. Jaime was Brody’s best man at the wedding and his day was almost as good as the bride and grooms. He had never felt so apart of something ever before that night. Jaime also got a job at Jane’s father’s oil company and was steadily getting back on his feet. There three worlds had collided, as different as they once were. And all three can now die happy, knowing they saved each others lives.