It didn't rain too often, but when it did, you could feel the sandy dustiness being swept away from the air. Oh, the fresh night air! He looked up at the sky. The depth of the rich clouds as they drifted past were illuminated by the unusually bright moonlight. It wasn't often he saw the vulnerability of the night sky.

"I don't like to lose control." She huffed loudly in disdain.

He couldn't tell how inebriated she was.

"There's nothing wrong with losing control. We can't control the life around us." He grabbed her arm to pull her from running into the two beach bums staggering down the sidewalk.

"Yes, but we have control over our lives! We should at least always be in control of ourselves."

He had nothing more to offer.

A bar was emptying out - they walked around the group over a gridlock of bricks. She nearly tripped.

"Why did you take me this way?!"

"Well, how would we avoid the people, then?"

She huffed again.

"Do you know where we're going?" Maybe she doubted his sobriety.

"Of course. Don't you trust me?" He hadn't anything to drink in hours. He only had the pangs of emotional confusion to cloud his mind. Was there such a thing as secondhand drunkenness?

"I do." 

A group of males accosted a single female walking down the street, as they walked past. Were they friends?

"I don't like those guys. I don't trust them. That girl wants to leave." As usual, she worried about others to a fault.

"Should I do something about it?" They stopped, and he looked back - the girl didn't seem too uncomfortable.

"No, let's keep walking." They turned and kept walking.

A car drove past, skooshing a puddle. The brakelights reflected off the sheen of water from the earlier showers. The original din of happy inebriation died down this far north. There were only the absent lights from houses and shunted glimmer from the streetlights, broken by the overhanging trees.

She huffed again. He sensed her displeasure again.

"What do you like about this moment?" Why focus on the negativity?

"I like that it's quiet. I like the peacefulness of it." He should have been invisible.

He said nothing. The silence loomed between the distance he kept from her.

All he wanted was for her to enjoy the night.  For her to know that there was nothing wrong with letting go of oneself every once in a while. To know that even when she wasn't in control, there were people to take care of her. To know that she didn't have to be everything right now.

All she had to be was herself. To enjoy the present. To spread the joy that she gave him to the others in her life. And everything else would work itself out.

But he said nothing. And the self-doubts lingered in the air like the clouds of that night sky, slowly drifting past the two as they walked back to the life they knew.