Blending in with the crowd, inconspicuous in his dark jacket and blue jeans, he still felt out of place amongst the lights and the glimmer, the eloquent glamour of a city his heart had left behind. Moving with the surging masses, wide-eyed tourist, laid-back natives, he was lost at sea in the melting pot of the world, trapped in the place where all seemed to meet, at the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street.
If you had ever told Ephram Brown, that someday he would consider Everwood home, regarding it high above the place had been forced, kicking and screaming, to leave behind, he would have surely laughed at you. But now, as he walked the familiar dirty and worn sidewalks, his feet taking paths that they had not traveled in a year or more, there was no laughter on his lips.
The flashing day-glo colors of the neon lights did little to revive the luster in his dull and tired eyes; hands buried deep in his pockets as he shuffled along. Past vendors, past hustlers and bootleggers, ignoring the smells and the sights, and the sounds of the traffic letting out off Broadway, this musical or that musical over and done with, another night off ticket sales revenue to be hoarded away in someone's already over stuffed bank account. At home, in Everwood, you didn't worry about such things. You didn't have such things to worry about, after all.
If he were home, he wouldn't feel so alone while surrounded by thousands, mostly because there weren't thousands to be surrounded by. At home, you weren't consumed and clumped and labeled just another face. Home, where he was somebody that mattered to somebody else, instead of nobody with nowhere to go. At home he was loved, and even if that made things hard, more often then not, it was worth it to be noticed and to have someone care enough to know your name. At home, there was her, Amy, waiting for him, patiently, biding her time as he was biding his.
She was alone too, but at least she was at home, and that was a start.
Ephram paused in his footsteps, letting his eyes scan along the length of the street, finally taking a good look at his surroundings. Familiar, oh yes, so very much so. And there had been a time when he'd longed to stand in this very spot, so much that it made his heart ache, merely because he couldn't. Now that he was here though, it meant, nothing, he felt nothing, and he knew that he probably never would.
It would be ok though, he'd be going home soon enough.
Because, as we all know, and have learned through the years, be it through movies, or books, or some wise elder person just passing on what is really nothing more then sweet common knowledge.
There's no place like home.