Even with every light in the house switched on, I couldn't feel a shred of warmth. Only loneliness.
Then something made me lift my head, and I met a pair of eyes that were both familiar and strange.
It was Russ.
He stood beneath a streetlamp not far away, looking nothing like the person I remembered. He was thinner, stripped of that old reckless confidence. His slightly overgrown hair fell across one eye.
He had no umbrella. The rain had soaked through his white shirt, and he looked wretched and pitiful.
Then his body gave a small jolt, as if he'd realized I was watching him, and he turned to leave.
But something seemed wrong with him. He'd barely taken two steps before his legs buckled and he collapsed to the ground.
Every ounce of self-pity vanished from my mind. I ran into the rain and pulled him up.
"Russ, are you okay?"
Under the faint glow of the streetlamp, I finally got a clear look at his face and gasped. "What happened to your eyes?"
One of Russ's eyes had turned completely gray, clouded over like fog, without a trace of light.
He turned his head away, hiding his whole face in the shadows like a frightened puppy, his voice trembling. "This eye... I can't see out of it."