The winter chill was setting in thick and fast. The days were getting shorter and on some days, the city would be enveloped in a seemingly impenetrable layer of fog. Life was starting to get difficult by the day for those who had morning shifts at work or study. For others however, it was just another day; so what if it's a bit colder today than it was yesterday!

    For Matt, who worked as a lifeguard at the local swimming pool, winters meant fewer swimmers and fewer swimmers meant lesser salary. That was not at all good because he had his parents and his sister to feed at home. He really didn't earn very much in any case, even during summers. His parents were not at all happy with what he was making out of his life. They thought that the job was menial and that the swimming pool was the place where all the spoilt brats hung out. His father, specially, loathed his son's position. His business was going downhill for a few years now and showed no signs of improvement. The company he was working for had gone bankrupt and to make matters worse, debts in the family's name had started to pile up over the last few months. And winter was bringing more gloom into this family already in trouble.

    However, there was just enough love in the family to keep them all together. But strings had started coming loose slowly with no solution to their increasing problems. And yet, Matt felt that there was nothing he could do. He was devastated when he found out that his sister who was still in school was doing tailoring work after school with his mother just to earn minimum wages. With a huge effort, Matt decided that he was going to give up his job, leave home, move into the city and look for work. Even as he made up his mind, he knew that life would not be easy anymore.

    When the last swimmer had retrieved from the pool one night at around half past nine, Matt decided he would make the last dive into the water before he quit his job. The water felt warm and welcoming with the new heating arrangements as he plunged into the water. There were very few things that he could think of that he enjoyed doing as much as he enjoyed swimming. The love of the sport had taken him nowhere except his spiritual self-actualization. He had won all competitions he had ever participated in but he was never called in for one of international level - one that really mattered. No name, no fame and no money. But there were countless things that working as a lifeguard had given him that money just couldn't buy. He had taught hundreds of small children to swim who literally worshipped him, saved dozens of lives and met every kind, the talented, the stubborn, the coward, the brave, the beautiful and the ugly. A wave of bliss swept through him as he thought of all those golden moments and floated effortlessly under the starry sky.

    He was the most sought after bachelor in the dressing room. And getting girls at the pool was as easy as getting fish from the market. But he knew how to handle them and to whisk them away like a professional juggler at work. It was not what he wanted. But things changed when one day, Teisha walked past him at the swimming pool. He recognized her immediately as the girl he had known a long time ago when he was a little kid and went to the same school as her. She hadn't changed much, except her bodily proportions or at least it seemed to him that way: same lovely face, the same dark eyes and the same bold attitude. She had first walked past him, and then turned and her lips had spread into a beautiful smile that he remembered to this day. The arrows had hit both ways so getting together was just a matter of time.

    Things were going well, but then the customary daddy-playing-the-villain at the girl's end and the dreadful breakup. She had cried all over him that day but Matt felt as if he could have cried her an ocean if there were so much tears in him. Two lives were torn apart that day but very few love stories made it to the happily-ever-after-ending these days anyway, he thought. He would just have to let it go. Like they say, in the end, all that matters is how well you lived, how well you loved and how well you learnt to let go. Imagining how it would feel like not to have a swim everyday from the next day on, he got out of the pool to head towards home.

    It was already 11.30 in the night. He got dressed, locked the pool up, gave the keys to the gatekeeper and turned around to walk home with a heavy feeling in his heart. As he walked into the cold night thinking his own thoughts, he saw a bunch of people huddled together in the distance. They all looked in his direction and started discussing something amongst themselves. When he came close enough, he recognized one of them as Jim, Teisha's suitor. They spread out as soon as their proximity decreased to arm's length. Apparently, they had all gathered up there to beat Matt up.

    Matt was in no mood for a fight. They were about eight of them in total most of whom Matt had punished at the pool for teasing girls and now, they wanted revenge. Indeed, his job had earned him friends as well as foes.

    "If you ever even look at my girl again", Jim began who seemed to be the leader of the bunch, "I will… I will…" His voice trembled with rage as he tried desperately to complete his sentence.

    "Go home, Jim", Matt said lightly, "I wouldn't dare look at Teisha again. She dumped me, remember?"

    But Jim was not to be intimidated. "Because of you Teisha is not herself anymore. I don't know what she even saw in you. You pathetic loser, you son of a bitch!"

    "That's enough", Matt shouted. He felt very sorry for Teisha and even more for Jim. But Jim was not going to give up without a fight. He foul-mouthed for sometime then all of them sprang onto Matt at the same time with clenched fists, chains, knives and pieces of wood. Matt resisted for some time but eventually he was outnumbered. Once or twice he had a strong urge to hit Jim back but he abstained. They hit him in the gut until he bled from the mouth and kicked his face with leather boots until it was covered in blood, stuck knives into his arm and thigh and broke his left leg. Yet Jim was not satisfied. He spat at him, used all sorts of derogatory language under the sun and perhaps, could have killed him if the others had not stopped him.

    They left him bleeding on the lane, cold and alone. It was the most deserted lane of the suburb where all the junkies lived. Matt looked around in agonizing pain searching for any passerby. But he was spared the trouble of much inspection because soon everything went black.

    When Matt came back, he found himself in a dumpster unable to move his head or body. With immense difficulty he pulled himself out of the filth and tried to stand up but it seemed like there was no part in his body that was not in pain in doing so. He would have cried for help but he knew it was the place sandwiched between the last two houses at the end of the lane where only junkies came to inject and throw their needles away. He waited for hours and hours for death to come but it would not.

    After what seemed like eternity, a familiar voice calling his name came to his ears like a sweet song. "Was it possible?" he wondered. It was Teisha! She was looking more beautiful than ever in a white shirt and jeans. As soon as she saw him, she threw herself at him and put his head on her lap and kissed his bloody forehead. Her usual merry eyes had an element of sadness and fright about them. But most importantly, there was love in those eyes and worries that come along with love for the loved one. She was trembling more than him but she produced a cell and ordered an ambulance at once.
 
    "I'm so sorry", she said over and over again as she took him into a warm embrace and cried passionately. "I'm never going to leave you again."

    Although those words were the simplest of words in the English dictionary and the sentence, the simplest, on structural basis, they meant the world to Matt and he felt like a fresh dose of joy had been injected into his body as she caressed his face and hair. All of a sudden, all his problems seemed like tiny weeds on the wall that could be so easily scrapped off.

    "I.., er.., love you!" Matt felt elated.

At that moment, he felt like he was reborn and that there was yet another life to be lived, one with Teisha in it, feeling her fingers on him, her warmth against his body, her floating hair on his face and taking in her sweet perfume, he felt like he could live for eternity that way without drinking a drop of water… it felt like home… like family… like… heaven. It was, after all, not a very bad thing that it was such a lonely lane.