She’s a cocktail of subverted nicotine stained insults and cherry lip-gloss. The other girls guess she must be kind of cool because the boys see her as short shorts and fish-net tights, crop tops and combat boots, miles upon miles of leather and tulle.
He’s a maelstrom of quick wit and unfounded criticism, quick to wear a shade of green not his color and slow to confess truths. The other boys suppose he must be kind of attractive because the girls see him as defined arms and stained glass eyes, shy smiles and baited breaths, miles upon miles of heartbreaks and stolen moments.

She reads the New Yorker and drinks copious cups of black coffee. She listens to Jason Moran and secretly cares that no one knows who that is, no one appreciates contemporary classical pianists like she does, but pretends that her music is anything but mainstream because it’s all a part of her avant garde chic.

He loses his evenings in Gabriel’s horn and spends ages staring at Kandinskys and Rodins. He believes in parallel universes and cannot accept that he probably dies in every last one because he’s so desperate for his own chance at immortality.

Maybe tonight she won’t think about him. Maybe when she sits at the foot of her bed and spins stories to her soul in the hope that it might survive until morning, just this once the heroes will be not-spindle-limbed, have not-piano-fingers, blink away not-grey-green-grey-blue shades of the day. Tonight she will create new heroes. And in doing so maybe she will discover that her longing for him hides behind baby grand pianos and cigarettes, still-warm mugs and courier font, waiting to be let go.

Maybe tonight he will remember her. Maybe in the squalor of another night, amidst shattered fragments of nostalgia, he will return to the time of her too-guarded stolen glances, too-jaded conspiracy theories, too-bold flirtations with too-many men, too-foolish to regret her past indiscretions. And in doing so maybe he will discover what he lost amidst infinite surface areas and abstractions, academia and invisible strings.

Maybe tonight they will move on from quietly lusting after one another, their affections always rising in opposition, never mutually felt or explored. Maybe they will turn the page to find a fresh start, or else be unafraid to begin new chapters in unwritten books. In all of the esoteric references, their philosophical musings and thought provoking queries, they will loosen their grip on the ideal of what was and find new spark, new heroes, new stolen glances. Or maybe, for one more night, they will find each other again.